It is hard to answer this question precisely, because the large,
radioactive nuclei are very complex structures, for which exact solutions of
Schroedinger's equation cannot be obtained. Rather these things are
usually studied via Hartree-Fock approximations.
However, in loose visual terms, you can think of a neutron as being in
a superposition of states, some of which are an electron-proton pair
separated by a substantial distance. If the electron finds itself too
far from its partner proton, the weak force is too weak, and the
electric force is shielded by the orbital electrons, so the electron
escapes, becoming the beta ray. This explanation has left out an
obvious factor - an anti-neutrino must also be created as part of the
process. This is often explained as being required to preserve lepton
number - but conservation of lepton number is a somewhat ad hoc law - I
don't know the real physical reason why lepton number is conserved.
Anyway, the point of randomness is that this is a quintessential
quantum process, very closely related to the phenomenon of quantum
tunneling. Unless there exists a hidden variable-type theory
underlying QM (which basically appears to be ruled out by
Bell+Aspect), the process must be completely random.
Colin’s Wackier Version:
Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3. They decay deterministically in >>3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in >>3D looks fuzzy to us.
Quantum mechanics is a statistical description that is predictive in 3D. It explains nothing.
I offer explanation, not description.
J
Colin’s Wackier Version:
Because the space they operate in, at the scale in which the decay operates, there are far more dimensions than 3.
They decay deterministically in >>3D and it appears, to us, to be random because of the collapse of the spatial dimensions to 3, where we
humble observers gain access to it. Same reason atoms jiggle in space. Same reason an electron is fuzzy. Smoothness in >>3D looks fuzzy to us.
It's a bit odd to ask why a random event happened; if you could explain why then there would be a reason for it to happen, and then it wouldn't be random.
John K Clark
> If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?
John K Clark
--
Stathis Papaioannou
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?
>>>
>>>
>>> It couldn't.
>>
>>
>> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor
>> deterministic?
>
> Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
> predictions about random events.
In my view, randomness = magic.
> In my view, randomness = magic.
John K Clark
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Mathematics itself seems rather magical.For instance the sum 1+2+3+4+5.....infinity = -1/12
And according to Scott Aaronson's new bookwhen string theorists estimate the mass of a photonthey get two components: one being 1/12and the other being that sum, so the mass is zero,thanks to RamanujanIf that sum is cutoff at some very large number but less than infinity,does anyone know the value of the summation.?
Telmo,I can only give you my opinion. You are of course referring to the double slit experiment where one photon can follow at least two different paths, and potentially an infinite number of paths.But even diffraction of a single photon will do that: in the simplest case send a photon on to a semi-infinite metallic plane and the photon potentially scatters into an infinite number of paths from the edge of the plane. We only know which path when the photon reaches a detector plane on the far side. The actual deterministic diffraction pattern only emerges when the number of photons sent approaches infinity in plane waves. The actual path of a single photon is random within the constraints of the infinite-photon diffraction pattern.So I say the way to deal with that is to propagate a large number of photons or do an EM wave calculation for the diffraction pattern.I wonder how comp treats such single photon instances. Does it use algorithms that are random number generators?
On 12 Apr 2013, at 03:30, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way?
It couldn't.
Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor
deterministic?
Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make
predictions about random events.
But with QM without collapse, matter does not behave randomly. The SWE is deterministic.
We are multiplied, and the randomness comes from the first person perspective.
Comp extends this. The SWE itself emerges from the first person perspective of the person supervening on the arithmetical relation defining computations.
Bruno
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> It seems to me that the very idea of singular causes and singular effects is deeply flawed.
> Can you point to a few examples of singular causes?
> All examples that I can think of have a line of regress behind them...
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Stephen Paul King
<kingste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Telmo Menezes wrote:
> "...My understanding is that
>
> it's consistent with the MWI and also with what Russel proposes in his
> book: everything happens but each observer only perceives one of the
> outcomes.
>
> This seems highly unintuitive to a lot of people, but it seems more
> reasonable to me than the idea that there is just one Telmo with one
> personal diary. If there are infinitely many, each one with his own
> personal diary, the world still looks exactly like it does to this
> particular instance of me, and we do not have to resort to any
> randomness magic."
>
> What people do not seem to understand is that 1st person perspectives, for
> instance, what any one version of Telmo perceives' is constrained to be
> consistent with Telmo's existence as a perciever. Observing many points of
> view simultaneously from a single location is very much like a list of
> propositions that are not mutually consistent. This is a failure of
> satisfiability in a Boolean algebra.
> The property of satisfiability does not just occur by magic...
Yes, I think about that too. It leads me to the idea that logic is
more fundamental than physical laws.
I would propose that each subset
of consistent perceptions is precisely what a 1p is. That's why I am
not aware of my alters, and maybe why I am not aware that I am you.
I'm counting memories as perceptions for simplification -- one could
imagine the brain as a bag of states that can be perceived, which is
perhaps a bizarre way of defining memory / personal diaries.
Unless we question causality itself. Which we should. This is why Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge and Philosophy is necessary.
But Bruno,because of the measure problem, MWI must also be probabilistic,otherwise it does not agree with experiment.
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Is 10^122 or 10^1000 large enough?Richard
I have tried to study the UDA but lack sufficient understanding to see how the UDA could compute an infinite number of paths or universes as in the diffraction example I discussed.
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Hi Bruno,Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'.
It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choice
and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.
On 14 Apr 2013, at 19:02, Stephen Paul King wrote:Hi Bruno,Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'.Yes. Basically, getting the fits person plural is the same as getting the physical laws.
It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choiceThat is asking too much, as I have already explained. I don't assume set theory.
and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.You should convince Craig, not a computationalist, as UDA shows that physical time is not primitive.Bruno
Hi Bruno,
InterleavingOn Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 14 Apr 2013, at 19:02, Stephen Paul King wrote:Hi Bruno,Unless we can explain how the *some first person plural indeterminacy* obtains, it does not give a satisfactory explanation of 'shared experience'.Yes. Basically, getting the fits person plural is the same as getting the physical laws.OK, but could you be a bit more elaborative? We have already agreed that our goal is to be able to derive 'physical laws', so we cannot assume something equivalent to them (by your account!) without explanation. I think that we get 1st person plurality by solving the solipsism problem for numbers: How can a number distinguish its dreams of itself and its dreams of not-itself?It seems to me that you are right, in so far as, the necessity of such, but I argue that that alone is insufficient. You might want something like the axiom of choiceThat is asking too much, as I have already explained. I don't assume set theory.Of course, I am not asking you to assume it. I am asking you to look at how set theory seems to be necessary to obtain 1st person plurality.
and foundation to force the collection of *some first person plural indeterminacy* into a partition, but I argue that this is equivalent to assuming that satistiability obtains for collections of propositions automatically - something we know it false!It is for this reason that I reject the timelessness of Platonism and adopt a 'Process" view where Becoming is ontologically fundamental and time is defined locally by the 1p measures of observers.You should convince Craig, not a computationalist, as UDA shows that physical time is not primitive.BrunoI do not know what you mean by "physical time". The time you use is the lexicographical ordering of numbers and does not refer to any kind of 'change' as there is nothing that 'becomes' in Platonia, everything just 'is'.This is where our ways of thinking differ the most. I assume that becoming is primitive (ontologically fundamental), pace Parmenides and you agree with Parmenides and assume Being is primitive. Time then is defined relative to an individual's measure of Becoming and since there is no 'ultimate' observer in my ontology, there is no primitive time eithe; there is only local times (plural) as there must exist multiple observers as there necessarily exist multiple measures of Becoming and Being. (Being is the equivalence class of automorphisms of Becoming.)
> The theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin is non-reductionist. It relies on the concept of "natural selection", which is an holistic concept.
> Finding a cure for cancer or understanding exactly how the brain works resist the reductionist approach to this day.
>> I can give a example of a effect with no cause at all, the creation of virtual particles.
> One could argue that they are the result of some condition created by the Big Bang.
> Causality is just a human concept anyway.
>> there is either a infinite regress of causes and effects like the layers of a infinite onion with no fundamental layer, or there is a effect without a cause. Neither of those possibilities is emotionally satisfying to some people but one of them must be true.
> Unless we question causality itself. Which we should.
> Science is not the only way to pursue knowledge
> Philosophy is necessary.
> Evolution doesn't make decisions at all.
> It's an emergent phenomena.
> That is debatable.> And Evolution has no foresight, it doesn't understand one step backward 2 steps forward, it only understands if there is a advantage to the animal right now.
> There is the possibility of the evolution of evolvability,
> Why only two genders?
> This is entirely not the case. The most obvious example is the field>> Richard Dawkins has said that in today's pop culture admitting to being a reductionist is like admitting that you like to eat babies, but the fact is that every disease science has found a cure for it has done so with a reductionist approach,
of psychiatry, using drugs for which mechanisms of operation are not
understood combined with therapy techniques that are completely based
on practioner's experience and intuition. Yet it manages to get
results above placebo for some classes of diseases, like depression.
> Being able to duplicate the brain does not imply that we understand it,
> nor does understanding it imply that we can replicate it.
> Actually understanding how the brain works means exactly the opposite: not having to consider all the billions of little details but instead
understanding the fundamental principles -- which are holistic for sure.
> How do you know that the universe can't think?
> My view is that the difficulty in defining certain terms is a hint about where our ignorance lies.
> Suppressing discussion about these definitions is a form of mysticism.
> >Philosophy is necessary but philosophers are not.
>I don't know what to say here. Isn't philosophy a human endeavour?
> what you mean by "philosopher"?
There is no knowledge as such in science.
That's contrary to all usage. It means I don't know the Earth is round and I don't know there's a refrigerator in my kitchen. I understand these are theories or models and that they are defeasible.
That's the point. That is important when we talk on science in science. The usage is good for sending man on the moon, but in epistemological research, we must be more cautious with the terming.
But to say there is no knowledge because knowledge must be certain seems perverse.
Knowledge must be true, not certain. Truth is anything but certain, in most case. The only exception might be consciousness.
And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true belief". My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being certain.
Exactly.
But as logician, I can't exclude completely a (comp) physics with non causal events, as the physics extracted from comp is only in its infancy, to say the least. Even in that case the non physical cause will have an arithmetical reason, and that non cause would emerge from the first person (plural) indeterminacy on the UD* or (sigma1) arithmetic. No need of unnecessary magic.
I would expect that in comp the same event would have arbitrarily many different causes.
Hmm... That's a bit ambiguous. I would say that a physical event has one cause : the multiple arithmetical realization leasing to some observer state. There is one cause or one reason, but it is infinite in extent---it is infinitely realized or implemented in arithmetic.
Brent
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On 4/16/2013 2:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
But as logician, I can't exclude completely a (comp) physics with non causal events, as the physics extracted from comp is only in its infancy, to say the least. Even in that case the non physical cause will have an arithmetical reason, and that non cause would emerge from the first person (plural) indeterminacy on the UD* or (sigma1) arithmetic. No need of unnecessary magic.
I would expect that in comp the same event would have arbitrarily many different causes.
Hmm... That's a bit ambiguous. I would say that a physical event has one cause : the multiple arithmetical realization leasing to some observer state. There is one cause or one reason, but it is infinite in extent---it is infinitely realized or implemented in arithmetic.
As Stathis pointed out, since a brain has only a finite number of possible states (assuming comp) it is inevitable that a state be repeated provided the brain lasts long enough.
But there need not be identical causal chains leading to this state.
A Turing machine can reach the same state by different sequences of computation.
QM is time reversal invariant, so if it predicts different future states of the observer then it also retrodicts different past states.
Brent
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On 16 Apr 2013, at 19:51, meekerdb wrote:
On 4/16/2013 1:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
There is no knowledge as such in science.
That's contrary to all usage. It means I don't know the Earth is round and I don't know there's a refrigerator in my kitchen. I understand these are theories or models and that they are defeasible.
That's the point. That is important when we talk on science in science. The usage is good for sending man on the moon, but in epistemological research, we must be more cautious with the terming.
But to say there is no knowledge because knowledge must be certain seems perverse.
Knowledge must be true, not certain. Truth is anything but certain, in most case. The only exception might be consciousness.
And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true belief". My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being certain.
Exactly.
Then you cannot assert that there is no knowledge in science.
Why?
Brent
(And it doesn't comport with your own formula that "knowledge = true belief". My belief that there's a refrigerator in my kitchen can be true without being certain.
Exactly.)
Brent: Then you cannot assert that there is no knowledge in science.
JM: "can be true..." - or not. We don't know. Nobody.
Bruno's 'certainty' is also hypothetical (what my agnostic position may question.)
It all depends how you (we?) define knowledge, certainty and 'true'. And the rest of it.
John M
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
Such a stress-mutation gene has never been found in a sexual animal and it's easy to see why. In sex all the genes are not inherited in one big package but are shuffled around with the genes of the other parent, so a animal that was lucky enough to inherit the good genes produced by the hypothetical stress-mutation gene but not the stress-mutation gene itself would do just as well or better than a animal that got both the good genes and the stress-mutation gene that is no longer active because the animal is no longer under stress. So even if such a stress-mutation gene did occur in one individual in a population it would vanish in just a few generations from the gene pool. Natural Selection doesn't figure "I better keep that stress-mutation gene because even though there is no stress now that could change and such a gene might come in handy in the future". Evolution has no foresight and can't think and all that matters to it is what's happening right here right now.
John K Clark
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> That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
>> If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 1:29 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
>> If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
No because in a sexually reproducing animal the genes that make the error correcting machinery are inherited independently of the very genes that they have corrected, and the vast majority of mutations are detrimental not helpful. So in any generation the offspring of a animal with good error correcting machinery will almost always do better than offspring from a animal with poor correcting machinery.
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On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.
> It can become distracting / misleading in deeper discussions about the mechanisms of evolution.>> You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am not.
> Emergence is just a way to connect different levels of abstraction.
> What do you mean "useful"?
>> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness> Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?
> If consciousness is easier than intelligence
> how come we have scientific progress in the latter and not in the former?
> how do you know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness?
Ok, I guess Plato and Aristotle and the rest of that gang are out then.> Somebody who puts "philosopher" in the occupation line on his tax form
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:> It can become distracting / misleading in deeper discussions about the mechanisms of evolution.>> You may be pedantic about the use of anthropomorphic language but I am not.
I don't care, anybody who was mislead or distracted and believed Evolution could think would be so stupid that I wouldn't care to talk to them. And as you once said "who are you to say what's useful or not as a tool for other people to think and understand?".
> Emergence is just a way to connect different levels of abstraction.
The trouble is people say X leads to Y but when asked how they just wave their hands around and say it's a emergent property, as if that explains something.
> What do you mean "useful"?
I'm not going to tell you. Any definition I give you will be made of words and I have no doubt you would then demand a definition of at least one of those words.
>> That's the trouble with this list, everybody is a big picture man with their own fundamental holistic theories about consciousness> Isn't "big picture" the theme of this list?
I thought the theme of this list was everything, and details are something. Dilettantes are always big picture men because that is so much easier than being a details man; they are VERY big picture men, so big that their ideas have made absolutely no changes to science or to anything that anyone can measure.
> If consciousness is easier than intelligence
Evolution certainly found that to be the case.
> how come we have scientific progress in the latter and not in the former?
Today's computers are smarter than they were 10 years ago so I think it is highly likely that they are more conscious too.
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Ummm, Craig, you couldn't tell if you were switched off and on unless you had environmental clues that time when by/shit moved around... I think that you are being a bit specist here. Computers are very much conscious, just not self-aware in any way relatable to our experience of such.
On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.
How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?
Craig
Brent
Such a stress-mutation gene has never been found in a sexual animal and it's easy to see why. In sex all the genes are not inherited in one big package but are shuffled around with the genes of the other parent, so a animal that was lucky enough to inherit the good genes produced by the hypothetical stress-mutation gene but not the stress-mutation gene itself would do just as well or better than a animal that got both the good genes and the stress-mutation gene that is no longer active because the animal is no longer under stress. So even if such a stress-mutation gene did occur in one individual in a population it would vanish in just a few generations from the gene pool. Natural Selection doesn't figure "I better keep that stress-mutation gene because even though there is no stress now that could change and such a gene might come in handy in the future". Evolution has no foresight and can't think and all that matters to it is what's happening right here right now.
John K Clark
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> A deterministic reality
> might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive").
On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.
How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science. This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.Bruno
Craig - John - this is to the hard-to-identify last part of your combined and mixed post signed by John K C. about the 'consciousness' ("C") part.I know that intelligence is a requirement of consciousness, just identify intelligence appropriately.<G>.
- I like to indentify "i" with the Latin origin as 'inter-lego' (between the lines) tp consider more than properly expressed by the words used - maybe considering the 'meaning' represented by the 'name' (word, term) in the particular language - always more comprehensive than the general usage of a term. One may tailor-make "i" to fit to a given 'meaning' used in one's own theory for "C".Otherwise:I have "another method" maybe not to 'measure', but identify consciousness(at least the term as many talk about it): it is a response to relations. IMO definitely NOT a HUMAN ONLY (not even animal) characteristic. I try not to call it "C".I consider the "C" term useful for people tackling with human behavior and in need of a general term to 'name' a group of phenomena they need for it.I definitely refuse definitions like "you can FEEL it" or "you know it for sure".
On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrot> A deterministic reality
We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.
> might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive").
And the only things we have found that have goals are humans and some of the higher animals, there is not a scrap of evidence that anything else does including reality or the universe or the multiverse if such a thing turns out to exist. Thus although humans may like or dislike what the universe does (I personally dislike the ban on faster than light travel because Star Wars was cool) from the universe's point of view it can't do anything wrong, or anything right for that matter.
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On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.
How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science. This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.Bruno
It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.
What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?
On 19 Apr 2013, at 19:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.
How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science. This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.Bruno
It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.OK.
What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?It is when god put the tree of knowledge in the garden :)More seriously, it is when universal machine/number begins to refer and self-refer. That ability makes it possible to accelerate the computations relatively to each other, but entails the possiblity of error.
The deep reason is already contained in Gödel's second incompleteness: if I am consistent then it is consistent that I am inconsistent (Dt -> ~BDt). Simple but rich correct theories can be come inconsistent, or consistent but unsound.
> We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.
> Everett restores determinacy in physics.
> The SWE's solutions are deterministic.
> I don't think that physical indeterminacy makes sense,
> nor that it is something testable.
On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:> We don't know that reality is deterministic and in fact right now the overwhelming evidence very strongly suggests that it is not.
> Everett restores determinacy in physics.
Yes, but although I like Everett I don't know for a fact that he is correct,
and even if he is from our point of view things are still indeterminate because there is information that we can never obtain, not even in theory much less in practice.
> The SWE's solutions are deterministic.
Yes, but the Schrodinger Wave Equation does not describe physical reality, it describes the Quantum Wave Function. The Quantum Wave Function is very useful and so are the lines of latitude and longitude, and they both have equal physical reality.
> I don't think that physical indeterminacy makes sense,
What law of logic demands that every event have a cause?
I think we're lucky that we live in a universe where at least some events have causes, demanding that all of them do may be asking for too much;
but of course if we weren't that lucky and lived in a completely random universe of white noise we wouldn't be around to demand anything.
> nor that it is something testable.
If indeterminacy is not testable then neither is determinacy.
John K Clark--
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On Saturday, April 20, 2013 4:15:17 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:On 19 Apr 2013, at 19:52, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:59:34 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:On 18 Apr 2013, at 22:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:29:29 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:On 4/18/2013 8:15 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been proposed that the susceptibility to mutation is itself a characteristic subject to natural selection.
If a animal is undergoing stress (too hot, too cold, too thirsty, too hungry whatever) that means there is something about it that is not well adapted to its environment; I can imagine a gene that in times of stress would switch on and produce a chemical that increases the rate of random mutation in the genes of the offspring of that stressed animal. Most of the offspring would have mutated in the wrong direction and die but they would have probably died anyway because they would have been as poorly adapted as there parent was, but if the mutational effect was not too strong (even if it's in the right direction you can change things too far) it could increase the likelihood that at least one of its children would be better adapted than its parent. However I maintain that such a stress induced mutation producing gene has had no significant effect on the history of life, at least not in animals that reproduce sexually.
That's a kind of Lamarckian adjustment of mutability. What I was referring to is simple Darwinian adjustment of mutability. There are error correcting mechanisms for DNA reproduction. Suppose they worked perfectly: then there would never be any genetic variation and when the evironment changed the species would go extinct. But if they had a slight error rate then there would develop a range of genetic diversity that might, under environmental change, result in survivors or even new species. So on strictly Darwinian theory the DNA error correction may be selected to be less than perfect.
How does a deterministic universe invent something which is intentionally less than perfect? I'm not saying that it couldn't, or didn't, but why would there really even be any possibility of volatility built into physics in the first place? What, in a deterministic universe, constitutes an 'error'?A deterministic reality might be unable to make an error at the "bottom level", but if it can emulate high level complex processes, like running some complex software, and such software can make an error with respect to the goal (like "survive"). Look at some youtube "crash investigation" showing why today some plane crash are due to computer errors. The error can have multiple origin, hardware or software.Likewise it is reasonable for a biologist to say that when a DNA polymerase introduces an unwanted supplementary nucleotide, it is making an error. In fact living cells contains a lot of error correction code to handle such cases, with 'error' taken in a sense similar to the one used in computer science. This illustrates that some errorless low-level can support higher level errors.Bruno
It seems like you are bringing in empirical evidence of errors in the real world and using that to justify the expectation that at some point between low-level and high-level, this 'error' potential emerges as a condition of complexity.OK.
What I am asking for though is precisely that this point be explained by theory. What is the theory of the emergence of the first error?It is when god put the tree of knowledge in the garden :)More seriously, it is when universal machine/number begins to refer and self-refer. That ability makes it possible to accelerate the computations relatively to each other, but entails the possiblity of error.
Why does it entail that possibility, i.e. how does 'error' become a possibility?
The deep reason is already contained in Gödel's second incompleteness: if I am consistent then it is consistent that I am inconsistent (Dt -> ~BDt). Simple but rich correct theories can be come inconsistent, or consistent but unsound.
Not satisfying. A paradox does not automatically conjure a phenomena where determinism arbitrarily fails on a infrequent but quasi-inevitable basis.
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