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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Jul 13, 2018 - 07:23am PT
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One MUST DO the experiment on ONESELF there IS no other way ... I'm with you on that
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 13, 2018 - 08:21am PT
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One MUST DO the experiment on ONESELF there IS no other way .......
same for the material world, too, as our perception is subjective, yet we seem to make progress understanding.
and I say it is possible to believe in both germs and nagas. Separate and sometimes overlapping magestariums.
sure, but germ "theory" leads you to a much broader set of explanations and to much better technology, and is better integrated with our understanding of life. I don't know where you draw line.
It seems like semantics, I suppose. But the cause of the wind in question is air temperature differential. My own definition of "cause" fits nicely with that.
I don't think it is semantics, it is the way humans think about the world, seeking "causes" is a natural response, look at the threads reporting climbing accidents/deaths, there is an irresistible urge for us to respond to looking for a "cause."
The temperature differential comes and goes... it is not specific to that particular place, its a general fluid behavior, it will happen when the conditions are present.
There is no "cause."
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 13, 2018 - 08:41am PT
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There’s so many things going on here.
Randisi,
A candid examination generally leads to increased understanding. Have you found differently?
Ed (and others),
1. Should I understand that physicists are unconcerned with causality?
2. I’m with DMT. I don’t understand this focus you have about intentions. I don’t know where in the conversation that came up. Why is intention associated here with notions of causality?
3. In the 35 years in 6 different universities in 3 different countries, I saw and heard much about causality in my own fields of study as well as adjacent fields. Are you suggesting that was odd and wrong?
Last night I watched lightning and thunder storms over Nogales, 40 miles south of my location, from the sofa on my back porch. I live in the Sonoran desert, so we often have wide vistas for viewing. I sat in the dark, listening to “Hits of 2017,” with a cabernet, and feeling the closeness of the moist wind. The conditions reminded me about our conversations about mind.
I’ll suppose I’m a minority here, but what matters to me is not causality of brain to consciousness nor whether science can or cannot make determinations about mind. IMO, those are irrelevant to mind’s presentation of experience. Living trumps every analytical exercise.
Randisi, as you probably well know, there is a brief model in Zen that says: (i) first there is the mountain; (ii) then there is no mountain; (iii) then the mountain returns. One seems to learn ever greater nuance by simultaneously letting-go and greater participation (and that process does not seem to be linear). The letting-go part is about quieting the discursive mind so that one can listen and see. The greater participation part is about jumping feet first with abandon into whatever is showing up in front of one. Perhaps that’s what you were pointing to.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 13, 2018 - 08:41am PT
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where is the cause?
The cause is in the laws and limitations of all actions in the universe. An ordered universe is a restricted universe in which some actions are inevitable and some are impossible. There is wind because it can by windy in some cases, though in other cases it can't depending on the physical machinations at play within a field of limitations. But it is the ordered structure of the universe that must lie behind all causal actions as it lies behind all that is.
And the problem, of course, is that order always implies an orderer of some kind.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jul 13, 2018 - 09:28am PT
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"but germ "theory" leads you to a much broader set of explanations and to much better technology, and is better integrated with our understanding of life.
I don't know where you draw line".
That is the question. Especially since the symbolism of the naga is primarily a psychological one meant for inner development, not explanations of illness though it can be used for that.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 13, 2018 - 09:41am PT
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There is no horse.
If we see an "aha" in the peasant's eye, then we have got somewhere.
If not, we may have wasted our time.
I disagree that we who have an interest and background in science are trying to convince you that we are right. We don't have time to waste on that considering the time and effort it takes to get funding from the agencies that offer it.
We may question statements you make about the impossibility of ever understanding mind and consciousness. That does not mean we need to explain our own views well enough that you will not ask us where the horse is.
That's a pretty strident reply and one that basically says, "I'm just right, you're just wrong, and I don't care to provide ANY account of my rightness and your wrongness." Moreover, it basically says, "Self-consciousness is some sort of illusion, but I can't be bothered to provide an error-theory of how we ALL are swept up in it." In essence, when hard questions are put to you about the adequacy of your paradigm, you simply punt. That's not a good faith discussion, so one wonders why you're here.
Apparently you've functionally chosen the first side of the dichotomy I noted earlier. Frankly, I've come to believe that the paradigms are indeed utterly incommensurable. So, on that note, I'll also choose that first option, and stop wasting any more of my time with a "discussion" that really is not.
Have fun, John. LOL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 13, 2018 - 10:05am PT
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Are you suggesting that was odd and wrong?
if you are saying there is no difference between "cause" and "causality" then you are wrong, at least where physicists are concerned. Physicists understand "causality," and perhaps differently than you.
But in terms of "cause," yes, the over riding sense is some sort of intention, and the use of the word purposely invokes those connections, as Largo has done in his discussions. The idea that human agency can act, step by step, in a sequence of actions that "cause" a final result, is generalized, as an analogy, to describe natural processes.
This analogy has long been abandoned by science. It is, however, a pervasive common view of which DMT provides an example.
Once again, philosophical notions are mixed with physical notions to provide a very confusing discussion.
Throw a rock in any direction of philosophical debate and you're going to hit the topic of "causes," it is embedded in the foundations of western philosophical thought.
And while I am often criticized for posting links to it, here is an example of a "wall of text" that illustrates the philosophical discussion:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/
The "recent" discovery of quantum mechanics seems to have not settled the matter for the philosophers... even though the "causal" chain is broken.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 13, 2018 - 11:22am PT
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when hard questions are put to you about the adequacy of your paradigm, you simply punt.
What is your impression of my paradigm?
It is definitely possible to put questions to me that I don't know the answer to.
edit:
My reply was mainly about the parable of the steam engine. Just extend it a little and what does the peasant do when you say that there is no horse?
Is the parable meant to show that careful explanations are not always fully understood, even though the student keeps saying that they do understand?
I can follow all the steps in some mathematical proofs but could not produce such a proof on my own, for the life of me. Does that prove anything of general significance?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 13, 2018 - 11:28am PT
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MB1: "Have fun, John. LOL"
Did you mean Andy?
Category: "(in a system for dividing things according to appearance, quality, etc.) a type, or a group of things having some features that are the same."
;>\
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 13, 2018 - 02:17pm PT
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It probably won't do any good at all but what's going on in this piece...
esp re: determinism and free will and even God
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=157&v=5QWUqtoaqpc
is just what's going on on this thread...
Folks are failing to realize (enough to the point that matters) that as you move/navigate through different categories of thought (e.g., fields of study, be it physics or evolutionary theory or sports or engineering or religion) the vocabulary and definitions and phrasing (iow, the language) changes.
Edit: So too the actual concepts or objects/systems - they change also.
Till (1) this is realized and then (2) fully-appreciated and then(3) worked into the conversation, which is often interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, we (thinkers, speakers, listeners, explainers, what have you) are fated to keep going around and around on much of this stuff endlessly.
(Perhaps this is objective of some?)
It's rather a mystery to me though why this is so, why it happens. Even my beloved Harris imo falls victim to this condition in important areas.
To pick on a couple categories: It's like, philosophers don't want to leave their philosophy category equipped with its specialized thinking and vernacular. So too, physicists - they don't want to shift gears out of their physics category with its particular thinking and vernacular. Even though the discussion is plainly interdisciplinary! plainly multidisciplinary! This (monolithic) custom or practice simply won't work - it's not amenable - on these more abstruse interdisciplinary problems.
But the subject (edit: or thinking art or skill) of "switching frames of reference"** as a matter of thinking and communicating and problem solving strategy needs to be breached; and then needs to be learnt by all partaking; and then needs to be emphasized in these type of discussions. If they ever truly want to get purchase on these many issues.
** its other name
As far as I know, only two public science communicators out of the entire herd! emphasize on a regular basis this awareness/wisdom/art/tool re changing categories of thought vis a vis changing system patterns and changing language - as a group of people deliberate/navigate an interdisciplinary (intercategory) issue or subject. Those TWO would be Sean Carroll and Robert Sapolski. Why only TWO? I have no idea. But Shermer and Wright above are prime examples of the status quo (and of the herd) who don't.
Otherwise, if we don't get on top of this "cognitive navigation problem" (for lack of a better word) between categories, it's like Shermer says in piece above: (certain subjects are) likely to be forever arguable, forever unsolvable, at least in the public arena.
...
Bob's appearance has significantly changed this year, I hope he's not ill. Or else maybe too much vegan meditation to an extreme?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 13, 2018 - 02:38pm PT
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yanqui, thanks for the heads-up re A Brief History of Time (1991). Because of your prompt, I was able to watch it and I really liked it. I had seen it early on bitd but forgotten much of it. Can't really remember but I suspect I got even more out of it this time than last. Hawking's mother was terrific in her interview bits. She was obviously a woman of ideas as well. And attitude. I liked that.
Highly recommended. 4 stars. lol
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103882/?ref_=nv_sr_1
...
I'm having a hard time identifying this interviewee from the movie, do any of you guys know?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 13, 2018 - 02:42pm PT
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there is a reason that physicists and philosophers use words the way they do,
it provides an improved precision and accuracy of thought with which to discuss some difficult ideas.
one can certainly choose not to address those difficulties, and the somewhat strained language seems so much like "semantics" which is uttered to dismiss the importance of what a word means.
in this day and age, one would think the meaning of words all the more important, given that there seems to be a general idea that they aren't really.
I would discuss this stuff in more symbolic forms but that would loose almost all of the audience who remain mystified by such language, to the point that the symbols truly are meaningless to them.
when one uses language in changing perspective, it is imperative to delineate the boundaries of validity of that language. failing to do so is dishonest. the use of words such as "cause," "causal" and "causality" in this discussion requires one to provide their definitions.
doing so reveals the depth of the human bias of that perspective, generalizing to the entire universe what is human, even with the knowledge that humans haven't been around very long, and there is ample evidence that the vast history preceding humans didn't seem to need humans to play a role.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 13, 2018 - 03:03pm PT
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(1) there is a reason that physicists and philosophers use words the way they do... (2) one can certainly choose not to address those difficulties... (3) ...failing to do so is dishonest...
Alas, I guess once again I wasn't clear. More later, but a bit of food for thought. It's not a matter of avoiding or shirking difficulty with these subject issues or it's not a matter of dishonesty - items you mention. This misses the point, idea or practice I'm trying to get across. I'm talking about the need of being willing and able to move, to shift, between categories of thought (e.g., fields of study, say from physics to chemistry) when considering various interdisciplinary topics like free will or causation. The use of "cause" and "effect" (or causation aka causality) for example is perfectly useful and productive for example when talking (or thinking) about inputs, functions or functionalities, or outcomes in just about any arena (category, field) that involves organization or systems (and this use is not limited to goal-directed engineering or intention-driven technology either). More later if you'll bear with me.
But the mystery remains why this is so hard to get across. In the meantime why are Sean Carroll and Robert Sapolsky emphasizing it (this need to shift between categorical frames, thinking and language) when they go multidisciplinary (e.g., with talk like X causes Y or with talk re free will)? Food for thought.
One last bit: I (nor Carroll or Sapolsky) do NOT deny the vital importance of precise definition of terms. But this precision of a term needs to be understood relative to its category and not another. "Causality", say, in physics. "Reactants" and "products", say, in chemistry. The thinker/speaker needs to take into account if he moves to a different category or categorical frame this definition is likely to change and if he enters this frame he needs to adapt accordingly.
If you remember my background's electronic systems engineering in communications. So I do have a grasp and full-on appreciation of the need for precise signalling (in this case, precise definition of terms) between communicators (be they computers or people or scientists/scienteers). I get it: just one bit (a one or zero) in the wrong place even amongst trillions and this can spell, in Trump's favorite word... disaster.
Okay, I'm really late now...
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Edit to add:
As an ending illustration of what I was trying to say earlier: it surprises me that it's not more understandable that physics, ecology (biology), engineering, etiology (medicine), law, public safety, politics - to pick several example categorical fields - all have their individual "ways of talking" (ref: Sean Carroll)... about "cause" or "causation", for example... recognizing that each in their own way articulates a validity or relevance. And finally as one (i.e., the thinker, speaker, problem solver, whoever) moves from category to category to category on his way to solving some interdisciplinary issue (e.g., free will) he should expect to have to adjust both his concepts, or conceptualization, and his language to fit the category's objects he's just entered or crossed and encountered (be they zika virus, disease and retardation; a cheetah catching and killing a gazelle; a keyboard keypress detonating a nuclear bomb; or GHG and climate change).
Okay, as with free will and determinism, I've probably said enough.
At least for a time... :)
Also, I didn't mean to imply the above video between Michael Shermer and Robert Wright isn't worth watching. It is, imo. Covers many cool topics.
...
Up above I wrote...
Original: To pick on a couple categories: It's like, philosophers don't want to leave their philosophy category equipped with its specialized thinking and vernacular. So too, physicists - they don't want to shift gears out of their physics category with its particular thinking and vernacular.
So on re-reading, I could've worded this way better.
Better: To pick on a few categories: It's like, a philosopher naturally doesn't want to leave their philosophy category equipped with its specialized thinking and vernacular. So too, a physicist naturally enough doesn't want to shift gears out of their physics category with its particular thinking and vernacular. So too, an engineer naturally enough doesn't want to shift gears out of their engineering category with its particular thinking and vernacular. Lastly, a theologian naturally doesn't want to leave their theology category equipped with its specialized thinking and vernacular.
I should not have posted so quickly. Lesson re-learned.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 13, 2018 - 09:10pm PT
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Glad I didn't try to major in philosophy. Kudos to MB1.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 13, 2018 - 10:11pm PT
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One can easily see the gross materialists here trying to push a square peg into a round hole,
as their consciousness in their own minds is so far out of tune with reality itself ......
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jul 13, 2018 - 11:13pm PT
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Now this is interesting
Thorne and his co-workers at Caltech conducted scientific research on whether the laws of physics permit space and time to be multiply connected (can there exist classical, traversable wormholes and "time machines"?).[30] With Sung-Won Kim, Thorne identified a universal physical mechanism (the explosive growth of vacuum polarization of quantum fields), that may always prevent spacetime from developing closed timelike curves (i.e., prevent backward time travel).[31]
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 14, 2018 - 05:46am PT
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I'm having a hard time identifying this interviewee from the movie, do any of you guys know?
Kip Thorne
The result of Google (image) search: Best guess: "gentleman". "Visually similar images" are photos of Donald Sutherland, Peter O'Toole, etc. In all fairness, Google image search does a much better job at identifying bald images of Kip Thorne.
The score:
Ed: 1
Google: 0
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 14, 2018 - 07:15am PT
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When I heard about image search I hoped it could help me identify birds and other stuff.
It identified this:
as "a flower."
But from what my climbing mentor/computer science friend once told me, the Dept of Defence probably has good but classified ways to examine satellite images to tell tanks from flower pots.
Cindy from across the street turns out to be the one I should have asked about the image above.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 14, 2018 - 08:36am PT
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Ah, so that's the famous Kip Thorne!
Thanks, Ed.
He said some great stuff in the Hawking movie.
The only thing about the movie that I didn't like was that they didn't identify the interviewees in the actual clips in which they were speaking.
It's funny, I tried Google image search, too. No hit. I also tried, I think, every physicist and Cambridge friend listed in the ending credits. Except somehow I missed Kip Thorne, lol.
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