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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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eeyonkee: . . . why don't you go read some big-boy books on the subject as I have, and then get back to us.
“Big-boy books?”
You’re a programmer, you say. Try to be a bit more specific.
Duck: What a mess. . . . All of your "so called" facts are mental speculations.
+1
HFCS: It's technical, eeyonkee - some number of years in science and engineering subjects are prerequisite for the fullest understanding - and also beyond the pay grade of most posting here -
What is “technical?” You see to imply that what is technical is factual.
Each and every discipline or area of study presents a view of the world / universe about what’s important, about what is, about the dynamics regarding what’s happening (explanations). All of them are looking at the same thing (“THIS” / Reality), which no one actually explains. Each discipline presents a loose set of interpretations, all of which are partial and inaccurate because they only present one view. These disciplines or areas of study constitute a vision. Each and every vision is really an issue of that might be best articulated as style. Physics, business, linguistics, anthropology, etc., inasmuch as they are looking at the same one reality (although highly and uniquely variegated) are all stylistic viewpoints.
Technical is another term for style . . . it just doesn’t look like it.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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MikeL. Here is a small list of some big boy books for you.
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
The Gene - Siddhartha Mukherjee
How the Mind Works - Steven Pinker
The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Daniel Dennett
Thanks for the link, HFCS. I'm looking forward to watching it.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Here is a small list of some big boy books for you.
Fascinating, says much about scientism. "Big boy" books full of "hard" science. How nice for you, you must be right. And what's with the evolution loyalty oath questionnaire? And the demand for science and engineering education as a preliminary to discussion? Always the demand for bona fides from the science side: state your degrees in order to speak. Pretty silly stuff.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I was sort of being snarky with the Big Boy bit. These books are all very accessible. They are written for the "layman". You could take a stab at the 5 questions...
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Fascinating, says much about scientism. "Big boy" books full of "hard" science. How nice for you, you must be right. And what's with the evolution loyalty oath questionnaire? And the demand for science and engineering education as a preliminary to discussion? Always the demand for bona fides from the science side: state your degrees in order to speak. Pretty silly stuff. Sorry, but I have to speak to this one. Turns out Paul, there is a lot that IS KNOWN through science. Would you agree with me that the earth is round and that that fact is germane to voyaging by sea from one place to another on our planet? Well, it also turns out that hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions of scientists work at and study scientific issues that are entirely germane to the question of What is Consciousness. The categories of science include, in no particular order:
Evolutionary biology,
Neuroscience,
Anthropology,
Paleoclimatology,
Archaeology,
Zoology,
Paleontology,
...
Now, these are people just like you, who study and eventually become good at (and hopefully enjoy) some discipline. The idea of an emergent genesis (it got to the present via biological evolution on planet earth) for consciousness is consistent with nearly all of the observations of all of these scientists in their varying disciplines. Seems to me, that makes you kind of a presumptuous fellow to, not only casually discount their life's work out-of-hand, but to assume it isn't germane to the question at hand.
There are certain scientific facts that you should know if you are to be taken seriously on this thread. You don't need to be a specialist to know them. That's all.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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It's technical, eeyonkee - some number of years in science and engineering subjects are prerequisite for the fullest understanding - and also beyond the pay grade of most posting here (HFCS)
Chuckle. Welcome to the club, eeyonkee. A number of us here apparently fall short of the (mysterious) educational standards cited by HFCS, whoever he (or she) is. Hiding behind a non-revealing avatar has its perks. But his (or her) fascination for Sam Harris is a little disturbing. I tried listening to the podcast but flamed out ten minutes in. Harris is quite articulate, although he says the same things over and over. However, his take on mid-eastern religions is potent commentary.
;>)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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I tried listening to the podcast but flamed out ten minutes in.
Speaks volumes.
You'd rather go on and on and on with MikeL and Largo. Chuckle.
Hiding behind a non-revealing avatar has its perks.
Boy, like WB, you just can't seem to let this one go and instead speak to the idea or ideas (ad ideam) rather than the man (ad hominem). The idea or ideas themselves are just too boring I guess, eh?
A focus and following of Sam Harris is "disturbing"? But a thousand posts referencing Largo is nbd? Chuckle... chuckle.
Bears repeating...
I tried listening to the podcast but flamed out ten minutes in.
Chuckle.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Chuckle ad infinitum . . .
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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some number of years in science and engineering subjects are prerequisite for the fullest understanding
This is just basic facts. To a great deal of understanding whether it's science or some other. Even rock climbing.
An engineer with five years of control theory under his belt is probably going to pick up on Dennett's allusions to control systems engineering faster or more fully than one who's only a couple months into his first course.
That was the point. Same goes for just about any area or field across the sciences. It's rather depressing that this even needs to be pointed out here.
Chuckle ad infinitum . . .
Now there's a lot of content. Whatever floats your boat, man.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Chuckle. Welcome to the club, eeyonkee. A number of us here apparently fall short
Interesting. To my lights you two aren't in the same "club" at all. A few posts back and few weeks back, he referenced a number of books that bear heavily on all these fundamental subjects that span science, humanism (if not the humanities) and belief. Curious, how many of those classics, most written by top-notch scientists, philosophers and scholars, you've read.
...
re: Sam Harris
FYI, you've disparaged him as a "neuroscientist" so let's take him as "just" a philosophy graduate then - from Stanford no less - for sake of this commentary. Harris currently has a platform on Twitter in addition to youtube. There he has a following of 430k-plus users, which currently is far and away - perhaps a 10X magnitude - more than any other philosophy scholar or opiner in the Western world. If you know Twitter, then you know this number is nothing to sneeze at esp in the philos and science communities. Clearly he's been resonating with a lot of folks - not all of whom are your "valley girls" - whatever that means.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I gotta say, lately I've had fun on this thread just stating my positions. I'm sure that we have all done this. I've been an avid reader of science in general, but geology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology in particular for most of my adult life. When I first transitioned to programmer from geologist, I used to make fun of the term "computer scientist". It always seemed more like "engineering" to me -- applied science. True science required discovery of either facts or principles.
Recently, that's changed for me. I'm not just a programmer, but a database and software architect and designer. I think long and hard about the relationships between things. B can be a part of A, be a type of A, or just use or be used by A, for example. I'm particularly fond of hierarchies and use them as the architectural foundation of the risk-assessment program that I have been working on for the past 2+ years. I feel like I have discovered principles.
These are the same types of issues that Life has to deal with it. It's as obvious as can be to me (and a bunch of others) that DNA-based life uses computer principles to achieve its ends (to survive). DNA itself, is a bunch of symbols -- a bunch of different recipes for the basic stuff and machinations required by Life. Replication is something that developed some 3+ billion years ago on this planet, and shortly thereafter, the tree of life got started. Anybody who has copied a file knows what replication is.
Posters from time to time on this thread have disparaged practically every contributor as punters, presumably since none of us are experts in the field of "consciousness studiers". If the subject was particle physics, that might be true (except for Ed, of course), but I don't think it is valid for this subject.
I can imagine that the top neuroscientist in the world could get consciousness utterly wrong if he did not have a good understanding of zoology or evolutionary biology. It turns out that this subject is both accessible to the interested but not professional reader, and possible explanations for could benefit from a wide-ranging background in relevant disciplines.
Lately, I'm riffing on the computer analogy and it seems to be bearing fruit for me.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Harris is quite articulate, although he says the same things over and over. However, his take on mid-eastern religions is potent commentary.
(1) "he says the same things over and over"
What a truly baseless thing to say. (esp in light of your apparent love of repetitivities by Largo, lol)
(2) "his take on mid-eastern religions is potent commentary."
A "mid-eastern" religion?
The facts are, you are way out of your depth both (a) regarding Sam Harris and (b) regarding these topics that apparently cause you to "flame" out where they do not concern Largo...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Paul: "Big boy" books full of "hard" science.
I wouldn’t characterize those books that way. Those books are arguably not rigorous, careful, systematic, replicated, scholarly, or peer-reviewed articulations (the gold standard, if you put science on a pedestal). They might perhaps be better labeled as popularized scientism—and you know that’s just fine. A great many people prefer popular stories.
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
(Paul Valery)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Greg, would you call Donald Knuth an engineer?
A friend of mine who went from physics to computer science once answered a question from me about parallel processing by saying, "I don't deal at the level of architecture."
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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As another long time software architect with a background in microbiology and genetics I would say in general our current technology and conception of hardware and software is entirely crude and primitive and doesn't in any way begin to approach the efficiency and complexity of what goes on in nature. We are just scratching the surface attempting to understand the basics at this point.
And that's not unlike a lot of fields of engineering where we are finally throwing off the yoke of Victorian arrogance and realizing nature does most things (watt for watt) far, far better and more efficiently than we do - that there is an endless bounty to be had in studying how life and materials are organized.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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MikeL, Largo, Paul? Can't any of you state your positions on those 5 questions? I can only assume that you have no idea. MikeL, try reading one of those "popular" books. I guarantee that there is lot's of real science and that you will probably learn something.
healje, the one point that I would disagree with in that last post is where you say our conception of hardware and software is crude and primitive. Life is as complex as it is mainly because of trial and error and a long expanse of time to have it all unfold. I don't believe that there are many, fundamental principles yet to be discovered in biology. Life can be almost infinitely complex based on rather rudimentary building blocks. Just like computer programs (only most computer programs don't have those seemingly infinitely malleable 3-D objects, proteins, to program against).
Andy, -- both a scientist and engineer, I would have to day.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I don't believe that there are many, fundamental principles yet to be discovered in biology.
I would say just the opposite - that we don't understand many of the fundamental principles of biology and in the ones we have some understanding of that understanding is quite often largely incomplete.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Hmmm, I'm certainly no expert. The word "fundamental" is obvious a bit imprecise. There is lots to be discovered, of course, I'm assuming that most of that would not fall under the category of fundamental principles is all
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"I would say just the opposite - that we don't understand many of the fundamental principles of biology"
That seeems to me a pretty confusing statement.
Esp from you since your background - per your own posts - is biology, microbiology and genetics.
...
Maybe we're better identified as a species as...
Homo sapiens arguens?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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eeyonkee: I guarantee that there is lot's of real science and that you will probably learn something.
I honestly don’t think you’d care much for real science. It can be very boring, painstaking, meticulous work. It takes a lot of focus. One digs down deeply into a very narrow subject area. The authors you’re pointing to (and I’ve heard and read some of what they have to say) are popularizers of conceits. Again, that's fine for what it is, but it’s not science as academics practice it. (You probably don’t care about that.)
As for your request, the 5 questions you pose are nothing that I find myself thinking about. They are irrelevant to me. As far as I’m concerned, they are simplistic characterizations of the same kind of conceits that people who want to be popularly entertained want. Any "answer" will do for me. Doesn't matter.
Here’s a little bit of cognitive science for you (based upon empirical research). People’s interests are initially intuitive and somewhat naive. They say the first thing that pops into their precious little heads. If their interests continue, they start to read popular writing on history, anthropology, physics, etc. This makes them dilettantes, and they can hold interesting conversations in parlors, bars, and restaurants. Finally, they may become erudite, scholarly bores (usually due to institutionalization that comes from too much education). These bores drill down into the finest and narrowest of detailed thoughts about singular subjects. Experts can really talk to about 15-20 other guys in their fields about what they’ve been studying.
The books you point to are, IMO, popular, artsy, people-pleasing, overly generalized, speculations, plain and simply. I don’t see that any of them further the community of scientists’ endeavors or conversations.
I would wish you would quit referring to science as you have been. At least then we could start from a common base of understanding. Science is a method of investigation that presents a viewpoint of various segmented worlds. IMO, there’s nothing particularly virtuous about it, not more than anything else. It’s a game that some of us play because it’s what we do, it’s who we are, it’s who we cannot help but be. The community of working scientists are relatively few and very specialized. Most of the world’s conversations about this or that genearlized topic of study is speculation (as the Duck continues to remind us).
You and everyone else can hold whatever beliefs they want. It is not only your right, but it concerns only beliefs (not at all important), which are aren’t much of anything when you get to thinking about beliefs.
If you are truly interested in mind (not in a scholarly way, not in an intuitive way, not in a speculative conversational way), then you can find your own path of discovery and become scientific (systematic, rigorous, careful, etc.) about it. You could start looking at your own mind. Sure, the brain is wondrously complicated. The mind, on the other hand, seems to be indescribable. You have your own research laboratory. You can look for yourself and see what you can see. It’s like climbing. You can read all day about what what the luminaries say about it, but you won’t know anything about it experientially unless you look for yourself. (I suspect you don't have that much interest in "mind.")
Forgot Pinker, Dawkins, Mukherjee, and Dennet. They’re fine for generating some interest, I suppose. Instead, you can start the eeyonkee research stream, and see what you come up with. Do let us know what you find. What do YOU find?
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