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The Philosophical Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 16 June, 2022, 01:24:20 AM

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Funt Solo

Well, I haven't done the math - but these guys have, and they reach the conclusion that Earth was lucky to manage the evolution of intelligent life prior to becoming uninhabitable.

The super-summary of their conclusion is "that intelligent life is likely to be exceptionally rare." Don't take my word for their word, though - it's an interesting article, even if some of the math is utterly beyond my current frame of reference.
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Definitely Not Mister Pops

#16
Quote from: sintec on 17 June, 2022, 02:31:31 PM
... It might be we're the late bloomer and all the other intelligent life managed the transition from simpler life forms in a fraction of the time. As far as I'm aware there's no real evidence either way on that one...

No evidence either way indeed. Could be we are currently* the most advanced lifeform in the universe.

Quote from: Funt Solo on 17 June, 2022, 03:35:49 PM
Well, I haven't done the math - but these guys have, and they reach the conclusion that Earth was lucky to manage the evolution of intelligent life prior to becoming uninhabitable.

That's an interesting paper. It's always worth remembering that "all statistical models are wrong, but some are useful". This is well argued, but is limited in that our sample group of planets on which any life has evolved is currently limited to one.

Furthermore, in my limited experience, the science of exoplanets tends to be outdated before the ink on the textbooks dries. There's so much up in the air that that any assumptions of exo-biology need to be taken with a grain of salt.  However, this paper acknowledges this, and presents a model that can easily be modified if/when our understanding increases.

Lastly, the improbability of intelligent life here is subject to the Law of Large Numbers. Million to one shots will happen twice if you take two million shots.


*relativity notwithstanding
You may quote me on that.

The Legendary Shark

Quote from: Mister Pops on 17 June, 2022, 12:17:27 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 June, 2022, 08:52:16 PM
If there is a God, then for me it has to be the universe (or the multiverse) itself, because that's the only thing that is both omnipresent, omnitemporal, and omnipotent.

I once heard a suggestion that brains evolved because the universe was trying to understand itself. It's a nice idea, but a bit too teleological for me.


Yes, I think I first heard that one in Babylon 5. The idea does, however, rest on the ideas that the Universe is self-aware enough to want to understand itself and also has enough self-knowledge to be able to manipulate its own molecules over long periods of time in order to create brains, the biological casings and support systems to house them, and environments in which to store them. It also aggrandizes us like most religious beliefs which rest on us being specially created for a specific purpose.

If we are "the universe trying to understand itself" then I think it's more likely we'd be a natural part of the universal consciousness (if such a thing exists), like the nerve endings in our own bodies.

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Hawkmumbler

"If man no longer finds any meaning in his life, it makes no difference whether he wastes away under a communist or a capitalist regime. Only if he can use his freedom to create something meaningful is it relevant that he should be free. That is why finding the inner meaning of life is more important to the individual than anything else, and why the process of individuation must be given priority."
― C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols


JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 June, 2022, 07:19:18 AM.

If we are "the universe trying to understand itself" then I think it's more likely we'd be a natural part of the universal consciousness (if such a thing exists), like the nerve endings in our own bodies.

My problem with the idea that human life is the universe trying to understand itself is the idea that intelligent life is any more important than anything else in the universe.   

Obviously it's more important to US because we ARE it. It's so important to us that it's hard to us to comprehend that other things can exist without being built by some kind of intelligent designer (who somehow is keeping a list of the actions of some tiny specks of life on a blue dot in an insignificant part of the universe).

The way I see it, a shambling meat-computer is no more incredible than the way an electron can seemingly be in two places at once, and the former is incapable of perceiving, or possibly ever understand, the latter - so if humans are the universe's attempt to understand itself, it's going to need to give us some better tools.

An intelligent understanding of processes is not required for those processes to happen.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Funt Solo

If a tree falls in a forest, and it lands on a mime, does anyone care?
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IAMTHESYSTEM

Quote from: Funt Solo on 10 July, 2022, 02:46:08 PM
If a tree falls in a forest, and it lands on a mime, does anyone care?

The Mime does. Well, they don't because they're dead.
"You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension."

http://artriad.deviantart.com/
― Nikola Tesla

JayzusB.Christ

In an imaginary glass box, no one can hear you scream.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

The Legendary Shark


I could get on board if all life is the Universe trying to understand itself, but not if it's just humans. Thinking that we're special is what gets us into trouble. For example, Christianity did away with the more primeval belief that we are part of the world by claiming that God gave us the Earth. It seems absurd to me that a human being can own a piece of the planet when it's patently obvious that, if anything, the planet owns us. All our greed and wars are based on this nonsensical belief that land and resources can be owned - but I digress.

I wonder if the idea that life is the Universe trying to understand itself really makes much sense. As I said earlier, the Universe would have to show a pretty deep understanding of itself to even conceive of creating life in the first place - so perhaps a more believable idea would be that life is the Universe trying to experience itself and that understanding takes place elsewhere in the same way that our senses provide experience while that experience is understood "elsewhere," in the consciousness. This kind of thinking relegates all life to the level of mere sensory apparatus, which moves us away from the center of things just like moving away from the heliocentric belief did in the past. I could live with that better than I can live with the idea that God (or the Universe) plans, moves, watches, judges and punishes everything according to some incomprehensible design.

Perhaps it is we who strive to understand the Universe from our position as experiencers, which is why our progress takes so long - we are nerve endings trying to be a brain, experiencers trying to be understanders. This does not, however, mean that we are incapable of understanding but it does suggest that achieving understanding will be difficult.

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M.I.K.

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 July, 2022, 08:08:20 PMIt seems absurd to me that a human being can own a piece of the planet when it's patently obvious that, if anything, the planet owns us. All our greed and wars are based on this nonsensical belief that land and resources can be owned

Human beings aren't even special in believing that. It's nothing more than the same territorial behaviour that exists throughout nature being taken to an absurd extreme.

Funt Solo

*Responding to the fish*...

You can sort of win a moral argument that way. Y'know: we don't own the planet, the planet owns us.

But - only sort of. Firstly, the planet isn't sentient, so also doesn't own anything. We live on the planet. Sometimes, we demarcate some territory and say "this is mine". If some philosopher turns up at my front door and starts banging on about how "all property is theft", then barges past me, grabs some food from the fridge and puts their feet up on the couch - well, there's going to be an argument. The philosopher *might* win the moral side of it - but will soon find themselves out on their ear.

Because ... and you might not like this ... but I own (in the terms of the legal framework I'm living within, and only partly, through a mortgage) this little part of the planet. And that philosopher - they don't.

It's possible that they might persuade me through other means of negotiation - such as being more heavily armed (see: Russia), or some confidence trick or legal invention - but in doing so they would only be attempting to usurp my claim in order to further their own.

What's really absurd, and nonsensical, is attempting to found an argument that ignores centuries of human behavior. You might as well claim that nobody won a football match, actually, because neither team owns the goals - they belong to the planet.

Now I can sit back and rest assured that I have completely changed your mind through my cunning use of logic. Unfortunately, I am having a premonition that you will be unable to join me in enlightenment because of your ownership of your original idealized view of an imaginary Shangri La. What you fail to realize is that you don't own those ideas - but rather they own you.
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The Mind of Wolfie Smith


The Legendary Shark


*Responding to Funty*

The question of ownership has vexed me for some time and is, I think, one of our greatest challenges as a species.

Firstly, though, it might help to define what is meant by "ownership" so that we're not talking past one another. To own a thing is to have possession of and control over the thing in question. Ownership is the state of having possession of and control over an owned object or objects. This is the definition I suggest for this discussion.

You bring up the question of sentience, which is an interesting one. Can a non-sentient thing own something? By the definition I used above, sentience is not a prerequisite to ownership. The Sun has possession of and control over the planets, moons and other bodies in the Solar System by dint of non-sentient (so far as we know) natural forces such as gravity and radiation. Similarly, the Earth has possession of and control over all terrestrial life, including human beings. Given that the Earth is not sentient (so far as we know), this is a purely mechanical form of ownership which is very strong.

Let us now imagine that an inconceivably rich Gazillionaire decides to buy the Earth by paying every human being an equal amount of money for their "share" of our planet. Does this Gazillionaire now own the Earth? Does the Gazillionaire now possess the planet? Well, the Earth can't be put in the Gazillionaire's pocket or moved into a warehouse, so the only form of possession would be in the legal realm - words on paper - so possession would be conceptional rather than actual. Does the Gazillionaire have control of the planet? The Gazillionaire can't change the planet's orbit, paint it orange, alter its rotation, or limit access to it.

In the above thought experiment, the Gazillionaire is sentient while the Earth (sfawk) is not, so sentience would not seem to be required for ownership. The non-sentient Earth could easily affect the Gazillionaire but the sentient Gazillionaire could not easily affect the Earth.

Perhaps, then, you mean that one or more properties of sentience is required for ownership, say, for example, awareness. A thing cannot be owned unless the owner is aware of the thing owned. I can think of two counterarguments to this off the top of my head. Firstly, consider a newborn baby. The baby has a liver, but it doesn't know that it has a liver or even what a liver is. For someone to say that the baby is unaware that it possesses a liver and therefore does not own one in order to remove it for transplant to another infant wouldn't fly. The newborn owns its own body, liver and all, and the fact that it is unaware of all its own bits and pieces does not negate that ownership. The infant's liver is the infant's liver. Period. Secondly, if I lawfully purchase or am gifted with a sealed box or locked storage container with no clue as to what was inside, it could not be argued that the contents of the box or container are not owned by me because I don't know what they are. Awareness, then, does not seem to have a bearing on ownership either.

How about the agency of sentience? Is a thing only owned if the owner can have some conscious and/or physical effect on it? The newborn infant cannot manipulate its own liver, nor the purchaser of the sealed container manipulate the contents without opening it up - unless they can somehow shake the container, which an earthquake could do also. So, agency would not seem to be required for ownership either.

The definitions of ownership I proposed, then, would not seem to fit with your view and so we need to straighten this out before moving on to discussing the limits and ramifications of ownership, otherwise we'll be talking about different things. What is your suggestion for a definition of ownership we can both agree on?
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The Legendary Shark


Quote from: M.I.K. on 10 July, 2022, 11:32:55 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 July, 2022, 08:08:20 PMIt seems absurd to me that a human being can own a piece of the planet when it's patently obvious that, if anything, the planet owns us. All our greed and wars are based on this nonsensical belief that land and resources can be owned

Human beings aren't even special in believing that. It's nothing more than the same territorial behaviour that exists throughout nature being taken to an absurd extreme.

I think there's a lot to this view. However, as a social animal we are also instinctively attracted to reciprocity, cooperation and charity as some of the ways in which we keep our societies together. Ownership, with a small "o," is not necessarily a bad thing. I like to own my own underpants, for example, and would rather not have to share with everyone else via some national or global Skiddie Bank (although an efficient laundry regime might tempt me if the overall gains of underpants-sharing were worth it). But when things get to absurd extremes, as you say, problems arise - such as when a king says "all of this country is mine" - Ownership with a capital "O," usually obtained by coercion, subterfuge, and force. The more powerful the human being, the more secure their possessions. This might work well enough for lions or bears but we are a different animal and I think we need to reevaluate the ramifications and limits of ownership before a very few end up owning everything. Or would it be good for a very few to own everything and decide how much the rest of us are allowed? Such a system might well be more efficient overall.

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Funt Solo

*Waves a little white flag*

My definition of ownership is based exclusively on my local legal framework. 
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