Curious About An Internet Ad

[durangodawood]

"Code" requires conscious intent. I don't see how that's even arguable.

It doesnt. Thats just an assumption you are throwing at it. To encode is simply to convert information into some form from which it can later be extracted.

You say some conjectures are less reasonable because they require many more novel, unobserved propositions, then you bring up "many worlds", which does exactly that.

More novel propositions than what? Not more than divine realms, for sure. Many worlds is just more of exactly what we already know exists by direct evidence: the material world. Whether its one more, or 20 more, or a gazillion more adds nothing to the novelty of it.

Divine realm however proposes a whole new kind of reality we've never documented directly. Thats what makes the divine realm conjecture such a bigger pill to swallow, rationally.

(Side note: I do not believe in "many worlds". But thats beside the point)

I apologize if I've missed your point or sidestepped your point, I didn't mean to.

No problem. I hope I dont come off too angry about it or anything like that. This is an interesting discussion.

All the demonstrable evidence supports Christianity. It doesn't prove it, but it supports it. From history to archaeology to Newton's laws and Einstein's theories, to what we've learned of DNA and genetics...some people debate whether science and religion are compatible. I think science is Christianity's best friend.

Science has been terrible for Christianity. Its massively eroded the iron grip it had on peoples imaginations. We keep learning physical mechanisms for processes we thought could only be direct divine intervention. The trend here is pretty clear.

History and archaeology confirm that many of the Bible stories were meant to take place in real world settings, or meant to document aspects of tribal/national history. But was that ever controversial?

Some very intelligent, well-educated scientists these days claim we are living in a simulation, which begs the question "what's being simulated?" There is a possible answer in the book of Genesis - God created man in His image...

Possibly the worst advertisement for advertisement for Christianity ever. The simulation conjecture is quite depressing to me. That doesnt mean its false, of course. But I just cant help but be turned off by it. Perhaps it has some appeal I haven't considered?

Dude, learn some history. Christianity was started by a tiny group of Jews who were persecuted by their fellow Jews and by the Roman pagans. Christianity was criminal for over its first 300 years. The early Christians had nothing to gain except horrible deaths. If you think Christianity was a get-rich-quick scheme, then go try it in Saudi Arabia today, where it's basically illegal. You won't get rich, you won't get any power, you'll likely get your head chopped off.

As noted above, the persecution may well have been overblown by people who wanted the early Christian story to come off a certain way. Regardless, the much longer "hard sell" era of western-dominant Christianity is what I refer to.

I will absolutely agree that Christianity presented a novel and extremely appealing recognition of each particular individual soul and being. It says you and the contents of your heart really matter individually and specifically to the divine. I dont think any religion had quite said that before.

 

[Chesterton]

I think that you're the one who really needs to brush up on your early church history, although to be fair yours is the accepted narrative. It's just that for the most part, it's not true.

"The Myth of Persecution": Early Christians weren't persecuted

I haven't read that book. Does it say the first Apostles got wealthy and powerful?

Judging from the article, I'd be a little suspicious of a history book whose goal seems to be an attack on the contemporary "religious right". Plus there's this: "Moss cannot be called a natural or fluent writer, but she is thorough, strives for clarity and is genuinely fired up in her concern for the influence of the myth of martyrdom on Western societies." When I want history I want the truth. The last thing I want is a historian who's "fired up in her concern".

 

[Chesterton]

Instincts are pulled from the gestalt of the make up of an animal.

You know what that's just about as clear as? Mud. Mud is just about what that is as clear as. (just kidding, just kidding)

It's a complicated web of interactions.

I agree it's complicated.

 

[sjastro]

Okay, forgive me, I'm just an ignorant layman. I tend to get my science from things that are popular and well-accepted over time. Newton got famous. Einstein got famous and was in all the papers. As soon as proof of a bubble universe colliding with ours makes the six o'clock news, then I'll take your idea seriously.

By admitting you are an ignorant layman confirms the strawman and argument from incredulity fallacies of your posts.
You can’t take a trick as your response reveals a new fallacy, appeal to popularity.

I’m sure you have heard of Stephen Hawking but what made him famous?
Was it being confined to a wheelchair suffering from motor neurone disease but still possessing an active mind directed towards physics, or perhaps popularizing physics for the general public by writing books such as a ”A Brief History of Time”?
What about the quality of his work such as applying curved space-time to quantum field theories in order to gain a greater understanding of black holes?

The answer should be self evident given that Hawking never won the Nobel Prize nor is his theory on Hawking radiation supported by observational evidence.
Using popularity or fame is therefore a very poor yardstick to assess science.

The topic of discussion here involves multiverses which is an application of quantum field theories.
Here the major players are Alan Guth and Andre Linde, clearly not household names hence they would fail your popularity contest despite working in a field that does not require the fame of a Newton or an Einstein as some form of justification.

 

[sjastro]

I think that you're the one who really needs to brush up on your early church history, although to be fair yours is the accepted narrative. It's just that for the most part, it's not true.

"The Myth of Persecution": Early Christians weren't persecuted

Indeed he should brush up on history particularly from the Roman perspective.
If you look at the history of the Roman empire, organized persecutions of Christians at a state level occurred under the following Roman emperors.

Emperor​	Reign (AD)​
Marcus Aurelius​	161-180​
Decius​	249-251​
Trebonianus Gallus​	251-253​
Valerian​	253-260​
Diocletian​	283-305​
Gallerius​	305-311​

In between these periods it was the up to the discretion of the Roman governors in the provinces to decide whether Christians were to be persecuted or not.
The letters of Pliny the Younger governor of Bithynia (in modern Turkey) to Trajan, one of Rome’s better emperors, highlights the confusion amongst the Romans themselves of how to deal with Christians.

Pliny and Trajan on the Christians

 

[Chesterton]

It doesnt. Thats just an assumption you are throwing at it. To encode is simply to convert information into some form from which it can later be extracted.

To encode means to transfer meaning. You and I are using at least two kinds of code right now - the English language and the software which lets us type it to each other. If I type the word "alphabet" you know what I mean because it's meaningful. If I type the word "asdfg", you don't know because no meaning is being transferred. It's not code for anything meaningful.

More novel propositions than what? Not more than divine realms, for sure. Many worlds is just more of exactly what we already know exists by direct evidence: the material world. Whether its one more, or 20 more, or a gazillion more adds nothing to the novelty of it.

Divine realm however proposes a whole new kind of reality we've never documented directly. Thats what makes the divine realm conjecture such a bigger pill to swallow, rationally.

(Side note: I do not believe in "many worlds". But thats beside the point)

Again, the "divine realm" is (to use your words) just more of what we already know exists. Many worlds is a pseudo-scientific grasping at invisible straws in an attempt to evade the problem of the wave function collapse, which we know is real.

No problem. I hope I dont come off too angry about it or anything like that. This is an interesting discussion.

I agree it's an interesting discussion. No, you don't come off as angry, but I think I have a bad habit of using sarcasm and snark. If I've offended you in that way at all, please forgive me.

Science has been terrible for Christianity. Its massively eroded the iron grip it had on peoples imaginations.

Could you elaborate with some specifics?

We keep learning physical mechanisms for processes we thought could only be direct divine intervention. The trend here is pretty clear.

I've read the New Testament. I might be forgetting something, but I don't recall where Christ or his Apostles are trying to convince me of the cause of any physical processes. If there is something like that, I'd hope you'd agree that that's not quite the main thrust of the books.

History and archaeology confirm that many of the Bible stories were meant to take place in real world settings, or meant to document aspects of tribal/national history. But was that ever controversial?

Some folks have tried to make it controversial. In the 19th century there arose the "higher criticism", especially popular in Germany, but it would eventually get frustrated by honest archaeology. People wanted to say Pontius Pilate was a fictional character, until it was discovered he was real. People tried to say Caesarea was a small town which couldn't have been as important as it's portrayed in the New Testament, until underwater archaeology discovered it was a massive Roman port city. Stuff like that.

Possibly the worst advertisement for advertisement for Christianity ever. The simulation conjecture is quite depressing to me. That doesnt mean its false, of course. But I just cant help but be turned off by it. Perhaps it has some appeal I haven't considered?

Well if we are seekers of truth, I don't think a primary concern should be whether it appeals to us. The truth might not be appealing. But I think it's interesting that you share an opinion with C. S. Lewis when he was an atheist. He wrote a poem trying to express how strongly he disliked the idea that our reality was a sort of artifice. I honestly don't get the objection from him or you. If an artist makes a painting, a representation of a bowl of fruit let's say, he's making a representation which is something "less real" than than the real thing, but I don't know, I'm not heavily invested in the difference. If a tree is just a stage prop, I'm not turned off by that. I'm not like this guy:

As noted above, the persecution may well have been overblown by people who wanted the early Christian story to come off a certain way. Regardless, the much longer "hard sell" era of western-dominant Christianity is what I refer to.

I hate it when threads get long and unwieldy, and go off on a dozen different tangents, so I'm trying to be concise, and I appreciate the fact that you also seem to be trying to be concise. I could write a long essay about the persecution being overblown, but let's stick with this - you said "The Church had a lot of worldly power to gain, and they are "early" enough for me. And wealth too. They certainly seem to have been very interested in those things."

I don't know what "early enough for me" means, but the gaining of power and wealth is news to me, and would be news to a lot of historians. Citation is needed.

I will absolutely agree that Christianity presented a novel and extremely appealing recognition of each particular individual soul and being. It says you and the contents of your heart really matter individually and specifically to the divine. I dont think any religion had quite said that before.

I agree. The treatment of women, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the idea of "there is neither Jew nor Greek"...it was pretty revolutionary.

 

[Chesterton]

By admitting you are an ignorant layman confirms the strawman and argument from incredulity fallacies of your posts.
You can’t take a trick as your response reveals a new fallacy, appeal to popularity.

I’m sure you have heard of Stephen Hawking but what made him famous?
Was it being confined to a wheelchair suffering from motor neurone disease but still possessing an active mind directed towards physics, or perhaps popularizing physics for the general public by writing books such as a ”A Brief History of Time”?
What about the quality of his work such as applying curved space-time to quantum field theories in order to gain a greater understanding of black holes?

The answer should be self evident given that Hawking never won the Nobel Prize nor is his theory on Hawking radiation supported by observational evidence.
Using popularity or fame is therefore a very poor yardstick to assess science.

The topic of discussion here involves multiverses which is an application of quantum field theories.
Here the major players are Alan Guth and Andre Linde, clearly not household names hence they would fail your popularity contest despite working in a field that does not require the fame of a Newton or an Einstein as some form of justification.

Nah, I never heard of any of those guys. In fact, I've never heard of you. Please don't talk to me again until you get famous.

 

[durangodawood]

To encode means to transfer meaning. You and I are using at least two kinds of code right now - the English language and the software which lets us type it to each other. If I type the word "alphabet" you know what I mean because it's meaningful. If I type the word "asdfg", you don't know because no meaning is being transferred. It's not code for anything meaningful.

Encode means to transfer information. Meaning only happens if theres a reflective mind to assimilate the information. That may happen, like in your example. Or it may not happen, like when DNA enables starfish reproduction. There is no starfish mind there to grasp any meaning out of the DNA. No human mind grasps the meaning in any particular starfish reproduction event either - unless they literally sequence it and learn what the sequences code for. Basically these coding and decoding events are pure information transfer without a mind that makes meaning of them.

Again, the "divine realm" is (to use your words) just more of what we already know exists. Many worlds is a pseudo-scientific grasping at invisible straws in an attempt to evade the problem of the wave function collapse, which we know is real.

The existence of a divine realm is way too disputed and non-demonstrable to say we know it. The sort of additional universes that many-worlds proposes are just like ours and so would be indeed known by us generally.

Could you elaborate with some specifics?
I've read the New Testament. I might be forgetting something, but I don't recall where Christ or his Apostles are trying to convince me of the cause of any physical processes. If there is something like that, I'd hope you'd agree that that's not quite the main thrust of the books.

I'm not talking about whats in the Bible. I'm talking about whats in the mind of the faithful - and former faithful - even back millennia before the new testament. When you explore the myths its always the gods did this, the gods made that, for everything. Now we've learned the natural processes behind so many things, divine explanations are only appropriate for ultimate questions like "what caused all this?"

Some folks have tried to make it controversial. In the 19th century there arose the "higher criticism", especially popular in Germany, but it would eventually get frustrated by honest archaeology. People wanted to say Pontius Pilate was a fictional character, until it was discovered he was real. People tried to say Caesarea was a small town which couldn't have been as important as it's portrayed in the New Testament, until underwater archaeology discovered it was a massive Roman port city. Stuff like that.

I see. For me I never thought real names and real places corroborated anything other than the existence of those people and places. Ive read loads of fiction with real people and real places as part of the cultural setting.

Well if we are seekers of truth, I don't think a primary concern should be whether it appeals to us. The truth might not be appealing. But I think it's interesting that you share an opinion with C. S. Lewis when he was an atheist. He wrote a poem trying to express how strongly he disliked the idea that our reality was a sort of artifice. I honestly don't get the objection from him or you. If an artist makes a painting, a representation of a bowl of fruit let's say, he's making a representation which is something "less real" than than the real thing, but I don't know, I'm not heavily invested in the difference. If a tree is just a stage prop, I'm not turned off by that. I'm not like this guy:

You probably arent invested in the difference because you really dont admit to yourself there could be a difference. Do you go around vacillating between roughly equal senses that everything you encounter is maybe real, maybe fake. Almost certainly you just go with "real" and dont even question. Unless youre some kind of guru.

I hate it when threads get long and unwieldy, and go off on a dozen different tangents, so I'm trying to be concise, and I appreciate the fact that you also seem to be trying to be concise. I could write a long essay about the persecution being overblown, but let's stick with this - you said "The Church had a lot of worldly power to gain, and they are "early" enough for me. And wealth too. They certainly seem to have been very interested in those things."

Its an overall impression I get from learning how much popes and bishops were always vying for power. And then seeing bishops mansions and cathedrals and massive treasure they hoarded up or commissioned - which compared to the general standard of wealth was a little.... obscene. I do like looking at some of that stuff tho. They really did rival royalty for many many centuries.

I don't know what "early enough for me" means, but the gaining of power and wealth is news to me, and would be news to a lot of historians. Citation is needed.

By "early enough" I mean Im talking about far back enough in the church's history that it makes up the bulk of that history.

I agree. The treatment of women, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the idea of "there is neither Jew nor Greek"...it was pretty revolutionary.

For sure. But I think its even deeper than recognizing, generally, those who society deemed 2nd class. Its that you personally are a center of divine concern, and not just a cog in the old testament historical machine that was mainly about the fate of "my people", with only key figures having notable relations with God. Jesus opened up that relationship to every single person on an individual, personalized basis. Thats how it seems to me anyway. And it goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of the faith.

 

[sjastro]

Many worlds is a pseudo-scientific grasping at invisible straws in an attempt to evade the problem of the wave function collapse, which we know is real.

This doesn't even make any sense.
If we knew wavefunction collapse was "real" then there would be no need to have interpretations such as the Many Worlds in the first place.
Evidently you are oblivious to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
Objects have a wave/particle duality and exist in a superposition of all possible states when not measured.
When a measurement is made the wavefunction "collapses" to a single state.
The problem is we don't observe the wavefunction collapsing only the outcome of the collapse which is the measurement.

This leads to various interpretations of wavefunction collapse or whether it even occurs.
The problem is made even worse as there are experiments which supports the various interpretations.
The Copenhagen interpretation for wavefunction collapse is supported by the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment but Many Worlds which is not a wavefunction collapse mechanism is supported by experiments such as the quantum Zeno effect.

 

[sjastro]

Here are the various interpretations of quantum mechanics over the ages.

 

[Gene2memE]

I agree it's complicated.

But do you also agree that C.S. Lewis was wrong when he "noted that when we say animals do things by instinct, the word is just a placeholder for saying that we have no idea why they do what they do."

Just because we've not completely solved the problem, doesn't mean that animal instincts are a total mystery. The fact that instinctive behaviours in some animals can be deliberately and consistently altered, to the point where those altered instincts are inherited by successive generations, suggests that we do have some idea.

Some light reading: Digging yields clues: Biologists connect burrowing behavior in mice to genes

 

[durangodawood]

But do you also agree that C.S. Lewis was wrong when he "noted that when we say animals do things by instinct, the word is just a placeholder for saying that we have no idea why they do what they do."

Just because we've not completely solved the problem, doesn't mean that animal instincts are a total mystery. The fact that instinctive behaviours in some animals can be deliberately and consistently altered, to the point where those altered instincts are inherited by successive generations, suggests that we do have some idea.

Some light reading: Digging yields clues: Biologists connect burrowing behavior in mice to genes

Also, Lewis could have said that 70 or 80 years ago, when it was a lot closer to correct that it is now. I tried to look up the quote. No luck.

 

[Chesterton]

Encode means to transfer information.

"asdfg" contains no information; it doesn't inform you of anything.

Meaning only happens if theres a reflective mind to assimilate the information. That may happen, like in your example. Or it may not happen, like when DNA enables starfish reproduction. There is no starfish mind there to grasp any meaning out of the DNA. No human mind grasps the meaning in any particular starfish reproduction event either - unless they literally sequence it and learn what the sequences code for. Basically these coding and decoding events are pure information transfer without a mind that makes meaning of them.

It's not the starfish that gets meaning out of the DNA, it's the proteins and cells of the starfish's body. Without meaningful encoding, nothing alive now would be alive.

The existence of a divine realm is way too disputed and non-demonstrable to say we know it. The sort of additional universes that many-worlds proposes are just like ours and so would be indeed known by us generally.

We know of a divine realm through metaphors and stories, as I think I mentioned earlier (if you choose to believe them). Additional universe are just like ours? We can't even see all of our own universe. We don't know what shape, what's driving it, or what's going to end it.

I'm not talking about whats in the Bible. I'm talking about whats in the mind of the faithful - and former faithful - even back millennia before the new testament. When you explore the myths its always the gods did this, the gods made that, for everything. Now we've learned the natural processes behind so many things, divine explanations are only appropriate for ultimate questions like "what caused all this?"

I can't speak for other religions that much, but you do find some of that. Still I don't think that the explanation of nature was ever the main purpose. Like, the ancient Greeks did have a lot myths where a god created this or that, but the same stories often had moral points to make.

I see. For me I never thought real names and real places corroborated anything other than the existence of those people and places. Ive read loads of fiction with real people and real places as part of the cultural setting.

I guess the higher critics felt differently.

You probably arent invested in the difference because you really dont admit to yourself there could be a difference. Do you go around vacillating between roughly equal senses that everything you encounter is maybe real, maybe fake. Almost certainly you just go with "real" and dont even question. Unless youre some kind of guru.

You mentioned faith earlier, so as I mentioned it probably depends on just my mood. But I don't think anything is "fake", I just think there may be things which are more real and less real, as I mentioned with a painting of a bowl of fruit.

Its an overall impression I get from learning how much popes and bishops were always vying for power. And then seeing bishops mansions and cathedrals and massive treasure they hoarded up or commissioned - which compared to the general standard of wealth was a little.... obscene. I do like looking at some of that stuff tho. They really did rival royalty for many many centuries.

By "early enough" I mean Im talking about far back enough in the church's history that it makes up the bulk of that history.

Okay. But we were discussing this in terms of the times of persecution, which was much earlier than the massive cathedrals and stuff.

For sure. But I think its even deeper than recognizing, generally, those who society deemed 2nd class. Its that you personally are a center of divine concern, and not just a cog in the old testament historical machine that was mainly about the fate of "my people", with only key figures having notable relations with God. Jesus opened up that relationship to every single person on an individual, personalized basis. Thats how it seems to me anyway. And it goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of the faith.

I agree.

 

[Chesterton]

But do you also agree that C.S. Lewis was wrong when he "noted that when we say animals do things by instinct, the word is just a placeholder for saying that we have no idea why they do what they do."

Just because we've not completely solved the problem, doesn't mean that animal instincts are a total mystery. The fact that instinctive behaviours in some animals can be deliberately and consistently altered, to the point where those altered instincts are inherited by successive generations, suggests that we do have some idea.

Some light reading: Digging yields clues: Biologists connect burrowing behavior in mice to genes

I didn't quote Lewis verbatim. I was just recalling one thought he had in passing, out of a book I read a long time ago. But I'm sure that "we have no idea" are my words, not his.

 

[sjastro]

"asdfg" contains no information; it doesn't inform you of anything.

Of course it contains information, each letter is a piece of information.
Information does not require "meaning", it is a mathematical concept based on a simple premise, how many questions need to be asked which only require a yes or no answer to guess the outcome of some event such as decoding a message.

The number of questions asked is related to the Shannon entropy H(x) defined by the equation.

Where P(xₖ) is the probability of the event.

The fewer questions asked means the entropy is lower and in the case of decoding a message it is less random and less information can be gained from the event in the form of knowledge.
A message with zero entropy means it is 100% deterministic, in other words the answer is already known and no extra information is gained as a result.

Here is a non technical video on the subject of information.

 

[durangodawood]

Of course it contains information, each letter is a piece of information.
Information does not require "meaning", it is a mathematical concept based on a simple premise, how many questions need to be asked which only require a yes or no answer to guess the outcome of some event such as decoding a message.

The number of questions asked is related to the Shannon entropy H(x) defined by the equation.

View attachment 338901

Where P(xₖ) is the probability of the event.

The fewer questions asked means the entropy is lower and in the case of decoding a message it is less random and less information can be gained from the event in the form of knowledge.
A message with zero entropy means it is 100% deterministic, in other words the answer is already known and no extra information is gained as a result.

Here is a non technical video on the subject of information.

Its a weird sense of "information" that could include random outputs that cannot inform.

 

[durangodawood]

It's not the starfish that gets meaning out of the DNA, it's the proteins and cells of the starfish's body. Without meaningful encoding, nothing alive now would be alive.

The starfish, does it have "conscious intent" for the DNA coding which the cells and proteins later unwind?

 

[Chesterton]

The starfish, does it have "conscious intent" for the DNA coding which the cells and proteins later unwind?

Having never possessed the consciousness of a starfish, I couldn't say with 100% certainty, but were I a gambling man, I'd probably go with "no".

 

[durangodawood]

Having never possessed the consciousness of a starfish, I couldn't say with 100% certainty, but were I a gambling man, I'd probably go with "no".

I'm looking for the conscious intent you say is required for a code to transmit information.

We have good evidence that the coding and decoding processes work fine without a conscious intent involved in their actual operations.

As for: was this whole scheme invented by a conscious mind, we have no direct evidence it was. And its way too premature to say it had to be. We are far from exhausting our investigations into the material aspects of this processes history.

 

[sjastro]

Its a weird sense of "information" that could include random outputs that cannot inform.

The degree of disorder or randomness is information.
In your DNA example, the information is in the ordering of the code which is the sequencing of Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G) and Thymine (T) bases in DNA.

Humans are differentiated from other organisms in the sequencing of these bases.