her accent reminds me of my mother's

Posted By: AngusDoes everybody agree? It seems to me that there are examples of strong emergence in chaotic systems and cellular automata.

I'd say we look out from an example of strong emergence, not weak. Must that be in conflict with the standard model; I don't quite get that claim. You cannot derive it - sure, but that is by definition. That also muddies her "there is no evidence for that" - well, she is a materialist, where exactly does she expect to find that evidence?

Posted By: pcstru

Posted By: AngusDoes everybody agree? It seems to me that there are examples of strong emergence in chaotic systems and cellular automata.

I'd say we look out from an example of strong emergence, not weak. Must that be in conflict with the standard model; I don't quite get that claim. You cannot derive it - sure, but that is by definition. That also muddies her "there is no evidence for that" - well, she is a materialist, where exactly does she expect to find that evidence?

Yea, yea, numpty.

We self evidently experience the material world and our experience of the world motivates us to explain the world we experience. We come up with ways to measure and to model and we say that model is what is objectively real. Naturally that model must contain us and that view immediately rules out strong emergence because of assumptions baked into the model (that it is objective and real). If every experiment possible deprives you of the strongly emergent behaviour/property when you remove the hosting fabric/system, then it is not strong emergence by definition.

By this gauge I'm a materialist. We don't really exist in any meaningful sense as far as the universe we have created is concerned. The physical universe reduces things to abstract fields and multidimensional strings, infinite multi-verses and all that. Our reality isn't lovely Vera who we greet every day in the local shop, it is wierd particles that we only 'see' as statistical events measured by giant machines that smash stuff together to see what it is made of. It is all wonderful, rational, measurements agree to truthy P values and it all seems to completely ignore the monster in the room, us. We perturb this 'reality' even as we try to 'look' at it objectively. Our most objective tools exist as 'philosophical' views - "scientific", "sceptical" etc etc are positions we take.

Of course, then there is the real world that we live in, which includes things that do not and cannot actually exist. Dragons, Unicorns, God, World Peace, Justice for all - fantasy & made up shit. A world of shared experience and ideas; where language and culture shape our thinking/behaviour and our thinking/behaviour shapes in turn our language and culture, like a supra-mind. Perhaps we should build machines to smash different views into each other at highly charged subject velocities. Or would that just look like twitter?

So here would be my challenge to hard materialists as I believe Sabine to be, who want evidence that something does exist that is not, and cannot in principle be explained by material, physical view of the world; can you reliably model the universe accurately on a cosmological scale, if we/life colonise it? If you can never in principle account for the presence of life in ontological models at cosmological scales, then either the models are wrong/incomplete or you have evidence of strong emergence - something emerges that is not in the underlying host model. The Fermi Paradox points us towords the conclusion that we are emergent because our continued existence and expansion should have large scale impacts (and points us to the importance of absence of evidence). So, the question for Sabine I think is are we in the models or not? If we are not the you at least have evidence of absence of something which we accept is possible.

Our fondness for Science, facts, objectivity is just a reflection that we like easy answers. Our rejection of philosophy a reflection that we don't like to ask difficult questions, perhaps especially of ourselves.

But yea. yea numpty. It is all just wurds. Clumsy things to try to find your way around any world with.

Posted By: AngusMore Sabine

Critique on many levels.

Posted By: Andrew PalfreymanI liked her grin when she mentioned consciousness.

Does that prove she is conscious, or does that prove she believes she is not?

She has more angels dancing on the head of her pin than anybody.

Posted By: PathoskepticWhat looks like strong emergence, is just ripples of lost information.

ripples in a Sea of Joy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ44k5LQsUg

Why not.

Goes without saying, but I don't believe any of this babble.

Posted By: PathoskepticGoes without saying,

If only...