Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theoryBy Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188Highlights • The Orch OR theory proposes quantum computations in brain microtubules account for consciousness. • Microtubule ‘quantum channels’ in which anesthetics erase consciousness are identified. • Evidence for warm quantum vibrations in brain microtubules is cited. • Interference of microtubule vibrations are ‘beat frequencies’ seen as EEG. • Orch OR links consciousness to processes in fundamental space–time geometry. Abstract The nature of consciousness, the mechanism by which it occurs in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown. We proposed in the mid 1990's that consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum processes correlate with, and regulate, neuronal synaptic and membrane activity, and that the continuous Schrödinger evolution of each such process terminates in accordance with the specific Diósi–Penrose (DP) scheme of ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) of the quantum state. This orchestrated OR activity (‘Orch OR’) is taken to result in moments of conscious awareness and/or choice. The DP form of OR is related to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and space–time geometry, so Orch OR suggests that there is a connection between the brain's biomolecular processes and the basic structure of the universe. Here we review Orch OR in light of criticisms and developments in quantum biology, neuroscience, physics and cosmology. We also introduce a novel suggestion of ‘beat frequencies’ of faster microtubule vibrations as a possible source of the observed electro-encephalographic (‘EEG’) correlates of consciousness. We conclude that consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe. |
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Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theoryBy Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188Highlights • The Orch OR theory proposes quantum computations in brain microtubules account for consciousness. • Microtubule ‘quantum channels’ in which anesthetics erase consciousness are identified. • Evidence for warm quantum vibrations in brain microtubules is cited. • Interference of microtubule vibrations are ‘beat frequencies’ seen as EEG. • Orch OR links consciousness to processes in fundamental space–time geometry. Abstract The nature of consciousness, the mechanism by which it occurs in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown. We proposed in the mid 1990's that consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum processes correlate with, and regulate, neuronal synaptic and membrane activity, and that the continuous Schrödinger evolution of each such process terminates in accordance with the specific Diósi–Penrose (DP) scheme of ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) of the quantum state. This orchestrated OR activity (‘Orch OR’) is taken to result in moments of conscious awareness and/or choice. The DP form of OR is related to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and space–time geometry, so Orch OR suggests that there is a connection between the brain's biomolecular processes and the basic structure of the universe. Here we review Orch OR in light of criticisms and developments in quantum biology, neuroscience, physics and cosmology. We also introduce a novel suggestion of ‘beat frequencies’ of faster microtubule vibrations as a possible source of the observed electro-encephalographic (‘EEG’) correlates of consciousness. We conclude that consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe.
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Kant argued that free will requires a noumenal self which is causally undetermined an uncaused cause outside of and therefore not subject to the deterministic laws of nature. Immanuel Kant on Free Will Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#ThePraAutThe most important belief about things in themselves that Kant thinks only practical philosophy can justify concerns human freedom. Freedom is important because, on Kant's view, moral appraisal presupposes that we are free in the sense that we have the ability to do otherwise. To see why, consider Kant's example of a man who commits a theft (5:95ff.). Kant holds that in order for this man's action to be morally wrong, it must have been within his control in the sense that it was within his power at the time not to have committed the theft. If this was not within his control at the time, then, while it may be useful to punish him in order to shape his behavior or to influence others, it nevertheless would not be correct to say that his action was morally wrong. Moral rightness and wrongness apply only to free agents who control their actions and have it in their power, at the time of their actions, either to act rightly or not. According to Kant, this is just common sense.
On these grounds, Kant rejects a type of compatibilism that he calls the “comparative concept of freedom” and associates with Leibniz (5:96–97). (Note that Kant has a specific type of compatibilism in mind, which I will refer to simply as “compatibilism,” although there may be other types of compatibilism that do not fit Kant's characterization of that view). On the compatibilist view, as Kant understands it, I am free whenever the cause of my action is within me. So I am unfree only when something external to me pushes or moves me, but I am free whenever the proximate cause of my body's movement is internal to me as an “acting being” (5:96). If we distinguish between involuntary convulsions and voluntary bodily movements, then on this view free actions are just voluntary bodily movements. Kant ridicules this view as a “wretched subterfuge” that tries to solve an ancient philosophical problem “with a little quibbling about words” (ibid.). This view, he says, assimilates human freedom to “the freedom of a turnspit,” or a projectile in flight, or the motion of a clock's hands (5:96–97). The proximate causes of these movements are internal to the turnspit, the projectile, and the clock at the time of the movement. This cannot be sufficient for moral responsibility.
Why not? The reason, Kant says, is ultimately that the causes of these movements occur in time. Return to the theft example. A compatibilist would say that the thief's action is free because its proximate cause is inside him, and because the theft was not an involuntary convulsion but a voluntary action. The thief decided to commit the theft, and his action flowed from this decision. According to Kant, however, if the thief's decision is a natural phenomenon that occurs in time, then it must be the effect of some cause that occurred in a previous time. This is an essential part of Kant's Newtonian worldview and is grounded in the a priori laws (specifically, the category of cause and effect) in accordance with which our understanding constructs experience: every event has a cause that begins in an earlier time. If that cause too was an event occurring in time, then it must also have a cause beginning in a still earlier time, etc. All natural events occur in time and are thoroughly determined by causal chains that stretch backwards into the distant past. So there is no room for freedom in nature, which is deterministic in a strong sense.
The root of the problem, for Kant, is time. Again, if the thief's choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, then it is the effect of a causal chain extending into the distant past. But the past is out of his control now, in the present. Once the past is past, he can't change it. On Kant's view, that is why his actions would not be in his control in the present if they are determined by events in the past. Even if he could control those past events in the past, he cannot control them now. But in fact past events were not in his control in the past either if they too were determined by events in the more distant past, because eventually the causal antecedents of his action stretch back before his birth, and obviously events that occurred before his birth were not in his control. So if the thief's choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, then it is not now and never was in his control, and he could not have done otherwise than to commit the theft. In that case, it would be a mistake to hold him morally responsible for it.
Compatibilism, as Kant understands it, therefore locates the issue in the wrong place. Even if the cause of my action is internal to me, if it is in the past — for example, if my action today is determined by a decision I made yesterday, or from the character I developed in childhood — then it is not within my control now. The real issue is not whether the cause of my action is internal or external to me, but whether it is in my control now. For Kant, however, the cause of my action can be within my control now only if it is not in time. This is why Kant thinks that transcendental idealism is the only way to make sense of the kind of freedom that morality requires. For transcendental idealism allows that the cause of my action may be a thing in itself outside of time: namely, my noumenal self, which is free because it is not part of nature. No matter what kind of character I have developed or what external influences act on me, on Kant's view all of my intentional, voluntary actions are immediate effects of my noumenal self, which is causally undetermined (5:97–98). My noumenal self is an uncaused cause outside of time, which therefore is not subject to the deterministic laws of nature in accordance with which our understanding constructs experience.
Kant holds that we can make sense of moral appraisal and responsibility only by thinking about human freedom in this way, because it is the only way to prevent natural necessity from undermining both.
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Kant argued that free will requires a noumenal self which is causally undetermined an uncaused cause outside of and therefore not subject to the deterministic laws of nature. Immanuel Kant on Free Will Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#ThePraAutThe most important belief about things in themselves that Kant thinks only practical philosophy can justify concerns human freedom. Freedom is important because, on Kant's view, moral appraisal presupposes that we are free in the sense that we have the ability to do otherwise. To see why, consider Kant's example of a man who commits a theft (5:95ff.). Kant holds that in order for this man's action to be morally wrong, it must have been within his control in the sense that it was within his power at the time not to have committed the theft. If this was not within his control at the time, then, while it may be useful to punish him in order to shape his behavior or to influence others, it nevertheless would not be correct to say that his action was morally wrong. Moral rightness and wrongness apply only to free agents who control their actions and have it in their power, at the time of their actions, either to act rightly or not. According to Kant, this is just common sense.
On these grounds, Kant rejects a type of compatibilism that he calls the “comparative concept of freedom” and associates with Leibniz (5:96–97). (Note that Kant has a specific type of compatibilism in mind, which I will refer to simply as “compatibilism,” although there may be other types of compatibilism that do not fit Kant's characterization of that view). On the compatibilist view, as Kant understands it, I am free whenever the cause of my action is within me. So I am unfree only when something external to me pushes or moves me, but I am free whenever the proximate cause of my body's movement is internal to me as an “acting being” (5:96). If we distinguish between involuntary convulsions and voluntary bodily movements, then on this view free actions are just voluntary bodily movements. Kant ridicules this view as a “wretched subterfuge” that tries to solve an ancient philosophical problem “with a little quibbling about words” (ibid.). This view, he says, assimilates human freedom to “the freedom of a turnspit,” or a projectile in flight, or the motion of a clock's hands (5:96–97). The proximate causes of these movements are internal to the turnspit, the projectile, and the clock at the time of the movement. This cannot be sufficient for moral responsibility.
Why not? The reason, Kant says, is ultimately that the causes of these movements occur in time. Return to the theft example. A compatibilist would say that the thief's action is free because its proximate cause is inside him, and because the theft was not an involuntary convulsion but a voluntary action. The thief decided to commit the theft, and his action flowed from this decision. According to Kant, however, if the thief's decision is a natural phenomenon that occurs in time, then it must be the effect of some cause that occurred in a previous time. This is an essential part of Kant's Newtonian worldview and is grounded in the a priori laws (specifically, the category of cause and effect) in accordance with which our understanding constructs experience: every event has a cause that begins in an earlier time. If that cause too was an event occurring in time, then it must also have a cause beginning in a still earlier time, etc. All natural events occur in time and are thoroughly determined by causal chains that stretch backwards into the distant past. So there is no room for freedom in nature, which is deterministic in a strong sense.
The root of the problem, for Kant, is time. Again, if the thief's choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, then it is the effect of a causal chain extending into the distant past. But the past is out of his control now, in the present. Once the past is past, he can't change it. On Kant's view, that is why his actions would not be in his control in the present if they are determined by events in the past. Even if he could control those past events in the past, he cannot control them now. But in fact past events were not in his control in the past either if they too were determined by events in the more distant past, because eventually the causal antecedents of his action stretch back before his birth, and obviously events that occurred before his birth were not in his control. So if the thief's choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, then it is not now and never was in his control, and he could not have done otherwise than to commit the theft. In that case, it would be a mistake to hold him morally responsible for it.
Compatibilism, as Kant understands it, therefore locates the issue in the wrong place. Even if the cause of my action is internal to me, if it is in the past — for example, if my action today is determined by a decision I made yesterday, or from the character I developed in childhood — then it is not within my control now. The real issue is not whether the cause of my action is internal or external to me, but whether it is in my control now. For Kant, however, the cause of my action can be within my control now only if it is not in time. This is why Kant thinks that transcendental idealism is the only way to make sense of the kind of freedom that morality requires. For transcendental idealism allows that the cause of my action may be a thing in itself outside of time: namely, my noumenal self, which is free because it is not part of nature. No matter what kind of character I have developed or what external influences act on me, on Kant's view all of my intentional, voluntary actions are immediate effects of my noumenal self, which is causally undetermined (5:97–98). My noumenal self is an uncaused cause outside of time, which therefore is not subject to the deterministic laws of nature in accordance with which our understanding constructs experience.
Kant holds that we can make sense of moral appraisal and responsibility only by thinking about human freedom in this way, because it is the only way to prevent natural necessity from undermining both.
Is there a rational and coherent reason to think such a noumenal self might exists? The answer to this question yes as I argued over several posts starting here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355212.msg14277573#msg14277573 Combining the above insights leads us to the idea that the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper fundamental reality. A universe with consciousness, as its ultimate teleology where consciousness operates upon matter with the proximate goal of sustaining and developing itself via instantiations in matter. A universe where entropy always increases and entropy is understood as information for consciousness to act upon.
This model cannot currently be proven true but neither can you disprove it or reject it as illogical for it for it is logically sound. Indeed one can even argue that this model better explains our universe for this model allows you to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics a task which traditional models have been unable to accomplish.
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Combining the above insights leads us to the idea that the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper fundamental reality. A universe with consciousness, as its ultimate teleology where consciousness operates upon matter with the proximate goal of sustaining and developing itself via instantiations in matter. A universe where entropy always increases and entropy is understood as information for consciousness to act upon.
This model cannot currently be proven true but neither can you disprove it or reject it as illogical for it for it is logically sound. Indeed one can even argue that this model better explains our universe for this model allows you to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics a task which traditional models have been unable to accomplish.
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The holographic principle does more than simply establish a non-falsifiable thought experiment. It also provides a mathematical model that reconciles quantum mechanics and gravity which up until this point physics has largely failed to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Gravity_and_quantum_mechanicsIn the decades after the discovery of general relativity, it was realized that general relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics. It is possible to describe gravity in the framework of quantum field theory like the other fundamental forces, such that the attractive force of gravity arises due to exchange of virtual gravitons, in the same way as the electromagnetic force arises from exchange of virtual photons. This reproduces general relativity in the classical limit. However, this approach fails at short distances of the order of the Planck length, where a more complete theory of quantum gravity (or a new approach to quantum mechanics) is required.
Below is a description of how the holographic principle reconciles quantum mechanics with gravity http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/132A new model in which gravity is not a fundamental force could—counterintuitively—give a controversial quantum gravity theory a boost. It may also change our picture of spacetime, and do away with dark energy.
Hawking and ’t Hooft had both worked on the so-called holographic principle, which relates the information content—or entropy—of a black hole to the surface area of its event horizon, the hypothetical sphere around the black hole where gravity becomes so strong even light can’t escape. It’s as if the horizon is a spherical television screen with all the information about the three-dimensional volume within encoded on the pixels on its surface. Verlinde has shown that by combining the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work, it’s relatively straightforward to derive Newton’s classical equation of gravity. (See "Decoding Entropic Gravity" for more details.)
The work has been causing a stir amongst physicists. "Verlinde’s paper is remarkable in that we all felt so stupid for not having seen it before," says FQXi’s Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, Ontario. "The mathematics involved is just high school algebra."
It might sound like re-inventing the wheel, but the approach implies that gravity is nothing more than the result of a system maximising its entropy, or disorder. At first glance, this looks like bad news for the quantum gravity crowd. If gravity is an "entropic force," there is no longer a need for physicists to attempt to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, or hunt for the hypothetical graviton (the particle posited to carry the gravitational force just as photons mediate the electromagnetic force), says Paul Frampton, at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Rather, all we need to explain the interactions of particles is the Standard Model of particle physics and entropy. "It means that everyone looking into quantum gravity is misguided," says Frampton.
Verlinde’s model is tied to earlier work by FQXi member Ted Jacobson, who had shown in 1995 that Einstein’s equations of general relativity could be derived using thermodynamics and the holographic principle. "The wonderful thing about the arguments of Jacobson and Verlinde is they give a deep reason for why a quantum theory of gravity should yield the phenomena of gravitation
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Reconceptualizing the metaphysical basis of biology: a new definition based on deistic teleology and an hierarchy of organizing entitiesBy Bruce G. Charlton https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entitiesStrikingly, there has been no success in the attempts over sixty-plus years to create life in the laboratory under plausible ancestral earth conditions – not even the complex bio-molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. It has, indeed, been well-argued that this is impossible; and that ‘living life’ must therefore have evolved from an intermediate stage (or stages) of non-living but evolvable molecules such as crystals – perhaps clays (Cairns-Smith, 1987). But nobody has succeeded in doing that in the lab either, despite that artificial selection can be orders of magnitude faster than natural selection. Since there is no acknowledged boundary dividing biology and not-biology, then it would seem that biology as currently understood has zero validity as a subject. What are the implications of our failure to divide the living from the non-living world: the failure to draw a line around the subject? Well, since there is no coherent boundary, then common sense leads us to infer in that case either everything is not-alive or everything is-alive. If nothing is-alive, not even ourselves, there seems to be no coherent possibility of us knowing that we ourselves are not-alive, or indeed of anything knowing anything – which, I take it, means we should reject that possibility as a reductio ad absurdum. Alternatively, the implication is that if anything is-alive, then everything is-alive, including the mineral world – so we dwell in a wholly animated universe, all that there is being alive but – presumably – alive in very different degrees and with different qualities of life. This inference I intend to regard as valid: it will be my working metaphysical assumption, and is one to which we will return later. So; if life is to be regarded as universal, it seems that the presence of ‘life’ can no longer be used as definitive of biology; and since reproduction/ replication is also inadequate, then we need a new basis or principle around-which may be made a different definition of the subject ‘biology’. I will argue, below, why this new principle should be ‘development’. … THE NECESSITY FOR TELEOLOGY IN THE METAPHYSICS OF BIOLOGY Natural selection is an inadequate metaphysical basis for biology because it lacks teleology - a goal, direction or purpose.This lack of teleology means that the potential for meaning - for knowledge - is excluded from the system of biology, and from any other system which depends upon it. Thus natural selection is radically too small a metaphysical frame - it leaves out so much that is so important, that what remains is not even a coherent subject. This is revealed in the un-definability of biology and the incapability of biology to understand the meaning of life and its origins, major transitions and categories. Without teleology, biology is self-destroying. Indeed - without teleology we cannot know. I mean we cannot explain how humans could have valid knowledge about anything. No knowledge of any kind is possible. If Natural Selection is regarded as the bottom-line explanation - the fundamental metaphysical reality (as it is for biology, and often is with respect to the human condition) then this has radically nihilistic consequences. And this is a paradox – if natural selection was the only mechanism by which consciousness and intelligence arose then we could have no confidence that the human discovery of natural selection was anything more than a (currently, but contingently) fitness-enhancing delusion. The reason is that natural selection is at best – and when correctly applied - merely descriptive of what-happened-to-happen. Since there was no reason why things had-to-be as they actually were, and there is no reason why the present situation should stay the same, then there will be no reason to suppose that the future outcome is predictable. There is no greater validity to what-happened-to-happen compared with an infinite number of possible other things that might have happened - so there is no reason to defer to what-happened-to-happen, no reason why what-happened-to-happen is good, true, just, powerful or anything else - what-happened-to-happen is just what led to greater differential reproductive success for some length of time under historical (and contingent) circumstances. Nothing more. Therefore - if humans are nothing more nor other than naturally-selected organisms - then there is zero validity to: cognition, emotions, intelligence, intuitions, morality, art, or science - including that there is no validity to the theory of evolution by natural selection. None of the above have any validity - because they all are merely products of what-happened-to-happen (and are open-endedly liable to further change). In sum - Without teleology, there can be no possibility of knowledge. (This is not some kind of a clever paradox - it is an unavoidable rational conclusion.) If, and only if, biology includes direction and purpose, is the subject compatible with the reality of knowledge. A new and better metaphysics of biology must therefore include teleology. STATEMENT OF THE NEW TELEOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS: THE HIERARCHY OF ORGANIZING ENTITIES The chronological sequence of the new metaphysics is the reverse of the usual posited in biology. Current biology usually assumes that matter precedes life; life precedes the brain; the brain precedes cognition – in other words that a solid brain comes before cognition (thinking) - including purposiveness - emerged. By contrast, I suggest that consciousness and purpose are the starting point – and that consciousness, with its ultimate teleology, therefore operates upon matter with the proximate goal of sustaining and developing itself via instantiations in matter - instantiation here meaning the specific and actual realization of an abstraction: building of abstraction into solid form. Therefore, (baldly-stated) consciousness ‘organized’ brains. (The above conceptualization owes much to the work of Owen Barfield, who was himself expressing ideas of Rudolf Steiner, who was in turn JW von Goethe’s scientific editor for the standard collected works – so this theory has its ultimate roots in Goethe’s biology; see for example Barfield, 1982; Naydler, 1996). So that (to put things simply); initially consciousness sufficed to organize undifferentiated matter into ‘physics’, ‘physics’ into ‘chemistry’, and ‘chemistry’ into what we recognize as the emergence of biological entities in their most basic forms. And the directing consciousness which drove biological evolution was further subdivided and specialized; for example regulating the basic transitions and divisions of life, and beyond them the further groupings down to species, then particular human groups. This system of consciousnesses can be imagined as an hierarchy of organizing entitiesBruce G. Charlton is a British medical doctor and Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham. Charlton graduated with honours from the Newcastle Medical School in Newcastle upon Tyne, took a doctorate at the Medical Research Council Neuroendocrinology group, and did postgraduate training in psychiatry and public health. He has held university lectureships in physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and psychology; and holds a Master's degree in English Literature from Durham University in North East England. From 2003 to 2010, Charlton was the solo-editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses, published by Elsevier
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The goal of nature is a very abstract topic but if we limit ourselves to the subset of nature we consider life we see fairly quickly that its goal is not to maintain a zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean. The essay on entropy below is incomplete and focuses too much on the effect of entropy on individual organisms rather than species as a whole but it is sufficient to demonstrate this point.
I dont think life is a subset of nature, but all of nature. It's only life from human point of view, but how does it look from a rock's point of view? It's just random events, there is nothing special about humans, only we think that it is, humans are no more special than a rock on a shore. This is a very good question. I did not go into the distinction between life non life because it takes us far from the realm of economics and deep into metaphysics. This is simply not a question you can answer with science for it is a question of metaphysics. For example one can make the metaphysical choice that “it’s all just random events” but this choice has significant nihilistic implications. Lets examine some of the other choices we can make. TELEOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with basic assumptions – descriptive of the fundamental nature of reality. Science takes place within metaphysics, and therefore the results of science (any possible results of science) can neither prove nor refute any metaphysical description – although some metaphysical systems will more clearly and simply make sense of (or ‘explain’) science than others.
In this sense metaphysics (which is to say a ‘paradigm’) is not ‘testable’ by science. This is because metaphysics itself underpins the definition of science (or a specific science such as biology); metaphysics determines what counts as a test, what observations to make and also how to interpret observations. For instance, no amount of biological research can ever decide whether biology is 1. the science of alive things or 2. the science of replicating things. This is not possible since definition 1 leads to one kind of biology using one type of expertise and methods; but definition 2 to another kind of biology with very different personnel and methods, as we have seen emerge over the past 70 years.
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I have to disagree here, i think the goal of nature is to maintain the zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean, whatever that mean is: politically, socially, economically.
However in this framework, humanity is progressing, and consolidating it's efforts, and becoming centralized, in whatever current political structure we live in.
You could say it's somehow a spooky effect of gravity, since gravity is the only physical force in the universe that creates planets from spacedust, so it's the only coercive force that exists. So perhaps gravity has this effect on lifeforms, centralization of politics...
There is a very real possibility that gravity is simply an emergent phenomenon of entropy. Quantum Mechanics is not simply a mechanism for guessing things. It offers us a deep insight that the world is not as it appears to our senses. It is quantum mechanics that leads us to the conclusion that we may actually be living in a Holographic Universe. The idea the the the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper reality. In his essay The Universe Anonymint draws our attention to the the holographic principle. Specifically the fascinating notion that when you combine the the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work it is relatively straightforward to derive Newton’s classical equation of gravity. These ideas are difficult to grasp and at this stage they remain theoretical physics. However, there are a growing number of scientist who are taking them very seriously. Below is a simple but nice introductory video on the topic... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMBt_yfGKpU(part I only) The goal of nature is a very abstract topic but if we limit ourselves to the subset of nature we consider life we see fairly quickly that it's goal is not to maintain a zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean. The essay on entropy below is incomplete and focuses too much on the effect of entropy on individual organisms rather then species as a whole. It also fails to examine the idea of entropy as information. Nevertheless it is sufficient to demonstrate this point. EntropyEntropy is both beloved ally and mortal enemy of life.To understand the dichotomy of entropy we must delve deep into the heart of thermodynamics. There are two fundamental laws of thermodynamics Law #1: The total quantity of energy in the universe must remain constant. Law #2: That the quality of that energy is constantly degraded irreversibly. From these laws we can derive some general principals: 1) Ordered energy -> Disorganized energy 2) High quality energy -> Low-grade energy (heat) 3) Order -> Disorder 4) Improbability -> Probability These principals outline a grim universe. At first glance they seem more compatible with a barren wasteland than a vibrant jungle. Thermodynamics demands constant and progressive degradation yet somehow we live in a world teaming with life and growth. Lets explore why. The Genius of LifeLife is able to increase its internal order while simultaneously satisfying thermodynamics. At first glance this appears to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Instead of disorder and death life forms order and birth. Instead of probability and cessation it does the improbable and continues. Rather than disorganized heat it forms the ordered thought and action. Life is able to do this because it is a dissipative structure. It is a structure that achieves a reproducible state operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium in an environment in which it exchanges energy and matter. Chemists can create complex high energy molecules in reactions that would not occur naturally by coupling those reactions with others that degrade other high energy molecules in low energy ones. As long as the combination of both reactions leads to an overall higher level of entropy the laws of thermodynamics are satisfied.Life has mastered this same process with stunning majesty. By coupling its existence to reactions that increase the entropy of the universe life is able to swim upstream against the tide of entropy. Plants harvest the energy of the sun. Animals consume that same energy indirectly. Entropy is MixedupnessThere are numerous definitions of Entropy. When talking about the mechanics of life the most useful is the one given by statistical mechanics. Entropy is the amount of additional information needed to specify the exact physical state of a system, given its thermodynamic specification.Entropy is a measure of the uncertainty which remains about a system after its observable macroscopic properties, such as temperature, pressure and volume, have been taken into account. For a given set of macroscopic variables, the entropy measures the degree to which the probability of the system is spread out over different possible microstates. The simple system of four balls traveling in the same direction, has less entropy than an otherwise identical system with 4 balls traveling in random directions as it takes more information to describe the exact physical state of the second system. Entropy Devourers Life All life struggles to avoid its eventual guaranteed entropic end.The conditions of death, decay, cessation are higher entropy then the conditions of breathing, growth, and body integrity. Therefore life is always in constant danger of death able to delay it's destruction only by constant feeding. Deprived of energy for a prolonged length of time life quickly falls to the laws of thermodynamics. In reproduction this gives rise to a great need for fidelity. When reproducing life must protect the integrity of its information. Unless both the ability to gather energy and the ability to reproduce is successfully transmitted that branch of life will cease. The genetic information transmitted from parent to child is not immune to entropy. Random mutation's introduce variations into genetic code. These mutations increase entropy as they increase the spread over different possible microstates. This mutation is very dangerous to life as the vast majority of mutations either have no effect or have a detrimental one. Life acts to minimize the danger by purposefully limiting this entropy. Most multicellular organisms have DNA repair enzymes that constantly repair and correct damage. Fidelity of information is thus largly maintained between generations. Fidelity, however, can never be 100%. The environment is not static but dynamic. Life must be able to adapt in response or life will cease. An organism with 100% fidelity of reproduction would never change improve or evolve. It would stand still while its predators and competitors grew more efficient. Long term survival requires mutation and change. For this life needs entropy. The tradeoff between fidelity and adaptability can be best thought of as the balance between search and exploitation. If replication was without entropy no mutants would arise and evolution would cease. On the other hand, evolution would also be impossible if the entropy/error rate of replication were too high (only a few mutations produce an improvement and most lead to deterioration). Increasing the entropy results in the potential sacrifice of previously acquired information in an attempt to find superior information. Life must master the deadly dance of harvesting entropy. Absorb too much and the species succumbs to mutation tumors and death. Absorb too little and the species stagnates and succumbs to more agile competitors. Life it seems walks the razors edge. Multicellular Organisms and CollectivismThe single celled organism is an anarchist. The multicelled organism is a collectivist.Life is in constant search of frontiers for it is only at the frontiers that competitive advantage can be found. The single celled organism is in a constant war for survival. It lives in the base state of nature and any advantage may mean the difference between life and death. The cell with improved locomotion may find food or escape predators, the efficient cell may avoid starvation in lean times, and the larger cell may eat its smaller competitors. As a cell increased its internal complexity, however, diminishing returns accumulate. A single flagella allows a cell to move but having two does not double cellular speed. A larger size may be advantageous but cellular volume increases at a faster rate than its surface area making it difficult to transport enough materials across cellular membranes. Once a cell reaches this point it is economically more efficient to form multicellular organisms and specialize. High levels of specialization requires collectives composed of many cells. In the multicellular organism cells trade independence and degrees-of-freedom in exchange for the benefits of size, specialization, and efficiency. Cells in a multicellular organism lose the freedom to independently move and reproduce and their survival becomes dependent on their fellow cells. In exchange they get to be a part of something larger and can benefit from the development of specialization including specialized neural tissues. Not all cells toe the collective line. Some cells throw off their chains and do whatever they want. When the rebels cells decide they want to divide and keep dividing the process is called cancer. In multicelled organisms cancer is simply the result of accumulated entropy gone wrong. Multicelled organisms like their simpler cousins need to adapt, change, and evolve. A species with 100% fidelity would have no cancer but it would also never change. Civilization and CollectivismCivilization is collective of mutually interdependent multicellular organisms.Civilization represents the next stage of evolution beyond the multicellular organism. Like the transition from the single to the multicelled organism it arises from the specialization and resultant interdependence of the sentient organisms that comprise it. With the onset of civilization environmental selection gives way to the selection of self-organization. The organization of the system increases spontaneously without this increase being controlled an external system. Civilization is a state of vastly higher organization and specialization. This increase in organization can be looked at objectively as an increase in potential energy. Civilizations must change, grow and adapt or face stagnation, decay and collapse. They must maintain fidelity (stability over time) while also allowing for adaptability (growth). Self-organization to higher levels of potential energy in a self organizing system is triggered by internal fluctuations or noise aka entropy. These process produce selectively retained ordered configurations and is the order from noise principle. Search and adaptability must be maximized subject to the constraint of maintaining fidelity through time and not losing the information that has already been gained. It is only through balance that optimal outcomes are achieved. |
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Being a ‘Bright’ Darkens the IntellectBy John C. Wright from his column EveryJoe THE WRIGHT PERSPECTIVE http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/11/being-a-bright-darkens-the-intellect/#more-14843Atheism Causes Brain Damage There are two kinds of atheist: a rational atheist, whose disbelief in God is grounded on some rational reason he can articulate, and an irrational atheist, who hates a God in which he allegedly does not believe, grounded on various unseemly appetites emotions and passions (anything from an infatuation with sin to a hunger for fads to a hatred of moral reality) passing with furious clamor through echoing emptiness of his brain. A rational atheist is one with whom one can have a rational discussion, and be a dispassionate as a judge in a courtroom. An irrational atheist has something wrong with his brain, and he belongs on a psychiatric couch. I have noticed of late the rational atheists are disappearing and the irrational atheists blooming, and fear I know the cause. In my youth, one could find from time to time an honest and thoughtful man who, not believing in God, could give a rational and honest reason for his disbelief. He could say it was a logical contradiction to say an omnipotent and benevolent creator could permit evil a place in his creation, since a creator lacking the ability to forestall evil is not omnipotent, or, lacking the motive, not benevolent. Or the rational atheist could say an omniscient being possessing or bestowing free will was paradoxical, since only the acts of an unfree will can be foreknown. The rational atheist could say that natural causes were sufficient to explain the cosmos and man’s role in it, ergo so no inquiry into supernatural causes is needed. Or a rational atheist could say that Christian theology was essentially the same as pagan mythology, and since even Christians admit such myths are manmade falsehoods, there is no rational way to defend one myth as true while condemning all others as false. Finally, a rational atheist could point out various inconsistencies in the Bible or in Church tradition, or enormities committed by followers of Christ, to lend weight to any doubts one might entertain in taking the Bible or the Church as a trustworthy authority or trustworthy witness. This final argument is not meant to prove atheism is true, merely that it is a sound position. I regret to report that, so far in my career as a Christian, not one of these rational atheist arguments has been encountered by me. Not one. The reader can read a more coherent argument against the existence of God in Thomas Aquinas, where he states the opposing position he intends to disprove, than you can find in any modern atheist tract. Instead one encounters arguments not worth refuting, illiterate blither about Christianity and Science being at war, or ahistorical nonsense about the Jihad and the Crusades being somehow equivalent. Instead one encounters spokesmen for atheism not worth speaking to. There was one fellow, a credentialed academic, who offered to debate with me. I was wary, but he agreed to my condition that he sign a vow to avoid personal attacks, and so I thought that, for once, I would get some intellectual exercise against an opponent in my weight class. How wrong I was. His vow lasted not even through the first exchange, when he discovered that I did not believe what his bigoted idea of slack-jawed yokel Christianity said I should believe. The fellow – out of courtesy I withhold his name – was unable mentally to process the idea that I was not adhering to the script, and so he insisted, yes, insisted that I believed what he script said I should believe. When I politely informed him that I believed what I said I believed, and not whatever make-believe he made believe I believed, he scolded me. He immediately brought out the whole infantile panoply of sneering condescension, mock astonishment, mockery, raillery, and accusation, for daring to say that my beliefs were not what his script said they were, and my reasons were those I gave, not those he wanted me to give. So much for his vow of civility. And this jackanapishness is not the rare exception issuing from teenaged pens, but the mainstream of atheist apologetics from grown men, journalists and academics. The modern books are simply unconvincing, illogical, petulant, juvenile and jejune bilge water. What happened to the rational atheist? Where did he go? What has happened in the intervening years between Colonel Ingersol and Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, famous skeptics who made rational and trenchant arguments against Christianity, men of hefty intellect and solid learning, able to brandish a pen like a rapier, and this blundering band of fumble-brained bigots of the current era, who cannot articulate any argument, trenchant or otherwise, against Christianity, because they cannot argue at all, only carp and scold? What made a whole generation of freethinkers less free and less thoughtful than their forefathers? The answer is easy to see once one sees what the basic argument in favor of Christianity is. According to apologist Frank Turek, the basic argument in favor of Christianity can be nicely summed in three philosophical questions, and one historical question. The historical question is whether the testimony given in the New Testament is true. The philosophical questions are whether miracles can take place; whether God exists; and whether truth is true. A rational Christian (for, yes, there are irrational ones) approaches these questions in reverse order. He first reasons that truth must exist, on the grounds that even those who deny it, affirm it. A man who says “there is no truth” is proposing that statement to be accurate and honest to its subject matter, that is, he is proposes the statement to be a true statement. Of the several arguments for the existence of God, the easiest to grasp is to observe nature, and affirm the principle that all effects spring from causes, that is, nothing comes from nothing. Since nothing come from nothing, no effect can arise without a cause sufficient to explain it. Now, we call the sum total of all natural events the cosmos. The cosmos either had a beginning, or not. If it had no beginning, then all chains of cause and effect reach backward endlessly to no first cause. But this beginningless chain of events is like supposing we could see a line of railroad cars without a first car, that is, without an engine to impart speed to the second car. We see one car pulled by the car before it, which in turn is being pulled by another before it, and we wonder why this cannot continue endlessly. Perhaps we imagine is a traintrack that circles the globe, with each car attached to the one in front, and the whole line is in motion; or perhaps we imagine a track reaching across an infinite flat plain with an endless line of cars rushing past. But no matter how we imagine an engineless train, if there is no engine, we cannot imagine why these cars are moving at their present speed, and not some other speed, not ten miles per hour more quickly or more slowly. We cannot imagine why they should be moving at all. Likewise, whether one imagines the cosmos, as the Hindu holds, as an endless circle of eternally returning events, or imagines it, as the Steady State theory holds, as an endless line reaching forever back into the infinite past with no first point, one cannot imagine what defines the cosmos in its current form. Why is it not ten percent larger or smaller, or free from entropy, or with different physical constants, or not in existence at all? Positing an infinite chain of causation posits that something, the current speed of the railcars, or the current situation of the universe, comes from nothing, from nowhere, for no reason. But our first principle of cause and effect rejects this. We can, as some physicists hold, throw out the baby with the bathwater, and say that cause and effect does not apply in all times and places, and did not exist at the early stages of the universe. This merely nullifies all rational thinking about events in time, whether scientific or otherwise. Obviously it puts the physicist who says it out of a job as much as if he had offered a resignation. And it is a paradox: once he admits there is no cause and effect, he admits he can know nothing about the universe, and this includes whether or not there is no cause and effect or not. If effects arise without causes, then, apparently, something called the law of cause and effect could pop into existence tomorrow for no reason. You see, once you say anything comes from nothing, in effect you say everything does. Hence from philosophical reasoning alone, we can deduce the cosmos must have had a beginning before which was neither time nor space, matter nor energy. Again, since no effect arises without a sufficient cause, the cause of the cosmos must be something outside the sum of all natural events. What is outside nature is supernatural. The cause which gave rise to time and matter must therefore be eternal and immaterial, that is, a timeless spirit. By definition, no physical event or natural reaction prompted this cause to become a cause, hence it must have been a mental event, a decision, a deliberate act of will, a fiat. But no decision takes place absent a decider, no deliberation without a deliberation, no act of the will without an actor, no creation without a creator. Therefore this cause is a person, or, at least a being with something like a personality, a will. Outside time, this creator logically must be able to see the beginnings and ends of all things within the time he creates, hence he is properly called omniscient; and being potent enough to create the cosmos, that is, having the power to set in motion all things that require power to set them in motion, he is the source and sum of all power, hence called omnipotent. Hence from philosophical reasoning alone, we can deduce a creator, and deduce attributes (supernatural, eternal, omnipotent and omniscient) rightfully called divine. From this argument we can defend Deism, the watchmaker God of the philosophers, but not the specifics of the Christian faith. That defense rests on another type of argument, an historical argument. Christianity is not a philosophy, like Deism; it makes a specific historical claim, hence philosophical reasoning absent historical reasoning is insufficient to defend it. (This, by the way, was the point my craven interlocutor mentioned above pretended not to understand, claiming that I was saying Christianity was based on blind and irrational faith. When I politely denied I had said or implied any such thing, and corrected his misquotes of me, he found himself unprepared to argue against a defender of the faith armed with reason, and so he addressed all his further magniloquence to Straw-Man Wright, and none to me.) Now, miracles we can define as divine intervention: a natural event arising from a supernatural cause. If no miracles are possible by definition, we need not look into the evidence or testimony of any particular miracle. If, however, even one miracle is shown to have happened, this opens the possibility that others have as well, and therefore each reported case of an alleged miracle must be examined on the merits of the evidence. But we have just defined a miracle as a natural event arising from a supernatural cause. The creation of the cosmos we have deduced to be such an event, since nature did not exist before time and matter and the sum total of what we call nature existed. Hence miracles are possible. This leaves us with this question of the historical accuracy of the testament affirmed in the New Testament. Not being a philosophical argument, the persuasive value here depends on the weight given the evidence, and each bit of evidence must be examined prudently both in its own right and in how it fits into the historical picture. Such a minute argument is far too tedious to repeat in this short column, but the conclusion of any honest examination of the record is brief enough to utter in a sentence: no one disputes the testimony for historical reasons, only for philosophical reasons. No one says, for example, that since a manuscript contains a report of a miracle but also of many other anachronisms or things contradicted by other sources, that manuscript is false and hence the otherwise credible the miracle ought not be believed. The skeptic only ever argues that, taking it as given that miracles do not exist, a manuscript containing a report of a miracle is by definition unreliable, even if it contains no anachronisms and the non-miraculous events so reported are confirmed by other contemporary sources. But the alleged historical untrustworthiness of the Bible is always the starting point of the so-called freethinker who wants to erode the authority of the biblical testimony. Yet these arguments rapidly founder when the standards applied to any other historical argument about the reliability of an ancient document are employed: the fact that the Bible has more copies, more contemporary or near-contemporary confirmation, than any other ancient document undermines any legitimate skepticism. There is more evidence that Jesus Christ existed and did the things he is reported to have said and done than there is evidence that Julius Caesar existed and did what he is said to have done. There are more and clearer documentary evidence of Saint Paul than of Cicero. And so on. The freethinker soon finds his historical nitpicking at the Bible is futile unless he addresses an audience that already, and for philosophical rather than historical reasons, does not believe in miracles. But, as we have seen, to disbelief in miracles requires eventually a disbelief in the creator, which, in turn, requires either a disbelief in cause and effect, a disbelief in the cosmos, or a disbelief in the truth, or, (what amounts to much the same thing) a disbelief in man’s ability to know the truth. Each step takes about a generation or two to trickle down through the philosophical and academic world and into common parlance. Hence, starting in about the 1870s, Bible scholarship ironically called Higher Criticism was all the rage among German scholars, and many results were noised about which have since been exploded. In the Victorian days, one generation later, the idea of a universe without a creator was promoted either tentatively or zealously by Darwin, Freud and Marx, all allegedly in a scrupulously scientific and progressive way. Marx has been as thoroughly discredited as it is possible for a mortal to be: not even hardcore Marxists take him literately any more; Freud is discredited; and the scientific opinion within my lifetime slipped from Darwin being held as an unquestioning part of the standard model of the universe, to merely a strong, but unprovable, hypothesis with many gaps and unanswered questions, paradoxes, and lapses. The fossil record does not show the continuous and gradual descent with modification Darwin proposed, and theories of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ propose no mechanism for what causes the equilibrium to remain stable for some geological eras, only to erupt into multiplicity in various ‘explosions’ of new species appearing in the fossil record. In any case, while Marxism and Freudianism are incompatible with Christian notions of the dignity of man, Darwin, despite the claims of Biblical literalists, is not. The freethinkers have an insufficient basis just on Darwin alone to erect their vision of a materialistic universe where life arises from nonlife nondeliberately, and selfawareness arises from nonselfawareness nondeliberately, and and where somehow the selfawareness becomes aware of the laws of morality, which no one deliberately invented, but seem to be discovered as if pre-existent. These ideas trickled down into common parlance from the Turn of the Century to gain greatest cachet in the 1930s, lending glamour to Nazism and Communism and other scientifically eugenic schemes for godless utopia. These ideas were debunked slowly during the postwar years as another generation of intellectuals came to the fore in the 1960s. And so, confronted with a century of being driven back, step by step, failure by failure, the freethinkers in my generation in the 1960s, who still were capable of reason in the long lost days of my youth, had to abandon the last branch of the tree where atheism could hide. Rather than confess that the universe must have a creator, and that therefore miracles must exist, and that therefore the reports of miracles in the Gospel are not automatically incredible, the freethinkers preferred to go full postmodern, and deny that truth exists. So they sawed off the branch on which they were sitting. This is the philosophical stance called Nihilism. It is an adoration of nothingness, the belief that all accounts of the universe are merely narratives, perhaps erected for utility or for sinister political purposes, but in any case, none having any special priority over another. All truth is a personal decision, like picking your favorite clothing to wear, and all philosophy is dead. But if all philosophy is dead, then all philosophies are irrational, including that philosophy believing in no grand truths called Nihilism. Nihilism is the only philosophy which, by definition, calls itself irrational. This doubling down on unreason took place throughout the academic world, and, later the media world, in the 1980s and 1990s, after I was graduated from college. The academic, intellectuals, and elite, as a consensus, slowly but surely made the decision that they would rather embrace unreason than admit belief in God was reasonable. And so they did: all the absurdities of political correctness, that is, the self-refuting idea that one must believe what is politically expedient is true rather what is true is true; all the absurdities of multiculturalism, that is, the self-refuting idea that the moral, political, philosophical and scientific progress of the West is no better than the backwardness and barbarism of cultures lacking that progress; all the absurdities of moral relativism, the self-refuting principle that there are no principles, and that is it absolutely evil to believe any evil is an absolute evil; and in a word all the nonsense of our utterly insane and irrational intellectual class, all of it springs from this turning point in the intellectual retreat from Christianity. In my youth, it was possible for a man to believe in absolute truth without believing in God. All rational atheists so believe. In the modern climate, it is realized that the belief in absolute truth forces one eventually to recognize absolute standards in moral law, that is, a law unbound by time and space, and the existence of such standards logically imply a law-giver to whom one is morally bound to obey, but the only lawgiver unbound by time and space must be a supernatural one: a god. While it is a logically self-consistent philosophical position to hold, as I did, that moral law can be objective without a God to legislate it, one finds that the intellectual elite of the West cannot maintain that position: because the emotional reason why they wished to escape from God in the first place was because they wished to escape the moral law. In order to promote and protect sin, even well educated men, once they lose the belief in God, soon find themselves unwilling, or perhaps unable, to articulate any rational reason defending the position. The habit of argumentation falls to one side. Schools no longer teach it, and men can get doctorates these days without ever once, not once, participating in an honest question and answer about any intellectual matter. The ability to entertain an idea without believing that idea is lost. The art of debate is lost. The art of thought is lost. And the atheists, by their own unwillingness to look truth in the face, lobotomize their own ability to support or defend their position. Their atheist philosophy becomes merely an emotional decoration to their life, a plume for their cap, something they stock on the shelves of their empty brains like bric-a-brac. Sin darkens the intellect. The reason why is because reason shows the sinner what his sin really is. He reaches the point of no return: either he abandons sin, and repents, and embraces the cold truths of reason, or embraces sin more closely, doubles the dose until he overdoses, and abandons reason. And that is why, if you want to hear a rational and rigorous argument defending the atheist position, you have to go to Thomas Aquinas, or come to me. About John C Wright John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title. November 11, 2015 @ 1:03 pmApologetics, Only Posting a Link, Reasonings
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Yes, you are right, socialism is unstoppable unfortunately, because it seems that nature has a hidden force that tries to equalize things.
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So if the endgame financial collapse will come, and the banking sector collapses, the elites losing their money, then maybe socialism will get weaker, and we can get back to traditional capitalism.
What do you think??
I agree with the concept of a hidden force. This force is Group Selection as outlined by Charlton. It is also the same fundamental force that was discussed from the perspective of entropy in Anonymint's Thesis on Life. Group selection is the process of promoting sustained reproductive success (lineal survival) of the group, in face of the spontaneous tendency for random change to promote the individual (and other lower level, below group) levels of selection. From an entropic frame of reference it is the interaction of ordered lifeforms to create a system of yet higher information content via a system of evolution. Entropy in this context is the sum of the logarithmic relation of the number and probability of the possible configurations (a.k.a. states) in the system, i.e. it is measure of the granularity and uniformness of possibilities in the system, i.e. the availability to fitness (to receive work) of the system. Group selection and entropic force are simply two ways of describing the same phenomenon. The goal of nature is not equality but progress and progress is clearly a knowledge age as described in The Rise of Knowledge. There is a functional role for socialism in a healthy economy as I have argued elsewhere in my Defense of Socialism. Sadly our extreme socialism is something else entirely. Modern socialism appears to be more of a population culling mechanism and it is likely to continue for some time for the reasons discussed in Understand Everything Fundamentally. In its wake it will leave a population selected for a knowledge age. Socialism will not fundamentally undermine the current global financial elite who's power and influence will grow in tandem with it. It is the gradual rise of a subsequent knowledge age that will not only herald a return to traditional capitalism but also dilute the power of the current elite. |
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In 1968 Dr. Calhoun created 'Mouse Utopia' a large fixed environment with unlimited food, and water, free of disease and predators intermittently cleaned and regularly resupplied.
In short let me summarize this article if you are too lazy to read it: Communists and Socialists will destroy humanity if they succeed!Socialism cannot be stopped for the reasons briefly touched on in Understand Everything Fundamentally. Attempts at education will also fail in the short term because the fundamental economic forces favor socialism. Socialism is pushing us towards centralized global government which while inefficient is decisively more efficient then multiple feuding centralized nations. The evolution of the social contract appears to be a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. I suspect that in the future republics will be consumed by world government, world government will evolve into decentralized government, and decentralized government will finally mature into a shared consensus among individuals with limited or no government.
Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity.
In my multiple debates with Anonymint I recall one instance when he decisively got the better of me. It was a discussion regarding socialism and I was arguing it should be opposed. His handle was iamback at the time. In what way are these mutually exclusive? Provided one does not neglect personal decentralized self-sufficiency why shouldn't a rational actor in our current environment also participate in the local collective and attempt to restrain said collective. To do otherwise is to yield the floor to those who will make decentralized self-sufficiency more difficult to achieve.
Because you will waste time and effort that could have been used to actually achieve it without being slave (dependent) on what the State does. And you will not stop the State from spiraling into the abyss, because the majority is going to demand expropriation. You can't suddenly change the situation of the majority. The majority has no other option and all the (political or even violent) fighting you do can't give them another option. The economic reality and trajectory was written into stone decades ago. It can't be altered. The economic reality is what it is. My advice to everyone is pay off all your debt because in a deflationary collapse that is underway (see oil under $50 today!) the government can take your assets and leave you with debt to pay but no assets to pay with. And debtor's prisons are returning. Even though I was reduced to near pauper, I prioritized paying off my credit card debts in 2014 and did pay $20,000 of it off for less than $10,000 by accepting best offers for negotiated settlement. I only have about $2000 of debt remaining (except that my ex took out a $25,000 student loan recently and I don't know if the USA will try to pin that on me). Also radically reduce the risk to unjust IRS audits and assessments, because these will become more common. Also radically reduce the risk to lawsuits, because these will become more common as westerners get desperate. Then the next priority is to align your vocation with the Knowledge Age and so you have income even during global economic collapse and your skills are transportable to any location you might choose to move to as the chaos takes form. Anonymint's advice was correct but incomplete. When you couple a mechanism of progressive and increasing dependency (socialism) with a fundamentally unsustainable financial system (fractional reserve fiat) the probable result is a system who's declared role is helping the poor but who's insolvency dictates policies geared towards sterilization. Such a result requires a certain degree of cognitive dissonance and a government who believes it is helping you while it works to ensure you do not reproduce. Toxicity of the Modern World In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned a future where the masses were rendered infertile and controlled with pleasure and drugs. Is that the world we live in now? Anyone over that age of 25 may not realize how far traditional courtship and dating has been undermined by modernity. The tinder generation is being conditioned to swipe right on their onscreen app and meet up later for random sexual gratification. This phenomena has been described by Vanity Fair as nothing less than a dating apocalypse. In Colorado long acting implantable contraceptives which a render women infertile for up to 10 years and require a doctor’s visit to remove have been implanted in 26% of young women age 15-24 as of 2013. In 2015 an advisory body to the US Department of Health and Human Services recommended that Medicaid examine how often doctors are using “most effective” or “moderately effective” contraception. Only contraception deemed “highly effective” or “moderately effective” (Long acting implantable or long acting injections) would be included in the proposed measurement. Doctor’s with a low percentage of young patients using such contraception would presumably be rated as giving lower quality care. We appear to be living in a “Utopia” of declining fitness and capability. An age of existential exhaustion manifested by an ageing, hedonistic society characterized by declining marriage, and near zero children. Add to this data the very real possibility of more direct government action. The Catholic church in Kenya has accused the government of secretly injecting young women with an anti-fertility vaccine disguised as a tetanus vaccine. Either the Catholic bishops are lying or the Kenyan government is. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/01/19/kenyan-bishops-call-for-no-more-tetanus-vaccines-until-further-tests/The situation can be looked at abstractly as the sudden and dramatic restoration of extreme selective pressure on mankind. Unlike our ancient history when we were subjected to violence, starvation, and disease the new pressure comes in the form of dependence, hedonism, and sterilization. As a species we have never been subjected to this kind of pressure before and are likely to be highly susceptible. Halting the reimposition of selective pressure is economically impossible and perhaps even inadvisable for it is the restoration of selective pressure that will ultimately prevent 'mouse utopia'. Astute individuals can avoid 'government help' by actively working to avoid dependency a task that will become increasingly difficult with time. Intellectual adaptability alone is not enough. It is also necessary to resist the decadence, hedonism, and social decay peddled by modernity. In Atheism and Health I argued that faith provides the best chance of success but other strategies may also be viable. Socialism will burn itself out gradually over time. Until it does the best course of action is avoidance of the inferno. It is the ashes of socialism that will pave the way for the knowledge age outlined in The Rise of Knowledge. When dealing with the proponents of socialism the proper emotion is not anger but pity. |
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Maybe they were atheist mice and therefore destroyed the world?
I would imagine they were traditional mice interested in traditional mice things. At least they started out that that way. |
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Mouse UtopiaIn 1968 Dr. Calhoun created 'Mouse Utopia' a large fixed environment with unlimited food, and water, free of disease and predators intermittently cleaned and regularly resupplied. Four pairs of mice were introduced into the 'utopia' on July 9 1968. Initially they thrived exhibiting exponential growth then something changed. http://tomax7.com/HeyGod/misc/MousePopulationStudy.PDFAs the unusually large number of young gained adulthood they had to remain,and they did contest for roles in the filed social system. Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically; they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the centre of the floor of the universe. From this point on they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates,nor did their behavior elicit attack by the most territorial males. Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males.
As a result of the extreme demands made on territorial males their ability to continue territorial defence declined. Gradually the frequency of this involvement in territorial defence declined as did the area defended. This left nursing females more exposed to invasion of their nest sites. Normally nursing females in the presence of territorial males exhibit little aggression. However, in response to invasion of nest sites and bases of ramps leading to them, the nursing females did become aggressive, essentially taking over the role of the territorial males. This aggression generalized to their own young who were attacked, wounded, and forced to leave home several days before normal weaning.
Maternal behavior became disrupted. Young were often wounded in the delivery process. Females transported their young to several sites, during which process some were abandoned. Many liters of young age on one survey disappeared before the next survey.
Population increase abruptly ceased on Day 560 after colonization. A few mice born up until Day 600 survived past weaning. Between these times deaths just slightly exceeded births. Beyond Day 600 the incidence of pregnancies declined very rapidly. Last conception was about Day 920.
Male counterparts to these non-reproducing females we soon dubbed the 'beautiful ones'. They never engaged in sexual approaches toward females, and they never engaged in fighting, and so they had no wound or scar tissue. Their behavioral repertoire became largely confined to eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, none of which carried any social implications beyond that represented by contiguity of bodies.
Most of the last of the population born were fully or largely like these non-reproducing females and these 'beautiful ones'(males). At this time only the 'beautiful one' category of males, and their counter part females, remained at an age normally compatible with reproduction, but they had long since failed to develop this capacity.
By March 1 1972, the average age of survivors was 776 days, over 200 days beyond menopause. On June 22 1972, there were only 122 (22male,100female) survivors. Projection of the prior few months of exponential decline in numbers indicates that the last surviving male will be dead on May 23 1973,1780 days after colonization.The population will be, reproductively,definitely dead at that time, although such death was predicted by 700 days after colonization. This demise of a population contradicts prior knowledge which indicates that when a population declines a few remnant groups, some individuals will reinitiate its growth.
The results obtained in this study should be obtained when customary causes of mortality become markedly reduced in any species of mammal whose members form social groups.
Prior theory indicated that a population in this type of environment would stabilize not go extinct. So why did it the mice in 'mouse utopia' die off? Some have argued that increasing mutation load is the cause but I find such arguments unpersuasive. Dr. Calhoun created an environment that destroyed the social structure and social behaviors of mice. This led to their extinction. Biology is often conserved and there is a simple biological model that expanded and extrapolated might account for the extinction seen in mouse utopia. That model is one of cellular apoptosis. This experiment provides a contextual framework for the observations and papers upthread showing that both active group involvement in religious organizations and active group involvement in secular organizations are associated with health benefits. |
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Mouse UtopiaIn 1968 Dr. Calhoun created 'Mouse Utopia' a large fixed environment with unlimited food, and water, free of disease and predators intermittently cleaned and regularly resupplied. Four pairs of mice were introduced into the 'utopia' on July 9 1968. Initially they thrived exhibiting exponential growth then something changed. http://tomax7.com/HeyGod/misc/MousePopulationStudy.PDFAs the unusually large number of young gained adulthood they had to remain,and they did contest for roles in the filed social system. Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically; they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the centre of the floor of the universe. From this point on they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates,nor did their behavior elicit attack by the most territorial males. Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males.
As a result of the extreme demands made on territorial males their ability to continue territorial defence declined. Gradually the frequency of this involvement in territorial defence declined as did the area defended. This left nursing females more exposed to invasion of their nest sites. Normally nursing females in the presence of territorial males exhibit little aggression. However, in response to invasion of nest sites and bases of ramps leading to them, the nursing females did become aggressive, essentially taking over the role of the territorial males. This aggression generalized to their own young who were attacked, wounded, and forced to leave home several days before normal weaning.
Maternal behavior became disrupted. Young were often wounded in the delivery process. Females transported their young to several sites, during which process some were abandoned. Many liters of young age on one survey disappeared before the next survey.
Population increase abruptly ceased on Day 560 after colonization. A few mice born up until Day 600 survived past weaning. Between these times deaths just slightly exceeded births. Beyond Day 600 the incidence of pregnancies declined very rapidly. Last conception was about Day 920.
Male counterparts to these non-reproducing females we soon dubbed the 'beautiful ones'. They never engaged in sexual approaches toward females, and they never engaged in fighting, and so they had no wound or scar tissue. Their behavioral repertoire became largely confined to eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, none of which carried any social implications beyond that represented by contiguity of bodies.
Most of the last of the population born were fully or largely like these non-reproducing females and these 'beautiful ones'(males). At this time only the 'beautiful one' category of males, and their counter part females, remained at an age normally compatible with reproduction, but they had long since failed to develop this capacity.
By March 1 1972, the average age of survivors was 776 days, over 200 days beyond menopause. On June 22 1972, there were only 122 (22male,100female) survivors. Projection of the prior few months of exponential decline in numbers indicates that the last surviving male will be dead on May 23 1973,1780 days after colonization.The population will be, reproductively,definitely dead at that time, although such death was predicted by 700 days after colonization. This demise of a population contradicts prior knowledge which indicates that when a population declines a few remnant groups, some individuals will reinitiate its growth.
The results obtained in this study should be obtained when customary causes of mortality become markedly reduced in any species of mammal whose members form social groups.
Prior theory indicated that a population in this type of environment would stabilize not go extinct. So why did it the mice in 'mouse utopia' die off? Some have argued that increasing mutation load is the cause but I find such arguments unpersuasive. Dr. Calhoun created an environment that destroyed the social structure and social behaviors of mice. This led to their extinction. Biology is often conserved and there is a simple biological model that expanded and extrapolated might account for the extinction seen in mouse utopia. That model is one of cellular apoptosis. This experiment provides a contextual framework for the observations and papers upthread showing that both active group involvement in religious organizations and active group involvement in secular organizations are associated with health benefits.
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A Former CIA Executive's Advice On How To Make Hard DecisionsA five-step decision-making process from a man who spent 25 years making life-and-death decisions. http://www.fastcompany.com/3046600/know-it-all/a-former-cia-executives-advice-on-how-to-make-hard-decisions1. FIND THE REAL QUESTION - Start with what you’re trying to accomplish and work your way back, instead of moving forward and making conclusions. 2. IDENTIFY YOUR "DRIVERS” - This approach gives you a way to manage data. 3. DECIDE ON YOUR METRICS - Decide what metrics you’ll use to measure how the problem and solution are evolving over time. 4. COLLECT THE DATA - Aggressively question the validity of your data. Once you have your data sorted, give yourself a grade that represents your confidence in assessing your question. 5. LOOK FOR WHAT’S MISSING - Every time you go into a problem, and before you rip into data, ask yourself, ‘Am I sure where I’m heading?’"
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Moloch has a point. Why don't religious people just kill themselves IF they truly believe they will go to heaven and live in paradise, instead of struggling here on Earth? At least Muslims got this part right, they are willing to die for their beliefs, and are happy about it. Muslims suicide bombers are the true believers, IMHO. Christians are fakes. They think they believe in afterlife but ask God to keep them alive as long as possible here on Earth  Some religions do not focus on the afterlife. http://www.jewfaq.org/m/olamhaba.htmTraditional Judaism firmly believes that death is not the end of human existence. However, because Judaism is primarily focused on life here and now rather than on the afterlife, Judaism does not have much dogma about the afterlife, and leaves a great deal of room for personal opinion. |
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I find it incredibly sad that CoinCube and BADecker spend 24/7 crying about how Atheists are horrible people... Fucking stupid ass religitards are always hypocritical hatemongers... You can't... just kill everyone who believes in any religion... they'll go to heaven, and the world will be much better without religion
Moloch you are obviously very angry but just to clarify I have never said athiest are horrible people in fact I have said quite the opposite on numerous occasions. My own view is that atheist are by and large highly articulate, responsible and intelligent people who have followed logic into a blind alley. I believe I have demonstrated that logic can also take a different path.
The purpose of this post is only to inform and share knowledge. It is a presentation of some data that highlights a possible health effect associated with atheism. If that has caused you distress I am genuinely sorry for that is not my intent. |
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this is a question of apriori not empirical facts....
Metaphysics is ontology and epistemology, not morality. Biology has nothing to do with truth.
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I think they (progress) will be achieved from a framework of theism, but in a slow way, that will leave behind piece by piece the spiritualism from theism, until it is reduced to the pure belief of transcendent perfection without content. That kind of theism would be compatible with nihilism and the two could coexists as mutually agnostic. The problem is that traditional theism brings spiritualism, and that spiritualism is just a more primitive type of thought, and that its bad when applied to knowledge, or morality. For example its hard to understand and artificially reconstruct the mind, if people think its an eternal substance completely separate from matter. Basically, I don't really care what anyone believes, as long as it doesn't determine knowledge, but because spiritualism practically always does, I'm against it.
Nihilnegativum we agree that this is a question of apriori knowledge the base fundamental assumptions about that nature of reality. Arguments on eventual convergence aside nihilism and theism represent competing and mutually exclusive views on reality. How should a rational individual choose between competing apriori assumptions? One approach is to adopt the position that most appeals to the self as true and accept it as true regardless of the secondary cascade of consequences that result. This approach might lead one to choose either theism or nihilism. A more practical approach is to examine the results of the choice and use that additional information to help guide the choice. Your concerns regarding the suppression of knowledge by spiritualism are valid based on historical president. However, my concerns regarding the undermining of health, well-being, and social stability by nihilism are also valid based on current data. By your own admission and logic you expect spiritualism to fade away with time leaving a theism of transcendent perfection that is entirely compatible with knowledge. I have no similar expectations regarding the detrimental effects of nihilism. One can argue that biological, moral, and anthropological arguments are entirely irrelevant in a discussion of metaphysics but this conclusion too stems from apriori assumptions. It is hard, usually impossible, to induce a re-examination of fundamental assumptions. However, what you currently regard as 'truth' is essentially choice and dictated by assumptions, which are not compelled. Looked at this way, to choose modern nihilism rather than the natural, spontaneous, 'biological' tendency to religious explanations is not just foolish, but incoherent - since the choice of nihilistic assumptions makes that choice itself meaningless. |
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Existential nihilism does not imply epistemological or moral relativism, nor does ontological contingency imply everything is random. Sure, there is no piece of empirical knowledge that would say anything about whether or not the universe has meaning, there is however empirical knowledge of true congingency at the quantum level and a priori knowledge against the universe having a meaning. And nihilism is far from being mainstream in any form.
Arguments at the quantum level can just as easily (I would argue more easily) be used to argue for theism as I have done upthread. Quantum Mechanics is not simply a mechanism for guessing things. It offers us a deep insight that the world is not as it appears to our senses. It is quantum mechanics that leads us to the conclusion that we may actually be living in a Holographic Universe. The idea the the the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper reality. In his essay The Universe Anonymint draws our attention to the the holographic principle. Specifically the fascinating notion that when you combine the the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work it is relatively straightforward to derive Newton’s classical equation of gravity. These ideas are difficult to grasp and at this stage they remain theoretical physics. However, there are a growing number of scientist who are taking them very seriously. Below is a simple but nice introductory video on the topic... I recommend it to anyone who has difficulty accepting the possibility of a deeper fundamental truth and reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMBt_yfGKpU(part I only) I have argued against atheism on three axes. 1) Metaphysically because the choice (in isolation) voids the existing moral structure rendering the decision itself morally incoherent. 2) Biologically because a sound moral structure is necessary for a healthy life and rejecting traditional structures appears to reduce health, happiness, and fertility. 3) Anthropologically because religion is a critical and perhaps primary mechanism for overcoming our species-specific upper limit to group size which is set by purely cognitive constraints. While I would concede that nihilism is internally metaphysically coherent in that it is impossible to prove nihilism is false. It is likewise impossible to prove theism is false. My criticisms of atheism, however, do extend to nihilism. You argued above that nihilism allows one to form a positive doctrine for re-evaluate of ones values and that the end of tradition that produces the possibility of new things to come. However, there is no reason to think the goals of progress and improving our value system and cannot be achieved from a framework of theism. With this in mind why choose a philosophical belief that is potentially unhealthy and detrimental to the progress we have made so far? |
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