New breakthrough in science hints at Intelligent Design

[interlagos]

My personal view is if this forum is as libertarian as it is supposed to be you should never feel the need to apologies to the people in advance, people who do not share your views. They will mock you anyway. So have fun and share away.

Agreed. Mocking is fun!

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But that is nonsense.  It is not that the circle is the result of intelligence, but that it requires intelligence, consciousness, etc to discuss it as an abstraction.
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This is a very good point. The next step would be to ask whether the "circle" exists without intelligence/consciousness discussing it as an abstraction or is it created by the mere fact of some consciousness describing it. Or the other way to put it: "Do mathematical structures give rise to consciousness or does consciousness give rise to mathematical structures?" From my empirical experience my consciousness is the root to everything else I get to think about, there is no outside to it.

In the end it all boils down to definitions in our language. What is "intelligence"? What is "abstraction"? What is "proof"? What is "what" and who is asking?

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In my view, God is not separate from its Creation (and is definitely not a bearded elder on a cloud).....

Prove it.

Because God is "a bearded elder in a cloud (read datacenter)":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wdKlWXyUkc
see the difference?

If you draw a perfect circle, then measure its diameter, measure its circumference, divide circumference by diameter, you get PI, always. 

There's no intelligent design there, it just IS, it's fact, it's math, a circle is defined as an 2d object where the diameter is the same measured from any edge to another passing through the center, no intelligence, no magic, just math.

Just as 1+1 = 2, no intelligence, it just is.

If these facts are true, and there are other facts that ring true regardless of circumstance, then you have solid building blocks for a complex system without design.

That's the problem. You see, the circle needs me to do all these manipulations to construct it. And from the looks of it I cannot say for sure that there is a single unique way to arrive to that construct. In fact you will most likely see this pattern a lot as you go. So what is circle then? A path in a chain of logical conclusions or a destination? Can there be a destination without a path?

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[ktttn]

And this hints at intelligent design how?

The basic train of thought is this: If properties of space-time take their origin from a pure mathematical object, then one can assume that space-time is a result of some intelligence as all mathematics apparently is. Wouldn't you agree?

The article also mentions that space-time along with quantum mechanics are emergent from the geometry, so make what you want out of it.

How can a music be a prof of intelligent designer? Everything in the world and universe has its own frequency, giving music as a prof of a God is just stupid.

When Edgar Cayce was asked in his usual trance-channeling state "What is the Universe?". His short and only answer was: "Music of the Spheres".

So, earth is 6000 years old?

Will we need to worship this designer in some way (sing songs, sacrifice goats etc), or can we just ignore the fact and get on with our lives as normal?

Ok apparently it was my (failed) attempt at trolling. I got bored and decided to see what happens if I post this. No need to sing songs or worship anyone, just relax and proceed as normal, I will be careful next time.

Well, if we're living in a computer simulation, then obviously there is a designer/programmer of the "Matrix computer code".

What you may question is if we live within simulations within simulations within simulations, then it may only be the very first world that would have happened by evolution alone. All simulated worlds run largely on evolution but may have variable amounts of code.

It does look more and more like simulation to me. Maybe there is a reason we all love playing computer games - we are in one! Thanks for the links I'll have a look!

If math itself were an intellectual construction it would fall apart at the seams. It begs the question.
Psychic Channelling and science aren't friends.

[elektibi75]

 

[ktttn]

If you draw a perfect circle, then measure its diameter, measure its circumference, divide circumference by diameter, you get PI, always.  

There's no intelligent design there, it just IS, it's fact, it's math, a circle is defined as an 2d object where the diameter is the same measured from any edge to another passing through the center, no intelligence, no magic, just math.

Just as 1+1 = 2, no intelligence, it just is.

If these facts are true, and there are other facts that ring true regardless of circumstance, then you have solid building blocks for a complex system without design.

Whoa, slow down people!

We take "1+1=2" for granted, but it's easy to forget the learning process that every child (or civilisation) goes through, that they start off in a world without numbers. It takes intelligence to imagine that there exists a "1" of something, and if that 1 exists "again", we can create the idea of "2" to represent "1 and 1", and so on. If nature somehow worked differently, presumably the maths deduced from it would also be different.

So when you say "it just is" you skip the point that "1+1=2" is true because we made it that way.

To me it seems that what we normally think of as maths, is deduced from whatever nature provides us with. Things are divisible? OK, so we have numbers. Things can be arranged in space? OK, so we have dimensions. Trouble is, that would make maths a subset of nature, and therefore it cannot fully describe everything about its superset.

Hence the whole god / intelligent design / whatever she-bang. It could be said that our "inner being" that witnesses 1000s of different smells and sensations that simply can't be explained in terms of "microscopic Lego particles configured into Von Neumann machines", is the living embodiment of mathematical axioms: the things that are set to 'true' but can't be proven.

We didn't make it that way. We observed it. Math is neither a superset nor a subset of nature. It's a protocol, expressed in many languages including base 12 and Roman Numerals. Our scale, the decimal point that was the atom, then the quark and string, and now this geometric construct is relative. The microcosm is the macrocosm.
EDIT: Smell consists of extremely quantifiable microscopic particles affecting our nervous system.

[RodeoX]

If there is a designer then why wont she reveal herself?

[ktttn]

If you draw a perfect circle, then measure its diameter, measure its circumference, divide circumference by diameter, you get PI, always.  

There's no intelligent design there, it just IS, it's fact, it's math, a circle is defined as an 2d object where the diameter is the same measured from any edge to another passing through the center, no intelligence, no magic, just math.

Just as 1+1 = 2, no intelligence, it just is.

If these facts are true, and there are other facts that ring true regardless of circumstance, then you have solid building blocks for a complex system without design.

Whoa, slow down people!

We take "1+1=2" for granted, but it's easy to forget the learning process that every child (or civilisation) goes through, that they start off in a world without numbers. It takes intelligence to imagine that there exists a "1" of something, and if that 1 exists "again", we can create the idea of "2" to represent "1 and 1", and so on. If nature somehow worked differently, presumably the maths deduced from it would also be different.

So when you say "it just is" you skip the point that "1+1=2" is true because we made it that way.

To me it seems that what we normally think of as maths, is deduced from whatever nature provides us with. Things are divisible? OK, so we have numbers. Things can be arranged in space? OK, so we have dimensions. Trouble is, that would make maths a subset of nature, and therefore it cannot fully describe everything about its superset.

Hence the whole god / intelligent design / whatever she-bang. It could be said that our "inner being" that witnesses 1000s of different smells and sensations that simply can't be explained in terms of "microscopic Lego particles configured into Von Neumann machines", is the living embodiment of mathematical axioms: the things that are set to 'true' but can't be proven.

We didn't make it that way. We observed it. Math is neither a superset nor a subset of nature. It's a protocol, expressed in many languages including base 12 and Roman Numerals. Our scale, the decimal point that was the atom, then the quark and string, and now this geometric construct is relative. The microcosm is the macrocosm.
EDIT: Smell consists of extremely quantifiable microscopic particles affecting our nervous system.

Don't be such a philosophical zombie!
I was talking about the 100s of feelings of smell. E.g.: "wow, this rose smell is beautifully rosy!"* Instead of "Alert! My atmospheric sensors are detecting aromatic carbon chains number 485! Exterminate them!"

*Notice how those descriptions of qualia are always tautological? A rose smells rosy. Red looks red. Blue looks blue. A high-pitched squeal sounds like a high-pitched squeal. Of course, whether my sensation of blue is the same as yours, is another matter. That's why the Wikipedia page on qualia is so huge, it seems that scientists don't know where to start with things we know absolutely but cannot prove. Blue always looks "blue" to everyone who can see blue? Or "sensory relativism", kinda like synaesthesia but mixed between different people?

I'm glad we agree. The assertion of intelligent design belongs in the hazy realm of subjective qualia, not fact, physics, math or science.
EDIT: I'm a behaviorist. I'm immune to the P zombie argument.

[cp1]

Now I have something besides a banana to give me nightmares

[RodeoX]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

[Mike Christ]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

Life suddenly makes a lot more sense.

[cp1]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

Actually science starts with a hypothesis

[ktttn]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

Actually science starts with a hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption that looks for itself in reality. The statement is the assumption, made into a question by the looking, just as all questions are made.

...
We didn't make it that way. We observed it. Math is neither a superset nor a subset of nature. It's a protocol, expressed in many languages including base 12 and Roman Numerals. Our scale, the decimal point that was the atom, then the quark and string, and now this geometric construct is relative. The microcosm is the macrocosm.
EDIT: Smell consists of extremely quantifiable microscopic particles affecting our nervous system.

Don't be such a philosophical zombie!
I was talking about the 100s of feelings of smell. E.g.: "wow, this rose smell is beautifully rosy!"* Instead of "Alert! My atmospheric sensors are detecting aromatic carbon chains number 485! Exterminate them!"

*Notice how those descriptions of qualia are always tautological? A rose smells rosy. Red looks red. Blue looks blue. A high-pitched squeal sounds like a high-pitched squeal. Of course, whether my sensation of blue is the same as yours, is another matter. That's why the Wikipedia page on qualia is so huge, it seems that scientists don't know where to start with things we know absolutely but cannot prove. Blue always looks "blue" to everyone who can see blue? Or "sensory relativism", kinda like synaesthesia but mixed between different people?

I'm glad we agree. The assertion of intelligent design belongs in the hazy realm of subjective qualia, not fact, physics, math or science.
EDIT: I'm a behaviorist. I'm immune to the P zombie argument.

The sciences routinely have to deal with various assumptions, postulates, axioms, and so on -- they all rely on that hazy realm to provide a starting point with things we know but can't falsify. And indeed, facts that can't be falsified do seem a bit more reliable than 'facts' that could eventually be shown to be wrong.

And by calling the above things a tautology, that wasn't a criticism, it was merely a statement of fact. It would be equally uninformative to say that the letter 'A' looks like an 'A' instead of a 'B', unless you're like me and are able to metaphysically see those letters, in addition to behaviourally storing the data in your biological data banks.

Nope. That's where science beats speculative postulating. Science starts with things we assume, not things we know. The hypothesis is an assumption/question, rather than the answer/result.
It's based on observable, repeatable phenomena. Nothing else meets the standard for acceptable, mathematically within-a-stated-acceptable-margin-of-error scientific data on which results are published.

[ktttn]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

Actually science starts with a hypothesis

How about..
Science starts with 'self' (interchangeably referred to as intelligence or consciousness) -- there's got to be "somebody home", so to speak. People have it. Supercomputers don't.
Then they receive information -- sensory inputs, whatever.
Then the data are interpreted. This includes forming a hypothesis about what (really) happened.
And curiosity. The "aim" thing kinda ruins it for me because it seems like a formulaic crutch that students are taught in schools. The curiosity thing provides motivation and will to gather more data and continue the process.

What I like about this is that anyone can basically be a mobile laboratory. Actual laboratories merely extend people's capabilities with cool sensory gadgets.

When I observe something it's either repeatable and demonstrable and record-able  or it isn't scientific data.
Supercomputers only exist so raw data can be crunched, algebraic formulas can be simplified, results can get published to people to interpret.


Frankly, Science doesn't give a flying damn about Solipsistic Existential Epistemology. It would rather count things.

[kokjo]

people, people, its cyclic. to form a hypothesis one must first have some data, and to recognize something as data, one must first have a hypothesis.
In other words i can not ask the question "What is the floopliwuply made of?" when i don't know what a floopliwuply is or that it even exists.

[ktttn]

people, people, its cyclic. to form a hypothesis one must first have some data, and to recognize something as data, one must first have a hypothesis.
In other words i can not ask the question "What is the floopliwuply made of?" when i don't know what a floopliwuply is or that it even exists.

A hypothesis is an idea. It requires no data. It requires only a direction in which one might look for data.
My hypothesis is that the floopliwuply is a random string- not a word. I can collect data on meanings of words and random strings now.

[Spendulus]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

Actually, looking for "intelligent design" is not a religion.   As practiced and conceived, it typically is a search for evidence or proof of a supreme being.  This is a logical fallacy.  If we did find evidence of intelligent design, what it would prove is the existence of a "prior intelligence of high order".  EG, something millions of years ago that was pretty darn smart.  If someone makes the leap from that to thinking they found proof of a supreme being, that's their problem.

When we go listen on big radio telescopes for ET, we are looking for radio waves that are "intelligent designed".  That is no religion, obviously.  Neither is it science unless you conceive of it in terms of the null hypothesis.  But simply listening to signals and reviewing them for patterns doesn't pass my smell test for "science".  Finding a dinosaur bone or looking at a star in the sky is not science and does not require science.  Science may be performed upon those observations, of course.

[ktttn]

Papercraft for the win. I guess I'm God now.

[kokjo]

people, people, its cyclic. to form a hypothesis one must first have some data, and to recognize something as data, one must first have a hypothesis.
In other words i can not ask the question "What is the floopliwuply made of?" when i don't know what a floopliwuply is or that it even exists.

A hypothesis is an idea. It requires no data. It requires only a direction in which one might look for data.
My hypothesis is that the floopliwuply is a random string- not a word. I can collect data on meanings of words and random strings now.

...and that mean that you have a hypothesis, that you can assign meaning to more or less random sequences of random shapes(you can read, for short).

[cp1]

OK, well I guess Euclid's Elements was just a load of rubbish then. Which would make Newtonian physics pretty baseless too.

Or maybe assuming is equivalent to knowing in a scientific context? Otherwise why bother making assumptions if we have doubts about their soundness? E.g.: assuming that Earth orbits the Sun, we do [ whatever measurements and stuff ]. According to Newtonian physics, the sun should also swivel a little bit due to the mass of the earth pulling on it (like an athlete doing a hammer throw), but we wouldn't know any of that without relying on Euclid's postulates.

That's math, not science.

[WishIStartedSooner]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

It's not even that intelligent of a design!

If there's intelligence behind this, then it intentionally saw fit to have a solid 95 percent of us tortured in a variety of fun different ways.

Meanwhile the same intelligence decided that a very small percentage of it's pets are special, and worthy of having everything they ever may have wanted out of life.

If there's some kind of intelligent god that had control over everything, isn't it arguably a giant, malevolent dick?

[RodeoX]

I think it's worth mentioning that intelligent design is in no way a science. It is a religion. It starts with an answer,  then looks for ways to support the answer that must be true. In science you start with a question and go where the answer takes you. Even if it contradicts your beliefs.

It's not even that intelligent of a design!

If there's intelligence behind this, then it intentionally saw fit to have a solid 95 percent of us tortured in a variety of fun different ways. Hitler, nukes on Japan, centuries of people being tortured for different reasons. Poverty, hunger, and absolute crap!

Meanwhile the same intelligence decided that a very small percentage of it's pets are special, and worthy of having everything they ever may have wanted out of life.

If there's some kind of intelligent god that had control over everything, isn't it arguably a giant, malevolent dick?

Yeah. God's actions makes no sense at all.
If intelligent design had any science behind it then why do I not see it published in scientific journals? Why? because the lack of evidence would quickly crush it as a theory. Unlike evolution, which has seen no contrary findings in over 150 years of research.