Determinism.

[IJesusChrist]

The very word shakes many religious and spiritual to the bone, including myself. But lend me your ears, and I shall lend you mine - I guess in this case it will be eyes.

Extracted from a reply in which Allusion alludes to a theory in which fractals govern the universes structure, and thus allows for information of the universe to be viewed from a single particle.
###Suppose we could gather all the information from an atom (this is not true, and I'll explain why later). According to the laws of physics then, we could predict certain things from the atom, or vice-versa (predict where the atom is according to the universe).

So, imagine a machine, so powerful, it could predict the future, given the atom's information, translated to universe. Imagine that machine, in short, predicts your death. Do you die in the same way? This is possibly the most important question within the idea of determinism. The idea of complete prediction of the known universe immidiatly gives rise to the paradox of "free-will" in which your death is presented to you in some occurence, yet now you have a choice to avoid that situation at all cost, or in extremity you could simply kill yourself as soon as you saw the prediction, thus giving a contradiction (sorry for the extremity in the example).

This paradox gives rise to a few possibilities:
1. We cannot predict the future with any type of accuracy.
2. The universe is not determined, i.e. the future is not set in stone.
3. There is a paradox within the machine itself, where its own prediction does not include itself predicting the future (hard to grasp).

Yet, to get to the very factual and scientific basis of these theories of the fractal universe, we still must abide by the Uncertainty principle, the symmetry of all particles, and the enormity of information (quantum computing).

The uncertainty principle immidiately presents to us the impossibility of extracting all the information from a single particle. Meaning that we cannot, for one, make grand predictions from a single particle, and for two, we cannot even make small predictions of the one particle.

The symmetry of particles (recently emphasized by a study on electrons) shows that there is no possible way to identify one electron from another. Against common experience, there is no way to "label" an electron, a proton, etc... This means that there cannot be any information extracted from a particle, in general, other than its position in space, or its momentum. However, there is quantum entanglement, which could give way to a large field in "everything is connected to everything" but I am not familiar with the subject, and won't give much more than that.

Beyond that, the enormity of information within a system, is by scientifical law, only completely understood by a system of exact size and similarity. I.E. to completely predict (with exception to the uncertainty principle) the Earth in its entirety, we need a computer the exact same size and similarity as the earth. Of course we can make very accurate predictions of the weather with a super-computer.

I am open to counter arguements or augmentations to what I have said, with the underlying theme of determinism or fractal universes. Hasn't been enough talk about this stuff on here lately...

 

[MichaelVipperman]

A philosopher friend of mine recently quipped that determinism is the erroneous belief that causation is transitive. I think that sums it up nicely.

Regarding fractals... recursion is wicked-awesome and all, but there are a great many emergent properties (dynamics which appear in systems that are not reducible to the components of those systems) which prevent its overextension.

 

[IJesusChrist]

Sorry you speak not my language, can you elaborate on this a little bit? - both points?

 

[Light]

Bit of a large post for me, but I just couldn't stop typing.

I see determinism as sort of a default state of the universe. If sentient beings use their will, it is suspended, then it takes over as these beings sit back and enjoy.

There are scientists that have proven that conscious will is an illusion, since the brain processes that perform a specific 'willed' action in the world come before consciousness of that will. i.e. I start the process of moving my arm and then become conscious of wanting to move my arm. In fact, this moves the problem back. Maybe the will is unconscious. Maybe consciousness is more than they think it is.

Consider this: if determinism is all there is, the world couldn't have been any different from what it is. I can imagine a world that is different entirely, even staying within the known laws of physics. So this deterministic world resulted in beings that can think of other possible worlds and have the idea that they can change things in the world of their own free will. Either this is a big illusion (like the sanskrit concept of maya) or concsciousness/spirit did actually evolve from clay.

One guy we don't hear a lot of in the debate about free will the last few centuries is God. He used to be the one thing/idea that inspired people to open their hearts and minds and give us the free will to do good or bad. Here, we see a link to ethics, a link that has somehow been broken since scientists started to embrace determinism and rejecting the concept of free will either explicitly or implicitly. This says something about science: it has to believe in determinism, because otherwise it wouldn't be able to predict the miraculous results of free will. It also says something about the role of ethics in the whole question. In the old God-paradigm, every free action was either good or bad. Science opened up a large terrain of neutral actions.

The ethics of modernity is in a state of shock. We have emerged from authoritarian rule over what is good and what is not to a sort of state where we kind of have to find our own way and think for ourselves. If we don't use this new power, we will succumb to a new leader or a new idealism that will place a stranglehold on the necks of the people we fear. If we practice and think for ourselves, our free will becomes stronger. I know mine has become stronger over the years and if I'm fooling myself into a bigger illusion, then I guess the jokes on me.

 

[ophiuchus]

If we practice and think for ourselves, our free will becomes stronger

There is a paradox within the machine itself, where its own prediction does not include itself predicting the future (hard to grasp).

there is at least 1 other possibility as well... im surprised it hasn't been brought up, as it's the most probable. the possibility that the answer that the machine gives you is precisely what causes you to live out the prediction that it made. who is to say that you would want to oppose the prediction? idk, that whole scenario that you created is all hypothetical anyways, kind of pointless if you ask me. unless we are talking about astrology, in which case the possible outcomes are still appropriate, yet we are talking about living entities giving the information, not robots. (although in this view, everything is considered a varying/ied level of consciousness.

Extracted from a reply in which Allusion alludes to a theory in which fractals govern the universes structure, and thus allows for information of the universe to be viewed from a single particle.

that's not what i said. im taking no offense here, but i stated more along the lines that the universe is fractal. i did not say that fractals govern anything. that's a huge variation in the entire line of thinking, especially in relation to what michael said here:

Regarding fractals... recursion is wicked-awesome and all, but there are a great many emergent properties (dynamics which appear in systems that are not reducible to the components of those systems) which prevent its overextension.

essentially, if we adopt the idea that you thought was my idea, then that would mean that free will cannot exist, because "structure", (form, life) is governed by fractality. but this is not what i'm implying, because this leaves nothing (that is, no "power") to consciousness, which is the entire driving force of the universe.

this is precisely what i mean, please read it carefully as it's easy to get caught up in the words since i cannot use inflection with my voice;

the universe is fractal, as well as consciousness. this leads us to "but then what is consciousness?" "what is the universe (made of)?" if it is fractal and (therefore) self referencing (or "recursive") then it can only be made of itself, which is entirely indescribable and entirely irreducible (without referencing something that is referencing something else, that references something else, that simply continues to reference something else, thereby putting off the defining entirely, ad nauseum. which is obviously a broken system...), and therefore it could not ever be wholly represented by computer (ie: the way we classically think of "fractal") as michael pointed out "that are not reducible". there is obviously something more to this system, because as is, the concept of fractality, although infinite, is still very 2-D...

i believe many, if not all of the "dynamics which appear in the system", are created by the aspect of consciousness. consciousness is the state of the fractal. therefore, that is also to say emotion is the state of the fractal. think about that for a minute.

if emotion is recursive, and the universe is recursive (same as "self-referencing", which is the same as "fractal"), then ones emotions literally reverberate out into space (edit: and inside of ones body, literally) not only in the form of mental energy, but in the form of physical energy as well. this statement has implications that are vast beyond common comprehension, and i advise anyone reading this theory for the first time to take it on skeptically, and by this i mean, do your own experiments. don't just believe it. experience it for yourself. experiment with your emotional state in regards to the humans(things) you interact with, and take note of what happens, but not just with that particular interactions, all of the interactions after that, human, or non, living, or non. i believe that if anyone does this, and really listens, and i mean listen with all the senses, to what happens back to them after they give a particular emotion to the universe, you may be startled at what you receive back.

so i'll leave that line of thinking right there. put it into the readers hands to verify it or not. i don't have much more to say about it other than i don't believe it, i knowit to be true. it is experiential. if you want to see it then you will. and likewise if you really do not wish to see it, even if you still try (yet internally resist), then it will abide you, and you will not see it. i hope for everyone to approach it without preconceived notions, judgment, or bias,, and ultimately without skepticism if they truly wish to understand the full effect (skepticism is that internal resistance). anyways, im beginning to ramble, but the point is right there. try it out, it's quite fun.

causation is transitive

what do you mean or imply here then? that, the causing is wholly independent? i think i know what you mean, but i'd love to hear it in your words if you dont mind...

hope that all makes sense, if further explanation is required i can do my best. it is a bit late atm

 

[IJesusChrist]

I think you missed the point or aren't understanding the paradox;

If a machine could predict the future - and it explained to you your death, will you absolutely die in that same manner?
No of course not - lets say you die in a car crash within the prediction so you sell your car and move to the middle of no where and don't go on roads, prediction avoided.

But how can this be, since the future was predicted on solid terms of causation and the laws of physics?

1. Consciousness cannot be involved in physics, i.e. it does not have to pertain to the laws of reality, and thus we have free will above and beyond simple 'cause & affect'.
2. The machine itself explaining to you the future cannot be in a closed system (but I don't see why not).

The counter point you brought up is just #2, and what I had said before; in the machine telling you how you die, it somehow changes the future, however, if the machine counts in its prediction, its own prediction manifestation, then I see no problem here, or perhaps I really am not able to comprehend such a loop hole.

This is a fundamental problem, and the answer is obtainable (theoretically) and would show if we have free will or not.

 

[ophiuchus]

no i see what you're saying, but i think more probably, that if a machine predicted your death, then everything that you do, from that point on, would still be leading to your death. even if it were preventative. say you're leaving the machine to go home. well, you didn't know any better, so you probably drove... oh, well you don't want your car to be stolen or towed, so you're driving home then? guess what happened... idk, really this is rather pointless, because it's not like any machine like this exists-which simply creates an entire debate dialogue over something non-existent. so i'll leave it there-unless we're talking about astrologers like i mentioned, in which case, everything still turns out to be predicted accurately, because the reaction the person has to the predicting itself is already accounted for in the prediction. because this entire scenario is all following a cycle, which, after studying the past of the cycle, narrows down the future possibilities to a fairly accurate account of what happens. go to cafeastrology.com (in the evening) and read your daily horoscope, then let me know what you think. you could even quote it and then paste it here along with an account of your day, so we could all draw independent conclusions from it.

if you can dig it, that website is really cool. it has things like a single weekly forecast (which applies to all signs) which is basically a description of what planets are where in our solar system, as well as our sun and moon in relation to the constellations, and then explanations of what kinds of energies will be at play under these planetary influences. once you read the weekly and monthly forecasts, you might understand a little better the dynamics going on with it, if you (anyone) didn't really before...

 

[ophiuchus]

This is a fundamental problem, and the answer is obtainable (theoretically) and would show if we have free will or not.

how?

1. Consciousness cannot be involved in physics, i.e. it does not have to pertain to the laws of reality, and thus we have free will above and beyond simple 'cause & affect'.

are you stating that "consciousness cannot be involved in physics" or are you simply stating that in regards to this,

No of course not - lets say you die in a car crash within the prediction so you sell your car and move to the middle of no where and don't go on roads, prediction avoided.

But how can this be, since the future was predicted on solid terms of causation and the laws of physics?

the hypothetical?

 

[IJesusChrist]

What are you not getting about this?

Hypothetically we could make a computer powerful enough to predict the future with great accuracy within a small system, but since other galaxies don't affect our quanta here, we can omit them, making the calculations far more reasonable, but still only in the hypothetical range. The idea here is that IT IS POSSIBLE. Where as any other way of measuring free will is not - do you see the importance of this now?

[quote:2568j39q] 1. Consciousness cannot be involved in physics, i.e. it does not have to pertain to the laws of reality, and thus we have free will above and beyond simple 'cause & affect'.

are you stating that "consciousness cannot be involved in physics" or are you simply stating that in regards to this,

No of course not - lets say you die in a car crash within the prediction so you sell your car and move to the middle of no where and don't go on roads, prediction avoided.

But how can this be, since the future was predicted on solid terms of causation and the laws of physics?[/quote:2568j39q]


And yes - both of them, they are the same thing. Consciousness is not bound to the realm of physics within our reality - i.e. you can make decisions that are above and beyond cause and affect, which could not be explained by any science.

And Aemilius, what is wrong with you're structure of reality?

 

[IJesusChrist]

Well firstly - there is no evidence, nor support for evidence that any electron is in anyway identifiable from any other electron besides from their position or velocity - and more exactly, even these cannot be held with any certainty due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, in short, all electrons are exactly equivalent.

I know this isn't as cool (at first) to everything being a fractal, but once you realize the implications, this is much more elegant than a fractal universe. We cannot know for sure if there is more than one electron in the universe.

Back to the hypothesis, I just debunked Allusion's "bow tied" summation - it is not hypothetical, it is testable, although still not probable, it is possible.

And, although this seems very obvious, the 'scientific law' that I was getting at earlier comes from the mathematical inductions from quantum computing:

To completely understand and predict a system, an equivalent system must be devised.

What this really means is that in order to model the earth exactly, you have to make another earth - again this makes obvious sense, but what it is saying, in importance, is that we cannot devise the earth perfectly with a system that is not of the same configuration as the earth.

So no, you cannot know the wind speed and direction of every atom/molecule within a hurricane without having a hurricane to model it. AKA you can come up with very very good predictions with computers, but it is not possible to predict with absolute certainty, even disregarding the uncertainty principle.

DUH

 

[IJesusChrist]

Like I said above, there is absolutely nothing alluding to any possibility that an electron can hold any information other than its position or velocity.

As far as science is concerned there is no holographic nature in reality - this is either an interesting theory of no bearing/proof or goes beyond the capabilities of science.

Either way it doesn't help in much...

We have to come to terms with all matter and energy is confined to the laws of the universe, most of which we are aware of [dark matter, dark energy aside].

However, that is not to say that there is no reason that thought / consciousness / spirituality has it's own realms.

I'm playing with the idea that the brain is simply a membrane between reality as we now define it, and that which we often describe as "higher" - i.e. dreams, inspiration, the after-life, etc.

I don't know why I'm posting this, but since I have joined this site I have perpetually been in a back and forth game of whether reality is restricted to matter and energy, and all thought and consciousness are simply very sophisticated phenomena of such, or whether there is a realm higher and beyond.

Much of you on here take it easy upon yourselves to take the latter as a fact, however, I found (find) it much harder to convince myself - but I had been looking at it in the wrong light my entire life. The two are not related in any other way other than the mind. . . gosh the insights I have on this website are innumerable.

 

[yourownworld]

what if time doesn't exist, I mean informations of the universe are, and time is just how we name the fact to display information, and another , and another... to turn the point into a line

 

[IJesusChrist]

one can be proved the other cannot.

why is mine no less fantastical?
Its a computer. You're sitting behind one when you are reading this. You make it bigger and tah dah you have a chance to glimpse the possibility that the universe is deterministic. What is so hard to get about this?

 

[twoceebee]

A philosopher friend of mine recently quipped that determinism is the erroneous belief that causation is transitive. I think that sums it up nicely.

Regarding fractals... recursion is wicked-awesome and all, but there are a great many emergent properties (dynamics which appear in systems that are not reducible to the components of those systems) which prevent its overextension.

He said what?

 

[IJesusChrist]

Emile, that is the thing - we are talking about determinism.

If determinism were true no - foretelling the future could not change the future, since there would be no action that is unpredictable - all actions and reactions are set in accordance to what is already known.

And no, you would not need to know the entire history of the world in order to tell the future, you just need enough information at any given time - HENCE we know where a car is going to be 1 second from now if we know the velocity and trajectory. We don't need to know where it turned last, or who is driving.

I'm making you think about this - that is good.

We make a computer that is good enough to predict a hurricane, then we make one that is good enough to predict the stock markets, then we make one that is good enough to predict what will happen in the next few days...

Again, it is not probable - I'm not arguing that we should/could/would make a machine that can do this, I am arguing that it is possible.

And that, I hope you will eventually see, is incredibly interesting, and possibly important.

 

[IJesusChrist]

Nonono you're still not getting it.

There is only one outcome in determinism - yes. And the machine predicts it into a certain degree, taking into account its own prediction (which cannot change the future - according to determinism). So it predicts what must happen, yet the human does not die the same way.

To simplify it to the most extreme case I can think of, lets take a ball on top of a wedge.

The ball, once let go of, will fall down the wedge, due to the laws of gravity. We can predict, using these laws and equations, nearly exactly where this ball will be in 1,2,3,4 seconds etc.

Let us replace the ball with a person, and the laws of gravity with all the laws of physics. Now, using all of these laws, and an innumerable amount of data, we can know exactly where this person will be in 1, 2, 3, 4 seconds. And, if we know enough, we can even predict what the outcome will be if we tell the person something about the future, i.e. we can predict their reaction perfectly - all their neurons must obey the laws of physics, the person's head must abide by the laws of entropy and enthalpy, electromagnetism, etc... and we can predict every thought he or she has, once we have enough information about how the brain works. Thus, we can see how someone will react to a said sentence - the only way they can react - and thusly explain their death to them...............

And thus the paradox is formed. As soon as we make the absolute concrete prediction that they will leave here and find a kitten in an alley way, after having been told the prediction, they have to find the kitten, since this is the only way the universe can unfold... Yet now, that person has a choice, free will.

There is a clue somewhere in this and I won't rest until I debunk it!

 

[IJesusChrist]

That is why this one is so important - it can be proven or disproven!

It doesn't matter if it will be, it just matters that it can be!

In discussions of God or purpose, or even morals, I agree - there is an inevitable stalemate.

But this one is based completely on testable data, and theoretically possible predictions, where the very definition of philosophy is the opposite.

If you think of reality not as growing tree, or a forever growing chain of events, but rather a pre-determined timeline, in which we are slowly floating through, this discussion is much more tangible.

If you assume that the future has already been determined, (which is basically destiny, but somehow not as romantic?) and you assume that it is possible to predict it's values and data, whatever, then you have a working hypothesis to test.

This is science, not philosophy.

And, to clarify:

I want to believe that consciousness is above and beyond the material and energetic laws that we know so much about, but I cannot be certain, and am on the fence about this subject.

 

[IJesusChrist]

I believe you approach my writings with an eagerness to disagree, or find something wrong...

 

[avemaria]

this conversation raises the same issues that were raised in the 'Terminator' movies, the hero receives a message sent back from the future, informing him of his future destiny, at this point he faces a choice about whether or not to fulfil his destiny. But it isnt really a choice, more like a foregone conclusion, because if he didnt fulfil his destiny, he never would have received the message from the future in the first place

 

[IJesusChrist]

Whatever man I think you're just old.