GENIUS FORUMS

Unidian wrote:

BTW, The Urantia Book is nonsense. While I concede it might be possible for certain people to sharpen their thinking skills though nonsense, most of us would be well-advised not to overdo it. Zen koans and aphorisms are a better route to this anyway. And if you want Sufi mysticism, go to the authentic source and read Al-Arabi rather than Gurdjieff.

Yahoo #2 has been heard from.
"A better route to this." What this are you talking about?
Koans and aphorisms are better at doing what?
Let me guess. Unidian has not READ the Urantia Book.

And I wasn't speaking of mysticism, I suggested Gurdjieff for entertainment value. Beelzebub's Tales is funny. IMHO.

Your thinking skills are sharpened when they are challenged. If the UB has not challenged you, then you have not read it.

BTW, the Urantia Book is not nonsense. Whatever else it may be, it is clearly not nonsense.

And Unidian, what do you mean by "certain people"?

You really need to understand something before you continue: this forum is not about "genius" in the conventional sense of the word. It is not about the stereotypical Albert Einsteins of the world with their massive intellects and/or IQs.

This forum is primarily about philosophy and truth.

elaborate please...

MindExpansion wrote:

You really need to understand something before you continue: this forum is not about "genius" in the conventional sense of the word. It is not about the stereotypical Albert Einsteins of the world with their massive intellects and/or IQs.

This forum is primarily about philosophy and truth.

elaborate please...

You should probably read the introduction forum...

brokenhead wrote:Yahoo #2 has been heard from.

What happened, did you pass a mirror?

Let me guess. Unidian has not READ the Urantia Book.

Correct. I'm also not going to read 500 pages of a four-year-old scribbling random letters with his Crayolas. A brief look at the content is quite sufficient to give one a good idea of what remains.

Why should I read it? Give me specific, concrete reasons.

For most people looking to be mentally challenged, "Goedel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid" should be a good start; and if you tell me you read it and it didn't challenge you, you are a liar.

If you want more challenge, study logic, math, and sciences.

But people like brokenhead don't really want to be challenged, they want to feel as if they had encountered and surmounted a challenge. A sort of belt-factory Tae Kwon Do dojo for the mind.

I have GEB, actually, but I haven't read it yet.

The Urantia Book (Wikipedia article)

God in the narrative of The Urantia Book is the creator and upholder of all reality — an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite and eternal spirit personality.

The most fundamental teaching about God in the book is that he is a loving Father, with whom all may have a personal relationship. "The face which the Infinite turns toward all universe personalities is the face of a Father, the Universal Father of love." Even during the development of numerous other themes in The Urantia Book, God as a loving Father is emphasized as the central, unifying attitude of God toward his creation.

From Paper 2, "The Nature of God":

God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. And never is it necessary that any influence be brought to bear upon the Father to call forth his loving-kindness. The creature's need is wholly sufficient to insure the full flow of the Father's tender mercies and his saving grace. Since God knows all about his children, it is easy for him to forgive. The better man understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love him.

God is said to be a mystery though because of the infinite scope of his perfection and all his attributes.

See what I mean? My usual suggestion to those peddling that sort of thing is to tell it to a starving child or a tsunami victim.

If I read every bizarre theistic text someone told me to read, I'd have no time left to read sensible, interesting things.

B-b-b-but wait, here comes the predictable reply! Wikipedia is biased! They didn't understand it! It doesn't really say that! You can't know for sure until you've read it yourself! You're closed-minded!

Objections noted. No need to actually say them.

But people like brokenhead don't really want to be challenged, they want to feel as if they had encountered and surmounted a challenge. A sort of belt-factory Tae Kwon Do dojo for the mind.

Hey, vicdan, chill. I invite challenge. I don't claim to have surmounted the UB. I DO claim to have attempted it. If you are going to dismiss something before you try it, I can't argue with you.

The only reason I threw the UB out here is that members of this forum are supposed to be intelligent.

Pearls before swine.

If I read every bizarre theistic text someone told me to read, I'd have no time left to read sensible, interesting things.

B-b-b-but wait, here comes the predictable reply! Wikipedia is biased! They didn't understand it! It doesn't really say that! You can't know for sure until you've read it yourself! You're closed-minded!

Objections noted. No need to actually say them.

I'm not telling you to read anything, unidian. Perish the thought. Too bad Wikkipedia wasn't around when I was in high school, though. Those fucking Cliff Notes were way over my head.

vicdan wrote:

For most people looking to be mentally challenged, "Goedel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid" should be a good start; and if you tell me you read it and it didn't challenge you, you are a liar.

Nice pictures in GEB!!

For a more scientific, and equally prosaic, treatment of AI, try Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind.

I read it (GEB)- and yes, it challenged me. It's one of the few books that have survived my many moves since 1979! A classic.

Unidian wrote:

See what I mean? My usual suggestion to those peddling that sort of thing is to tell it to a starving child or a tsunami victim.

Well, aren't you just the worldy-wise one? "That sort of thing" you quoted sounds really lovely to me. In fact, I suggest you read more quotes from the UB. A passage a night before bedtime should do.

Starving children need food.
Tsunami victims need shelter.

You are the one who needs the Urantia Book.

Actually ENM is much less scientific than GEB. Penrose's thesis about non-computability of mind is completely unsupported, his argument for it amounts to little more than intuition appeal, and his major point being bases on rejecting the Church-Turing thesis doesn't help matters -- CTT is a major result, and if it were wrong, the world would be far more weird than it became with the advent of relativity and QM; but Penrose doesn't explore what it would mean, he merely suggests that there could exist some sort of quantum magic which would be an Oracle.

Penrose does little more than support our intuitive misconceptions about computation and cognition. GEB radically challenges them, forces us to move outside our zone of comfort. The whole point of ENM is to affirm our common intuition that cognition is not, and cannot be, a computation.

Just like a QRS drone to see great enlightenment and challenge in something that merely reaffirms common prejudices though.

If you want more challenge, study logic, math, and sciences.

But people like brokenhead don't really want to be challenged

Oh, and vicdan... I have studied logic, math, and sciences.

Just like a QRS drone to see great enlightenment and challenge in something that merely reaffirms common prejudices though.

QRS drone? I challenge you to a duel, sir! As I am the wronged party, I shall choose the weapons.... Featherdusters at four hundred yards.

Actually ENM is much less scientific than GEB. Penrose's thesis about non-computability of mind is completely unsupported, his argument for it amounts to little more than intuition appeal, and his major point being bases on rejecting the Church-Turing thesis doesn't help matters

Don't tell me you didn't read this one either! His major point is Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. And he gives a nice accounting of quantum ideas along the way. I'll bet you just read the reviews or skimmed through it, right?

brokenhead wrote:His major point is Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Yes, and he uses it to argue that humans are stronger than Turing machines because humans supposedly don't have goedelian sentences. Which is the intuitive appeal I was speaking about -- we just intuitively feel that we can prove any goedelian sentence.

And he gives a nice accounting of quantum ideas along the way. I'll bet you just read the reviews or skimmed through it, right?

Wrong; and I bet you didn't understand GEB, either -- and I find it hard to believe that you have actually studied math, logic, and science to any significant extent. Your idea of what is 'challenging' tells that quite well.

Hey, I found GEB plenty challenging. That's why I still have my copy after 25 years. Because I like to take it out from time to time, such as when I read ENM.

How do you know what I find challenging?

And since when is it a bad thing for someone (such as Roger Penrose) to put forth a detailed argument about what he intuitively feels is correct?

The problem is not with supporting your intuition with an argument; that is perfectly OK. The problem is with the argument which relies on intuition to arrive at its conclusion, which is what Penrose's argument basically is -- "look, people, surely you feel you don't have a goedelian sentence of your own!"

The whole point of ENM is to affirm our common intuition that cognition is not, and cannot be, a computation.

Are you sure you read it? The point of ENM is to state (and attempt to demonstrate) that human consciousness is not MERELY a computation. I take it you disagree with his assessments of strong AI. He doesn't say that humans don't have Goedelian sentences!!! Where did you get that? Humans, in the act of doing mathematics, HAVE to encounter true statements that cannot be proven within the given framework - or collection of theorems. That's the whole point! Goedel's theorem ensures this. It takes insight to surmount this. It took insight to discover this.

GEB is a fascinating book. But more scientific than ENM? This is Roger Penrose we're talking about! I'm reading Road to Reality right now, and all I can say is I wish I had that book when I was an undergraduate physics student. I mean the man has published with Hawking, or is Hawking some kind of establishment shill as well?

ENM is challenging, vicdan. Maybe you didn't get it the first time. I know I didn't. But he absolutely does NOT rely on inuitive arguments! He's a mathematician, not a philosopher. He takes three chapters to painstakingly demonstrate his arguments mathematically. He does the same close arguing in Road to Reality as well.
And I'll throw another challenging book into the arena, since that's what this thread is about: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Tipler & Barrow.)

brokenhead wrote:Are you sure you read it?

No, I am just spouting random letter sequences, OK?..

The point of ENM is to state (and attempt to demonstrate) that human consciousness is not MERELY a computation.

Erm, yes, do you understand how this is the same as what I had said? No? I guess you didn't study enough math then.

I take it you disagree with his assessments of strong AI. He doesn't say that humans don't have Goedelian sentences!!! Where did you get that? Humans, in the act of doing mathematics, HAVE to encounter true statements that cannot be proven within the given framework - or collection of theorems. That's the whole point! Goedel's theorem ensures this.

Are you sure you understand the topic?

According to Penrose, humans don't have goedelian sentences (which is not the same as humans not knowing other systems' goedelian sentences) -- meaning that humans, according to him, cannot be theoremic systems subject to Goedel's 1st theorem. His very argument is that because we humans can prove goedelian sentences for other theoremic systems true, we don't have our own goedelian sentences -- which makes us Oracles (in the computational sense) rather than computations. This is where the intuition appeal is: Penrose points at the fact that we can prove goedelian sentences for other theoremic systems, and then essentially says: "Look, surely you would agree that if we had our own goedelian sentences, we could prove them true as well, which makes us not subject to Goedel's 1st theorem, and thus stronger than computations". This is blatant gut appeal.

I suggest you stay away from topics you don't understand.

It takes insight to surmount this. It took insight to discover this.

You don't understand the topic. if this is what you regard as 'insight', then my opinion of you remains in its previous unflattering state.

GEB is a fascinating book. But more scientific than ENM? This is Roger Penrose we're talking about! I'm reading Road to Reality right now, and all I can say is I wish I had that book when I was an undergraduate physics student. I mean the man has published with Hawking, or is Hawking some kind of establishment shill as well?

Huh? Establishment shill? Who said anything about being an establishment shill?

Penrose is a great mathematician. He is a sucky cognitive scientist and philosopher, especially philosopher of mind. Being a great mathematician doesn't confer upon one automagical greatness at informatics, AI, or philosophy of mind.

"Look, surely you would agree that if we had our own goedelian sentences, we could prove them true as well, which makes us not subject to Goedel's 1st theorem, and thus stronger than computations". This is blatant gut appeal.

I suggest you stay away from topics you don't understand.

Your paraphrasing is blatant gut appeal. You're making a silly argument out of a simple concept. Why the chip on your shoulder?

You haven't convinced me that you understand ENM.

"A sucky philospher of mind." That's a keeper.