GENIUS FORUMS

Greetings,

I'm curious to know what are your core proposition of your belief-system. If possible, present them in the order of importance - most important first.

My world view...

Simple beginning to the creation, as simple as possible. A few mixed elements.
Evolution.
Infinate.
End suffering.
Build new worlds.
Live in peace.

All of which has already happened, and we are a result. The total of this proposition is that we are living on a world that was designed to filter out bad humans.

I have only one core precept.

Experiences are systematic and predictable.

That's all.

vicdan wrote:I have only one core precept.

Experiences are systematic and predictable.

That's all.

Or that you have systematic constructions of experiences?

Well, duh. of course I do; but the point is that it's possible to have a systematic construction of experiences which actually predicts future experiences. This is not logically necessary -- the universe could be total chaos, things happening without any rhyme or reason, impossible to predict.

The only assumption I really need to make is that it's possible to predict future experiences. The rest is pure mechanics.

vicdan wrote:I have only one core precept.

Experiences are systematic and predictable.

That's all.

This is sad and pathetic, but also funny in a way.

vicdan wrote:Well, duh. of course I do; but the point is that it's possible to have a systematic construction of experiences which actually predicts future experiences. This is not logically necessary -- the universe could be total chaos, things happening without any rhyme or reason, impossible to predict.

The only assumption I really need to make is that it's possible to predict future experiences. The rest is pure mechanics.

Didn't you say that you believe in Quantum Randomness that is TRUE randomness, and unpredictable???
So at a quantum level, a human is totally random. Else life is just a game.

I believe in the total randomness of sentience, I also believe that we are guided, but not 100% guided.

Pincho Paxton wrote:Didn't you say that you believe in Quantum Randomness that is TRUE randomness, and unpredictable???

Yup. But we don't need every single future experience to be predictable. With QM, for example, being able to predict the probabilistic distribution, rather than the actual outcome, is good enough. We need just enough predictability to make predictive models of future experiences.

For a caveman, simply being able to predict that when you throw a rock, it will fly, and if you aim it well, it will hit the target, is already an important step forward. What matters is that the rock wouldn't become a cream pie singing Broadway showtunes, or any other arbitrary shit.

PhysicsDude wrote:

vicdan wrote:I have only one core precept.

Experiences are systematic and predictable.

That's all.

This is sad and pathetic, but also funny in a way.

I think, in his next life, Victor is going to be reborn as a computer.

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I don't think I have a core proposition.Perhaps "less is more" may be mine.

I must've been an early 20th century German architect in my former life.

David Quinn wrote:

PhysicsDude wrote:

vicdan wrote:I have only one core precept.

Experiences are systematic and predictable.

That's all.

This is sad and pathetic, but also funny in a way.

I think, in his next life, Victor is going to be reborn as a computer.

-

Victor's incarnation as insufferably deluded dilettante needs to go. This egomaniacal wannabe pundit and his ersatz education have been spewing out neophytic drivel across the net for too long. Spin the karmic wheel!

how's your bridge toll business going, troll?..

Victor's incarnation as insufferably deluded dilettante needs to go. This egomaniacal wannabe pundit and his ersatz education have been spewing out neophytic drivel across the net for too long. Spin the karmic wheel!

Hey, chill, pdude. You may disagree with vicdan, and I often do as I read these forums, but you can't be serious calling his ideas ersatz or drivel. If nothing else, they seem intelligent, thought-out, and consistent.

In this case, I agree with vicdan that as you mature, you see patterns where you didn't see them before. Victor has to admit that he was not always at a point where all phenomenon appear predictable. So that must have been acquired since birth. Likewise, he seems to be predicting that that notion will never go away, not even upon experiencing additional things for the rest of his life.

And there's where I disagree with him. "There are more things dreamt of..."etc is closer to my core belief.

But are the patterns really there, or are you imposing them, perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, perhaps with a motive, perhaps with none? Can't two people look at the same cloud and "see" two clearly distinct things? And not "perceive" the other's perception until one is told of it and looks for it?

I would not want to live in a world where all thing were predictable, even in theory. And I don't think we do. We try to, but there's no such thing as "permanent," no such thing as "clear." When you add the cycles of the seasons, days, tides, birth and death, similar people at an office that is much the same every day, a lover's face that changes imperceptibly, I think we come to cherish a "life" and the myriad of cycles that combine to produce a predictability that comforts us. But this is a mental construct, is it not? Doesn't everything change? I think on a basic level, depite everything we do to provide consistency for ourselves and our loved ones, we need change. We need it and we know it is the only thing that is inevitable, that doesn't change.

I often go back to mathematical ideas for analogies to explain what I'm thinking. So here I go again.

Any function over a given interval can be expressed as a finite or infinite linear combination of known functions via a Fourier Transform. This notion is of tremendous power because we can take any function, no matter how complex, and write it as a simple sum of known, simpler functions. These simpler functions are said to form a complete basis. There are many differnt sets of basis functions. We can write the sum as an infinite polynomial. Or we can write it as an infinite sum of sines and cosines.

But wait! Sines and cosine are periodic! Doesn't that mean we can take any function, no matter how erratic and arbitrary, and express it as a linear sum of terms that are perfectly periodic and always repeat themselves? A quantity Q that changes over time can be expressed as a function of time t: Q = F(t). Yet we're saying that F(t) can be written:
F(t) = a1cos(b1t) + a2cos(b2t) +...

where all the bold terms are just numbers and the series "..." might be infinite.

Each term is completely periodic! Which means we know how each term will behave as time t goes on as far as we want into the future!

Does this not imply we know Q at any point in the future, making vicdan's predictability claim very credible?

Alas, no. We can only calculate the a and b coefficients above if the interval of t for which the equation above holds (call it p) is kept finite. Because to get F(t) exactly right for this given, fixed interval, we have to assume F itself is periodic with period p.

Okay, vicdan, this proves nothing. It's just an observation that perhaps if we rely on the patterns we know, either first hand through experience or indirectly, to predict future events, there may be a limit to the precision of our prediction.

Indeed, what I'm saying is, roughly, "'for instance' is not proof." How can you be sure your set of basis vectors - your experiences - is complete? If we can predict future events in every case, why don't we? Just because we can predict - with excellent precision - the outcomes of some events, does not imply we can always do so.

Predictability is an illusion we create, and each individual prediction can be more or less precise. That we are able to create it at all is because reality as we know it seems to be cyclical in nature.

There exists sufficient thermonuclear weaponry to snuff out all sentient life on this planet within a day or two. So anything that seems "inevitable" is in fact only "extremely likely." Which doesn't contradict any scientific fact whatsoever. "Physical probablities are engineering certainties" was a mantra I heard in the Physics departments with which I was associated.

brokenhead wrote:Hey, chill, pdude. You may disagree with vicdan, and I often do as I read these forums, but you can't be serious calling his ideas ersatz or drivel. If nothing else, they seem intelligent, thought-out, and consistent.

Don't pay any attention to him. His presence here seems to be solely for the sake of trolling me --a he doesn't seem to have posted anything but snipes in my direction. it's just some troll with a grudge.

And there's where I disagree with him. "There are more things dreamt of..."etc is closer to my core belief.

But if you are trying to pare your belief system down to its axioms, this proposition does nothing to help you. it's more of a metaphysical belief.

the way I approach this problem is, I try to figire out the minimal axiomatic set which would allow us to derive our knowledge of the world. You could start with axioms of statistics and instrumental theories, for example; but that's pretty heavy. You could start with just the materialistic assumptions; but those are derived.

If you keep digging, at the end you will find is that perhaps the only thing we need to presuppose -- and the one thing we must presuppose -- is that, in some way or another, we can predict a reasonable subset of our future experience; i.e. that induction works. Anything else, arguably including logic and math, can be learned (we surely start out with some ability to manipulate symbols, and it's probably as powerful as arithmetic, but it doesn't have to bear any actual resemblance to logic and math as we know it). However, as Hume had convincingly demonstrated in his argument about induction, induction can only be presupposed -- because to conclude the functionality of induction, you would need induction.

All of which is to say, i think the supposition that we can use past experiences to predict future experience -- i.e. that there is some exploitable order to our experiences -- comprises the absolutely minimal set of axioms we need to have a belief system of any sort. Everything else can be derived from experience, except for the very possibility of deriving something from experience.

Indeed, what I'm saying is, roughly, "'for instance' is not proof." How can you be sure your set of basis vectors - your experiences - is complete?

We can't; and we need not have certainty of that. We do need to be have a reasonably reliable way to predict whether our next action will result in a keyboard click or the house turning into a grand piano. You are right, we cannot make deductive proofs from inductive patterns -- we can't even use induction to prove future observations. We can't even be sure that the next time we throw a baseball, it won't turn into a tap-dancing Key Lime pie singing showtunes while performing an acrobatic strip-tease.

And yet we need to be able to plan, to make decisions with intended (and predictable) consequences -- to stand up, to eat, to throw a rock... which is why we assume that our experiences are predictable, we don't prove it.

If we can predict future events in every case, why don't we? Just because we can predict - with excellent precision - the outcomes of some events, does not imply we can always do so.

You are actually agreeing with me. I don't think you understood what I meant.

I do now.