Life with purpose

I get really frustrated when people get hung up about whether or not there's a God behind it. Because we are then into belief in (or rejection of) religion. So for people from both extremes - atheist and religious - the God of religion is the only concept of a fundamental consciousness. There's no consideration of philosophical alternatives - it is all down to dogma.

The simulation hypothesis is an example of what I'm talking about. Whenever I've come across it I wait for the words "natural explanation". In other words, Some super-intelligent species created a computer simulation of a universe which explains why the laws are so perfectly contrived. But the super-intelligent beings had to have evolved in a Darwinian process (of course) in their own natural (physical) universe. Talk about can-kicking but it goes on all the time.

I definitely agree with that first bit. Maybe it's a bit of bias or whatever showing through, but whenever I see flaws in things like evolution or physics and then someone on the end of it is going "And THAT'S just more proof god is real!" it's like jeez...alright then cool dude. I feel like it's very American focused too, comes to a debate between Christians (specifically their America versions, you don't have dutch christians talking to dawkins or anything) and Atheists. Don't have Buddhists or pantheists going "I knew it Buddhist intelligent design!", or Christians going yknow maybe Christianity is wrong and Buddhism is right cause of this evidence, is just NO I'm right.

As for the simulation, people who take it literally I feel have always been the tech equivalent of religious fanatics. Even Nick Bostrom, the guy who came up with the most recent popular interpretation is like jeez, I only think it's 40% and people who send me proof need to give it a break it's a philisophical question. Same kinda people who believe in something like a Singularity, just tech obsessed people who have gone we're too big for these silly religious superstitions but also the entire universe exists in the mind of our super computer creators and our benevolent AI will make us immortal.

I definitely agree with that first bit. Maybe it's a bit of bias or whatever showing through, but whenever I see flaws in things like evolution or physics and then someone on the end of it is going "And THAT'S just more proof god is real!" it's like jeez...alright then cool dude. I feel like it's very American focused too, comes to a debate between Christians (specifically their America versions, you don't have dutch christians talking to dawkins or anything) and Atheists. Don't have Buddhists or pantheists going "I knew it Buddhist intelligent design!", or Christians going yknow maybe Christianity is wrong and Buddhism is right cause of this evidence, is just NO I'm right.

As for the simulation, people who take it literally I feel have always been the tech equivalent of religious fanatics. Even Nick Bostrom, the guy who came up with the most recent popular interpretation is like jeez, I only think it's 40% and people who send me proof need to give it a break it's a philisophical question. Same kinda people who believe in something like a Singularity, just tech obsessed people who have gone we're too big for these silly religious superstitions but also the entire universe exists in the mind of our super computer creators and our benevolent AI will make us immortal.

Way back in the early days of this forum I started a thread about the very flaws in evolution that you mention here. One of the points I tried to get across repeatedly was that you don't have to be some kind of evangelical fundamentalist to question neo-darwinism. The article I linked in the OP of that thread was making a similar point. I am not at all religious. I have no faith and am as partial to evidence as any of the sceptics here. There are valid questions when it comes to neo-darwinism but the problem is that the evolution debate is considered settled by those same sceptics. There can be no dissent. Anyone who dares to question is an heretic. Looks a lot like another religion when that happens.

However, there is another aspect to the argument and the sceptics have a point: most of the evidence presented as a challenge to neo-darwinism comes from ID proponents and, in particular, the scientists working for the Discovery Institute. That is a very Christian-Conservative organisation - not something I would be drawn to because I'm neither a Christian nor a Conservative. But if their questions are valid and the science behind their research can be checked - even if we don't agree with their ideological conclusions (God did it) - we should consider those questions. It seems to me that the reason the neo-darwinist mainstream refuses to engage with the DI scientists has more to do with the motivation of the DI than the results of the research. I've often seen the argument that they don't engage because the DI research is not scientific and the reason it is not scientific is that it proposes a supernatural cause. Science, they maintain, is based on methodological naturalism which, by definition, excludes the supernatural.

Way back in the early days of this forum I started a thread about the very flaws in evolution that you mention here. One of the points I tried to get across repeatedly was that you don't have to be some kind of evangelical fundamentalist to question neo-darwinism. The article I linked in the OP of that thread was making a similar point. I am not at all religious. I have no faith and am as partial to evidence as any of the sceptics here. There are valid questions when it comes to neo-darwinism but the problem is that the evolution debate is considered settled by those same sceptics. There can be no dissent. Anyone who dares to question is an heretic. Looks a lot like another religion when that happens.

However, there is another aspect to the argument and the sceptics have a point: most of the evidence presented as a challenge to neo-darwinism comes from ID proponents and, in particular, the scientists working for the Discovery Institute. That is a very Christian-Conservative organisation - not something I would be drawn to because I'm neither a Christian nor a Conservative. But if their questions are valid and the science behind their research can be checked - even if we don't agree with their ideological conclusions (God did it) - we should consider those questions. It seems to me that the reason the neo-darwinist mainstream refuses to engage with the DI scientists has more to do with the motivation of the DI than the results of the research. I've often seen the argument that they don't engage because the DI research is not scientific and the reason it is not scientific is that it proposes a supernatural cause. Science, they maintain, is based on methodological naturalism which, by definition, excludes the supernatural.

Pretty much exactly what I mean. I've been put off ID a lot because of the people who support it. I mean, there might be a degree of intelligent design, maybe instead of randomness agents can choose their evolutionary paths, but you can't consider things like that cause it's really just a discussion of god and atheism, SPECIFICALLY American god and American atheism that just infects all debates about the subject. I'm thankful that people like Bruce Greyson stay in the middle ground cause you imagine how bad it'd be if he just was talking about god all the time.

Life with purpose

Phillip Ball

...organisms don’t evolve ‘in order to’ achieve anything (such as running faster to improve their chances of survival). In the end, it’s all meant to boil down to genes and molecules, chemistry and physics – events unfolding with no aim or design, but that trick our narrative-obsessed minds into perceiving these things.

There could be a final cause despite nature's appearance of randomness if we are seeing but one iteration of a simulation. If it is indeed simulations all the way down then the semi-arbitrary branch we find ourselves on might be an attempt to engineer things towards a certain goal... much like this:


or this...

or this...


One mark of general intelligence is the ability to rapidly and efficiently simulate things in your head so as to achieve a goal with as few iterations as possible, so I don't imagine we are one of billions of attempts to get it right, but rather that the simulation might surge ahead in local areas as needed generating what appear from our perspective to be goal oriented synchronicities or highly improbable but meaningful coincidences.

For example, take any random beneficial mutation... not very likely... but perhaps the probability is shaped by the simulation running some side simulations (time-loops) and then implementing the results. So let's say the Owl wants to see in the dark and that desire - especially when persistent over generations - increases the probability of a mutation that gives the owl bigger eyes with more rods and cones because the simulation conducts a local brute force time loop search for the beneficial mutation and then implements the solution on the main timeline giving us punctuated evolution with an inherent final cause related to the desires of the predecessors.

There could be a final cause despite nature's appearance of randomness if we are seeing but one iteration of a simulation. If it is indeed simulations all the way down then the semi-arbitrary branch we find ourselves on might be an attempt to engineer things towards a certain goal... much like this:

I agree on the importance of Final Causes, they have importance at the level of individual possibility selection as well IMO.

I may be missing the Pattern here...but not sure how we can have simulations all the way, as doesn't each higher, more surface level of the simulation dependent on the lower & deeper ones' clock cycles?

Then if this goes all the way - how does anything ever happen?

I agree on the importance of Final Causes, they have importance at the level of individual possibility selection as well IMO.

I may be missing the Pattern here...but not sure how we can have simulations all the way, as doesn't each higher, more surface level of the simulation dependent on the lower & deeper ones' clock cycles?

Then if this goes all the way - how does anything ever happen?

I don't really know... I haven't thought it all the way through... just going by feel.

Things happen because there is a goal because there is a lack that needs to be filled.

If I want to throw a basketball in a goal, I can train in simulation (run the scenario in my mind) and I can train in the real world by practicing. Applying the mental simulations should reduce the number of iterations in the real world required to improve the skill and make the goal. I can also build a robot and use deep learning to run through a billion practice cycles in a simulated physics environment and that robot can outperform me in the real world. 

So in a sense, our real world is God thinking things through trying to work out a solution to achieve a goal and perhaps we are the in the mind of God or the imagination of god working through a simulation in his own mind or perhaps he has created a system that runs orders of magnitude faster and simulates his "real world" by running billions of cycles and that is what we find ourselves in.

Edit: I keep making posts and then going back to YouTube and come across a video demonstrating what I was talking about... here's deep learning where the robot learns in simulation and then applies to real world to solve Rubik's cube:

Seems a bit too product of the time for me. Everyone thought the universe was clocks, then valves, then pistons and now it's fancy simulations. Still a bit too sci fi for me to take literally. But, they are certainly interesting videos to watch and think about.

Seems a bit too product of the time for me. Everyone thought the universe was clocks, then valves, then pistons and now it's fancy simulations. Still a bit too sci fi for me to take literally. But, they are certainly interesting videos to watch and think about.

Technology is a metaphor for the whole of reality because of the relationship between Truth, purpose and will. I can't say it any better than Jason Jorjani, so I'll leave this link here:

Seems a bit too product of the time for me. Everyone thought the universe was clocks, then valves, then pistons and now it's fancy simulations. Still a bit too sci fi for me to take literally. But, they are certainly interesting videos to watch and think about.

I somewhat agree, but I do think that given we all have an interface of the senses between us and Reality it does seem that there is value in thinking of our relationship to the Real as functionally like a simulation.

And for Idealists like Bernard Haisch, John Ringland, Tom Campbell, and Brian Whitworth it seems to me the simulation is a modern way to talk about a very old metaphysics.

I somewhat agree, but I do think that given we all have an interface of the senses between us and Reality it does seem that there is value in thinking of our relationship to the Real as functionally like a simulation.

And for Idealists like Bernard Haisch, John Ringland, Tom Campbell, and Brian Whitworth it seems to me the simulation is a modern way to talk about a very old metaphysics.

That's why I meant literally. Definitely some use to using it metaphorically, like the radio metaphor of consciousness. Consciousness isnt LITERALLY being transmitted to the body like radio waves.