Words of encouragement from scientism

how about the development of anaesthesia?

That was more of an accident than a development, Malf and no one knows how anaesthesia actually works, apparently.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2...aesthesia/

I have had two operations under general anaesthetic this year. On both occasions I awoke with no memory of what had passed between the feeling of mild wooziness and waking up in a different room. Both times I was told that the anaesthetic would make me feel drowsy, I would go to sleep, and when I woke up it would all be over.

What they didn’t tell me was how the drugs would send me into the realms of oblivion. They couldn’t. The truth is, no one knows.

One thing I've never found another solution to is existence itself. It appears that existence is just a brute fact, and thus all things that exist also exist as brute facts. There doesn't appear to be any other possible explanation as any explanation must first start with something existing, which begs the question.

Which would mean that even if there is apparent structure and constraints, those things are or must be based on structureless, open, brute fact. Which would mean that reality and physics operates far more like an API, constants that technically exist, but can be spoofed to get results that are "unintended" but possible. for example, kinetic effects without an apparent kinetic cause. Which would give a very simple mechanism for many psi type effects. I'd argue that quantum mechanics already gives evidence for this sort of model, as far as I can tell, it predicts the behaviour of QM and that it should be more shaky at smaller and smaller scales.

While I didn't bring up the Quantum Foundations information in order to answer your question, it may actually provide an answer. One of the ways we can gain a foothold into investigating a phenomenon is if it shows up somewhere else, unrelated to our initial reasons for identifying the phenomenon. One of the questions which scientists studying the Foundations problem are asking is whether the stuff which leads to wave-function collapse is a different kind of stuff than everything else - whether the results are different in the presence or absence of conscious awareness.

Linda

This "stuff" is well-modeled as decoherence.  The wave function is just good old real-world probabilities in a structured existence.  Collapse of the wave is the "P equals 1" state of affairs.  Physicality is the set of P=1 states in unfolding time.  The goal is to predict the future and in the present the computation is based on the sum of probable states.  New information flow from the environment will shift the P value of converging objects till an outcome occurs.

 A wave-function is a description of a probability, and a probability is a statement of ignorance. Ignorance is not a physical object, and neither is a wave-function. When new knowledge displaces ignorance, the wave-function does not collapse; it merely becomes irrelevant. -Freeman Dyson

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25350

 Multiple information objects (eigenstates) can be measurements of the present.  These are sometimes called super-positions.

I ascribe to the outlook that these information objects and their future and past outcomes can be part of reality.  QM results seem to strongly support this as a sensible view.

No spooky quantum mystical juice.  Minds change real-world probabilities.

[Laird]

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Perhaps ask malf to explain it to you then. He seemed to understand perfectly.

For those who are stressed/ feel anguish in these difficult times, I have found some words of encouragement from our leading elite intellectuals. This is what science (or scientism) and atheism say about mankind, meaning, purpose and spirit:

“Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.”
Jean-Paul Sartre

Enjoy.

I would exclude J. Coyne, from a list of elite thinkers.   The other quotes attack a basic question, is subjective information encompassed by a boundary and doesn't cross over directly to being objective meaning?  This is a related paradox to the idea - that the engine of reality is exclusively in physical events.  It has been been 50 years since I tackled Sartre, but his memes are well-worn.

J-P embraces subjective feelings with all the passion of a Frenchman.  He sees them as pitiful experiences in vain foolish striving.  "Useless passion", is a powerful phrase and attempts to destroy "enthusiasts" and all self-assigned purpose.  He looks at objective meaning and sees blank space.

Of course J-P's "passion" was to dose himself, liberally, to enhance his own subjective environment.

Information science offers a different framework.    Biological information processing is by the same rules as any information processing; in exactly the same way that bio-physics plays by the same set of physical force equations, as inanimate objects.  The mental output of humans or bacteria are not material configurations, but mind processing objective information.  And the flow of information is observable objectively and open to research.  

Minds actively change real-world environments with teleonomic purpose.  It is natural and part of science.  The natural world is brimming with communication, signs and meaning, all open to analysis and theory.

 teleonomic  Biology. the principle that the body's structures and functions serve an overall purpose, as in assuring the survival of the organism.

And for my two-cents, minds also love, create homes, appreciate beauty, act selflessly, experience joy..............

For those who are stressed/ feel anguish in these difficult times, I have found some words of encouragement from our leading elite intellectuals. This is what science (or scientism) and atheism say about mankind, meaning, purpose and spirit:

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant…”
Stephen Hawking

The universe and life are pointless…
In a YouTube video he states that evolution “says that there is no special purpose for your life, because it is a naturalistic philosophy. We have no more extrinsic purpose than a squirrel or an armadillo.”
Jerry Coyne, biologist

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins

That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave. . . Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.
Bertrand Russell

“Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.”
Jean-Paul Sartre

Enjoy.

I'll admit I enjoyed this post in the spirit of good satire, but Sartre and Russell are of a different category, if not in separate categories from each other. Arguably Hawkins too, who asked of physics:

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? ... Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

I wouldn't put deep thinkers like these three in same box as the others you mention?

I'll admit I enjoyed this post in the spirit of good satire, but Sartre and Russell are of a different category, if not in separate categories from each other. Arguably Hawkins too, who asked of physics:

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? ... Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

I wouldn't put deep thinkers like these three in same box as the others you mention?

Some choice quotes from Russell in addition to the one in my signature [keeping in mind Russell is the author of Why I am Not a Christian]:

“The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure—features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.”

- Bertrand Russell

=-=-=

“There will remain a certain sphere which will be outside physics ... It is obvious that a man who can see knows things which a blind man cannot know; but a blind man can know the whole of physics.”

- Bertrand Russell