I Know You Exist, But I Dont Think You Are Real. a thought trail i found myself lost in

[qwijibow 0]

As i right this, im swatting at a huge fly buzzing round my head using a hair brush, but i assure you, as far as i know, i am not insane.One night, after a few exams, too tired to sleep, i was laying in the dark listening to my Mp3 player with headphons. the song was by a band called "Red Hot Chilli Peppers", the song was called "By the way"Its the first time ive heard that song in years, ive only ever heard it in rock city whilst quite drunk.Instead of the usual memor that come flooding back, in my half asleep state, possably dreaming i was 80 years old, still had the mp3 player, it still had the same songs, because computers with USB slots didnt exist anymore. And i was listning to be, beeing reminded of my youth.So i wake up, and start consdering the possability that time has suddenly reversed 60 years.( i read a study once about how tiny quantum particles being affected by future events, causality before cause, the end conclusion was that time doesnt move forward smoothly, it goes backwards a bit, forwards a bit, a bit like a mad random quantum pendulum, ofcourse, being slaves to time, we dont notice, as time goes backwards, we move backwards, memory are un made, etc etc etc)So knowing i was about to jump back to beeing 80 years old, i wanted to have anouther experiance as a 20 year old. I cant wake up my parents (they will think im mad) and tell them i need to talk because in 40 years they will be dead and i wont get anouther chance.time is running out... what to do ? Thats when i saw my radiator, a bit the corner of it, (hurting my tooth a little, when im 80 i may no have any teeth)Now thinking about what ide just done, i had to get up, turn the lights on, and think how normal this is. i know im not insane, im just thinking, beeing philosophical. (the fly is now on my monitor)I went into the garden (it was about 3am by now, we have had a new sofa delivered, the old one is in the back garden) it would be fun to sit, watch the summer sun rise, in a big comfortable sofa, in the back garden, contemplating life the universe and everything.This is when i started thinking about computers, and virtual machnes. X86 emulators.Inside a real computer, you can run a virtual computer.The virtual computer isnt real, but it can do real things, real maths etc.Th only rule, is the virtual machine cannot have more memory, or be more powrfull than the host computer. (its more stupid)Virtual machines can in turn run virtual machines, the same rule applies.this virtual machine isnt even running on a real machine.the pretend machine, is pretending to run a pretend machine, and yet the maths are real, accurate, and correct,What if, we froze time, and magnified a living human bran by a trillion zillian times.and spent all eternaty making an exact copy. same electrical resistance, same wireing, same everything. we make a perfect copy of a brain. both braisn in the same fireing pattern and electrical and cheical activity, not a single electron out of place.wont both brains function ?Now, building this brain is too hard... lets simulate it in a computer, pefrect simulation, perfect physics engine, perfect everything.wont the brain continue to function ?the chemicals in the brain arnt real, the brain cells the the chemical are acting on arnt real, but the simulation simulates the reaction perfectly.the brain continues to function.Now get rid of the computer.Lets say there is a super intelligent beeing with a super intelligent mind.This super intelligent mind Imagines anouther mind, much less intelligent... but it imagines this mind so acuratly, that this mind functions... its self aware, it feels love, is scared to die... the imaginary mind is not real, but the self awareness, and the mouitions are real.What if I, (and you, and our whole universe) are the imagination, of a super intelligent mind, which is in turn the imagination of an even grater mind... GOD for example.We Could all be self aware, but we are nothing more than the imagination of somthing else.The whole universe is a mind... or possably the imagination of a mind.an Insane mind, born deaf, blind, no sensory input... fed through a drip, gone insane, and imagined the universe in its diluded, drunken self.I dont hear voices in my head, but some do, they call it a mental ilness... are those voices self aware ? even on some much lower scale than we are ?the dilusion, of a delusion of a delusion.If i think to hard, ask too many questions, willl the deluden mind that imagined me be locked in an insan asylum, and have me silnced with drugs ?

[mitchellmckain 0]

Have you read or watched "Lathe of Heaven", by Ursula LeGuin, recently? Anyway I guess I am going to be nasty and poke few holes in things you have said.First, your world in the computer. I think you assume too much, at least when you leap from computers to human brains. We designed computers and we can reduce them to as set of rules that must be followed. When you assume that the same can be done for the human brain, I think you assume too much. Now I do not mean that would not be possible to simulate the human brain with a new kind of computer that doesn't have to follow rules the way computers do now. But then I am not sure we should call such a thing, a computer.Second, your world in a some great mind.When this being of yours imagines a so called self aware person can this imagined person ever do anything without your superbeing imagining him do it. And since this person never does anything of its own without the superbeing imagining it first, then would the superbeing really think that the imagined person is self-aware? And what of the imagined person himself? Since the source of all his actions and thoughts are imaginations of the superbeing then how would he ever think of himself as being apart? If the self is not source of your actions or thoughts, then how is it anything at all? How can "I" be the subject of any sentence? If the self is a delusion then what is its purpose and what is its cause?Now suppose this great superbeing could imagine such an autonomous thought that thinks for itself and no longer relies upon his own imagination any longer? Is the superbeing still sane? After all, he no longer has control over his own imagination.P.S. Just so you don't throw me in box for easy dismissal, I am not an atheist or even an agnostic.

[qwijibow 0]

You say computer can be reduced to a set of rules that they must follow, but the human mind cannot. You are correct im making assumtions, (i am assuming the non-existance of what christians call the soul)

I believe that the human brain can be reduced to a set of rules... the rules of physics.
maybe even quantum mechanics.

Just because we dont know all the rules of the universe doesnt mean they dont exist.

As for your point about the imaginary person not being able to do anything without the real person imagining them to do it...

well here is a very interesting non-proovable debate.

A computer has a set of instructions that it follows, a large number of different running programs. One of these programs is the virtual machine, all the instruction says to do, is run a virtual machine, imagine anouther computer... but the virtual machine itself has its own, completely different set of rules, its own different programs.

i would say that the real computer has the ability to kill the imaginary one, but the imaginary one is dependant on the survival, electrivity, and processing power of the real one, but i would still consider it a seperate computer.

When we dream, could you argue that the peopl we imagine are somtimes out of our own control.. i would not consider them as alive as a human, but maybe as mentally aware as an ant or slug ? (are ants and slugs self aware ? i dont think so)

Im not saying that it is humanly possable...
but if we contructed a coputer, and programmed all the laws of physics into, and simulated a small universe, and kick started evolution (playing god) would the microbes in this artificial universe be any less real than those of our own universe ?

in an insane universe where electrons are spinning in all directions at a time... and quantim mechanics... maybe non of it beeing real is the most sane answer.


Edit:
some interesting links i found...
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

and my favorit, a study showing how very simple rules, and produce very complicated outputs, neither completely predicable, or turuely random (just like your brains running on simple one neuron kicks anouther neuron)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/10/24/is-the-universe-a-computer/
phto's in action...
if all 3 blocks above are block, leave white, otherwise colour black.
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[Glockmeister1405241492 0]

Only you know you exist. Everything else could all be a lie, like the Matrix.I think this world runs by a set of rules, but I really don't think that we will be ever advanced enough for us to happen.

[qwijibow 0]

Only you know you exist

i dont know, thats the problem.

[mitchellmckain 0]

I haven't the slightest idea what christians are talking when they talk about the soul. There are too many assumptions in that concept to contemplate. I don't even know what it means to assume it doesn't exist.Now physics I do know, its what I do. And well, quantum physics does represent a set of rules but not so much about what is or what happens but about what you can know and what you cannot. We can use it to understand some phenomena and even to predict others, where quantum uncertainty is dampened out. But it is unlikely that quantum uncertainty is dampened out in a complex system far from equillibrium where chaotic dynamics is likely to play a role. Such a case is the human brain. With all the talk of quantum computers we may someday have computers which can simulate something like this and yet maybe not. Once there were philosophers that believed that everything in human experience could be reduced to mathematical laws. And then a clever guy used Mathematics (or Logic, same thing really) to prove that Mathematics itself could never be proven consistent. I think that this and quantum mechanics raises serious doubt about wheter anything like the human brain can be reduced to a set of rules.People once thought that quantum mechanics might eventually be explained away. They thought as you do that just because we know the cause or the rules that doesn't mean they don't exist. They proposed that there were hidden variables to explain why one measurement and not another after a quantum wave collapse. Well another clever guy, John Stewart Bell, devised and experiment that would actually test if such hidden variable really could exist. These were actually performed and the result was that no hidden variables exist. This suggest serious doubt about whether really are any such rules that you think exists. Therefore, a say you assume too much.It really seems that we are surrounded by events which have no ultimate cause, at least not in the traditional sense of the word, which is what Aristotle would have called effective cause. Most these events are lost in a sea of averages and have no impact in the world we know. The exception is complex systems like the human brain, where it seems likely that the quantum wave collapse is routinely amplified into macroscopic events. How then shall we understand these events without cause? A lot people like to use the word random, as if we really knew what that meant, and they like to use it to mean "without meaning or reason". But consider how we experience them? What really happens when we make choices? Are they without meaning or reason? No, we usually have the reasons ready. But are our reasons really the cause of our choice or did we choose the reasons when we made our choice? Of course many human choices do seem to be somewhat invevitable and some people are rather predictable. But I at least, am not sure whether it is always so. And in such cases I find the word "random" to be a poor description as well. Rather it seems to me to be a rather odd sort of event that contains within it, its own cause. No, it is not causality as we are used to seeing it. But this idea of "self causality", does seem, at least me, to best explain the human experience.I realize this idea is a bit unconventional, but it does provide an answer to a troubling conundrum. If all our actions and thought are just the end of a causal chain of deterministic events that orignate outside of ourself, then why do have the absurd sense of self. Why do we suffer this delusion that we are the author of our thoughts and actions. I guess in the end I am an existentialist and a pragmatist like Kierkegaard and Charles Sanders Pierce. If philosophy is just bunch dead logic without meaning in the human experience then why bother with it. You may call me a fool for grasping at meaning, but then I am not the one whose self image is a mechanistic automaton.Of course, if you are right and the human experience is indeed reducible to a set of rules to be simulated on todays computers, then I have no difficulty with imagined people either. But how could you call them self aware when their sense of self is a delusion. Real awareness in such a being would dispense with the self and be one with the world around him.

[mitchellmckain 0]

The first clever guy was Kurt Godel (o with an ulaut).

 

Oh and this sentence in a later paragraph is missing a "don't"

 

They thought as you do that just because we don't know the cause or the rules that doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

P.S. Just testing. Does "Gõdel" works like in html?

[IcedMetal 0]

Wow, that made me thik in a whole new way. Us being "virtual machines" of God follows the Christian belief; We are all images of God. It could be possible. I guess we will never know till we die, then we can tell no one that dose'nt know. Is'nt that a bummer?

I haven't the slightest idea what christians are talking when they talk about the soul.

The thing about a soul is that it cannot be explained. It is what you think it is, nothing more. So you could say, no one has a similar soul.

[qwijibow 0]

. I think that this and quantum mechanics raises serious doubt about wheter anything like the human brain can be reduced to a set of rules.

maybe not, but a single neuron can easily be reduced to a set of rules.
im not sure if modern biology 100% understands the singl cell neuron, but i doubt there is anything magical about it. its just a single cell.

any idiot can understand a transister. put enough of them together in the right order, and you have an Athlon64 processor.

im not religous myself...
but ive heard the riddle, "could god create a rock so large, evn he could not lift it"
the answer of course beeing boreingly answerred by someone saying "god would create the rock so large that it occupied all the space in existance, and there would be no space to lift it"

what about...... could god imagine a creature so intelligent, that this creature could imagine the universe as we know it.

im trying to tell myself that an imagined beeing could not be self aware... but i dont believe it.

[mitchellmckain 0]

I think you underestimate the neuron. Its complexity not only puts all the computers we have to shame but it is alive. And it is the meaning of this word "alive" wherein all our difficulties lie. I am not so sure that that the neuron and the human being are fundamentally or qualitatively different. Quantitatively different by an enormous factor in many different ways, yes. You see I don't go along with the christians at all when they say that living things are designed in some divine workshop. I think they have there metaphors mixed up, because I do believe there is something fundamentally different between what is "alive" and what is not. The proper metaphor for a creator of living things could never be a watchmaker or other designer of dead things. The correct metaphor must be a farmer who raises crops, a rancher who breeds horses, or a teacher who educates children. These are our real life examples of those who create living things and design plays no role at all.The computer can be reduced to a set of rules because it is designed. I see no evidence for and only a greal of evendence against the possibility that living things could ever be reduced to a set of rules. I don't know what you mean by the word "magical". The only real life use of the word is for things we do not understand. And as far as we have come in understanding the neuron as we have, I think you greatly overestimate this if you think we can say that we understand it. So I must disagree with you on this one, magical may indeed be an apt adjective for the neuron. "Zgibble" is a word with no meaning because it never used by anyone to mean anything, but isn't the word "God" almost as meaningless since so many people use it to mean so many different things? Ok, .... I'll play the game anyway... why not? From your context the word "God" apparently means this being that people apparently believe is all powerful. And you are suggesting that the idea is inherently illogical, I guess. Yawn... The subject is a tad old. I can't do it. Ok, how about this. If there was such an being, what would he do? What would motivate him/her/it? If we are going to talk about such a peculiar being isn't that a more interesting question? What is the point of picking on terms like "all powerful". Power is an illusion anyway.

[qwijibow 0]

The single neuron is painfully predicatable.my study of neurons only goes as far as a university module in artificial neural networks, but still.an neuron has a large number of inputs, and one output, which can be split and used as input to other neurons.if at any one time the total input voltage is above a trigger voltage, then that neuron sends a spike of output through its output connections.this is almost exactly how a transister works.if the input to a transister goes above a trigger voltage, then the transister turns on.the human brain learns by adjusting the trigger voltages.when i say there is nothing magical about a neuron, i mean it doesnt rcieve devine input from a soul hovering above your head... a neuron compares inputs, and firees an output spike.a neuron can be simulated in a ocmputer, no question about it. easy.so why, given a big enough computer, why could we not suimulate several billion, connect them up exactly as they are wired up in Mr.X's head.

[mitchellmckain 0]

Ah yes an approximation simulation and a pretty good estimation at low resolution.At a height of a few thousand feet the people in a city look like ants. Oh, have you played those sim city games.I think weather is much simpler than a neuron and we have pretty good models that we can stick on a computer to predict the weather. ha ha.

[qwijibow 0]

I think weather is much simpler than a neuron

oposite way round to the nth degree.

neuron..
if (Input_1 + Input_2 + .. + Input_N > trigger) then output = 1
else output = 0

the wether !!!!!
how much do you know about chaos theory?
about the butterfly causing hurricanes on the other side of the world?

the entire brain is a chaotic system, just like the wether, but a single neuron is pretty simple.

[mitchellmckain 0]

neuron..

if (Input_1 + Input_2 + .. + Input_N > trigger) then output = 1

else output = 0

 

the wether !!!!!

how much do you know about chaos theory?

about the butterfly causing hurricanes on the other side of the world?

 

the entire brain is a chaotic system, just like the wether, but a single neuron is pretty simple.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK I think this post clears things up a bit. What you mean by a neuron is simply its function in a neural net. If one assume that it does its job properly you can treat it as a set of rules. Kind of like reducing a telephone operator to the rules of his/her job description. Yeah ignore the details and you get Sim City.

 

Once you characterize something as a chaotic system you can start to quantify this characteristic in terms of complexity, speed and more importantly hierarchy. Really complex chaotic systems are hierarchical and looking closely at such a chaotic system you see that it is composed of the interactions between smaller chaotic systems. This hierarchal development enhances the system's ability organize it own structure with greater independence from the environment simultaneous with greater sensitivity to the environment. The greater independence and sensitivity allows more adaptability and better survival.

 

Compared to the speed of neural interaction, the interactions in the chaotic system which is the neuron itself is quite slow. Yet the neuron is way beyond the complexity of the weather. Earth weather, in fact, is too unstable and self organizing systems like hurricanes are much shorter lived. The red spot on jupiter is a different story. They all redirect energy and materials to reinforce their own structure, and eventually they die.

[moonwitch1405241479 0]

I dont hear voices in my head, but some do, they call it a mental ilness... are those voices self aware ? even on some much lower scale than we are ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'll reply to this first

Let's look at this from the inside. (Try to follow my mind here people LOL)

 

I do hear voices, and as far as I can tell, they are self aware, mainly because at times I "overhear" them having conversations with each other and talking about me as if I was a by stander. But that aside, some with MPD/DID (Multiple personalities) they actually have an inside world, a friend of mine even had maps drawn from her"village", where these alters lived, how the communicated. Doesn't that sound like self aware? Like a world inside a human being? Our minds are only limited by ourselves. If we dream, dream that we can fly and that we're soaring over mountains. Then we can see these things, are those less real? Because to US in that very moment it IS real.

 

We are limited in ourselves only because of what WE believe or choose to believe. Everything is an illusion, because how can we be sure that what we see, hear, eat, feel, smell is there. (I know I am sounding like the Matrix)

 

Our biggest limitation is language. I may see apple blue sea green, and you see grass green... while looking at the same object, someone else may see another shade of green, yet there are not words enough to desribe (successfully describe) each nuance of color, scent, sentiment etc. So is what I see reality? Or is your perception reality? And there it is... perception... it all boils down to perception.

 

Another thing, previous experience may cloud our interpretations and perceptions... Some think of good things when hearing the word "father" while others will think of pain.