March 19, 2012
Abandon all hope, ye who enter this thread
by Dave Maier
Christopher Langan's Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) (which, my Ivy doctorate in philosophy notwithstanding, I am utterly incompetent to evaluate) is either a god-awful pretentious mishmash of meshugas, or the most profound metaphysical discovery in history, or something in between. On another day, we might discuss the very real philosophical and metaphilosophical issues involved in the CTMU and its reception.
But that day, my friends, is not today. Today we celebrate, in all its scrumtrilescent glory, an Intertubes train wreck of jaw-dropping scope and power.
On February 11, 2011, blogger Mark Chu-Carroll, a computer scientist at Google, posted on his blog another in a continuing series of posts about amusing internet cranks.
Stripped down to its basics, the CTMU is just yet another postmodern "perception defines the universe" idea."
Sets are a tool that we use to construct abstract models that describe things. The universe isn't a set; it's the universe. And yet a huge part of his argument is, ultimately, based on "disproving" the idea that the universe is a set, based on silly word-games.
This is pure muddle. It's hard to figure out what he even thinks he's doing. It's clear that he believes he's inventing a new kind of set theory, which he calls a "self-processing language", and he goes on to get very muddled about the differences between syntax and semantics, and between a model and what it models. I have no idea what he means by "replacing set-theoretic objects with syntactic operators" - but I do know that what he wrote makes no sense - it's sort of like saying "I'm going to fix the sink in my bathroom by replacing the leaky washer with the color blue", or "I'm going to fly to the moon by correctly spelling my left leg."
Thereafter follows a comment thread for the ages – a multivolume epic with unforgettable characters and deathless prose, slabs of impenetrable verbiage, earnest confessions, wisecracks, vicious personal insults, and a tragic end.
The first comment asks "Could he be trying to pull a reverse-Sokal on us?"
Further discussion centers on the distinction between sets and their contents, which Mark had picked out as Chris's central confusion.
A commenter called Race Traitor helpfully links to an Amazon page called "So You'd Like To Learn Advanced Mathematics on Your Own" and suggests that Chris check it out. allOrNothing responds to this that "Your comment is so condescending the spittle flying from your mouth feels like rain."
What I love about this thread is the way what might be, for all we know so far, a minor semantic quibble (about the use of "set") gets out of hand almost immediately, and mushrooms beyond all conceivable expectation. It's like you can see the trains being carefully assembled and reverently set on their tracks, revved up to full speed (starting miles away for this very purpose) and let loose, the ensuing fiasco unfolding in slow motion over the space of months.
Here Chris could presumably have said "okay, if you want to use "set" that way, let me put it another way for you." And he sort of does; but mainly, he lists Mark's Errors:"If Mark does not desist in his nonsense, it may well turn out to be something he regrets for the rest of his life."
Mark is not having this:"What a load of ad-hominem ridden bullshit."
Again I remove the substantive remarks, as they are not the sort of thing that goes well with popcorn; basically, Mark restates his central point:
As I've frequently said on this blog: the worst math is no math. And that's a pretty good description of your writing. There are lots of mathematical words, but they're used in ways that just make no sense. They look impressive, but when you try to burrow down to get to their meaning, they don't make sense. They muddle together fundamental concepts in nonsensical ways; they blur the distinctions between things that are necessarily distinct.
[insert accelerating train sounds here]
Of course, you won't actually address any of these problems. You'll just wave your hands around and insult me some more. I remain uncertain of just how it is that doing that somehow defends the validity of your theory, but that's probably just because I'm not as smart as you.
On 2/17, Chris provides another exhaustive analysis, loaded with carefully worded digs and faint-praise damnation. It contains a total (unenumerated this time) of twelve attributed Errors:"If I pop in here again, it will be strictly as an undeserved favor. Good day to all of you."
Much discussion follows (I have to elide here, or we'll never get to the good stuff), summarized pithily by MikeTheInfidel: "You can take your 'undeserved favor' and shove it right up your ass."
– but then another defender shows up, and there is more – much more – about sets.
Mark and Chris trade accusations of unintelligibility. Chris shares a joke; the punchline reads
“Wayull, Lurleen,” he drawled after a long and satisfying gulp, “some of ‘em *SAYud* they was. But you know how them @#$$%&s lie!”
Things settle down a bit, and by mid-March it looks like the thread is petering out. (Ha!) For nearly a month the final comment is:
Mr "The Smartest Man in the Room" with an ego to make up for the lack of even basic genius is indulging in Post Hoc Reasoning and Question Begging with the smell of liniment in his nostrils and possibly suffering the side effects of steroids.
But the ad steroidem argument will not be the last word.
I have more delicious excerpts than I can possibly use.
6/27: "[Something John said] means you're asserting that nothing exists. I think you'll have a hard time proving this."
Reply: "Oh, my god. I though the logic could not get any worse. You seemed reasonable."
7/25: Julia_L writes:
"OK, I get it. And if I don't, surely someone will point that out and call me a poopyhead(PH)."
Her conclusion:
"There is no paradox in a finite Universe and the rest of Lagan's extrapolations are not required. However, two plus two DOES equal five and I AM the Queen of England."More back and forth about reality. Shodo namechecks Dr. Bronner. "Seriously, if I had a nickle for every time I came up with a "profound" idea after a few bong rips, sitting on my porch then I would have about $77.45."
Copernicus, Ptolemy and String Theory ("an abomination") are discussed. John Fringe's "mocking tone" is not appreciated ("Good bye sir").
7/28: Mark returns for a brief reprise of his main point.
8/1: Chris responds. His prose is (for our purposes if not his) a joy. Space runs short: I will simply link. Twelve Errors, with a "little sermon" at the end. Its peroration:
if Mark [...] continues to pop off because a few diehard sycophants appear willing to cover for him and get his back even when the springs and cogs and gear oil spray out of his ears, then there’s always a risk that sooner or later, at a time to be determined by fate (and/or me), he’ll learn the unpleasant taste of crow. Raw crow, with the feathers and the mites.
A bravura performance.
Mark replies immediately, but briefly; no quarter asked nor given. Chris replies line by line. The trains may by this point be truly said to have collided; yet the debris has only begun to scatter.
You can’t BS your way out of the pickle you’ve gotten yourself into here. You may as well lie down and play dead.
Stay down, Mark. Don't even try to get up.
On 8/3, Tim shows up. Up to now we have seen nothing. Nothing!
I am a metaphysian. And, so that my boldness is revealed up front, I will let you know that, in your regard, I hope to inject some fundamental REASON in to the debate.
You have been warned.
Briefly, Chris, you underestimate the force behind Kant’s noumenon. Materialism can only be bested by I’dealism. That is, reality is at bottom idea! There is no matter as such! “matter” is, rather, information representing real I’dea. I say I’dea, singular, because … give me a moment please.
Take all the time you like. It's only August.
8/5: Still no word from Mark. Maybe he's staying down. In the meantime Chris returns to say that he knows [Robert] Pirsig well ("clearly a very bright man") but that w/r/t the MoQ, "comparing it to the CTMU would be like comparing a Ford Model T to the Starship Enterprise."
On 8/11 we meet Jeremy Jae. This guy is great.
I can say now that the CTMU is the most amazing holonic theory of reality I have seen; this is the metaphysics of the future. The CTMU alone is obviously [...] the workings of creative genius. It [is] an omnidimensional model of reality (which is nearly impossible for current humanity to penetrate since it is a complete model in fact it may even be overcomplete.) There are several prophetic insights I can see within the CTMU that give us a better understanding of our current gnosis on natural language in man and artificial intelligence that ties directly into my own view of reality and a theory I am working on involving cellular automata and the evolution of physical form by AI.
8/23: Chris himself returns:"It appears that the confusion persists."
Unfortunately, it seems that
most CTMU critics resemble obnoxious schoolchildren on the rampage, popping off about this or that awful grownup in a way reminiscent of the movie series "Children of the Corn", or perhaps the old Star Trek episode "Miri", the sci-fi tale of a mirror-Earth in which [...] ragtag death-squads of prepubescent rug rats [...], unafraid of spankings and unwilling to toe the line for anyone displaying any degree of mental and emotional maturity, occupy themselves with tracking down and liquidating any grownups - derisively referred to as "grups" - of whom they get wind.
8/31: Jeremy Jae links to "a video I made in 2003 about 'eidetic evolution', a theory of how mental images generate all form in reality."
Rubix is unimpressed:
Who the heck voiced that video? The Cave of Wonders?
TOUCH ONLY THE LAMP.
Anyways, what you're saying is BS.
On September 1, a further momentous showdown begins. Chris: "Good Lord Almighty." He makes a connection between "John Fringe" and John Noble's mad-scientist character on Fringe. I love that show!
9/3: Chris explains his SIWOTI syndrome:
some [readers] erroneously assume that your critique is some sort of expert consensus, as opposed to the aimless bloviation of just another opinionated part-time blogger whose “math expertise” is confined to writing boilerplate code, and who is weighted down by the bursting load of pseudonymous toadies in his pants.
Even though anonymous critics and their ringleaders are a dime a dozen and notorious for spewing smelly mud like ruptured sewage lines, the bunch of you are simply beyond the pale. Obviously, any hostility associated with your squirting behavior falls on your heads alone.
You, Mark Chu-Carroll, are definitely the primary troll here; the juvenile trolls only gathered because they smelled meat. You might as well live under a bridge, polish your scales, and gobble up unwary billygoats.
9/6: Rubix is getting frustrated:
Will you guys please quit plugging up the thread with huge spamwalls of text and keep to the topic at hand? Share that stuff over email or something.
9/14: A new commenter (not me, I swear, though I couldn't have put it better myself):
I'm leaving this comment only to say that, despite the sheer intimidating length of the comment thread, this sort of thing is like porn. The messy kind that may leave you feeling slightly dirty at the end an in need of a bath with sold scrubbing, but thoroughly enjoyable throughout the actual act of perusal.
Glorious metaphysics porn.
9/28: Chris, in response to Mark:
Generally speaking, the typical defender of the CTMU is a model citizen if not an absolute saint next to the typical CTMU critic, who would evidently lie, cheat, steal, and pimp his sister, mother, and grandmother in order to get over on the theory, smear its author, and express his hatred of God and religion.
9/28: TUNAPOLOCS:
What is the difference between a mathematician and a metaphysician? They both have paper and pencil, but mathematicians have a garbage can.
Rubix accuses Chris, openly this time, of lying about his (perfect) SAT score. Pathological liar, extreme bitterness, childhood demons, insecure and likely jealous, petty, narcissistic liar, ego-stroking and attention-seeking, disrespectful, disgusting disgrace, unjustly self-entitled. Whew! Chris isn't going to like that!
Isotelesis quotes Chris discussing the "ERSU, short for Expanding Rubber Sheet Universe [and the] USRE (ERSU spelled backwards), short for Universe as a Self-Representational Entity." More: Prigogine [where has he been all this time??], Eric Jantsch, Hermann Haken. Gertzel's Chaotic Logic. The Necker cube, as discussed by Atmanspacher and Filk. Alternative approaches to bistable perception.
TUNAPOLOCS posts a block of text which looks like it comes from the Postmodernism Generator, and indeed: "8942852 individual pieces of bullshit generated since this program's inception on November 11, 1998"
Back (darn nesting, ruins the chronology) to 9/29: another wall of text from isotelesis. Then another.
Rubix protests: "Posting paragraphs is okay if they're short, but you're just posting huge globs. [...] This isn't my blog, but jeez."
isotelesis, 9/30: "It seems MarkCC agrees with Chris Langan on at least one point, the universe can be modeled by an intrinsic, self-scaling, multi-attribute/constraint satisfying information synthesizer."
Mark: "Why on earth would you say that?" Oooh, bad question. The ensuing slab of text is a leviathan, a behemoth, a doomsday machine. Rubix: "lol. Yeah, that wasn't predictable at all."
9/30: Rubix admits defeat:
Anyways, all I will say is that Chris Langan is by **far** the best troll I've ever seen. For that, I have to give him credit. [...] He's uncrackable. I've wasted a great deal of time trying to get him to admit his scam, but he's just too persistent. I yield, Chris. You win.
On 10/3, after yet another salvo from Chris against "Chubix," Mark disemvowels Chris's next post, which now ends like this: "Hv nc d."
Mark:"I've been blogging for a long time, but I've got to say you're one of the most profoundly, pointlessly, and arrogantly idiotic people I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with."
Reply: "Mark, you're a full of it as a Thanksgiving turkey. [...] All in all, you’re a stain on the Internet, your mother, and the planet Earth." Yes, he went there!
The ban-hammer is unsheathed and displayed:
Let me make something abundantly clear to you. [...] If you want to keep playing these idiot games where you spew insults, you're welcome to waste your time, but they'll hit the bit-bucket, unread.
On 10/5, Chris is again disemvoweled. Mark explains that Chris had threatened legal action. Chris's reply, in which he accuses Mrk of cnsrshp, is likewise disemvoweled. A further reply has apparently been autodisemvoweled.
Isotelesis returns with another slab about the Yoneda Lemma, and another about RDF semantics and the the lattice approach of Formal Concept Analysis of Ganter and Wille, not to mention the distributed logic of Information Flow of Barwise and Seligman. I keep expecting Fartov and Belcher, but no such luck.
More. More still. Mark: "For goodness sake, don't you have anything better to do with your time than copy-and-paste what seem to be entire books?"
10/14: flaneur: "I find all of this very entertaining."
November is very eventful, with more slabs from mereotelic aka isotelesis, and a new commenter who engages with Mark at length (civilly). Nothing more from Chris.
I have omitted some classic exchanges, including two hilarious parodies (by John Fringe) of other commenters' "arguments", but I have already overstayed my welcome here today. I leave the penultimate words to Tim [11/27]:
I continue to confidently suspect that Langan's CTMU is missing a degree of complexity. What is self-configuring and self-processing is thee i'dea ("I am"), and "language" doesn't fully capture it. Langan, I think, gives short shrift to the syndiffeonic meduim, and endorses his unbound telesis (UBT), but thee i'dea must be self-bounding, so, in short, I don't think he can properly arrive at an understanding of Jesus' "above". And should I suspect other than that the "Iron Rod" with which the "victor" will "smash" "the nations" [below] is the Plank scale?! (See Revelation 2:27, and the context! {and should I suspect other than that "Jezebel" is materialism, qua the lie "universe"?})
11/28: Shadonis to Tim: "I think you're crazy."
Comments are closed on 11/30, as (Mark informs us on a subsequent post), the drain on the server when commenters refresh was getting out of hand. They're still at it, I think, on that new post, but alas, the thrill is gone.
Posted by Dave Maier at 12:50 AM | Permalink
Comments
My favorite aspect of this extended performance art piece is the vague threats. They go great with the mustache.
Posted by: tomas | May 14, 2012 2:14:31 AM
Hamid: Yes, I see that Mark knew that Chris had published in an ID forum, but that's not at all the same thing as "going after him" for that reason (even if Blake does suggest it). (Also, I do concede to Chris that "going after" Chris is an apt description of Mark's post, whatever the reason for it.)
Christian: I'm not sure this helps in the context, which I have not been following, but to my ear "∀x P(x)" means "Everything in the domain has the property P". Without a model I can't tell whether it's *true* or not, but is that sufficient for meaninglessness in the relevant sense? If so, there's your difference with Tuukka.
Chris: I think you give Dawkins too much credit. Of course you're right that he wouldn't be up to the debate, but that doesn't mean he's avoiding it on purpose because he knows he'd lose. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't even heard of you or the CTMU. Not everybody watches TV.
tomas: Absolutely.
Everyone: Note the little icon at the bottom of the page, right above "Post a Comment". This means that we have gone onto the next page of comments, so new comments will not appear on the main page of the post. Also, I have a new post up today - check it out!
Posted by: Dave M | May 14, 2012 9:39:14 AM
Dave Maier: "Chris: I think you give Dawkins too much credit. Of course you're right that he wouldn't be up to the debate, but that doesn't mean he's avoiding it on purpose because he knows he'd lose. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't even heard of you or the CTMU. Not everybody watches TV. tomas: Absolutely."
Perhaps you're right, Dave. But are you sure you really want to say so?
You see, if you're right, then Richard Dawkins would have to be quite stupid. This would be true for one or both of the following reasons:
(1) It is quite stupid to claim that you know whereof you speak regarding a given subject when you actually have nothing but your opinion to go on, especially if there's more to the subject in question than mere opinion after all (and regarding theology, Dawkins obviously can’t say whether there is or there isn't).
(2) It is quite stupid to claim that you know what you're talking about even while sequestering yourself away from most of the world in the Holy Ivory Tower (aka the universities), thus limiting your awareness to a closed system which filters and/or blocks out any idea not originating or already existing within it, even if said idea receives repeated airplay on (inter)national television and major periodicals and then lingers on the Internet throughout the entire next decade.
If I were Richard Dawkins (which I admittedly am not and would not wish to be), and I were saying some the things that Richard been saying with respect to theology and other branches of philosophy and science, I'd make very sure that I was as up-to-speed as I could be on these subjects … as opposed, for example, to waiting for one of my equally blindered academic associates to tap me on the shoulder and whisper "Pssst! Richard, there's somebody out there who the mass media says is a lot smarter than you, and who swears up and down that he can prove you're full of cow manure!"
Obviously, one doesn't get up to speed in one’s chosen field by assuming that academia is necessarily a one-stop shop on all avenues of intellectual commerce. There's simply no evidence for such an assumption – there can’t be, because academia is a profoundly circular enterprise - and making assumptions on no evidence is something that no self-styled intellectual authority should ever do, especially with the intention of treating or (worse) promoting them as facts.
I suppose I should also mention that several years ago, there was an extremely aggressive and underhanded attack against me and the (former) Wikipedia CTMU article that was traced to the website of an organization called “The Brights’ Net”. If you need three guesses to figure out who ultimately controls this website (despite the boilerplate disclaimers), I’ll give them to you without hesitation. It may be circumstantial, but it’s highly suggestive nevertheless.
By the way, I once had a beard to go with the mustache. This raises an interesting question: does something that sounds like a threat when accompanied by a mustache sound as menacing when the mustache is augmented by a beard? Or do the benign public images of trusted figures like Daniel Dennett and Santa Claus weigh against such a likelihood?
One thing's for sure – as any academically certified philosopher is well aware, many important philosophical issues hang in the balance! ;-)
Posted by: Chris Langan | May 14, 2012 1:05:45 PM
Who do you mean by "we"? Are you trying to convince Chris to not tell me the things he already said he is considering to tell? Why would you want to discourage Chris from explaining the CTMU?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | May 14, 2012 2:00:36 PM
Christian,
I don't know any of my alleged blunders, except that there should be a myriad of them according to you. :D Well, it's not like I'd really care about that. What is more interesting is what exactly would you find me to have missed with regards to syntax and semantics. I see any such issues could possibly have a connection to the formalization of romantic quality in the Metaphysics of Quality, and that's why I'm asking. I might get new ideas from your attempts to explain yourself. I'm here to learn, not to piss and moan.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | May 14, 2012 2:07:26 PM
Since I mentioned "named sets" earlier, I thought I'd add some of the reasons why I thought this was interesting, and how the CTMU actually covers the topic of attributive duality.
"In modern mathematics, the naming theme emerges in different ways. The great Russian-French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck—still alive but no longer active as a mathematician—put a heavy emphasis on naming as a way to gain cognitive power over objects even before they have been understood. One observer of Grothendieck's work wrote, "Grothendieck had a flair for choosing striking, evocative names for new concepts; indeed, he saw the act of naming mathematical objects as an integral part of their discovery, as a way to grasp them even before they have been entirely understood." Mathematicians often observe that, on the basis of intuition, they sometimes develop concepts that are at first ineffable and resist definition. These concepts must be named before they can be brought under control and properly enter the mathematical world. Naming can be the path toward that control.
...
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this topic became critical when mathematicians developed whole classes of "mathematical objects" of which no one had earlier conceived. Being totally unknown, they arrived unnamed. There was even serious doubt that they truly "existed." Maybe they did not deserve names.
...
Particularly valuable work in this new field of set theory was done by Russian mathematicians, especially Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin. Both of them were under the heavy influence of a religious sect of the Russian Orthodox Church called Name Worshippers, whose members put a heavy emphasis on the power of naming. Intellectually and religiously, Egorov and Luzin were descendants of the desert fathers of the fifth century, who had such a strong influence in the Russian Orthodox Church. Egorov and Luzin believed that if they named God, they assured his existence, and similarly they thought that by naming the new sets, they could make them real. God could not be defined, but he could be named. The new sets also resisted definition, but they too could be named. The Russians returned to Moscow and created one of the most powerful mathematical schools of the twentieth century. The story of what they did, and how religious thought motivated them, is told in the recent book Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity, written by Jean-Michel Kantor and me."
http://philoctetes.org/news/the_power_of_names_religion_mathematics
"Sylvester James Gates Jr. is a professor and director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland. I interviewed him once before, years ago, for a program on Einstein's ethics. We talked then about the inspiration he drew from Einstein's little-remembered passion for racial equality. James Gates spent part of his own childhood attending segregated schools, but he went on to become the first African-American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university.
...
Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being — conversation about meaning, religion, ethics, and ideas. Today: "Uncovering the Codes for Reality" with string theorist S. James Gates.
Ms. Tippett: Something that you've written about that's part of your endeavor is naming what you see, right? So, I mean, is that one way that we interact with these physics, just by naming what we see?
Dr. Gates: You know, in many cultures, the act of naming is regarded as a very, very powerful thing.
Ms. Tippett: Yes, yes. It's creative.
Dr. Gates: For us, the naming represents a celebration of becoming aware, of knowing the universe at a different level than we had known before. One of my favorite examples is something that today we just take for granted. It's called the electron. But there was a time before anyone ever dreamed that such an object could exist. In fact, we know the first person who had that dream. It's a guy named G.J. Stoney. He was an electrochemist in England and he said, "Hmm, there's a funny bit of possibility that there's a bit of matter smaller than an atom." He was a person who later actually named the object the electron. So what does the naming do for us? Well, once we know it's there, we can start to use it. And, boy, we're using it at the very instant with the electrons that we're manipulating to talk back and forth.
Ms. Tippett: OK, all right.
Dr. Gates: So this comes from the naming. So it's a little bit like magic. You know, it's like in the Harry Potter movies, there are all these spells, conjurists, this and thats.
Ms. Tippett: So thrilling, yeah.
Dr. Gates: Exactly. So in some sense, if science conjures, it's when we get a clear picture of something that we didn't know and we give it a name.
Ms. Tippett: So everything we're talking about here, the strings and even the electrons until not that long ago, were not proven they're unseen, but you talk about the telepathic nature of mathematics.
Dr. Gates: Yes.
Ms. Tippett: So that even before some of these things can be seen in this literal sense, the theoretical physicist has this extrasensory perception organ [laugh].
Dr. Gates: Yes. Mathematics is a sensory perception organ for those who learn how to use it that way. The example I like to point out most is the idea of the atom. Again, today a very mundane idea. You say atom and people yawn and say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we know all about atoms." But you can ask, who was the first person to understand how big an atom is? You know, this is a question you very seldom encounter, but the answer turns out to be rather surprising. It's a guy named Albert Einstein.
...
Dr. Gates: About the adinkras and the codes. This blogger, who, to this day, I don't know this young man, read the article and he raised the question that, if the equations of fundamental physics are based on information theory and essentially information theory is at the very center of string theory, how did it get there? And his implication is that indeed this is something for theologians to contemplate. You know, that was, again, for me a stunning assertion and it still has yet to be fully studied. But it probably will not be studied by physicists [laugh]."
http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/codes-for-reality/transcript.shtml
"There is also the divine unity or entity which is sanctified above all concept of humanity. It cannot be comprehended nor conceived because it is infinite reality and cannot become finite. Human minds are incapable of surrounding that reality because all thoughts and conceptions of it are finite, intellectual creations and not the reality of divine being which alone knows itself. For example, if we form a conception of divinity as a living, almighty, self-subsisting, eternal being, this is only a concept apprehended by a human intellectual reality. It would not be the outward, visible reality which is beyond the power of human mind to conceive or encompass. We ourselves have an external, visible entity but even our concept of it is the product of our own brain and limited comprehension. The reality of divinity is sanctified above this degree of knowing and realization. It has ever been hidden and secluded in its own holiness and sanctity above our comprehending. Although it transcends our realization, its lights, bestowals, traces and virtues have become manifest in the realities of the prophets, even as the sun becomes resplendent in various mirrors. These holy realities are as reflectors, and the reality of divinity is as the sun which although it is reflected from the mirrors, and its virtues and perfections become resplendent therein, does not stoop from its own station of majesty and glory and seek abode in the mirrors; it remains in its heaven of sanctity. At most it is this, that its lights become manifest and evident in its mirrors or manifestations. Therefore its bounty proceeding from them is one bounty but the recipients of that bounty are many. This is the unity of God; this is oneness;—unity of divinity, holy above ascent or descent, embodiment, comprehension or idealization;—divine unity—the prophets are its mirrors; its lights are revealed through them; its virtues become resplendent in them, but the Sun of Reality never descends from its own highest point and station. This is unity, oneness, sanctity; this is glorification whereby we praise and adore God."
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/c/FWU/fwu-20.html#pg68
"For example, Creator presupposes creation, Resuscitator implies resuscitation, Provider necessitates provision; otherwise, these would be empty and impossible names. Merciful evidences an object upon which mercy is bestowed. If mercy were not manifest, this attribute of God would not be realized. The name Lord proves the existence of subjects over whom sovereignty is exercised. The name Omniscient demands the objects of all-knowing. Unless these objects existed, omniscience would be meaningless and without function. The name the Wise necessitates objects for the exercise of wisdom; and unless wisdom comprehended them, this name would be inconceivable. Therefore, the divine names and attributes presuppose the existence of phenomena implied by those names and attributes."
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/PUP/pup-93.html#pg275
"Thus, according to a general understanding, a name is a label or representation of a "thing" or place that is normally used to distinguish between one another (Wikipedia). Names can have different meanings in different contexts, the particular meaning that is intended is considered as a binding (Irlam, 1995). Names acquire more and more economical value (Marshall, 2000)." - Mark Burgin, Theory of Named Sets
"Each component of a fundamental triad plays its unique role and has a specific name: the Entity 1 (Essence 1) is called the support, the Entity 2 (Essence 2) is called the reflector (or the set of names) and the connection (correspondence) is called the reflection (or the naming relation) of the fundamental triad."
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~mburgin/papers/FstrSUM4.pdf
"In science and nature we study and utilize collections of objects by organizing them by relations and patterns in such a way that some structure emerges. Objects are being bound together to form new objects. This process may be iterated in order to obtain higher order collections. Evolution works along these lines.
When things are being made or constructed it is via binding processes of some kind."
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.6228.pdf
"Where local structure conspansively mirrors global structure, and global distributed processing "carries" local processing, causal inconsistencies cannot arise; because the telic binding process occurs in a spacetime medium consisting of that which has already been bound, consistency is structurally enforced."
http://ctmucommunity.org/wiki/God
"Even if CTMU were a definition rather than a theory, definitions are necessary components of theories. There is an inclusory relation, not a total distinction, between the two. In fact, the CTMU can be characterized as a THEORY of how the mind DEFINES and IS DEFINED by the universe."
http://megasociety.org/noesis/58/05.htm
"The fact that most such theories, e.g. theories of physics, point to the fundamental status of something “objective” and “independent of language”, e.g. matter and/or energy, is quite irrelevant, for the very act of pointing invokes an isomorphism between theory and objective reality…an isomorphism that is subject to the Reality Principle, and which could not exist unless reality shared the linguistic structure of the theory itself.
...
For example, while it is easy enough to identify an individual element or set by constructively naming or “enumerating” it, e.g. “X”, identifying its complement often requires that its name be used as the basis of a restrictive constraint that can be applied across an entire finite or infinite context in one attributive operation, e.g. “not-X”. The duality relationship holding between names and constraints is nicely captured by De Morgan’s laws, ~A∩~B=~(A∪B) and ~A∪~B=~(A∩B), which express it by permuting the objective and attributive operations ∪ and ∩.
Because states express topologically while the syntactic structures of their underlying operators express descriptively, attributive duality is sometimes called state-syntax duality."
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Langan_CTMU_092902.pdf
"In the New Testament, John 1 begins as follows: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (my italics). Much controversy has centered on this passage, as it seems to be saying that God is literally equivalent to logos, meaning “word”, “wisdom”, “reason”, or “truth”. Insofar as these meanings all refer to constructs or ingredients of language or to language itself, this amounts to the seemingly imponderable assertion that God, of Whom believers usually conceive as an all-powerful Entity or Being, somehow consists of language. The CTMU is precisely what it takes to validate this assertion while preserving the intuitive conception of God as the all-knowing Creator – or in non-theological terms, the “identity” or “generator” – of reality. Nothing but the CTMU can fully express this biblical “word-being duality” in a consistent logico-mathematical setting." - Langan
http://www.superscholar.org/interviews/christopher-michael-langan/
Posted by: Hamid | May 14, 2012 4:41:15 PM
Tuukka, I think that what Christian and others are trying get at here is that (1) technically, "undefined (or partially defined) predicate" is an oxymoron, and (2) nothing without a proper definition is meaningful, in a strict logical sense, to the people with whom you’re ostensibly trying to communicate.
You cannot specify a definition only partially and still claim to have a “well-defined predicate". That's because a definition, model, or predicate is a mapping into or onto a universe, and must therefore terminate on some specific set of points or relations within or on that universe.
Once you specify the full definition of "the number whose successor is 0_i", including all definientia thereof, there is no longer a semantic conflict of the kind you propose. Why not? Because you have now specified a numerical universe for your predicate, and thus eliminated any others with which it might have conflicted.
On the other hand, if you specify all (of the usual) such universes, they form a tower of mathematical fields in which your "predicate" must be precisely located (defined, modeled, “predicated”). To wit, where a number is an element of a certain field, you must specify a field in order to define “number”. That’s why mathematicians refer not to garden-variety numbers in their proofs and equations, but speak explicitly of natural numbers, integers, rationals, reals, complex numbers, quaternions, octonions, and so on.
On the other hand, if you choose to define "number" in a general way that applies to the elements of any possible number field, thus to capture the bare essence of what it means to be a "number", then you can't make a contradiction out of the resulting predicate. That's because it means precisely the same thing in every possible universe (and in your terminology, can be "nonrelativizably used"). Moreover, you can’t specify precisely what it means to be the “successor” of a number. All you can do is define 0 as a generic additive identity, which is not enough to define "the number whose successor is 0_i".
In either case, if you fail to specify a particular universe of numbers in which to model your predicates and any questions thereon formulated, then (1) you cannot obtain an answer to the question "is there a number of which 0 is the successor?"; (2) you cannot claim that the (missing) answer is self-contradictory; and (3) you have no contradiction to use against the CTMU.
I hope this is clear to you now.
Posted by: Chris Langan | May 14, 2012 5:19:01 PM
Chris,
Logically, yes. And this issue in no way differentiates the CTMU from most other ontological theories, such as materialism or idealism. These theories already implicitly contain assumptions like M=R or MAP, except that in the case of materialism/physicalism it's of course not "mind" that equals reality, but "physical objects". So is the merit of the CTMU to explain in more logical terms the assumptions most ontologists have already been making for millenia?
My point is not so much to criticize the CTMU in particular, but to point out that the logical approach is unsatisfactory due to reasons anyone can perceive. Like I said:
Right now, if you want to understand me, you'll find it obvious that there are nonrelativizably used predicates, even though the technical logical approach cannot grasp them. The nonrelativizability article is the most mathematical description of them that I've ever read. But it's not a proof -- just a description of entities that are beyond the logical approach, from the viewpoint of logic. Initially, I wasn't sure the CTMU does not even intend to discuss this sort of things, as I had heard it's intended to be revolutionary.
Does the CTMU provide any solution to the symbol grounding problem? In other words, in what way does the theory of the CTMU correspond with actual experience? My own theory, Sets of Quality, finds nonrelativizably used predicates necessary for solving the symbol grounding problem, and solves that problem to some extent. It ascribes observable structure to phenomena, just like theories of physics do, but the scope of phenomena it deals with is much broader than that of physics.
You spoke of the separation between normative science and empirical science in some introductory text or abstract of the CTMU paper (I don't remember exactly). But apparently the CTMU is purely normative and formal? If not, how not? Right now the CTMU seems like a dialectic taxonomy that has no specified relationship with phenomena. If you do want to actually refer to phenomena, how do you do that without nonrelativizably used predicates?
For example, how are you going to refer to the actually experienced emotion "joy"? You can't capture that emotion into a definition or into a word, because merely reading the word "joy" does not necessarily make you feel joy. If the CTMU can readily differentiate the actual experience of joy from a reference to that experience, how does it do that?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | May 14, 2012 6:35:08 PM
I should also mention that the relationship between logic and geometry is becoming increasingly appreciated in physics through computer science.
"My aim in this short article is to provide an impression of some of the ideas emerging at the interface of logic and computer science, in a form which I hope will be accessible to philosophers.
Why is this even a good idea? Because there has been a huge interaction of logic and computer science over the past half-century which has not only played an important role in shaping Computer Science, but has also greatly broadened the scope and enriched the content of logic itself.
This huge effect of Computer Science on Logic over the past five decades has several aspects: new ways of using logic, new attitudes to logic, new questions and methods.
These lead to new
perspectives on the question:
What logic is — and should be!"
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.5342v1.pdf
"We argue that the search for the ultimate theory of physics can be modeled mathematically as the search for an algebraic system with the property that the set of all its representations forms an algebraic system isomorphic with to the original. The simplest examples of algebraic systems with this property are identified with corresponding theories of physics. The philosophical setting is developed in the form of a Kantian-like thesis."
http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~majid/Plog/Entries/1990/6/21_Entry_1_files/pri.pdf
"Here then is an idea from a Physics Essays article I wrote some 20 years ago, and now covered in my chapter of On Space and Time. Let’s start with the very simplest theory of ‘physics’ — and I don’t mean Physics 101, I mean at the level of my 1 year old son. At the moment he is busy (I think) naming things, dividing the world into different classes of objects. Apples, pears, fire-engines … and learning about logical connectives such as ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’. What I mean here, broadly, is the logical part of language as a description of the world, something which goes back to Aristotle, if not earlier. The theory consists of statements about objects falling into these various groups. And perhaps you have come across a useful ‘pictorial’ way of thinking about this called ‘Venn diagrams‘. Basically, fix some Universe of all possible things within some context, represented by box. Inside this box different groups of objects are represented as (possibly overlapping) regions.
Now, here is the neat bit. You can just as easily work with the complement of a region as the region itself. Thus if a certain region is called ‘apples’ then its complement ‘not apples’ is some other perfectly good region or concept. Although not formalised till many centuries later in the work of the British mathematician de Morgan, classical logic at this level has a deep symmetry in which speaking about a class of objects is equivalent to speaking about its complement:
“This is not an apple or an orange” is equivalent to “This is a not-apple and a not-orange.”
This is not an apple
It would be quite cumbersome but we could systematically replace the concept of apple by the concept of not-apple in all of our language. In working with complements you have to interchange ‘or’ with ‘and’ (as in the example above) and ‘nothing’ with ‘everything’ (within some context) and so forth. It is a transformation of the whole way that we talk about the world. In the case of apple and oranges it’s obviously better to work with a ‘localised concept’ than with the delocalised ‘not-apple’ but what about adjectives such as ‘heavy’ where there is less of a bias? “This is not a heavy apple” is equivalent to “this is either not an apple or it is not heavy.”
...
Clearly this complementation-symmetry of logic is lost in more advanced theories of physics. It was lost as soon as Newton discovered gravity, because real apples cause gravity (curve spacetime as we say these days) while not-apples need not.
My proposal is that in quantum gravity something like this complementation symmetry should be restored."
http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/12/aristotle-may-provide-the-key-to-quantum-gravity/
"Now as to the infinite Power that knoweth no limitations; limitation itself proveth the existence of the unlimited, for the limited is known through the unlimited, just as weakness itself proveth the existence of power, ignorance the existence of knowledge, poverty the existence of wealth. Without wealth there would be no poverty, without knowledge no ignorance, without light no darkness. Darkness itself is a proof of the existence of light for darkness is the absence of light."
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAF/taf-2.html#pg20
"In the same proportion that the body of man is developing, the spirit of man must be strengthened; and just as his outer perceptions have been quickened, his inner intellectual powers must be sensitized so that he need not rely wholly upon tradition and human precedent. In divine questions we must not depend entirely upon the heritage of tradition and former human experience; nay, rather, we must exercise reason, analyze and logically examine the facts presented so that confidence will be inspired and faith attained. Then and then only the reality of things will be revealed to us.
...
Man should continue both these lines of research and investigation so that all the human virtues, outer and inner, may become possible. The attainment of these virtues, both material and ideal, is conditioned upon intelligent investigation of reality, by which investigation the sublimity of man and his intellectual progress is accomplished. Forms must be set aside and renounced; reality must be sought. We must discover for ourselves where and what reality is."
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/PUP/pup-104.html#pg328
"Conspansion is not just a physical operation, but a logical one as well. Because physical objects unambiguously maintain their identities and physical properties as spacetime evolves, spacetime must directly obey the rules of 2VL (2-valued logic distinguishing what is true from what is false).
Spacetime evolution can thus be straightforwardly depicted by Venn diagrams in which the truth attribute, a high-order metapredicate of any physical predicate, corresponds to topological inclusion in a spatial domain corresponding to specific physical attributes. I.e., to be true, an effect must be not only logically but topologically contained by the cause; to inherit properties determined by an antecedent event, objects involved in consequent events must appear within its logical and spatiotemporal image. In short, logic equals spacetime topology.
This 2VL rule, which governs the relationship between the Space-Time-Object and Logico-Mathematical subsyntaxes of the HCS, follows from the dual relationship between set theory and semantics, whereby predicating membership in a set corresponds to attributing a property defined on or defining the set. The property is a “qualitative space” topologically containing that to which it is logically attributed. Since the laws of nature could not apply if the sets that contain their arguments and the properties that serve as their parameters were not mutually present at the place and time of application, and since QM blurs the point of application into a region of distributive spacetime potential, events governed by natural laws must occur within a region of spacetime over which their parameters are distributed."
http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Supernova.html
Posted by: Hamid | May 15, 2012 2:03:59 AM
Let me recap recent events for you, Tuukka.
1. On your own initiative, you came onto this thread to inform me and the rest of the world that you had nailed me and my theory dead to rights on a certain novel but irrefutable point of logic.
2. Noting that you had made some errors, I tried to dissuade you.
3. You denied that you had erred and persisted in prosecuting the CTMU.
4. At your insistence, I pointed out your primary error of comprehension regarding your target.
5. You denied that you had erred and persisted in prosecuting the CTMU.
6. Somebody else pointed out an obvious but seemingly trivial error that you had made.
7. You denied that you had erred and persisted in prosecuting the CTMU. I was the raccoon, you were the coon-dog, and I was to be treed forthwith!
8. I again tried to dissuade you.
9. Others joined in, expanding on the seemingly trivial error of logic that you now seemed bent on compounding.
10. You again denied that you had erred and persisted in prosecuting the CTMU.
11. I explained precisely what your critics meant, how it ties into your own logical terminology involving "nonrelativized predicates", and (again) why your terminology cannot be used against the CTMU.
12. You now insist that the CTMU is, in effect, trivial and insignificant because it fails to accommodate "nonrelativizable predicates” (as already explained, the CTMU accommodates all valid predicates), and because you, personally, cannot see how it solves the “symbol-grounding problem” or “the problem of joy".
I am advising you once again to desist.
I have no trouble believing that you have your own theory of reality, and that it represents an interesting new perspective on certain philosophical issues. To the extent that it is actually unique, I sincerely wish you the best of luck with it. But now that you have made it very clear how much you actually understand of the CTMU and its relationship to logic, don't you think you'd better return the favor?
Please bear in mind that over the last couple of decades, many people - some having extraordinary IQ’s, and some claiming to be professional academics but strangely unwilling to come clean about their actual identities and qualifications – have tried to find "errors" in my work. Not one has succeeded. There is a very simple reason for this: my work is exactly what I say it is, and by the nature of its design, it is absolutely bulletproof. This is why it has been deliberately marginalized by the very successful, very profitable coalition of Academia, Inc. and Atheists-R-Us. But only a fool would take this marginalization as indicative of its true worth. Regardless of any misunderstandings that have been propagated regarding it, it is in every way valid, significant, and revolutionary.
I'm sure that you have arguments against this, Tuukka. (Arguments, if not all of the logic behind them, seem to come very easily to you.) However, we have now established that you lack the CTMU comprehension to justify detailed answers to your various CTMU critiques, none of which seem to be based on what the CTMU actually says or actually is.
If you like, you may explain your own theory of reality to anyone who is interested. But be careful, as just one of two things will prove to be true regarding it.
(1) It cannot be comprehensively interpreted in the CTMU, in which case it is logically invalid.
(2) It is valid and can thus be interpreted in the CTMU, in which case you should avoid casting any doubt on its fulfillment of this requirement by casting further aspersions on the CTMU.
I hope that we now understand each other at last. Once again, best of luck with your own theory, and thanks for the opportunity to learn a bit about it.
Posted by: Chris Langan | May 15, 2012 9:57:11 AM
Yahoo! It will be very interesting to comment on that book with its actual content and details :)
I can't wait.
Posted by: John Fringe | May 16, 2012 7:59:41 AM
Chris,
Why did you do that?
I don't give a flying fuck about that. :D
But my work is better than yours.
I totally agree.
An exagerration.
You sure have convinced yourself about that! I didn't say the CTMU does not succeed in its goal. I said the goal isn't that good.
Severely incorrect. It can be deemed neither logically valid nor logically invalid. You haven't understood Wittgenstein.
The CTMU is a formal poem. My theory has correspondence with actual experience.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | May 16, 2012 9:25:35 AM
So I guess that's it for Tuukka then. He bravely took his best shot, and missed by a mile.
Tuukka, I enthusiastically applaud your courage, if not your encyclopedic comprehension of logic and analytic philosophy, and wish you Godspeed on the road to whatever kind of insight may inspire you.
But wait a minute ... as far as philosophy and for that matter entertainment are concerned, this really isn't a very satisfactory outcome at all, is it.
After all, we know by reading the glowing references for 3 Quarks Daily that several highly qualified big-name academic atheists count themselves as readers (Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, and so on - no surprise there, as it's an interesting and attractive site). But it just doesn't seem right that every single one of them would let the Tuukkas of the world go up against mean, God-believing intellectual bully Chris Langan all alone like this.
Are we really to believe that not a single big-name academic atheist reading this blog, while operating honestly and forthrightly under his real, illustrious, and fully verifiable name, has the compassion, intestinal fortitude, and sheer academia-certified brainpower to help poor Tuukka out of his jam?
Isn't one of these dedicated crusaders willing, for example, to defend Tuukka's belief that the CTMU is nothing but an incomprehensible "poem", or that it fails to nontrivially describe the structure of reality, or that it does not imply the existence of God?
Come on, now. Won't the atheistic bedrock of academia send out its best man so that we can see whether or not he, it, and its obedient cash cow, the commercial (technical nonfiction) publishing industry, are all that they crack themselves up to be on the subjects of God, religion, and reality theory?
Yes, yes, I know. Big-name atheistic academics are exceedingly busy "defending science" and debunking religion and all that. Why, it's their public duty!
But still, as almost anyone with half a sniffer is aware, it smells a bit off ... almost like something may be rotten in Denmark, so to speak.
Well, I guess we'll just have to see what happens, won't we.
Posted by: Chris Langan | May 16, 2012 3:55:06 PM
What a display of blatant mendicancy we've got here from the rascal! XD One almost feels sorry for him...
Posted by: John Fringe | May 16, 2012 6:24:44 PM
Before one even considers that question, one should first ask, who has found value in your work?
Posted by: Sagredo | May 16, 2012 6:49:34 PM
Fringe, you shouldn't be talking. You are an individual who gratuitously (and quite reprehensibly) insults people under the guise of anonymity. That makes you quite pathetic in anyone's book.
Now I'm not saying I'm 100% pro-CTMU, but I would gladly defend Langan a thousand times from the likes of you.
This is because:
(a) Langan has disclosed his full identity to the general populance in the form of media exposure. This has led to him being constantly insulted and disparaged by anonymous accounts on internet fora, one of which you seem to be the main participant.
(b) Langan is willing to defend his ideas publicly under his own identity.
(c) Langan does not insult anonymously (this being the main reason).
Imagine yourself in the reverse situation - you are now widely known to the general public in the form of media exposure. Then you find hundreds or thousands of anonymous accounts on the web making highly insulting comments about you. You know damn well you would not make even half of these comments in person.
So go ahead and continue to anonymously insult, but you deserve zero respect in my book.
Oh yeah, and: XD LOLOLOLOL aren't I clever with this little snide side comment.
Posted by: Frank J. Aiello | May 16, 2012 8:59:46 PM
Great argument, Aiello*. Anonymity is making Langan wrong XD. Damn anonymity! Only a well known respected scientist who can attract interest to Langan so he can sell books can speak in the same forum as him, so that every time anyone googles "Langan" all you see are those famous names! Dammit!
In any case, you know, some people have zero respect for vaporware theories, people who beg for reflected fame to try to make a living by selling books about vaporware, people who believes everything they read (like IQs), people defending theories without actually saying a word about the theory contents, theories founded on inconsistent axioms, people discovering the dynamics of Dark Matter without knowing what the center of mass is, people insulting anonymous people because they haven't got academic credentials and then famous scientists because they they've got academic credentials, and various other situations.
That "gratuitously" is very questionable, by the way. I made my objections crystal clear. I thought this just isn't the forum (this is the forum about how crazy the forum to argue about this was). In any case, if you've got some actual concrete point to defend CTMU you want to argue about...
I just can't control who respects what. I live with it XD
*Presumed Aiello, I mean XD
PS: I love how you speak for everybody
Posted by: John Fringe | May 17, 2012 6:27:44 AM
Damn those members of the French resistance which fight the Nazi occupation! They operated under anonymity! They deserve zero respect! Sons of bitches!
--------
Disclaimer: I'm not comparing myself in any way with anything nor anyone else. Just showing anonymity has no relation with who is right and who is wrong, while fulfilling Godwin's law in the less damaging way, and giving my touch of satire. Not for the humorless. High quality troll food
Posted by: John Fringe | May 17, 2012 6:51:33 AM
Some are born to anonymous cowardice; some achieve it; some have it thrust upon them by the fickle finger of Fate (e.g., as it was thrust upon the French Resistance by the Germans).
Some of those who achieve it or have it thrust upon them - not many, but a few - can, by dint of hard effort, sincere remorse, and a strong desire to improve themselves, reverse their conditioning, transform their malicious intent, and turn over a new leaf.
"Fringe", would you like to step forth out of the shadows and reveal your full and verifiable identity, thus showing yourself to be something like an honest and well-intentioned participant in the discussion?
That way, I can attend to any substantive CTMU critiques you may actually have, where by "substantive critique" I mean something that I can recognize as bearing in some specific way on my work, as opposed to your sporadic eruptions about me and it (which you don't understand in the least, but in place of which you have constructed a bizarre, Rube Goldberg-style contraption around which you dance while croaking voodoo chants).
By the way, you're not a victim, and I'm not the intransigent, well-entrenched power in this conflict. You have nothing to fear but (1) emerging the victor at last, or (2) being unmasked as a resentful little troll who vengefully follows me around from forum to forum as I try, as calmly and patiently as possible, to defend my work from those who would denigrate it.
It's either that, or you might as well go away. As long as you remain anonymous, you and your remarks have no constructive value at all. All that they can do is degenerate in a defamatory, ad hominem way to the point at which they begin, sadly enough, to damage the reputation and credibility of those whose hospitality you abuse.
After all, we've seen that happen before.
Posted by: Chris Langan | May 17, 2012 9:01:46 AM
I'm having a déjà vu here, something must be happening in the Matrix.
If you want to now how the conversation follows, go to page http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/02/11/another-crank-comes-to-visit-the-cognitive-theoretic-model-of-the-universe/
On the contrary, if you're lazy and want to know how it ends, go to page http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/12/01/the-annoying-ctmu-thread/
Choose your own adventure!
PS: Dave, get ready to write another "that discussion became mayhem" post.
Posted by: John Fringe | May 17, 2012 9:50:00 AM
Chris,
Huh? But I believe in God and have had conversations with Him. I am not interested to prove the existence of God, but that's only because the thought hasn't occured to me. I also don't know how to do that. For me, the Buddhists proved millenia ago, that what we in the West consider philosophy is pretty whacked. Nobody here is interested of their proofs! :D Well, a few are. :)
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | May 17, 2012 2:17:20 PM
Hello Chris, I just want to say thank you for your ongoing work!
Through participation in the strange world of high IQ (...and high ego) communities I stumbled across The Art of Knowing and soon after, the CTMU. I moved back and forth between various textbooks and the CTMU, taking a significant amount of time before arriving at a place of what I feel is true understanding. The majority of what I had viewed as genuine criticisms (some of which were shared by CTMU commentators) were addressed and removed by more background reading. It took quite a self-critical eye to view these objections as my own ignorances, or maybe it was my youth, but either way I would encourage other readers to take the same approach. Consequently I've found it to be a logically sophisticated framework overlapping with much of Alfred North Whitehead's work, Buddhist and Vedic philosophy, more obscure work on consciousness like Thomas Campbell's "My Big Toe" and indeed my own writings have been extended by it.
It was mystifying to read Mark Chu-Carroll's thread. The key to true learning, understanding and discussion from that place is pure curiosity. Many commentators are unable to sever attachment to their prematurely cooled ideas. Concrete in terms of their inpenetrable nature, not of their weight. The CTMU is in logical congruence. Take this as an opportunity to learn rather than indulge in egotism. Likewise I wish you wouldn't waste your time with much of this Chris. I am looking forward to your upcoming book.
James
Posted by: James F. J. Flynn | May 17, 2012 3:32:54 PM
Chris,
yeah, thank you too! I wouldn't have gotten back to philosophy without you. Guess your book will be a must-have. As a westernization of Buddhism, the CTMU is better than Structure of Emptiness.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | May 18, 2012 5:45:53 AM
A new book from Mr. Langan! Looking forward to that. I'm never really 100% certain that Chris isn't trolling us, but on the basis that I find reading him intellectual stimulating for my own thought, I suspect the fat lady hasn't sung yet in this opera.
Re. the evil question, I think it's resoved in the observable fact of language, in that a phenomenon may bear many senses of "good" and "bad" relative to various points of view.
The idea of trust in God would be to trust that the WHOLE PICTURE (or the point where all the relative goods and bads coincide?) has at least some tendency towards good (/rational).
I think it's relatively clear that the resolution of any ToE has to include the observer in some capacity as also being the Universe itself. Metaphysically everything is the Centre, is God, and that includes observers knowing stuff about the world, interacting with it, avoiding the bad, cleaving to the good. So basically, I guess ultimately morality has to be grounded in our self-realization as deities, and a concomitant resolution to act hereinafter with the dignity appurtenant thereto :)
Posted by: P. George Stewart | May 30, 2012 2:35:04 PM
In case anyone missed the earlier quote, Langan mentions the CTMU could be described in non-theological terms if one prefers, so I hope non-thiests do not underestimate Langan's powerful ideas simply over the historical term "God". He uses the terms "identity" or "generator" of reality. My view is that the identity of reality is "God" or "Unbound Telesis", while the generator of reality is "God's Will" or "Multiplex Unity", though I'm sure my question may be based on an inadquate interpretation, I think many Athiests don't bother to question the adequacy of their own interpretation of what God really is or means.
"The operation of combining language, universe, and model to create a perfectly self-contained metalanguage results in SCSPL, short for Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language. This language is “self-similar” in the sense that it is generated within a formal identity to which every part of it is mapped as content; its initial form, or grammatical “start symbol”, everywhere describes it on all scales. My use of grammatical terminology is intentional; in the CTMU, the conventional notion of physical causality is superseded by “telic causation”, which resembles generative grammar and approaches teleology as a natural limit. In telic causation, ordinary events are predicated on the generation of closed causal loops distributing over time and space. This loop-structure reflects the fact that time, and the spatial expansion of the cosmos as a function of time, flow in both directions – forward and backward, outward and inward – in a dual formulation of causality characterizing a new conceptualization of nature embodied in a new kind of medium or “manifold”."
http://www.superscholar.org/interviews/christopher-michael-langan/
Posted by: Hamid | Jun 2, 2012 6:14:13 AM
What do manifolds have to do with logic? Their relationship isn't unique to the CTMU, though perhaps the coherence of its scope is unique. What I'm interested in isn't a silly debate between Dawkins or Dennett and Langan, even MarkCC with his Ph.D. in mathematics and just "one-extra-semester of Descartes" short of a Ph.D. in philosophy couldn't even get fast his prejudice to even find a foothold on the topic, while trying to bash Langan for daring to scale a mountain he couldn't even make a dent in.
Many public intellectuals have been ignoring their responsibilities, which Langan has taken the trouble to remediate. I think Malcolm Gladwell (who interviews Langan in "Outliers") was the first to actually bother to do his research, though Langan isn't the type to go after such people for attention, I think if there could be a fair public discussion with other fair, legitimately qualified, and publically reputable intellectuals...that would be great, if only reputation always coincided with fairness or qualification with apparent legitimacy. I think the fact that Langan tries to make his work accessible to people without a background in such highly technical subjects makes him an educator without peer, if only people were willing to admit they could learn a thing or two from someone without a foothold in academia.
It seems like such a wasted opportunity, perhaps are only a handful of people in the world who could really understand the CTMU as of now. I hope that by finding relevant connections with other researchers, it will lead to more opportunities for the polishing effect of education to bring out the latent virtues in humans.
"All relations, mapping and functions relevant to reality in a generalized effective sense, whether descriptive, definitive, compositional, attributive, nomological or interpretative, are generated, defined and parameterized within reality itself. In other words, reality comprises a "closed descriptive manifold" from which no essential predicate is omitted, and which thus contains no critical gap that leaves any essential aspect of structure unexplained. Any such gap would imply non-closure."
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Langan_CTMU_092902.pdf
"When one uses a particular logical formalism, one makes an ontological commitment to being able to interpret the symbols involved. We discuss this in a case study of geometric logic, being aided by a presentation of the logic as a sequent calculus. We also discuss the connections of geometric logic with topology and algebra."
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/papersfull.php#TVCL
"This book is the first to present a new area of mathematical research that combines topology, geometry, and logic. Shmuel Weinberger seeks to explain and illustrate the implications of the general principle, first emphasized by Alex Nabutovsky, that logical complexity engenders geometric complexity. He provides applications to the problem of closed geodesics, the theory of submanifolds, and the structure of the moduli space of isometry classes of Riemannian metrics with curvature bounds on a given manifold. Ultimately, geometric complexity of a moduli space forces functions defined on that space to have many critical points, and new results about the existence of extrema or equilibria follow.
The main sort of algorithmic problem that arises is recognition: is the presented object equivalent to some standard one? If it is difficult to determine whether the problem is solvable, then the original object has doppelgängers--that is, other objects that are extremely difficult to distinguish from it."
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7903.html
"Let’s make this short and punchy. We start with propositional logic, which consists of nothing but tautological, always-true relationships among sentences represented by single variables. Then we move to predicate logic, which considers the content of these sentential variables…what the sentences actually say. In general, these sentences use symbols called quantifiers to assign attributes to variables semantically representing mathematical or real-world objects. Such assignments are called “predicates”. Next, we consider theories, which are complex predicates that break down into systems of related predicates; the universes of theories, which are the mathematical or real-world systems described by the theories; and the descriptive correspondences themselves, which are called interpretations. A model of a theory is any interpretation under which all of the theory’s statements are true. If we refer to a theory as an object language and to its referent as an object universe, the intervening model can only be described and validated in a metalanguage of the language-universe complex.
Though formulated in the mathematical and scientific realms respectively, Lowenheim-Skolem and Duhem-Quine can be thought of as opposite sides of the same model-theoretic coin. Lowenheim-Skolem says that a theory cannot in general distinguish between two different models; for example, any true theory about the numeric relationship of points on a continuous line segment can also be interpreted as a theory of the integers (counting numbers). On the other hand, Duhem-Quine says that two theories cannot in general be distinguished on the basis of any observation statement regarding the universe.
...
The messages of Duhem-Quine and Lowenheim-Skolem are as follows: universes do not uniquely determine theories according to empirical laws of scientific observation, and theories do not uniquely determine universes according to rational laws of mathematics. The model-theoretic correspondence between theories and their universes is subject to ambiguity in both directions. If we add this descriptive kind of ambiguity to ambiguities of measurement, e.g. the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that governs the subatomic scale of reality, and the internal theoretical ambiguity captured by undecidability, we see that ambiguity is an inescapable ingredient of our knowledge of the world. It seems that math and science are…well, inexact sciences.
How, then, can we ever form a true picture of reality? There may be a way. For example, we could begin with the premise that such a picture exists, if only as a “limit” of theorization (ignoring for now the matter of showing that such a limit exists). Then we could educe categorical relationships involving the logical properties of this limit to arrive at a description of reality in terms of reality itself. In other words, we could build a self-referential theory of reality whose variables represent reality itself, and whose relationships are logical tautologies. Then we could add an instructive twist. Since logic consists of the rules of thought, i.e. of mind, what we would really be doing is interpreting reality in a generic theory of mind based on logic. By definition, the result would be a cognitive-theoretic model of the universe."
http://megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Theory.html
Posted by: Hamid | Jun 2, 2012 7:51:01 AM
Hi Everyone.
I'm baffled as to why Chris Langan is being treated so poorly when he has accomplished so much. We should be thanking him for his generoisity in sharing his discoveries of the universe with entire public.
I look at it this way: when past "geniuses", of a lesser caliber than Langan, discover something incredible about the universe, they did everything they could to obscure their findings and make it as difficult as possible for people like us (the "everyman") to understand their discoveries.
A good example of this point is Isaac Newton: when Newton "discovered" new things about the universe, he (Newton) at first likely had some general notion of what was going on, and understood in his own mind, what was going on with a particular phenomena, but had no way to describe it. So, his solution was to take the easy way out in order to bring his discoveries to fruition: he created a new math system (CALCULUS) in order to rigorously mathematically prove his theory. Calculus, and newton's theories were able to be communicated elegantly and effectively throughout the last few hundreds years, and have paved the way for modern engineering and science.Calculus is something that even high-school students are taught as it is based on siund, logical foundations of mathematics.
Chris Langan, on the other hand, is a mathematical/philosophical/scientific pioneer/leader of the most true sense. If you study his CTMU for an extended period of time, you will experience the benefits of understanding the universe/God. Chris' theory of everything, as far as I can tell (CTMU), uses an Ivorian-Geometric LaGrangian approach (6-dimensional Cartesian-coordiante in some instances) based sytax (under a theme typicallyreserved for Fourier/DiPasQualian transformstions)) meta-decompressed/unpackaged).
Additionally, did you know that Chris Langan couldn't fit his head on his own motorcycle helmet because his brain is so large?? (This is a fact stated in his interview on ABC a few years ago).
Also, Chris came up with a revolutionary sketch of a neural-network processor design on the back of a bar napkin (unfortunately some jerks were fighting, Chris broke the fight up, and when Chris went back to his area, his napkin with the design sketch was gone)--This story was also confirmed by Langan on ABC I believe).
Anyway, my point is look at the evidence of Langan vs. Newton to see where true heroism, leadership, and intelligence comes from.
Posted by: PHILLYKid07 | Jun 22, 2012 6:41:29 AM
Hi Phillykid,
It's interesting that you would (facetiously?) contrast Newton's form of genius with Langan's, perhaps they could be compared with regard to apparently heretical ideas.
I think Langan's work is fitting in terms of history, one can go as far back as the philosophies of Anaximander (aperion), Anaxogoras (nous), Heraclitus (palintropos), and Aristotle (hylomorphism).
"Newton's religious views developed as a result of participation in an investigative discourse with Nature (the nature of the world) and developed from the apparent dichotomy of biblical reality from the increasing revealing of the structure of reality from investigation, and the subsequent challenges these truths of nature posed toward established religion for Newton, especially in light of Christian scriptural belief. Unorthodoxy was made necessary for Newton, and those affiliated with him, by the need for rediscovery of a prisca truth that had been hidden somewhere in the time of classical history. By this they might have the capacity to engage in open dialogue with an investigation into Nature. In this conflict of ecclesiastical order and the liberating effects of scientific enquiry, he and others turned to the prisca in all the security of a classical civilization having been supposedly founded on bona fide insights. So, for them, the truth lay within the perception of reality attained by Pythagoras and communicated, supposedly in a secret way, to a specific circle of people.
As is found among some of the established intellectuals of the Renaissance age, Newton believed that ancient philosophers and religious persons had gained insight into the truth of the nature of the world and universe, but this truth having become hidden within the language of the recording of the truth at the time and by later medieval scholars (Albertus Magnus, Arnold of Villanova and Roger Bacon) that required deciphering in order to be understood. The belief in the wisdom of the ancients, that thinking was intelligent and knowing in the civilization of classical religious figures (Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet Isiah and Solomon) and writers (Plato and Democritus) is known as prisca sapientia.
Like many contemporaries (e.g., Thomas Aikenhead) he lived with the threat of severe punishment if he had been open about his religious beliefs. Heresy was a crime that could have been punishable by the loss of all property and status or even death (see, e.g., the Blasphemy Act 1697). Because of his secrecy over his religious beliefs, Newton has been described as a Nicodemite.
According to most scholars, Newton was Arian, not holding to Trinitarianism. 'In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_religious_views
"Evidence from a wide range of disciplines, from cognitive neuroscience to anthropology to cross-cultural studies of the world's myths and religions, all support the claim that God is (and always has been) an interpretation, a personification. Furthermore, there is no counter-evidence supporting the claim that God is a person! This fact alone makes sense of the hundreds of competing stories around the world as to what God supposedly said or did.
"God" is a mythic personification of reality, not an invisible friend or otherworldly entity. Indeed, any so-called God that is imagined as less than this is hardly worthy of our devotion and deserves to be mocked, as the New Atheists so readily do. As I regularly remind audiences...
'Poseidon was not the god of the oceans, as if some supernatural entity separate from water was looking down from on high or rising from the deep. Poseidon was the personification of the incomprehensibly powerful and capricious seas! The same, of course, is true of Neptune.
Sol was not the spirit of the Sun, as if there were a separation between the two. Sol was a proper, reverential name for that seemingly eternal, life-giving source of heat and light, and occasionally a life-taking source in times of desperate drought. By saying "Sol," "Helios" or some other proper name, our ancestors experienced that reality as a "Thou" to be related to.'
...
All the aforementioned ways of experiencing human limitations are, of course, unavoidable. Life itself makes us finite. I am not making myself finite. Some mysterious "more than me" is making me finite. This mysterious power, this undeniable reality, says Bultmann, is what cultures throughout history have meant by the word, "God".
...
"Why call this mysterious power ‘God'? Why give the enigma, the mystery that drives us this way and that and hedges us in, any other name but ‘the enigma', or ‘fate'? Or, if there must be a name, why not equally well ‘the devil'? Doesn't this power play a cruel game with us, destroying and annihilating? Is not unfulfillment the distinguishing mark of every life? Is not death and nothingness the end?"
These questions reveal that it matters how we name what is undeniable so, how we think about the inevitabilities of life, because our naming will influence how we will relate to our own finitude—indeed, to all aspects of our lives. If we call this enigmatic power or force, "the devil", we are thereby proclaiming reality to be fundamentally evil and untrustworthy. Such a stance toward life can only lead to despair. If reality is seen as evil, then we are estranged from reality. Yet because we are also inextricably bound to reality—we cannot escape it—we despair.
But despair is not the only option. Bultmann suggests that faith has nothing to do with beliefs; it's about trust. Trust that reality is okay just as it is. Reality is not too tough for me; I was made for reality! This trust gives meaning to our lives. For me to look into the awe-filling fullness of life and pronounce the name "God" means a commitment of my life to reality-based living. That's why I say, Reality is my God, evidence is my scripture, and integrity (living in right relationship with reality and helping others do the same) is my religion. Life as it really is, with all its warts and glory, this is the primary object of my trust, my loyalty, my love.
I foresee the concept of a "personal God" imaged as an unnatural being with the best and worst of human traits—now the hallmark of evangelical Christianity—being replaced by a reality-based view of God within a few generations. Despite how it appears in the Bible, ultimate Reality does not have the deranged personality and character flaws of a Bronze Age warlord. Indeed, evidence suggests that God has no character traits or personality at all, other than what we embody and/or project. God is a personification, not a person. This fundamental shift in the ‘root metaphor' of the Abrahamic traditions will, I predict, be seen historically as perhaps the greatest theological transformation in millennia. This shift, and what follows naturally from it, will also go a long way toward reconciling science and religion. It will do this not by accommodating science to religion, but by naturalizing, REALizing, religion. This shift leads to a serious upgrading of our map of reality. It opens the door to thinking about "God ways" and "God's guidance" via science rather than ancient texts. In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
http://www.thankgodforevolution.com/node/2010
Posted by: Hamid | Jun 23, 2012 3:22:30 PM
Hi,
Earlier in the night before my initial post on Friday, I was drinking heavily with my friends :)
We got into a discussion about the validity of Malcolm Gladwell’s theories. After our conversation I came across his work on Langan, and spent the next few hours that night reading/watching all that I could about Langan. Anyway, I couldn’t help writing a drunken rant against Langan’s ideas :)
As far as I can tell, Langan is just another guy exploiting the current lack of scientific evidence to explain away (via a God, or universal consciousness, explanation) physical phenomena that appear to have paradoxical elements at the moment (i.e. “spooky action at a distance”).
I’m sure I’m just echoing the same comments made by countless others, but Langan clearly uses made-up words in place of any remotely serious math, and it’s outrageous that he’s taken seriously by national TV.
The worst part of all this is that a guy who espouses eugenics and the sentiment that individuals aren’t born free (but need to earn their freedom) received positive media exposure.
Posted by: PHILLYKid07 | Jun 24, 2012 8:45:40 PM
For the sake of accuracy and the readers of 3QuarksDaily, I hereby note that the above pseudonymous post is highly misleading about me and my ideas.
For example, the CTMU does not appeal to “spooky action” of any kind (anyone who says that it does is an ignoramus); the CTMU has a uniquely consistent mathematical structure (a fact which any well-known, well-reputed expert is invited to challenge under his real name in broad daylight in any neutral content-oriented venue); very little of this structure would be comprehensible to the average person, or for that matter academic specialist, were it presented in symbolic language (as opposed to the gentler language in which I’ve considerately described it); I’m not a “eugenicist” in the modern sense of that sorely-abused term, but merely acknowledge the advisability and compassion of genetic counseling and self-discipline (anyone who doesn’t is a selfish imbecile); I believe strongly in rights, but rationally acknowledge that they entail responsibilities and sometimes require training in their proper exercise (depending on the “right” in question), and so on. In short, there is no accuracy at all in the above post or its predecessor, save perhaps for the personal confessions of its author.
For future reference, there is not enough time or coherent thought in one night of “heavy drinking” to read and properly assimilate anything I’ve written, let alone all of it.
Thanks for your attention.
Posted by: Chris Langan | Jun 26, 2012 3:15:52 PM
Chris Langan: "People who wanted to have children would apply to make sure they have no diseases. Why do we have to do it through genetic engineering? Well, we have to let only the fit breed […] Freedom is not necessarily a right. It is a privilege that you have to earn. A lot of people abuse their freedom and that is something that people have to be trained not to do." (literally)
I don't believe that this "we have to let only the fit breed" means the same as "merely acknowledge the advisability and compassion of genetic counseling and self-discipline", but this is just my opinion. People, judge yourselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gjyXG5O0
Posted by: John Fringe | Jun 30, 2012 7:31:10 PM
That (Errol Morris) interview was highly edited; most of the context is omitted. The stage was cunningly set, and various scenarios laboriously created, behind the scenes by the interviewer. Watchers must therefore be careful not to take my responses out of context … and where the context is ambiguous, this is hard not to do.
So let me clarify. For modern human beings, "fit" means "biologically equipped to survive, prosper, and reproduce at replacement levels in a modern technologically advanced society without chronic dependence on medical intervention", which obviously means "physically and intellectually high-functioning and free of debilitating genetic disease".
As any avoidable deviation from this standard unnecessarily and therefore immorally penalizes the “substandard” individual, breeding for fitness is clearly the only moral and compassionate way for people to reproduce. No rational person wants to be intellectually disadvantaged or debilitated by an inherited disease that could have been predicted and avoided; by a simple application of the Golden Rule, prospective parents should do what they can not to inflict genetic diseases or disabilities on their offspring. Only a selfish and immoral (or stupid) parent would carelessly saddle his or her offspring with avoidable problems of this serious kind.
The standard objections are as absurd as they are familiar. "Who are we to interfere with nature?!" (News flash: we've already "interfered with nature" in ways that no one could imagine a mere century ago; that's a large part of the problem.) "Past abuses committed in the name of eugenics are reason enough to suppress the investigation and humane application of human genetic knowledge!" (Abusus non tollit usum.) "Better to effect the social and technological suspension of natural selection and reproductive quality control while continuously degrading the environment and thereby damaging human DNA, and let the human genome go inexorably down the drain by sheer genetic entropy, than to hurt the precious feelings of the genetically disadvantaged and/or reproductively incontinent!" and so on ad nauseam. These objections are so transparently nonsensical that it hurts to repeat them.
Genetic screening is now a reality. Like any technology, it can be used for good or evil. Good people should acknowledge it, and where possible, use it to foster the health and happiness of future generations while preserving the integrity of the human genome. As medical technology and social safety mechanisms allow more and more genetically compromised individuals survive beyond the age of reproduction, anything less would be genocidal.
On to the proper definition of “rights”. Rights consist of protections ("freedom from") and opportunities ("freedom of"). The more densely people are packed together, and the more they must compete for dwindling resources, and the greater and more irrational their senses of entitlement may grow, the more their freedoms interfere in socially destructive ways. This means that they must be trained to exercise their freedoms in socially nondestructive ways, i.e., so that one person's "freedom of" does not violate another's "freedom from" or vice versa. This training should obviously begin in grade school or even earlier.
The only alternative is to leave such matters to a centralized authority that relies on threats and coercion to keep order, and inevitably comes to hold people and their rights in utter contempt. (Sound familiar? At this stage, it certainly should.) That's called a "police state". It is the inescapable political destination of those who want rights without training and responsibility. People who wish such a fate upon themselves and each other are fools, villains, or both.
Which of these describes "Fringe"? As he won't even reveal his name, we have no choice but to guess about that. The best guess is probably "both".
Posted by: Chris Langan | Jul 2, 2012 10:35:16 AM
Langan, you don't understand how evolution or DNA works, yet you want control over it, believing otherwise "human genome go inexorably down the drain by sheer genetic entropy". Classic behaviour, sadly. DNA has been evolving without you for million of years. But you just decided, without understanding any of it, that it's in crisis, and only you can save it by controlling it.
You're just a victim of your own ignorance. No one knows how DNA exactly works. Hell, we don't even understand all the information. It's even more complex, because we're starting to understand that our genetic information is not all in our DNA. As we interact with lots of other organisms, and this interaction is necessary for our development, their DNA carries information necessary for us. And we only have some superficial knowledge about a few genes, not understanding what consequences have a change on them.
Just look at what dog breeders have done. They selected some pure breeds of dogs to eradicate some "deteriorating" traits and reinforce others. You know what? Any pure breed dog has lots of health issues. You change something and get unexpected results. In contrast, most mixed dog has an iron health. In a difficult environment, a street mixed dog will survive far better than any pure breed one. And I'm not talking about those selected for appearance, but for endurance, for example. People simply lack the information natural selection has at hand.
Of course, you can give parents some options about genetic screening. I'm not about "interfering with nature", that's a strawman of yours. In fact, we're part of nature, our actions are nature. But that's their personal option. What you shouldn't do is imposing the same uniform criteria in every breeding. Well, you shouldn't and, fortunately, you can't, and this is a good thing. If you use a uniform criteria, if you just select some traits, you reduce the gene pool and make the species DNA worst, not better. Any criteria like yours just makes DNA more uniform, which is bad. To understand this, you have to understand evolution a bit. Your lack of humble blinds you on this.
That's just one factor: reducing the gene pool is bad. There are a lot others. Natural selection works on individuals, not directly on species. Fitness depends on the environment. I don't know how to illustrate this so people can understand it. Maybe diabetic people are better suited to cope with climate change, we don't know. Maybe only them will survive it XD I will not address all this points here.
To sum up, if you don't understand it and it's working, don't touch it. Or at least, restrain yourself of imposing a uniform criteria in something that works because of its diversity. And despite what you can think, DNA has been evolving for million of years, still is, and it does not degenerate without your intervention. An ignorant sees something good working that he doesn't own and doesn't understand, and claim control in the false belief that an hero is needed and he is the chosen one.
Notice that I didn't mention feelings here. It's simply not good for manhood to do what you say. But this is another topic that, of course, should be addressed. What's society target if not individual happiness? Maintaining DNA pure? Well, I'll not address any of this. But people can see where you want to go here. Not a beautiful direction.
Of course, and fortunately, most people would never give a damn what your opinion is about their offspring. They don't mind if you consider diabetes bad enough to prevent them from having children or not. And this is a very good thing, by the way. And any other thing would not only be pure fascism, but also bad for our DNA.
Posted by: John Fringe | Jul 2, 2012 7:49:20 PM
How is the Mind Equals Reality principle different from Berkeley's Master Argument, which was refuted by Bertrand Russell among many others?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 4, 2012 6:28:21 AM
You just don’t give up, do you, Tuukka.
When it comes to "refutations" of the Master Argument, one can focus on Russell alone, dispensing with the "many others" who have come up with their own poorly disguised versions of Russell's root error.
Russell's root error is called "dualism". The opposite property is called "duality", or in a closed system, "self-duality". (Read the quote in Wikipedia – when Russell fails to recognize the semantic coupling of “in the mind” and “before the mind” as an extended duality relationship, instead mistaking it for an “empty” tautology, the game is up.) As the CTMU is the only possible theory of reality that is fully self-dual and thus uniquely correct, dualism cannot be used against it. (Anyone who doubts this is free to ask any big-name analytic philosopher, mathematician, or scientist to comment openly – that is, without benefit of disguise or concealment - and if the comments are negative, to watch what happens. ;-)
Did Russell make any other errors? Of course he did; one can’t make as fundamental an error as dualism and not compound it. In particular, Russell failed to acknowledge the general nature of “tautology” and the necessary distribution of tautological structure throughout reality, including its informative parts.
In fairness to Russell - always one of my favorite philosophers despite his occasional misconceptions and spectacular theological confusion - Berkeley made certain errors of omission in formulating the Master Argument (entirely excusable, given that he was writing over 300 years ago). Lay it all out mathematically, and these errors quickly become apparent.
But as I've already explained, and as we can see by the continued eruptions of a certain chronically anonymous, ever-belligerent gadfly, this really isn't the place for a detailed discussion (you’ll simply have to wait for the book).
And on that note, let me offer some general reminders.
People who like to discuss moods, feelings, opinions, desires, intentions, knowledge states, and other subjective data should specialize in their own, as these are the only ones of which they can be sure.
People should refrain from bothering others to whom they are unwilling to identify themselves, as this destroys any expectation of honest dialogue.
People afraid to speak for themselves by name have no business pretending to speak for anyone else, let alone “most people”.
I’m sure that most 3Quarks readers are aware of these facts.
Good day.
Posted by: Chris Langan | Jul 5, 2012 12:20:05 PM
XD
Posted by: John Fringe | Jul 5, 2012 12:59:08 PM
Chris, what are your thoughts of my work?
http://wakingvigilantresolute.scienceontheweb.net/
Posted by: Mars Turner | Jul 14, 2012 10:16:48 PM
Chris,
thank you for your reply. I never give up but I'm not decisively your opponent!
If you were familiar with the Metaphysics of Quality you would know that accusations of implicitly duplicating the Master Argument could also be used against that philosophy, which claims everything to be Quality. The MOQ steers clear of actually duplicating the Master Argument by stating Quality as indefinable. Quality consists of static quality and Dynamic Quality, and the latter places the concept of Quality beyond the reach of criticism from the Master Argument. It is a metatheoretic concept that could, for example, include all metatheories of static quality, but in an unspecified form. I checked the link from Mars Turner and it seems Unbound Telesis is a similar concept. Am I right?
Mars, I think you have made pretty good work on this.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 5:44:40 AM
Hey Fringe,
why don't you come out with your real name. A friend of mine thinks you're Dawkins. That should be enough compliment for you.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 11:13:02 AM
Chris,
what is the difference between unbound telesis and the set of the extensions of nonrelativizably used predicates?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 2:51:34 PM
Chris,
the question about UBT and the extensions of nonrelativizably used predicates is the most important one for now. I hope you answer that one, but some other questions come to mind.
Does the CTMU state anything about synchronicity?
Does the CTMU facilitate the idea that humans use concepts whose extensions are not (from a human point of view) dialectic but phenomena? Can the CTMU differentiate between concepts whose extension is dialectic and concepts whose extension is not dialectic?
If John Fringe is bothering you, could you just ignore him? I don't remember anything he has written because it bored me, but he seemed critical.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 3:49:08 PM
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/949261/unbound-telesis
Sorry, I do not mean to be rude, but this is marginally amusing from certain perspectives.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 17, 2012 5:19:37 PM
Carlos,
I think the video was funny until the punchline.
Chris,
basically, I find Russell's criticism of the Master Argument reasonable for any monistic ontological category that does not contain unbound telesis or an equivalent concept. It's not total rubbish. But I don't know whether it really applied to Berkely's work, not having studied it. It could be Berkeley's idealism did not include an equivalent concept, in which case the critique was correct. A concept equivalent to unbound telesis is so abstract and unobvious people cannot be required to understand it's implicitly supposed to be there.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 6:15:26 PM
Carlos,
the idea of Chris as a video game character was funny, and that's what I liked in the animation.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 6:20:14 PM
Carlos,
okay, maybe even the punchline was funny. :D I see a character pair for a tv-show, with Chris solving every problem with superior wits, strength and McGyver-skills while ranting calmly about philosophy, and the other guy complaining and presenting Frasier-like "witty" insults to him. Nothing explains why the critical guy follows Chris to every place. Maybe he's gay and actually has a crush on Chris?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 17, 2012 6:36:07 PM
Chris,
it seems our earlier confusion about me not understanding the difference between syntax and semantics was due to you using "semantics" to refer to romantic quality and me using "semantics" to refer to normative semantics. Romantic quality in the MOQ can be thought to refer to phenomena or direct experience.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 19, 2012 9:16:04 AM
What is confusing about the Mind Equals Reality principle is that it seems to be intended to patch up an essentialist metaphysical theory that does not feature Dynamic Quality, unbound telesis or an equivalent concept. Why should the CTMU have both unbound telesis and Mind Equals Reality? Are they intended to be different ways of saying the same thing?
Another similarily confusing principle in the CTMU is called the Metaphysical Autology Principle. According to Langan it somehow “tautologically renders this syntax closed or self-contained in the definitive, descriptive and interpretational senses” (p. 15). In usual essentialist theories this principle would seem like an attempt to argue against the existence of Dynamic Quality or unbound telesis. But the CTMU has the concept of unbound telesis.
Perhaps all this is an attempt to define the CTMU somehow tautologically, so that it has multiple starting points. The “axioms” of the CTMU, including Metaphysical Autology Principle and Mind Equals Reality, necessitate the formation of the concept of unbound telesis, but having the concept of unbound telesis results in those axioms being true. That is an interesting possibility.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 29, 2012 1:06:09 PM
" Why should the CTMU have both unbound telesis and Mind Equals Reality? Are they intended to be different ways of saying the same thing?"
McGyver: "We only have to envision duct-tape being the solution for every problem for it to be true, and therefore the ultimate ends of the Universe is to produce a mind capable of envisioning duct-tape, and for the realization of duct-tape itself, so yes, your postulate is correct, now leave Chris alone, he's not interested in you that way."
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 29, 2012 8:05:12 PM
Someone sum up the CTMU in an easy to understand manner, please.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Jul 29, 2012 10:49:27 PM
Carlos:
I'm not the critical guy.
Chris Chin:
What I'd like to have is an explanation which proceeds from the most abstract concepts to the most particular ones. That doesn't seem to be Chris's thinking style, though. If he were a programmer he'd code C++ rather than Python. Know what I mean? No wonder he found Pirsig "nebulous", or that I find the CTMU difficult to understand.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Jul 30, 2012 4:47:15 PM
I put a less negative and less opinionated review of the CTMU on my website.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 1, 2012 5:52:29 PM
I think the CTMU fails for one major reason: It involves teleological principles.
It's just a word that implies that things have a purpose or end goal. That's not the way our universe works. There's no evidence of it.
It's a common creationist argument to look at something complex and think that something must have designed it. It's argument from ignorance: "I don't know how else this could be, therefore X."
We already know how things like evolution work, and it doesn't require any guidance or end purpose. Just natural selection and variation.
Of course, even when someone accepts all this, it doesn't explain why our universe appears to be complex. The answer to that is simply, "We don't know yet." It might be a Darwinian mechanism, but we just don't know yet. Anyone who claims to know needs to provide evidence for it.
However, from what I am reading here, it seems like Langan already claims to have done this using logic. The problem there is that logic alone doesn't yield new discovery. You still need evidence. Without evidence, you can pretty much make up anything you want and not be proven wrong. But just because you can't be falsified doesn't mean you're right.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 3, 2012 9:30:58 AM
Chris Chin,
I don't think the teleological goal of the CTMU is something very particular.
Well, Pirsig and the Metahphysics of Quality disagree with you on that one. The universe has a goal, but the goal is not towards definable circumstances but away from them. If you think the CTMU is "hard science" I understand your concern, but it's metaphysics.
I don't mean to divert the topic of this discussion away from the CTMU, but I'm only trying to address your concern. Even evolution has a goal: survival of the fittest. Yet, what does that mean? What is it to be "fit" other than to survive? Evolution is only survival of the survivors if you want an exactly correct definition of the goal of evolution. But that's no longer a very informative description of evolution.
True, but I don't find metaphysical theories to belong within the domain of falsification. Metaphysical theories are used to construct notions of truth -- therefore, to speak of the truthfulness of a metaphysical theory would imply a "meta-metaphysics" which is used to assess the truth value of metaphysical theories. Yet the "meta-metaphysics" would again be difficult to falsify. That doesn't imply all metaphysical theories are of equal value or usefulness -- only that their value is assessed differently from the value of objective or empirical scientific theories. Metaphysical theories can be evaluated based on their elegance, symmetry and inclusiveness. I cannot adequately evaluate the CTMU. It seems either extremely unelegant or extremely inclusive.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 8, 2012 3:05:58 AM
The thing is, science is the lens through which we derive truth about our natural/physical world. A metaphysical conclusion can have multiple explanations/justifications and still be completely wrong. Consider all the metaphysical claims of the past that were rendered false once we made the leaps in science necessary to settle the debate.
Evolution has no goal. That's like saying a rock falling to the ground has a goal to reach the ground. "Goal" is not the right word to use here because it implies an intent. Evolution just does its thing blindly. It's a result of natural processes just like anything else. Evolution is NOT merely "survival of the survivors" -- there's more to it than that. The key point is natural selection and variation. Biological structures (i.e. living creatures in our case) that are better-equipped to outlive competitors are the ones that survive and pass on their genetic material, and what defines "better-equipped" is always changing and depends on all the environmental variables at hand.
As for your paragraph about "metaphysical truth," again I think this is a bit of a misnomer. Here, in the real world, truth value is judged on the merits of empirical evidence. If you're not talking about the real, then there's nothing really to discuss. Anything goes. And frankly, I'm more interested in truth as it applies to our existence.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 8, 2012 8:57:39 AM
Chris,
in another place I wrote:
Does the CTMU facilitate this kind of a proof? If so, what's the proof like?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 9, 2012 3:12:26 AM
Chris Chin:
Agree. Other "lenses" or contexts besides empirical science, that I know of, do not facilitate separate and systematic notions of truth and falsehood about affairs of the external world.
Wrong in which theory or context?
I have never heard of a metaphysical theory being rendered false by science -- only of some metaphysical theories becoming unpopular or popular due to some scientific advancement.
Unprovable. Evolution only does not necessarily have a goal.
I do not find there to be a clear-cut border between entities that have intent and entities that do not. I also do not regard this to cause practical problems such as what are the rights of an unborn fetus. (I think abortion should be legal.) Practical issues are solved by working solutions instead of solutions that are "justified" by some symbolic dialectic. Even if criminals had no intent despite being human, locking them up in a prison for some time seems to be the only way to sustain a working society. The issue of whether criminals have intent or not is irrelevant here -- all relevant issues, that I know of, can be reduced to another issue than that of free will.
What does it mean to be "better-equipped", or more "fit", or stuff like that? It is survival of the survivors. You can't ultimately define those concepts in a way that would provably account for all of evolution. This is not to criticize the theory of evolution, which is excellent because it has practical applications. This is only to point out something about the logical structure of your argument.
Literally speaking, "truth value" is almost never "judged" on the merits of empirical science, but belongs to the subject matter of normative proof.
I don't know what you mean by unreal things.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 9, 2012 3:25:25 AM
"What does it mean to be "better-equipped", or more "fit", or stuff like that? It is survival of the survivors. You can't ultimately define those concepts in a way that would provably account for all of evolution. This is not to criticize the theory of evolution, which is excellent because it has practical applications. This is only to point out something about the logical structure of your argument."
Refuted here: http://www.talkorigins.org/sandbox/Keith/kwork/Ver5_tautology.html
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 9, 2012 12:11:37 PM
If that were what I was saying to you, I would have claimed theories of empirical science have no empirical justification. They do. But empirical science does not necessarily have empirical justification if placed in a context in which empirical justification is not required. I do not disagree with the link you presented. As far as I bothered to read it, it stated obvious things that are beside the point I'm making here.
I am sick of having to deal with arguments that are unrelated to my own, because I expect to be able to talk with people about things that interest me. I mean no disrespect, but I've wasted a lot of time for this kind of discussions, and I just don't know how to keep them from occuring again and again. Let's not discuss this.
I could talk about this from the social role of a teacher, with the appropriate respect and attention invested in my input. But for some reason you seem to perceive this discussion as an opportunity to defend the theory of evolution. Therefore you are unlikely to grant me such a social role but rather, to divert the discussion to a topic that has little to do with the CTMU or with what I said.
What pains me is that you sending me that link could imply that you do not know metaphysics can be a topic of discussion.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 10, 2012 6:34:43 AM
Actually the page is somewhat interesting, because it sheds light on the notion that in a finer analysis it makes sense to differentiate evolution from survival. That hadn't occurred to me. Let's try again.
You said:
This is not necessarily true. There is no obligation to construct only such metaphysical systems in which evolution has no goal. Same goes for this:
There is no obligation to believe this. Lack of empirical evidence for a belief does not entail the belief is banned.
There is no metaphysical requirement to believe this.
That world is the only real world to you. If you wish to stay in this discussion, trying to persuade everyone think like you do, I maybe cannot prevent you despite finding your way of thinking a crippled version of what I think. However, as for my metaphysical ideas, you have devised opposition to them yourself. Nothing in my thinking provoked you to oppose them, but you have some apparent belief that everyone should think in terms of empirical evidence. I, too, think everyone should think like me unless they have a better system (yours is not, as it is a fragment of my system with no additional features), but I acknowledge I can invoke a true change in thinking only voluntarily, so I am probably wasting my time here.
Much respect to Langan for bothering with these kind of arguments. I don't know whether engaging in this sort of discussion is training for something unpleasant that I will have to do more in the future, or a genuine waste of time. I suppose my goal would be to learn to hear these kind of arguments without flinching, but the disappointment is hard to stomach whenever someone wants to prove that only a part of the whole is real. I feel life is more fun when I focus on my own thing. I came here due to an optimistic belief I could share my thoughts with others. Perhaps a more reclusive approach would guarantee short-term happiness for me, but on the other hand, it seems hard to accept people truly think like this. I get the feeling someone's got to do something, and only a few people actually are doing anything.
In any case, what I intended to talk about was not about whether empirical science is true. The whole question of the truthfulness of empirical science is a matter of totally arbitrary definition. I understand you have problems there in the USA (you're from there, right?) because creationists want to change curriculum for absurd reasons. I don't think this debate has anything to do with that, however. Langan appearing as a creationist actually makes sense metaphysically, but has nothing to do with the curriculum issue unless used as the foundation of political stick man arguments. There is possibly a danger that the CTMU is used so. However, I am still only interested of the metaphysics and not of the potentially troublesome stick man arguments, because metaphysics is important to me, and I could not advance important things in my life if I presumed people are so evil as to abuse anything that I would say. Even if I were to end up in some kind of peril because of that, I don't think a person really has a better way to attempt to live than to try to do what they want.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 10, 2012 7:29:28 AM
In a sense, I falsely accused you of not providing metaphysical arguments in the first place. The discussion you want to engage in could probably be considered metaphysical. My view is more like meta-metaphysics, because I'm not interested in proving any single metaphysical stance as correct, but examining their mutual relationships.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 10, 2012 7:33:53 AM
And maybe your system does have additional features within it's own scope, so it's not decisively lesser than mine. I'm interested in metaphysics that have a low level of detail, a high level of methodological rigour (higher than that of Descartes) and a maximally high scope. Your empirical stuff may have a a high level of detail and a high level of internal consistency, but a small scope. As far as I know, expansion of scope tends to be the hardest to obtain.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 10, 2012 7:44:07 AM
"The whole question of the truthfulness of empirical science is a matter of totally arbitrary definition."
The point of empirical science is that it never asserts absolute truth at any given point (which is why the ability to be falsified is required). The idea is to get as close to truth as possible by observation, testing, prediction, etc. Science can show things to be demonstrably true. We know for a fact that evolution occurs and the evidence for it is overwhelming. Can it be falsified? Absolutely. But such a falsification would need to be something gargantuan in order to explain away such a great deal of consistent evidence.
Anyways, I think the more important point here is to address something like the following:
"There is no obligation to construct only such metaphysical systems in which evolution has no goal."
To be very clear, when I say "evolution has no goal" I probably should have said "There's no evidence that evolution has a goal. On top of that, the evolution we see is consistent with an evolution that has no goal." This is why we say "evolution has no goal." It could turn out to be wrong, but again, without evidence for it, there's no reason to assert it.
To argue that evolution has a goal means that there's some intent behind how things unfold. However, we can explain how things unfold through natural laws. There's no need to invoke an intent. Is is possible? Sure. Anything's "possible" when there's no evidence to contradict it. But then why believe in it or take it as a serious argument? That's why metaphysics tends to get put to the backburners. It's fun to wax intellectual over, but ultimately, it's just speculation.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 10, 2012 9:30:47 AM
Yes... there is no mistake in this as far as I am aware. But it is possible to formulate a concept of "the goal of evolution" and ask what is that concept like. Is it a nonexistent concept? That is, is it a predicate whose extension is empty, or an empty set? Unprovable.
Rather, a concept like "the goal of evolution" resembles, logically, a non-well-founded expression, such as "+=1+=-". It cannot be argued to be void of the constituents we use to construct meaningful expressions, such as the operators +, =, - and the number 1, but it also cannot be argued to use those constituents in a meaningful way.
In deliberations of empirical science, things like these tend to be irrelevant. But in metaphysics they are important. "The goal of evolution" is not nonexistent simply because it is not a well-founded expression. I agree you already said it was a simplification that it's nonexistent, and I don't blame you, but I would like to underline that in metaphysical discussion such simplifications should not be used.
Most metaphysical theories, that I personally find interesting, manage to somehow differentiate well-founded entities from non-well-founded entities. Both "God" and the members of the set of "unbound telesis" in the CTMU are non-well-founded. This is not criticism of the CTMU, because I don't find metaphysical theories to capture the most interesting things if they omit such non-well-founded objects. Rather, it is a merit that the CTMU includes such concepts. This does not mean that the CTMU would make sense as a whole, only that it seems to have a feature I deem very good.
Ontological "theories" such as materialism and idealism are inherently very unimpressive to me, and I could even accuse them of causing insanity. Some young people take them too seriously. They expect these theories to also include non-well-founded objects - perhaps they are not yet aware of the difference between well-founded and non-well-founded objects. I think it is of utmost importance that metaphysical theories attempt to span as many as possible of the things that can even be mentioned. This is also why metaphysics is not decisively empirical. The logical problems involved with non-well-founded concepts may preclude the results of empirical experiments to decide the outcome of a debate in which such non-well-founded concepts are used.
In this article, which I also find interesting, professor Graham Priest uses the difference between non-well-founded sets and empty sets to explain Buddhism.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 12, 2012 5:01:56 AM
I find you to simultanously say a reasonable thing here, and to contradict yourself. There may indeed be no "higher truth" in things that no evidence contradicts. For example, I think it's quite possible space aliens have visited the Earth, but so what? I don't spend my time thinking about that, because it doesn't feel relevant. I also don't expend my resources in trying to argue that aliens have not visited the Earth.
However, from my point of view, the "possibility" (you put that in quotation marks) of anything is enough to make it interesting. I am not going to use my knowledge of such possibilities to make some very specific conclusions on how society should be arranged or what I should do tomorrow. Rather, I am categorizing these "possibilities". I am trying to find structure within the language that we use to talk about these "possibilities".
I do not know exactly why I am doing so, only that I am driven to do so by some mental force which I cannot resist. Perhaps I am a monomaniac and an autist, but that's irrelevant from my point of view. All I know is I've always been like that. So, someone questioning the importance of me doing this has little effect on whether I do this. I am like an animal with regards to this cerebral pursuit.
However, there are some reasons to believe the pursuit is not in vain. I believe metaphysical understanding is necessary for some people to understand others. For example, maybe you one day will need to have a pleasant conversation with a creationist. When that day comes, understanding of metaphysical categories and their relations to each other will quite possibly help you to keep the discussion in such tracks, that you don't have to contradict each other and you don't have to argue. Even if the creationist says something you don't like, because it has no empirical justification but should have, you can redirect the conversation into a more spiritual topic. The creationist would not oppose evolution if he truly understood it. It is a metaphorical act of opposition, in which he truly opposes something else but is not adept enough in language and logic to express himself clearly. You want to help such people express themselves clearly instead of polarizing the debate by contradicting them. Some people can do this intuitively. For some others, ecspecially intellectual people, there is a need to have a logical framework for doing so. What I am trying to do is to devise such a framework.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 12, 2012 5:26:18 AM
There is no one comprehensive explanation to why people believe the things they do believe. Rather, the beliefs of people form the circumstances in which we must operate.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 12, 2012 5:28:30 AM
I think a lot of scientists would have superior mental powers when compared with a lot of creationists, and that the creationists are not against science, but against the way in which scientists use their powers. Scientists are intelligent and consequently could have a lot of mental power. Even though a creationist can be downright stupid, he may have devised a better way to use his limited cerebral ability. Perhaps his cerebral poverty has indeed forced him to do so. He can see the betterness of his way of using his mind, and he wants to send a message to those with more power that this way of using the mind is better, but he has such limited abilities that he is prone to send the wrong message. Even though creationism is the wrong message, it is something that unites people who want to send a message to scientists. Scientists are too detached from the world and from people. I believe creationists want scientists to be more passionate and to have a stronger will -- perhaps to be more like Chris Langan! They want a heroic scientist, and because they don't have one, there is an authority problem in society and the creationists are consequently behaving unruly and trying to change curriculum just because they can do that if there are many of them. A lot of scientists don't understand it's not a good way to live a life to just contradict people, to be "objective", to speak in a creaking voice, to be boring and to be too detached. A hero of science cannot go around saying evolution has no purpose, and all there is is a bunch of objective facts which imply nothing greater than themselves. "Nothing greater than what you already have" is what you already have. People want more! They want progress. And the progress they want may be an illusion, but it's not a lie, because "the goal of evolution" is not non-existent, but only non-well-founded. You could make anything of it! Can't you see how easy all this would be if you just dared to seize the opportunity?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 12, 2012 5:43:04 AM
"However, from my point of view, the "possibility" (you put that in quotation marks) of anything is enough to make it interesting."
Sure, possibilities are interesting. But possibilities are just possibilities. Too many people take a possibility and claim it is truth without any real evidence whatsoever.
"They want a heroic scientist, and because they don't have one, there is an authority problem in society and the creationists are consequently behaving unruly and trying to change curriculum just because they can do that if there are many of them. A lot of scientists don't understand it's not a good way to live a life to just contradict people, to be "objective", to speak in a creaking voice, to be boring and to be too detached. A hero of science cannot go around saying evolution has no purpose, and all there is is a bunch of objective facts which imply nothing greater than themselves. "Nothing greater than what you already have" is what you already have. People want more! They want progress."
I would say, "that's too bad!" if people want more. Science doesn't just change and bow to someone's opinion just because they want reality to be a certain way. Interesting possibilities still need to be verified to have any truth value to them. If someone finds science "boring," they can't just substitute their own desires over things like many Creationists do. If a scientist "contradicts" you, it's because you're making a claim that is demonstrably false. Young-Earth Creationism, for example, is demonstrably false. Noah's Ark is demonstrably false. Much of the Bible is demonstrably false. So I disagree that scientists need to somehow tiptoe around those who are ignorant and spouting nonsense, because frankly, NOT contradicting them gives them false credibility.
Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan are good examples of who I would call "heroic scientists." They don't invoke religion/metaphysics or anything like that but still bring light to the wonders of science and why it is all indeed a very exciting -- not boring -- thing. The notion that there's "nothing greater than everything contained in our universe" isn't necessarily depressing, because it gives mankind power over itself. To restrain yourself to such a primitive concept like God I would argue is opposite of progress.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 13, 2012 4:25:25 PM
To be sure, being a heroic scientist isn't what's being sought after here. Being exclusively a scientist is insufficient for fixing the authority problem I meant to talk about. One has to also address non-scientific questions, such as what is the goal of evolution. Since such things are beyond science, they may be declared to contain whatever data we want. I am interested in categorizing the possibilities of what we could possibly want. The possibility of a possibility is, after all, a truth - even if the truthfulness of a possibility weren't.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 14, 2012 12:49:37 PM
Non-scientific questions are fun to talk about but again, there's no reason to posit a goal for evolution when there's no evidence it has a goal. It's just a result of physical processes.
Do you think there's a goal behind the 5th rock falling down the 2nd ravine in the middle of a forest in the middle of North America? No -- it's just something that happens. There's no "intent" or reason behind it.
Either way, it doesn't change the fact that wanting something doesn't make it true.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 14, 2012 1:03:25 PM
http://as.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x7drk/by_request_iama_member_of_the_mega_society_the/
This may be of interest to some of you, especially given that it sprang from the following request.
http://as.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x2p0x/ama_request_christopher_langan_smartest_man_in/
Overall, the comments are pretty disappointing.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 14, 2012 3:08:28 PM
I'm sorry, but I just had to laugh.
Somebody suggests a Langan Q&A; it attracts some interest; an anonymous rodent seizes the opportunity to plug an equally anonymous "high IQ" atheist; and before you know it, some nobody with a pseudonym is fielding aimless questions with all the charm, insight, and thoroughness of a conceited high school kid afraid of being late for study hall.
If I were to say "accept no substitutes", that might be taken to imply that I'd participate in such an exercise myself. But of course, given the number of snide, misleading, and downright stupid comments in the original thread, I'm afraid that's a no-go. Besides, the outcome is a foregone conclusion: though puking up slurs and insults like bad drunks on a marathon distillery tour, the atheistic know-it-alls of reddit would quickly feel the crunch, moistening and lubricating my outsoles like crack-house cockroaches caught in a midnight drug raid.
Those who want to see me participate in a learned dialogue or debate should save themselves some trouble and convince a real player, a heavyweight CTMU critic, to put his money where his highly knowledgeable, well-respected mouth is. No substitutes will be accepted.
Have a nice day.
Posted by: Chris Langan | Aug 16, 2012 4:10:01 PM
"Heavyweight CTMU critic"? I don't think that exists.
Unless you are implying that you want a prominent scientist to debate you? They don't usually get into the business of debating metaphysics/intelligent design.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 16, 2012 4:35:35 PM
I note that someone calling himself (or herself) "Chris Chin" seems anxious to discuss the topic of Intelligent Design. Having stated repeatedly that pseudonymous gadflies are ineligible to converse with me, I can only assume that Mr./Ms. Chin means to address someone else, e.g., Moose Lim, Jude Ayzim, or perhaps Sy N. Toloji.
Whether these august personages can be located here or on some other bulletin board or email list, I simply can't say.
For the record, it may well be the case that there are no eminent scientists willing to criticize the CTMU (which, incidentally, is not merely equivalent to Intelligent Design as presently understood). That's only natural, as the CTMU is absolutely correct. But if so, their disinterest is not presently my problem. Rather, it is the problem of those who want to see a CTMU debate. If they wish to interest a prominent scientist in this prospect, they are free to make the attempt.
Of course, it might not pay for them to get their hopes up. The reason is not that the CTMU is scientifically irrelevant; rather, it is that the scientific relevance of the CTMU is no less inarguable than its correctness. Denying this would be like saying that model theory is incorrect and irrelevant to science, and no prominent scientist is likely to sign off on that either.
Good evening.
Posted by: Chris Langan | Aug 16, 2012 6:41:15 PM
Is actually anyone interested in a "debate"? Just asking.
I know that "debates" are useful for cranks to make their "theories" look like a real alternative, as if there is an actual controversy. And I understand very well why Langan needs some famous guy to publicite and sell a few of his "books" (where he promised us actual physical predictions XD). But, is there anyone there actually interested on this? (Tuukka, I take you for granted, you have too much free time not to be interested in that).
(Preemptive defense: yes, I know, anonymity blah, pseudonym blah, don't like your name blah, I know)
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 16, 2012 8:52:42 PM
I really love the naivety of the approach: true until someone famous attracts attention to me.
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 16, 2012 8:57:58 PM
Some intriguing testable predictions might bring people to the table. Would coming up with those be left up to the people who cannot comprehend the theory?
Posted by: Carlos | Aug 16, 2012 9:42:34 PM
Chris Langan: I never implied anywhere that I was "anxious to debate Intelligent Design," so I have no idea where you got that from.
I have barely even said a word to you and you choose to be racist? What do you have against Chinese?
I know you advocate eugenics as per your YT videos and all, but seriously?
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 16, 2012 9:57:21 PM
There's no mention of race, or for that matter eugenics, in any of my above comments, "Chris Chin". I merely suspect that you're a pseudonymous gadfly whose name is not what you say it is.
If you like, you may provide such personal details as will allow your name to be verified. If I find them satisfactory, then there will be no further need for me to put "Chris Chin" in quotes. I may even do you the favor of pointing out a couple of your more embarrassing mistakes so that you can learn to avoid them in the future.
Otherwise, I'm afraid we'll just have to leave things as they are.
By the way, I inferred your preoccupation with Intelligent Design from the fact that you mentioned it quite out of the blue, that is, for no apparent reason. (The CTMU is not considered an Intelligent Design theory by those who understand it. In fact, it predates Intelligent Design theory.)
Good night.
Posted by: Chris Langan | Aug 16, 2012 11:28:42 PM
I have this theory of mine that apples fall upwards. I infer that from the inconsistency of the set of all sets.
Until Einstein rises from death and confront me or any other heavyweight apples up critic do the same, I will not participate in debates about the direction of falling apples, and you should accept I'm right and be silent, because you don't understand my theory about which I don't speak and I don't know you personally, so you're all s&/t.
Also, I have a proof of my theory, here in my hand, and I will publish it in the future, so you can't criticize my theory now.
If you believe apples to fall down, you don't understand metaphysics and you should again be silent. Yes, my assertion is physical, but my non-defense is metaphysical.
There is a last reason why you should accept my theory. That apples fall downwards can be checked by science, but science has a problem I just make up.
In science, things are decided by experiment, and not by authority. I declare this to be a problem.
To solve it we should assign authority randomly to a crank who don't decide things by experiments.
That would solve science non-existent problem.
XD XD XD
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 17, 2012 8:06:17 AM
Chris Langan: No, what you said is racist. It's no different from Rosie O'Donnell or Alexandra Wallace making their inane comments by showing off an ignorance for the culture and language.
I'm not a "pseudonymous gadfly." This is my real name. Are you woefully unaware that "Chin" is a common Chinese surname? There's nothing wrong with my name. Your reasoning is ridiculous.
"I don't think that's your real name so I will make fun of Chinese people until you give me your personal details?"
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 17, 2012 9:12:17 AM
Don't take it personally, Chris.
Chris and some of the people who follows him (I'm thinking about Tuukka) goes accusing people for every nonsense they can think about. I've been accused of being Dawkins (because, of 7 billion people on the planet, who the hell else could I be?), of having a void, empty and boring life, of being obsessed with Langan, of vandalizing wikipedia (which I've never modified in my whole life), of being a terrorist, and of several other nonsense. The motivation? That I talk about Langan in a blog where I'm an usual commenter, and in this one, where I was cited explicitly, and which was about the previous one. Two. That's all.
And the guy who accused me follows Langan to every web he goes, and even talks about me in at least two webs of his own. So if I have an empty life, he should...
But don't take it personally. It just that they apply their awesome mental powers not only to the universe, but also to people, and they've got those great psychological powers which let them infer thinks about you with the same certainty than about the universe.
XD
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 17, 2012 9:45:17 AM
That's still no excuse for Chris Langan to be a blatant racist.
I mean, I've seen what other people have said about this guy through other places. I'm well aware that his social skills are impaired, but I didn't fully realize the extent of the damage until now.
Posted by: Chris Chin | Aug 17, 2012 10:38:41 AM
"Well, we have to let only the fit breed" (Langan)
"Freedom is not necessarily a right" (Langan)
Until now? O_o
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 17, 2012 4:28:03 PM
You don't need a reason.
Not you. Go away.
Moron. Go read about "vagrant predicates" by Rescher. He's mainstream enough for you. Or use NFU instead of ZFC.
Why are you interested in forming cliques? If Langan realized he should study my work, I wouldn't have to follow him. I'm trying to give him a hand and you think I'm his slave or something. That is a despicable way of thinking about things. You are a very foolish person. If everyone thought like you do, nobody would give anyone a hand. You wouldn't want to live in that kind of a world, and you wouldn't behave the way you do if you understood what you're doing.
And what are you doing to help? Furthermore, why should one axiomatically oppose racism? Genocide has shaped the world. The persecution of Gnostics by non-Gnostics, the persecution of Neanderthals by the Cro-Magnon... genocide is not a one-dimensional moral issue with only one notion of right and one notion of wrong. If you think genocide is wrong because some UN charter says so, you don't understand what the moral value of genocide depends on.
I'm annoyed by you gadflies, because by fighting you and ignoring me Langan can actually dismiss my criticism of the CTMU. I somewhat understand what Langan is trying to do, and my criticism may or may not work, but since Langan just makes nonsensical comments to you, you are actually protecting him. Are you envious of me because I'm the only one here who actually got what it takes to challenge Langan? That you yourselves got nothing more than noise and pathetic whining about genocide and intelligent design? Are you here to bloat your ego or to challenge Langan?
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 23, 2012 8:32:59 AM
The worst kind of people in the world are those who interpret being nice as submission. Nothing good may be in the presence of such people. I never said I am an adherent of the CTMU. But if I even hypothesize that the CTMU makes sense, you think I'm Langan's drone bitch. Have you ever heard of "proof by contradiction"? In that you suppose some statement, examine the logical consequences, and find out the statement leads to an inconsistency. The CTMU cannot be refuted by means of proof by contradiction if simply hypothesizing, that an aspect of the CTMU is correct, leads to some kind of a social punishment, such as being considered a "follower" of Langan.
This discussion is not divided to proponents and opponents of CTMU. It's divided to people who want to discuss the CTMU and people who are annoyed by Langan. Langan has evaded my questions, and you haven't even got the wits to blame him for it. Instead, you create such an uncomfortable atmosphere that I actually can't blame Langan for evading my questions. He should e-mail me, though, if he really wants to discuss the CTMU. Or there should be a Google discussion group or something like that. Langan is, apparently, writing a book, so maybe he doesn't right now have time for that. I, too, am writing a book and can spend only so much effort to these kind of discussions, so I understand that. But I do think Langan is somewhat to blame for not giving proper answers to my criticisms.
Do you see what he does? He doesn't answer me. He waits until you say something stupid, and then participates in the usual brawling as if that would matter. This gives an impression he's still in the conversation -- that he hasn't left the arena although I don't know why he'd stick here -- but the conversation doesn't go anywhere.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 23, 2012 8:49:31 AM
Argh, Tuukka, now you're unintentionally very funny. Do you really pretend me to feel guilty because by telling Langan (who knows what he is doing very well) that his word salad is nonsense (which he knows), I have prevented you to illuminate Langan with your own nonsense? Noooo, now the World is worse, people don't help each other now!!!!!!
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 23, 2012 5:34:57 PM
It's just too funny to see how Tuukka, in all his brilliance, accuses me of truncating his carreer as The Man (R) who made Langan see the light because by doing so I made the World a horrible place where people don't give a hand to their congeners...
...and inmediately see him (Tuukka) following his reasoning by asking Chris Chin why should Chin consider racism against him as a bad thing, and then to see Tuukka singing the benefits of genocide by the fallacy of appealing to nature. Ah, axiomatically, because if Chin is against racism against him, it should be axiomatically XD XD XD
I'm a monster XD XD XD
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 24, 2012 12:55:46 PM
John, if Langan thinks eugenics is okay, I can't reason about it with him if he thinks I'm opposing it out of habit and conventionalism. I think I should change social role here. Neither you nor Langan want to talk about the kind of things I do. I thought this discussion was something that might interest me, but maybe it isn't. If Langan thinks he's a crank, then maybe I was being too compassionate. I thought maybe he's just weird and needs help. I used to be like that. I was once saved by someone pointing out I was wrong. I've always been grateful for that and thought since someone did that to me, I could check whether Langan needs that done to him and do it. But if this is some sort of a play, okay then. It didn't occur to me you might want to play something like this when you could have the real thing. But I don't blame you for believing the real thing doesn't even exist or is unattainable.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 25, 2012 11:11:35 PM
Anyway, objective proof for things like Noah's Ark is irrelevant. They are archetypical entities. If you simply think about them, or even speak about them, they are as true as they ever were meant to be.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 26, 2012 2:10:15 PM
Ever heard of the emotional oracle effect? People who trust feelings in predicting the future are more successful than those who prefer logic and analytics. That there is science saying science isn't the best tool for everything. You gotta have the other tools in your kit, too, if you're serious about conceptualizing reality in the broadest possible sense.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Aug 26, 2012 2:33:25 PM
Tuukka, the problem is that your posts are totally and completely unrelated to reality. You just recognize some easy pattern, and you parrot us all your superficially preconceived discourse, independently of the concrete situation (beyond the pattern, of course). I've seen a lot of people do this, and normally the preconceived discourses are just as bad as yours (using the fallacy of nature to justify genocide, hell, this must be a canonical example of fallacy), usually conceived to be shocking under the false assumption that going against the tide automatically makes you look intelligent.
Just see. Chin says something, Langan makes some racists comments against Chin, Chin points the racism in Langan's comments, and you came with, textually, "why should one axiomatically oppose racism?" and "If you think genocide is wrong because some UN charter says so, you don't understand what the moral value of genocide depends on""
Hell, what's the relation? Who said anything about being against racism "axiomatically"? What makes you think that Chin has no arguments against racism against him beyond axioms? Do you really believe that Chin doesn't like racism against him only "axiomatically"? Hell, I've got like tons of arguments against racism, and I'm sure Mr. Chin has a lot more against racism _against him_. Your comment is just completely unrelated to the conversation.
What happened is easy to guess. You somehow decided some time ago to be gifted and more intelligent than the rest, and decided that the rest of people are, how would you say it, "very foolish people", so you should parrot all you know to prove it, independently of the situation. So when Chin complained of racists comments, you just assumed that, as he is other person not you, he just can't have any actual reason not to like racism, so it should be axiomatic, despite nobody saying so. This is totally ridiculous. Of course Chin has reasons not to like racism against him beyond what UN officers say. Hell, your comments are totally undetached of the situation.
But you went far beyond that. You then started speaking about genocide, about which nobody said nothing, giving your complete parroted discourse, which, additionally, is fallacious (if it has been done in the past, it can't be that bad; hell, it hurts my brain even repeating it). Of course, you simply assumed that we don't have arguments against genocide, because, in the end, we're others, so we're imbecile, so all our positions are axiomatic. Even on those topics you just brought because they come with your parroting about racism.
It was even funnier because you did it just after appealing to good feelings between human beings that I'm destroying by saying that Langan's word are nonsense.
And that's all your doing. You recognize some pattern, you parrot all you superficially read about it. Want examples?
I said Langan uses naive universal set inconsistency to infer things, you insult me and parrot about NFU at any opportunity, whose name you superficially know. Without even understand what I'm saying (see bellow).
You read Langan's writings, you recognize a pattern (the word "metaphysics"), it triggers your parroting about it. Completely unrelated with the writing. Hell, let's take a look at what we're arguing about. These are Langan's words:
----------------------------------------------------
(Langan) "Reality is a set because, to the extent that it is subject to scientific inquiry and analysis, it consists of discernable entities subject to conceptual aggregation. One requires no particular mathematical model to infer this; one requires nothing more than the scientific method"
----------------------------------------------------
Now, I ask you. Do you really believe that Langan employed or knows how to employ the scientific method (which implies experimentation and replicability) to prove that reality is a set? Just imagining Langan with a lab coat measuring realities and sets make me laugh. It's completely nonsense. Do you need to debate to arrive at the conclusion that he didn't applied the scientific method to discard the null hypothesis of reality not being a set by the scientific method? This is idiotic, no debate here, and no methaphysics coming to rescue. Or do you believe that Langan claims this but does not know that he didn't use it?
(Langan)"So mathematicians view sets, broadly including null, singleton, finite and infinite sets, as fundamental objects basic to meaningful descriptions of reality. It follows that reality itself should be a set - in fact, the largest set of all. But every set, even the largest one, has a powerset which contains it, and that which contains it must be larger (a contradiction)."
Hell, this is naive universal set inconsistency by the book, with a lot more non sequiturs and arbitrary suppositions, like mistaking the properties of the elements of a set with the properties of the set. And you can ask me a hundred times to use NFU, it would not change the fact that Langan does not understand this.
And when Langan goes even further and start trying to sell us that he made important advances in physics, that CTMU explains dark matter and gravitational anomalies:
(Langan)"However, an alternative theory does exist. It is virtually unknown to most physicists, whose stock repertoire is limited to theories that have been published by other physicists in exclusive scholastic journals unreceptive to strange new ideas emanating from unknown, academically uncredentialed sources. It has, however, been published for a highly intelligent readership in a journal called Noesis. This theory is called the CTMU."
Do you really believe that Langan has a theory describing gravity with more detail than scientists? And that he is writing tons of words about CTMU in a very vague way, but no word about physical numerical predictions? Really?
Or, do you alternativelly believe that Langan claims to have discovered this, but he hasn't, but he don't know he hasn't? Hell, it's ridiculous. Of course CTMU is not a physical theory, Langan has not made any computation, and he knows he is lying when he says so.
When you accuse me of not allowing a serious debate so you can teach Langan why he is wrong, do you really believe that Langan has made the computations with his theory and it predicted the correct observations astronomers are seeing? Seriously? Or, contrary, are you telling us that Langan hasn't made those computations but claim to have done them without knowing that he hasn't done them?
All this is beyond ridiculous. Of course Langan has no good theory to predict dark matter, of course he hasn't checked it, and of course when he claims to have such a theory he knows he haven't. Of course Langan has not being in a lab testing with the scientific method if reality is a set (which is nonsensical). And of course he knows he hasn't when he says he has.
When Langan says calculus is wrong and shows us he don't understand basic calculus
(Langan) "Analysis is based on the concept of the derivative, an "instantaneous (rate of) change". Because an "instant" is durationless (of 0 extent) while a "change" is not, this is an oxymoron. Cauchy and Weierstrass tried to resolve this paradox with the concept of "limits"; they failed."
Do you really believe that he discovered a problem in Weierstrass' formulation of calculus no mathematician has seen? Do you believe he doesn't know he's wrong about this?
(Langan)"Strictly speaking, Newtonian mechanics and all subsequent theories of physics require a nonstandard universe, i.e. a model that supports the existence of infinitesimals, for their formulation."
Do you really believe that classical mechanics requires infinitesimals?
Or do you believe that Langan is wrong about all the concrete and easy things he say, but right about all the metaphysical and obscure things he says?
No, you just recognize the pattern, and then you parrot your discourse, unrelated to reality.
Reality is this: Langan's CTMU is nonsense, Langan knows it when he says things like he can prove reality to be a set by the scientific methos; the only reason people is attracted to it is because Langan appeared on TV (CTMU, as seen on TV!), and you should start to actually think instead of being so worried with trying to look intelligent.
And please, stop accusing me of not allowing a serious debate about CTMU. Come on!
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 26, 2012 3:13:26 PM
> "People who trust feelings in predicting the future are more successful than those who prefer logic and analytics."
There, in all its glory. As a general assertion.
That's precisely why we adopted science to predict things, because it doesn't work.
For example, by feeling it inside and guessing you can predict the future position of planets than by analytical methods. Or the next tide. Or the next eclipse. Predicting the future is clearly easier by feeling.
For all demons, Tuukka, stop parroting everything you read and start using your head, or at least process it before.
The emotional oracle just means that people don't have a good analytical model for most situations (that is, that we're not expert in every field individually), and that people are worse guessing an analytical method than directly the solution.
Science is precisely arriving and checking those analytical models. And people who know such models can use them to predict far better than by feeling.
Hell, "that there is science saying science isn't the best tool for everything". Do you even read what you write? It's not only completely false, it's ridiculous and laughable to the extreme!
Stop parroting!
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 26, 2012 4:55:08 PM
For those who don't know the effect, you've got an article by its primary author here, judge yourselves:
http://www.columbia.edu/~tdp4/Pham-Lee-Stephen-JCR2012.pdf
The conclusion, from its authors:
"Individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals
with lower trust in their feelings [...] However, the effect occurs only among individuals who possess sufficient background knowledge about the prediction domain"
Just compare with Tuukka's interpretation (parroting isn't usually accurate):
"People who trust feelings in predicting the future are more successful than those who prefer logic and analytics. That there is science saying science isn't the best tool for everything."
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 26, 2012 6:49:08 PM
Ah, one last important thing about this silly "feelings predicts better than science".
If you read the actual paper about the oracle effect, another conclusion is
"the effect occurs only among individuals who possess sufficient background knowledge about the prediction domain, and it dissipates when the prediction criterion becomes inherently unpredictable"
If you look at the paper, you'll see that they call "unpredictable" to situations for which no good analytical models exists, like medium-range wheater or stock market prediction. Understand it: if there is no predictability (no good analytical model), there is no emotional oracle effect. If there is no background in the field, there is no effect.
The best model for prediction, as you can see, is an analytical model.
What the effect means is nothing surprising. People don't usually know analytical models, so we're not talking about the accuracy of analytical models.
We all make internal models, which are better than random models (evolution guarantees this). People who trust their intuitions can predict better than those who not when they've got enough knowledge.
But, of course, scientifically derived and tested models are by far better, and the effect says nothing against this.
Tuukka just don't feel the need to actually read the article, and preferred to trust his feelings about what it says. Then he punishes us by parroting about it.
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 26, 2012 7:05:02 PM
I could be laughing (with good reason) at Tuukka's comments for centuries.
Just look at the emotional oracle paper again. It shows you how the groups under study with high trust in their feelings guessed weather in Beijing for the next two days with more or less 12% accuracy, while people with low trust in their feelings guessed it with 6% accuracy. Anyway, both groups failed more than 8 times each 10 tries. From this, Tukka infers that this is science telling us that science is not the right tool for this.
Of course, this is just a proof of Tuukka's detachment from reality. Any current physical model would have predicted the weather in Beijing for the next two days with an accuracy well over 90%. Taking into account the law of diminished returns, you can see science outperforms guessing by orders of magnitude for predicting (which is the target of science). No person in the study used science to make their predictions, and the study didn't compare science with feelings in any way.
The study is fair and you also have examples on the opposite, where people not trusting their feelings outperform those trusting them, like in the case of predicting weather in Melbourne. It shows you how the topic for prediction matters.
But nothing of this interests Tuukka, who decided to occupy his brain parroting us not very accurately, and telling me to read "mainstream enough for me" literature. XD XD XD
Posted by: John Fringe | Aug 27, 2012 6:51:51 AM
John,
I was usually treated like that. It's difficult for me to take another role. Basically, I come to places with the assumption that I am indeed more intelligent than the rest, and that I'd like to be proven wrong. This assumption is not always true. According to some neuropsychological tests I am not phenomenally gifted, only "very gifted". Creativity and aggression might be even more important for me than intelligence.
Basically, my assumption about my superior intelligence, that underlies my behavior, is just a way for me to get what I want. This CTMU thing was troubling me, and I wanted clarity, and I wanted it fast, because I have the character flaw of being impatient (or the virtue of being efficient). This is unrelated to the CTMU, but in fact I've been going through a creative phase for the last year, and I don't like having to wait for answers right now. Right now I'm able to invest all of my capacity to metaphysics, and I might not be able to do that at a later point in my life.
Yeah, I guess it's supposed to hurt! But you had your laughs earlier. Don't go all XD on me if you don't want to get a bit hurt!
I'm not very interested to debate on genocide right now. I do not advocate genocide, but I also think no definable act or event can be deemed immoral independent of context. There are logical and set theoretic reasons for this. But like I said, as a metaphysician I am interested of contexts and their limitations, and have nothing I desperately need to prove about genocide in particular right now. Well... I don't think there's anything I desperately want to prove in this discussion anymore. If there ever was.
No. :D
Langan is probably indeed a crank. Hey, I'm sorry if I inconvenienced you too much. For seven years I've been afraid someone might duplicate my work or produce even better work, because that would be a pain in the ass for me even though it would also be a great thing. Langan had such a big ego I wanted to check this thing very thoroughly. I was suspicious of your criticisms of Langan, because you seemed to have developed nothing significantly better yourselves, but that is not a sufficient reason to dismiss your criticism as invalid.
Seems like you gave my suspicions of your criticisms of the CTMU some serious thought, and I'm thankful of that. The CTMU probably is bullshit.
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Sep 1, 2012 1:11:43 PM
But no offense to Langan! This has been an invigorating and queer experience! Can't have any fun around here unless someone does something confusing...
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Sep 1, 2012 1:16:07 PM
The thing is, Pirsig has made some really simple mistakes with his Metaphysics of Quality. Now, Robert Pirsig, who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is the guy who got me interested of metaphysics in the first place and to adopt a critical or outright hostile attitude towards the academia. There are other reasons for the latter, too, but I could say Pirsig validated the mistrust of academia I began to have ever since high school. Ecspecially my mistrust of academic philosophy.
From my point of view it makes sense that Langan could have had a great metaphysical theory, yet he would have made some really simple and bizarre mistakes, such as claiming it is some kind of an essentialistic truth that reality is a set. The proofs of the Indian mathematician Ramanujan are notoriously obscure, and he in fact developed some good mathematics simply based on dreams he saw. Galileo Galilei's certain proofs were even invalid. And Pirsig... well, they say the Metaphysics of Quality is continental philosophy so it is somehow less constrained by logic, but I don't think it should be bound to an existing tradition. Pirsig has omitted so much of existing metaphysics that could be seen to parallel his, that there's no reason to believe he would have definitely wanted to retain some "continental approach" despite not founding his work on any notable branch of continental philosophy.
The Metaphysics of Quality has a really simple set theoretic problem, because the theory argues it contains itself as its member, even though this is not possible in ZFC. Pirsig dismissed this complaint, which was not presented originally by me or in the set theoretic form. The dismissal was an offhanded remark similar to most of the things Langan has written. Pirsig did not indicate awareness of set theory, even though the problem should be trivial to notice for anyone who knows the basics. I would like to contact Pirsig myself about this, but he is not available for inquiry, so I proceed on my own terms.
Given that the Metaphysics of Quality really transformed my life, and that it's author made such weird mistakes like that, I've ended up believing I don't care what the author even wanted to say, if I can rephrase his thoughts in a way that makes sense to me, and express that view to others as my own interpretation. Given that I've almost done that to the Metaphysics of Quality, I was interested of doing the same thing to the CTMU... but maybe it's not possible. Some metaphysical theories with weird inconsistencies are fertile whereas others are not, and there's no interesting application of the CTMU that I yet know of.
In Lila's Child and afterwards Pirsig's metaphysical assertions have been vague and disinterested. Basically, I did everything I could to find out what Pirsig would have plausibly meant with some of the things he wrote, and when things didn't make sense, I did not hesitate to make my own interpretations. Some in the MOQ online community sure didn't like that! I was kicked out from the biggest MOQ discussion group. That made me so angry I wrote a book about my thoughts -- something I tried to do for seven years but didn't just have enough energy or willpower to do it. So again I, unexpectedly, got what I wanted by contradicting people and behaving as if I were superior. And look at Langan! He's doing that, too -- it's the only thing he's really doing if he hasn't actually developed any interesting metaphysics -- and he gets all the attention in the world, which apparently is what he wants! It's the American dream. Aggressive marketing. I didn't want things to be this dirty. I honestly didn't. This is disgusting, in a way. I wanted to be humble and work a lot, but ecspecially if you have no academic credentials, you'll achieve next to nothing by being nice all the time. And the academia is not the place where you combine issues of continental philosophy (emergence) with the methods of analytic philosophy, or make any big changes whatsoever. They're completely stuck. Their books are not best sellers and they are not the talk of the internet. Even if you had enough credentials to make a living as a professor, that would have next to nothing to do with whether you can influence someone beyond the infinitesimal clique of academic philosophers. A lot of creative minds are batshit crazy -- outright insane -- and the academia is full of pompous airballs who would prefer to fragment people's conception of reality instead of unifying it, so I had to give Langan a real chance. He seemed to be a weird guy who, however, is working on metaphysics for a justified cause.
But this is of course off-topic. If there's something very important about the CTMU that needs to be discussed, go for it! :D
Posted by: Tuukka Virtaperko | Sep 1, 2012 2:28:56 PM
Does anyone know how langan is defining god inhis theory? Also I remember in his interview he was talking about an "advanced ethics", what does he mean by that?
Posted by: Fred | Sep 21, 2012 3:58:14 PM
I missed the fact that there was a 2nd page of comments. This is why I've been M.I.A. for months.
Tuukka: my advice to you is to stick to the "continental philosophy" circles. They have a rich tradition of sounding off on technical matters in which they have little to no expertise.
The quality of your CTMU criticisms rivals Sandra Harding's claim that Newton's principia is a "rape manual" or Lacan's proof that the penis is equal to the square root of negative one.
Posted by: Christian Dipoce | Sep 26, 2012 11:51:38 PM
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