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Is Jesus's "this generation will certainly not pass" valid grounds for scepticism?

Poem said:
There is scepticism that Libet's findings (particularly the milliseconds that electrical brain activity is said to precede one's actual volition) are significant.
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I have always thought that this result - which I see no reason to doubt - is not significant. Being educated in computer science I have no problem with decisions being taken by another process than the awareness process.
 
steenkh said:
I have always thought that this result - which I see no reason to doubt - is not significant. Being educated in computer science I have no problem with decisions being taken by another process than the awareness process.
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Neurologists, philosophers, and religious folk were fascinated with Libet's experiments. Psychologists looked at each other and said "He's just figuring out we have a subconscious that makes some decisions for us now?"

Eta: Libet's instructions to subjects were to indicate when they 'felt the urge' to move (while also telling them to choose themselves randomly). In order to react to an urge, of course you have to basically tell your subconscious to provide the urge, hence the milliseconds of run up brain activity. The subjects literally told themselves to do so. Added to which, the subjects would (quite naturally) have a slightly delayed recognition time for this urge they had suggested to themselves.
 
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Ryan O'Dine said:
To add to steenkh's post, this is where the value of 1/3 of biologists comes from...


quoted from Poem's article linked in the Federalist.

IOW, "Intelligent Design" Behe pulled it out of his nethers.
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I've been trying to find the link to the quote...could you help?
 
sphenisc said:
Cheers, however it doesn't exactly amount to overwhelming evidence of the "third of biologists" figure.
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The biologists in question were specifically *not* creationists. Might their issues with nat selection not being fully explanatory be along the lines of abiogenesis being unaccounted for? I mean, what their specific reservations are (claimed to be) might be more technical, not global.
 
Thermal said:
The biologists in question were specifically *not* creationists. Might their issues with nat selection not being fully explanatory be along the lines of abiogenesis being unaccounted for? I mean, what their specific reservations are (claimed to be) might be more technical, not global.
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Possibly, but it's usually required to have better evidence of their actual existence before attempting to provide an explanation of their reasoning.
 
pgwenthold said:
This does not follow at all.

My roomba makes choices all the time. It does not have free will.
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But the guy who chose the entirely deterministic and rule-based system which the roomba uses to "choose" one path over the other does, I would presume. If humans have such strict rulesets, we certainly don't know about them. It's math all the way down in the case of AI. There's nothing arbitrary about it. Even "random numbers" are generated with algorithms which return quite specific results... with time passing as the "randomizing" factor (but it's not random. Math is incapable of random).

But yeah... that goes back to my original point. You can't prove the non-existence of free choice within a system explicitly designed to remove all the free choice before you can calculate. All systems which we can sufficiently control to produce a result would qualify as inadequate in this regard.

Basically, instead of disproving "free choice" all you end up doing is proving the inadequacy of your method. You won't find it there. It literally can't exist within a mathematical framework. Probabilities are about as close as you can get, but they fail at actually producing an action in real time. We can produce an algorithm which mimics a probability, but each individual result is still entirely deterministic.

You can't prove "absolute internal control" by using external manipulation. It can only be detected within the system. Luckily for us, our consciousness is that system, and it's quite obvious until you go about trying to prove it to others. Of course, I'm assuming that all other humans are conscious. I can't prove that. I could very well be playing a single-player game where I'm the only entity which is actually conscious... but that heads us toward brain-in-a-vat solipsism.

I dunno... maybe your roomba IS conscious. But I would assume not if it always performs exactly as programmed. In a way, only the roomba can really answer that question, and there's no reason to take its word for it if it somehow communicates, because that could also be (is likely to be) entirely the result of external factors in the case of AI.

If it nearly always does what you ask it to, then it likely doesn't have free will. That's as close as I can get to an indicator, and that's not absolute. But it can really only be detected by eliminating external controls.
 
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sphenisc said:
Cheers, however it doesn't exactly amount to overwhelming evidence of the "third of biologists" figure
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The third of biologists is a guess by Behe: “Behe explained that, “Based on conversations with my own colleagues at Lehigh [University], dozens of other biologists, and news stories in journals I would guesstimate that a third or more of biologists are quite skeptical that Darwin’s theory explains all of biology.” The growing literature speaks for itself.”
 
Poem said:
Okay - but I was also aware that he had died some years back...so I am not sure of your point
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My point is this:
steenkh said:
But you are right, nobody thinks that evolution theory is in a crisis, just more complicated than you thought 20 years ago.
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aka when Stephen Jay Gould was alive.
Poem said:
Er - yes it is observation that alters the outcome; cease observing and the interference pattern goes away.

You are perhaps pointing out that it is not human observation?
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I am pointing out that "observation affects the outcome" is a very common mischaracterisation of what the double slit experiment actually shows us. For a start it is not observation that affects the particles, it is better to think of it as interaction - and it can be interaction with anything. Second, the outcome is not altered due to this interaction. Both outcomes were and are already there (as are all possible outcomes). But the wave function is collapsed by the interaction and that results in one outcome becoming evident at the macro scale.

Don't be embarrassed about this. Like I said, "observation affects the outcome" is how most people interpret the double slit experiment, and to a first approximation it's not entirely misleading. But the truth is always more complicated, and in quantum physics it's usually a lot more complicated.
 
arthwollipot said:
My point is this:

aka when Stephen Jay Gould was alive.

I am pointing out that "observation affects the outcome" is a very common mischaracterisation of what the double slit experiment actually shows us. For a start it is not observation that affects the particles, it is better to think of it as interaction - and it can be interaction with anything. Second, the outcome is not altered due to this interaction. Both outcomes were and are already there (as are all possible outcomes). But the wave function is collapsed by the interaction and that results in one outcome becoming evident at the macro scale.

Don't be embarrassed about this. Like I said, "observation affects the outcome" is how most people interpret the double slit experiment, and to a first approximation it's not entirely misleading. But the truth is always more complicated, and in quantum physics it's usually a lot more complicated.
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I'm not trying to imply anything, but it strikes me that a lot woo arguments hinge on overcomplicating the simple stuff and oversimplifying the complicated stuff.
 
arthwollipot said:
I am pointing out that "observation affects the outcome" is a very common mischaracterisation of what the double slit experiment actually shows us. For a start it is not observation that affects the particles, it is better to think of it as interaction - and it can be interaction with anything. Second, the outcome is not altered due to this interaction. Both outcomes were and are already there (as are all possible outcomes). But the wave function is collapsed by the interaction and that results in one outcome becoming evident at the macro scale.

Don't be embarrassed about this. Like I said, "observation affects the outcome" is how most people interpret the double slit experiment, and to a first approximation it's not entirely misleading. But the truth is always more complicated, and in quantum physics it's usually a lot more complicated.
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Exactly! It's not so much the observer that changes, it's a different time as well. Electrons/light act differently at 12:01 than they might at 12:10. This is an experiment that is impossible to reproduce. No matter what you do, you're changing a variable. And because man doesn't know where every electron is at any moment in time, it might always result differently.
 
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Darat said:
The third of biologists is a guess by Behe: “Behe explained that, “Based on conversations with my own colleagues at Lehigh [University], dozens of other biologists, and news stories in journals I would guesstimate that a third or more of biologists are quite skeptical that Darwin’s theory explains all of biology.” The growing literature speaks for itself.”
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Yes I know.
 
Darat said:
The third of biologists is a guess by Behe: “Behe explained that, “Based on conversations with my own colleagues at Lehigh [University], dozens of other biologists, and news stories in journals I would guesstimate that a third or more of biologists are quite skeptical that Darwin’s theory explains all of biology.” The growing literature speaks for itself.”
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I really don't believe Behe. He is not exactly an unbiased source. I'm pretty sure this is confirmation bias at work.
 
Manopolus said:
Even "random numbers" are generated with algorithms which return quite specific results... with time passing as the "randomizing" factor (but it's not random. Math is incapable of random).
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You are thinking of pseudo-random numbers. But there are also true random number generators based on radioactive decay, or in the case of https://www.random.org/ based on atmospheric noise.
 
arthwollipot said:
I am pointing out that "observation affects the outcome" is a very common mischaracterisation of what the double slit experiment actually shows us. For a start it is not observation that affects the particles, it is better to think of it as interaction - and it can be interaction with anything. Second, the outcome is not altered due to this interaction. Both outcomes were and are already there (as are all possible outcomes). But the wave function is collapsed by the interaction and that results in one outcome becoming evident at the macro scale.
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I think it should also be mentioned that there are other valid interpretations than the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics. There is also the Many-Worlds Interpretation which has no “observations”, and no collapse of the wave function.
 
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