Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

Now do this double blind, just in case there was any confirmation bias involved.

~~ Paul

The whole point of the exercise is to train yourself into overcoming your own tendencies towards confirmation bias. The whole point in doing this is so that should you find yourself in a situation where it is impossible to employ the normal scientific method you are better able to think rationally about whether or not you should believe a particular explanation for what has apparently happened. Wilson is trying to help people to teach themselves how to distinguish between truth and lies in areas where science cannot operate. He is the ultimate freethinker, as some skeptics on this site are well aware. Here he is, right underneath somebody called "James Randi", and some others called Dennett, Shermer, Sagan, Dawkins......:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/freethinkers.htm

Pop-philospher, freethinker, science fiction writer, humorist, humanist, and perhaps the most sane person on earth. Wilson's entertaining writing makes the reader think. He doesn't always get the facts correct, perhaps by design, but this compels the reader to check his sources and to think. He represents one of the few human beings on earth who claims to own no beliefs.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Apparently he is a blatant contradiction.

~~ Paul

The Ultimate Paradox. 0 = ∞......does not exist and does not not exist (both of them).

 

[articulett]

Now do this double blind, just in case there was any confirmation bias involved.

~~ Paul

Exactly. You can make a pendulum go around just by thinking of making it go around...of course you have to be holding it...which means that it's quite possible that something other than your thoughts are making it go around...
It's a much simpler experiment...you can make it go back and forth while purposedly doing your damndest to not do anything physical to influence it...just thinking about it is enough--but it's not you thoughts causing the movement--otherwise you could do that to a pendulum hanging from an inanimate object.

People can be very convinced and still be wrong--it's pretty easy to get people to believe in the "mysterious powers of the mind" and ignore the obvious. It is obvious that people fool themselves regarding the invisible world--it's not at all obvious that there is anything to such perceptions.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

People can be very convinced and still be wrong....

How very true.

Has it ever occured to you that this may include yourself?

 

[articulett]

Sometimes assuming the Bible is true saves time.

Yes, but assuming the bible is true creates more conunudrums than it solves. Assuming that materialsm is true until or unless evidence warrants otherwise has lead to some of the greatest neurological and genetic understandings of all time. One leads to murkiness and confusion and the other leads to answers.

Science is often just simple...when you need to play word games, it probably isn't factual. If you can't understand it if you speak a different language...it probably isn't science. Although the facts may be complex and detailed, scientific theories are pretty concise--"dualism is a human illusion"--it is the best explanation for what we observe and it can fit on a sweatshirt. The bible and your theories are not nearly as terse.

 

[Belz...]

By being beyond the dichotomy of existence and non-existence.

Geoff, that's the SAME thing said in different terms. I asked you for an explanation: how can something NOT exist and yet NOT NOT exist ? How can it possibly NOT be a contradiction ? How do you define "beyond the dichotomy of existence and non-existence" ? They are complementary.

Why?

Assuming the universe was spawned by the singularity, we're told that it was a random quantum fluctuation that brought it into beign. RANDOM. Which means a lot of OTHER fluctuations could result in a similar (or not) universe.

For me, that is one of the major problems with the Christian conception of God. Emotions are human weaknesses.

Well, if you remove all the troublesome attributes, you're left with no god at all, or a god-machine, which STILL has attributes that need explaining.

 

[Belz...]

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/esp.html

Click on this link to show exactly how easy it is for geoff (and apparently many others) to believe that "synchronicity' is real. People are so easy to fool--it's sad...really.

Damn! Those people really ARE gullible. Figuring it out was so easy, a 6 year old could do it.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Geoff, that's the SAME thing said in different terms. I asked you for an explanation: how can something NOT exist and yet NOT NOT exist ? How can it possibly NOT be a contradiction ? How do you define "beyond the dichotomy of existence and non-existence" ? They are complementary.

No further explanation is possible.

Assuming the universe was spawned by the singularity, we're told that it was a random quantum fluctuation that brought it into beign. RANDOM. Which means a lot of OTHER fluctuations could result in a similar (or not) universe.

So you are proposing an infinite array of Universes instead of an infinity which spawns a single universe. Positing something infinite in order to get rid of something else infinite is not much use.

 

[Belz...]

Sometimes assuming the Bible is true saves time.

Touché.

Ah, but I stated that X doesn't exist and X doesn't not exist. Is that the same?

Why, yes.

 

[Belz...]

No further explanation is possible.

Of course. It's contradictory. No further explanation COULD be possible.

So you are proposing an infinite array of Universes instead of an infinity which spawns a single universe. Positing something infinite in order to get rid of something else infinite is not much use.

I'm not familiar enough with the multiple universes spawning from one universe thingy, so I can't comment on that more than I already did. But if infinity (or tendency towards infinity) is expected, then so be it.

The Ultimate Paradox. 0 = ∞......does not exist and does not not exist (both of them).

That's not a paradox, Geoff. 0 does not equal infinity any more than 0 = 1. No amount of mathematical gymnastics will make it true.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Yep. You can never directly observe my experiences. No technology will ever allow this. Even a telepathy machine would not be sufficient. You cannot take some parts of my subjective experience, seperate them from the other parts, and implant them into someone-else's experience because they would appear different to the someone-else because they existed in a different context. To experience what it is like to be Geoff, you have to be Geoff.

Possibly so, but that is no reason to assume that subjective experience is somehow nonphysical.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Possibly so, but that is no reason to assume that subjective experience is somehow nonphysical.

~~ Paul

I am no longer responding to comments like that one. I have nothing new to say on the matter.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The whole point of the exercise is to train yourself into overcoming your own tendencies towards confirmation bias. The whole point in doing this is so that should you find yourself in a situation where it is impossible to employ the normal scientific method you are better able to think rationally about whether or not you should believe a particular explanation for what has apparently happened. Wilson is trying to help people to teach themselves how to distinguish between truth and lies in areas where science cannot operate. He is the ultimate freethinker, as some skeptics on this site are well aware. Here he is, right underneath somebody called "James Randi", and some others called Dennett, Shermer, Sagan, Dawkins......:

How am I going to train myself to overcome confirmation bias by proposing explanations to myself and then looking for quarters? The experiment suggests precisely that I adopt a hypothesis bias and then look for a quarter, adopt another bias and then look for a quarter, etc. Let's say I find 100 quarters under each bias and then compare the times required to find them. One will be shorter than the other. What does that tell me about the veracity of the hypotheses?

Or is Wilson suggesting that it doesn't tell me anything? Ah, maybe that's it. I may have spoken too soon.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

How very true.

Has it ever occured to you that this may include yourself?

Yes indeed. And I was fooled. I believed that new age crap because I was raised to put my trust in faith and feelings and to top it off with a smattering of scientific mumbo jumbo. But the guy who can't make new memories (Clive Wearing) because of a damaged hippocampus made me wonder how the hell you can experience anything or remember anything without a whole entire brain--so I went in search of the evidence for consciousness outside the brain. And I never found it...just the kind of stuff you preach...just the kind of answers that the wrong answers on the page sound like. I wanted to believe. But I found out something far more interesting and useful. We know a lot about consciousness and the brain and how it evolved and why--by "we" I mean humans--scientists--reems of experiments--we also have tons of data regarding how easy it is to fool people; it's what James Randi is about, afterall. And I think it's sad that people cling so tightly to their murky "feel good" beliefs because they are uncomfortable "not knowing" rather than waiting for the answers or accepting that we humans can't know something YET. Simple evidence would convince me I'm wrong--measurable evidence...because it is very obvious that people are good at seeing the truth they want--moreover, once they do so, they fill in their own reasons because their mind is drawn to find that which supports their truth and to negate all evidence to the contrary (or see all of those who present evidence to the contrary as hard headed or arrogant.) What would convince you, you were wrong geoff? What would convince you that your eloquence is on par with the eloquence of some of the other responders--fairly well reasoned...but still wrong? Could anything convince you or do you think you are too smart to have fooled yourself? I am no slouch in the I.Q. department; I fooled myself for years. I wish I had had someone like Paul or Belz prodding my thinking along.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I am no longer responding to comments like that one. I have nothing new to say on the matter.

Why does the fact that only one person can observe X make X special? Forget consciousness for a moment and just talk about X. Keep in mind my definition of physical and try not to answer as if I am an incorrigible materialist.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

Damn! Those people really ARE gullible. Figuring it out was so easy, a 6 year old could do it.

Yes...but did you read the responses...some were even eloquent and fairly well reasoned but still utterly wrong.

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/espnewcomments.html

Don't you find that alarming? Disconcerting? Conviction seems not to have a bearing on correctness.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So you are proposing an infinite array of Universes instead of an infinity which spawns a single universe. Positing something infinite in order to get rid of something else infinite is not much use.

It is if the new infinity can be made to fit into coherent theories and possibly even have evidence uncovered for it. Also, since we know that at least one universe exists, it may be simpler to assume many exist rather than having to propose an additional mechanism for confining everything to a single universe.

But by all means, people should throw their hypotheses into the ring and let science (and other ways of knowing?) sort them out.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

It is if the new infinity can be made to fit into coherent theories and possibly even have evidence uncovered for it. Also, since we know that at least one universe exists, it may be simpler to assume many exist rather than having to propose an additional mechanism for confining everything to a single universe.

But by all means, people should throw their hypotheses into the ring and let science (and other ways of knowing?) sort them out.

~~ Paul

I agree. And the truth tends to be the one amassing the evidence-- the truth means that all other explanations...no matter how carefully worded or reasoned...are wrong. Just like in that ESP test. All of the answers were equally wrong...even though some were reasoned and explained more clearly then others. To me, justgeoffs argument is akin to the eloquent wrong answers.

 

[hammegk]

Will articulett ever notice the only person here preaching The Truth is her?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

How am I going to train myself to overcome confirmation bias by proposing explanations to myself and then looking for quarters? The experiment suggests precisely that I adopt a hypothesis bias and then look for a quarter, adopt another bias and then look for a quarter, etc. Let's say I find 100 quarters under each bias and then compare the times required to find them. One will be shorter than the other. What does that tell me about the veracity of the hypotheses?

Or is Wilson suggesting that it doesn't tell me anything? Ah, maybe that's it. I may have spoken too soon.

~~ Paul

RAW does not tell people what to believe. His purpose is to get people to understand just how much their own beliefs influence their own ways of thinking about and interpreting reality.