Posts by Etude

142

CO Disfellowshipped in UK

by konceptual99 in

jw
friends

so, i have it on very good authority that a co has recently been disfellowshipped in the uk.

he has just finished serving the north west london area.

i don't know any details but perhaps there is someone who does know what happened.

Etude

Maybe he was disfellowshipped because of what ziddina suggested he would do and already did: started drinking heavily, turned to drugs and committed acts of sexual immorality.

Really, I hate to specualte on that. It makes me feel just like the witlesses who just repeat gossip about some disfellowhipped person. I was a victim of that type of gossip even though I had not been disfellowshipped. Come to think of it, I probably agreed with and abeted some opinions about someone who was disfellowshipped without having all the information. Stupid me.

I don't know if providing a name would help the guy. It just may add to his embarrassment and shame, which is the last thing I would want for him and the first thing the witlesses desire. It should be up to him to come out with the truth. But for the cloak of piousness cast by the witlesses, there is inherently nothing wrong with drinking, smoking something and occasionally getting your rocks off.

15

What's It Like To Be Normal

by EmptyInside in

jw
friends

yes,that is a strange question.

but,i always felt like the odd one out.

and as a witness,i felt like i had some secret from all the "worldlies" about the big secrets of the universe.

Etude

Being odd is cool and hip. To be normal, you should strive to be different, just like everybody else.

A life wasted can be another life rediscovered. Whatever you went throught, think about what that has contributed to who you are now and think about the positives those experiences have given you in terms of perspective. Would you think as clearly and decicively now if it weren't for your previous intellectual encarceration? At least you seem to be asking important and interesting questions.

The questions about the universe are quite fundamental. For me, the answers were critical. After my major shake up as I slipped away from the witlesses, I felt Catholic again because I was in Limbo. I didn't know what to believe and was very troubled by thinking that either God had failed me or there really wasn't a god. I don't know about anyone else, but that was very painful to me. Yet, that was my journey. You have to find yours. Good luck along the road. If you need to bounce some ideas, I'm here and so are a lot of other people.

119

worn out ministerial servant!

by El_Guapo in

jw
friends

Etude

Welcome El_Guapo! Now that you have examined your situation, what do you want to do? Leave entirely? Stay in the congo and learn more about their deceptive ways? Document their hyporcracy? Start a new life? Whatever you do, we're here to support you.

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

A very interesting piece. Ronald Bailey's treatise suggests to me an air of "Determinism", not only by the suggestion of our "gene-driven" driven actions but also by our "event-driven" actions, as in the case of the jilted wife running over her cheating husband with a very nice car. Regardless of whether or not we hold to that philosophical predilection, I still think that the means, the workings of the brain that operate according to physical laws, which Natural Selection or whatever caused it has made possible, are ultimately responsible for whether we have a "free will" or are simply executing predictable choices. The physical process for carrying out thought and what the thought is that may constitute "free will" are two separate things.

What Bailey seems to suggest is that beyond the physical transpirations, beyond the genetic mandate and even beyond deterministic behavior, our brain (that is, the suggested complexity of it) and the intense variety of choices it can make, turns out to supersede determinism and especially morality. Did I get that right?

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

" A [chess] game is never predetermined because the game is what actually happens as it is played. "

Yes, a game is never predetermined because it actually has to happen. However (wouldn't you know there'd be one), there is a finite number of moves possible on a chess board; that would be every possible combination of moves given 8x8 squares [ 10^(10^(50)) ]. Even though the number is quite high, there is a limited number of games under 40 moves that can be played [ 10^(40) ], out of which a subset number of moves for a specific game is drawn. The remaining number though considerably less is still large, but that's not a problem even for today's crop of PC processors, let alone something like Deep Blue.

Furthermore, even thought there is a limited number of possible moves per game, many moves can be eliminated that are not strategic or significant towards winning the game. The point is not about the huge number of permutations that is possible but the much smaller number of moves that are practical and conducive to winning a match, especially after the first 4 moves on the chess board.

The capability of the silicon processor is what has furthered the mathematical discipline called Combinatorial Game Theory. I expect that the AI techniques will advance sufficiently to make us redefine our idea of consciousness and intelligence. Thank you for allowing this conversation to provide some "logical" legs stretching.

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

" Even a perfectly operating chess program can be defeated some of the time because underlying principles cannot be reduced to the foreseeable. "

Depending on what "perfectly" means then, yes! So can a human being. My impression is that chess-playing computers are getting "smarter" by the minute and have algorhythms that help it learn after a mistake. In other words, many programs contain the essence of learning after failure. What the chess program needs to determine is which, out of all the possible outcomes, is the winning strategy. It's starting to happen although presently, computers are barred from open competitions. But in 1997 IBM's Deep Blue beat Kasparov and in 2004 Hydra, Fritz 8, and Deep Junior (all computer programs) beat top players Ruslan Ponomariov, Veselin Topalov and Sergey Karjakin.

" Joe Blow...meets Victoria and falls in love. She is moving to a 3rd world country to be a missionary. Joe isn't even religious. But....he is in love! "

Perhaps Joe Blow is in lust because Victoria can suck a golf ball through ten feet of hose. That's where thinking ends. He's at the mercy of whatever happens and is not concerned with what can be known.

" Man's thoughts are what the imagined God is in the first place! "

Indeed, yes! That's a very good answer to why "God cannot know".

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

Terry:

" If we look up into the sky and see a horse while looking at a cloud you wouldn't say that the "horse-ness" of our identification is contained in the constituency of the cloud itself, would you? I reckon not. "

OK. Even though perhaps we've drifted some from the original topic, what the conversation has amounted to are various supporting arguments to the original topic. By your statement above, you present the idea that perception (or interpretation) of an event is not part of what is being observed but solely lies with the observer. In one sense I tend to agree because if not for our ability to observe clouds there would be nothing t to interpret. It's the classic "if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, I don't know how you feel about that, but you must concede that if two individuals are watching the cloud and they both recognize the shape of a horse, rather than one seeing a horse and the other a table, that there is some fundamental patterns holding information (whatever that is) to cause more than one individual to identify the same shape of the cloud.

How all of that relates to our topic is via the inference that whatever we perceive is conducted in our brains and has a discrete underlying process that follows the laws of nature. How that process turns a cloud-shape to appear like a horse, is not exactly attainable to us. But at least we know why it happens. In my discussion, I was allowing for the possibility that because of a physical process underlying thinking, it may be possible (though highly improbable) that a sufficiently advanced intelligence could gather all variables associated with a thought or decision and predict what will come next. Causality, in this case, is akin to the "Butterfly Effect", where the flapping of the butterfly wings in one part of the world might triggered a hurricane in another. The Lorenz' Strange Attractor and the equations behind it point to causal effects, but not in the linear statistical fashion and rather in a mathematical chaos model.

So, I agree with you that "God cannot know" from the aspect of what you last described: that " God cannot (rather than will not) create a rock so heavy He cannot lift it ". It presents an unexplainable paradox. But that doesn't exclude for me the possibility of "knowing" that you referred to previously. It's like Arthur C. Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

Terry

" My mentioning of the "Will" was to demonstrate that any reduction of a gestalt such as the MIND into a mere organic brain has to pretend the actual purpose of thinking is beyond constituency of neuron firing while simultaneously assuming it isn't. You can't really get away with having it both ways. "

I think we're narrowing down our meanings or at least refining them. Let me see if I can re-state for the purpose of clarity what you're saying: The gestalt of the MIND is global or comprehensive. So, we don't think of a table in terms of lines and rectangles but as a complete and whole entity. When we think about beauty, we don't just think of colors and shapes and sounds but of the whole thing that is beautiful. You say that reducing whatever it is that transpires in the mind to mere electrons in an axon jumping the synapse to another neuron's dendrite "pretends" that thinking is more than a neuron but at the same time assumes it isn't. Damn, even my dissection of your original sentence confuses me. Perhaps you can explain it better in your next response.

But assuming that my interpretation is correct and that my understanding of you intent is clear, we may be talking about apples and oranges. I'm not saying that when we think our thinking process transpires in terms of the most basic components, shapes, or attributes of things (the reductionist idea). At least, that's not the way I view life in general. What I am saying (and maybe this is where I seem to be a reductionist) is that the underlying function of the mind (everything it does to operate) is performed by chemical reactions and obey a construct of nature (the natural laws).

That is not to say that the result (ideas, beauty, musical genius, etc) of the chemical reactions and the laws that govern them is not gestaltic (I'm not sure if there is such a word). In other words, I don't see why the results of such a neurological processes cannot engender more than lines and colors and basic shapes and instead pretend that what it does is beyond the neuron. That we cannot presently explain how some established paths of neurons yield genius does not mean that the process cannot engender genius.

To think in other terms, that the physical process of chemical thoughts are NOT associated with "mind" leads me to that terrifying and mysterious place where "mind" seems to be separate from body, allowing for the possibility that it may exists outside of the body.

So, we can be in agreement if we both substantiate that "mind" (thinking, perceiving beauty, or having genius) IS perceiving in a whole (gestalt) manner and is not reductionism , whereas the process that drives that capability is simply fundamental and obeys the laws of physics.

I think that the pathology of the brain, precisely when it is due to a chemical imbalance that would cause psychosis or schizophrenia, clearly shows that the underlying process of "mind" is due to nothing more than chemical reactions creating electrical paths. This is why it seems reasonable that wearing a helmet with electrodes can make one feel or experience the gestalt of spirituality or a unique sense of "oneness" with the universe.

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

Terry:

" I'd have to understand what the basis is for asserting the firing of neurons obey the laws of physics. How do you account for the "Will"? "

Hmmm. You kinda jumped from one end of the universe to the opposite end there. We know that any thought processes involve the "firing of neurons" because we can actually measure which ones fire and which ones are inhibited and we use scientific tools based on electronics and other laws of physics to make those measurements. We also know that this is the way thought is conducted because when the electrical activity responsible for consciousness stops working, we declare a person brain-dead and pull the plug.

Really -- I don't see how we can contradict that. Now, the "will", Feynman or Hawkins is another matter. The knowledge of how those firing of neurons create thought and intellect, is presently beyond our understanding. But that there's a fundamental mechanism by which that happens is hardly in doubt.

In an earlier comment I made reference to "60 Minutes" piece showing how researchers are now able to tell if you're thinking of a particular object or if you're lying about something. They can't tell what you're lying about, but they can tell the difference from when you're telling the truth. Of course, this presently requires a sophisticated MRI and a person's cooperation. But the point is that we already have a rudimentary way to ascertain what goes on in someone else's mind. It's crude, but the implications are enormous.

I'm not saying that today or any time soon we will be able to read someone's mind. I am saying that given a sufficiently large intelligence, it may be possible to accomplish what we're trying to do today: finding what's on someone's mind. I suppose I could seem less deterministic or a reductionist by stating that given the possibilities, a large intelligence may not at every chance come up with THE answer. The calculations may lead to multiple answers that are likely to occur. But it would narrow the possibilities. In that respect (not being reductionist but as a parallel example), it would be like a game of chess that is played before the first piece is actually moved. The possibilities are already there and can be projected forward by several moves, knowing that the other player has a finite number of moves at the outset.

I don't disagree with your original premise about what god cannot know but not for the self-referent reason you mentioned. The way god is explained to us, s/he is boundless, omnipotent and a limitless sage. But that also means that s/he cannot escape his/her own make up (whatever that is) and would be automatically prohibited from creating an equal. The paradox that questions his/her existence is in the contradiction of his omnipotence and what s/he's unable to do.

81

Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry in

logic prohibits self-reference.

it is a convention like not multiplying by zero.

live with it!.

Etude

Terry:

" Additionally, the human mind can dabble with its own after-echoes. These resonances become recursive and all attempts to analyze them create meta-entanglements. If we think about thinking, for example... "

Sure. My point is that ultimately any "after-echoes", "resonances" or delusions our minds experience are coded in electrical impulses that obey the laws of physics. Due to individual differences but with the same constraints of the laws of physics, individuals will react differently. But the process is still the same. That allows for some things which are fundamentally the same make us agree on a lot, like whether it is day or night or that a forum exists called .

But it's quite likely that the women I lust after are different in looks than the ones you lust after. So, my lust is not your lust. But, they both can still be attributed to an identical process (not trajectory) of brain chemicals and electric impulses. If you could account for your variances and I for mine and input all of that into the fastest and most advanced computer ever built along with some rules, it might be able to predict that you like Mansfield breasts and that I like J-Lo butts. Did we get off topic?