i try to understand why other people believe what they believe.
the author discussed in the article below evidently wants to hide his head in the sand and paint all atheists with the same broad, incorrect brush.
it's as if he's never actually sat down with an atheist and had friendly conversation.. .
It's as if he's never actually sat down with an atheist and had friendly conversation.
It's much easier to just pass judgment on another group you don't agree with without actually trying to understand them. My JW mom tells me I'm an atheist because I don't want to be accountable to anyone. Also that I have no morals because atheists can't possibly have any morals without God in their lives.
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
Now, I can't say for sure if things at the quantum level ARE truly random. If they aren't then everything MUST play out the way it does. However, if it appears to be random, we cannot divine whether or not it truly is, it measures and behave in a random fashion, the for all PRACTICAL and OBSERVABLE purposes, it is.
I agree completely. Someone build a universe save/restore machine so we can find out for sure.
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
I have tried to have this discussion with friends before. Some people get very emotional and upset at the thought they don't have true free will.
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
Otherwise, the newtonion math defining gravity would perfectly describe the orbit or mercury around the sun
That's not due to quantum gravity... general relativity is what refined our understanding of gravity at those scales.
Also, remember we are ultimately talking about free will here. Does QM play a role in your decision making?
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
See the slit experiment.
Yes, and if performed the experiment and noted the results, restored the universe to a point before you did the experiment, would you get different results? If QM is truly random, then yes. If it is NOT truly random, then no.
Quite the reverse, quantum events are the building blocks of the macroscopic world.
True, but the unpredictability of quantum events does not affect us at a macroscopic level.
Like I said this is just a thought exercise for me. When someone first approached me about the idea of the universe being a deterministic machine, I too thought of QM as something that disproved that. I am just thinking of the possibility that QM is not truly random and what that would mean.
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
Too bad that "thinking about that quite a bit" was a waste of time, if everything in the universe is actually deterministic.
It's just a thought exercise -- not a waste of time. Even if the universe is truly deterministic, it doesn't mean everything is pointless. Life is not pointless or without value because evolution happened.
Again, I want to point out that modern science does not agree that the universe is a deterministic machine. The seeming macroscopic deterministic qualities that we see on a large scale are really probabilistic results that cover up the underlying quantum mechanics.
I speculate that perhaps quantum events are not truly random. We could find out if we had the universe state save/restore machine around. And like I said above, perhaps it wouldn't matter anyway if the quantum world IS truly random, as those events don't really affect us at a macroscopic level.
(Like I said this is just something kind of fun to think about.. I have already considered quantum mechanics and how it may be something that disproves the idea of the universe being deterministic... I am playing devil's advocate a bit and considering the possibility that quantum events are not really random.)
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
Why do you think that? Observations made actually don't bear this out.
I speculate that even at the quantum level, which appears to us to be truly random, is NOT random. If the universe state could be restored, even quantum events would play out exactly as before.
That's a guess. How could we ever test it?
Even if quantum events did NOT play out exactly as before, would it matter? Quantum uncertainty has no real bearing on the macroscopic world.
things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.
1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?
2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?
I have thought about this quite a bit.... I think the universe is a deterministic machine and that free will is an illusion. It's only the perception of free will that matters, so this conclusion doesn't "bother" me.
Think about it this way... if we had the ability to save the entire "state" of the universe and restore it to an earlier point in time, everything would play out exactly as it did before...the same choices would be made, the same seemingly random things would happen exactly as before: weather patterns, radioactive decay, activity at the quantum level etc.
Of course until someone creates a device that can save/restore the state of the universe, we wouldn't be able to test my little hypothesis. And even if we had such a machine, we'd have to be outside the universe so that our own observing mind is not restored with the rest of the universe.
energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.
they only travel through time by persisting as they are.
(mountains, for example.).
I still think that science fudges a great deal when they try to define : Energy.
But, maybe I'm just too dense to understand.
Or perhaps you're just tired of the word being abused by the new agey types.
I think of energy as just a potential to do work. Temperature, movement, radiation... all energy.
energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.
they only travel through time by persisting as they are.
(mountains, for example.).
Okay, but what DO YOU MEAN when you say "there is also an inherent uncertainty"? Why do you say this? What makes you think this is so?
Ok, I'm a bit embarrassed to say I don't remember the specifics as to why I think this way. It is how I understood QM to work from what I have read on the subject. I need to go back and re-read some things... I hate it when I forget why I think I know what I think I know.
I really like this thread, by the way!
