2023-03-04 14:23:38 <KipIngram   > I really do like Sabine Hossenfelder, but I just completely disagree with her re: non-determinism and free will (neither of which she appears to accept).
2023-03-04 14:24:00 <KipIngram   > I just find it self-evident that yes, we DO have free will, and to doubt that just strikes me as a form of mild insanity.
2023-03-04 14:25:11 <KipIngram   > I think, really, that someone should have been able to PREDICT, hundreds of years ago around Newton's time, that sooner or later we'd find a "chink" in determinism (which is exactly what quantum theory is), because one HAS to be there in order for free will to exist.  It does - so a chink had to too.  We just didn't FIND IT until the early 20th century.
2023-03-04 14:25:38 <thrig       > your gut bacteria, however, are giving what you think of as you a hankering for ...
2023-03-04 14:25:59 <KipIngram   > So even as the whole business of science was spewing out all of the deterministic laws, someone should have been saying "this isn 't going to be the whole story."
2023-03-04 14:26:30 <KipIngram   > Well, obviously a great part of our experiences in the world wind up looking "almost deterministic."
2023-03-04 14:26:39 <KipIngram   > It's a chink, not a full on "breach."
2023-03-04 14:26:47 <KipIngram   > But a chink is all you need.
2023-03-04 14:27:37 <KipIngram   > I think that, in a way I can't even start to explain, our minds are able to choose the outcome of certain quantum processes deep in the brain.  the available choices being precisely those that are allowed by quantum theory, of course.
2023-03-04 14:28:06 <KipIngram   > And our brains and bodies "amplify" those small "choice outcomes" up to the deliberate motion of our bodies and so on.
2023-03-04 14:28:37 <KipIngram   > Our first order of business as a newborn baby is learning how to run all that machinery, as well as how to impose order and sense on the flood of data streaming into us through our senses.
2023-03-04 14:29:05 <KipIngram   > exactly how much of that is born into us (driven by genetics0 and how much of it is "learned" I won't attempt to guess.
2023-03-04 14:31:01 <KipIngram   > To me this picture is just the easiest and simplest way to take all of the data I have, which includes not only all of the data gathered by science but also my internal subjective experiences, and make sense out of them in an orderly way.
2023-03-04 14:32:38 <KipIngram   > The other "really fundamental thing" I won't try to way in on (because I see it as wholly unprovable either way) is the materialist/idealist debate.  Is the physical universe "actually something" and our minds access it via the quantum processes I mentioned above?  Or is it really our minds that are fundamental and "the world" just how we have organized our perceptions of our interactions?
2023-03-04 14:32:52 <KipIngram   > It really doesn't matter - in either case science is about organizing our perceptions.
2023-03-04 14:33:23 <KipIngram   > Doesn't matter to science why / how we HAVE those perceptions. We can't access any information beyond the perceptions - they're our starting point.
2023-03-04 14:33:47 <KipIngram   > So science is about how those perceptions behave - not "why they're there" and "where they come from."
2023-03-04 14:34:24 <KipIngram   > Often people who express support for idealism get accused of being non-scientific - it's like the materialists have "claimed ownership" of science.
2023-03-04 14:34:41 <KipIngram   > But that's ridiculous - science applies equally well in either model, which is exactly WHY we can't answer the question.
2023-03-04 14:35:12 <KipIngram   > Honestly, I don't think it really matters - again because our perceptions, regardless of origin, are what it's all about.
2023-03-04 14:38:01 <KipIngram   > If we experience it reliably and repeatably, it's "real."  To me that's the definition of real.
2023-03-04 14:38:58 <KipIngram   > But anyway - that's just a bit of good old Sabine's outlook that I don't cotton to.  I love her audacity and outspokeness, though.
2023-03-04 14:39:45 <thrig       > Toynbee got in trouble for putting too much "woo" into his Study of History
2023-03-04 14:39:45 <KipIngram   > I'm watching this video of hers at the moment:
2023-03-04 14:39:47 <KipIngram   > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVD99JF-dfE
2023-03-04 14:39:53 <KipIngram   > Some interesting tidbits in this one.
2023-03-04 14:46:59 <KipIngram   > Although she just committed a mortal sin by using the "particle is in two places at once" language.
2023-03-04 14:47:14 <KipIngram   > Such a horrible mis-presentation of the whole business.
2023-03-04 14:47:50 <KipIngram   > The particle isn't IN ANY place until you have in your hand the results of a position measurement showing that it is in some spot.
2023-03-04 14:48:04 <KipIngram   > And when you do that (make a position measurement) you NEVER get two answers.  You only get ONE.
2023-03-04 14:48:33 <KipIngram   > Before the measurement, the WAVE FUNCTION can be spread out over many places.  But that is a sufficiently different idea that the language should make it clear.
2023-03-04 14:49:21 <KipIngram   > That spread out wave function is just an entirely different beast from a "point like wavefunction" that you get upon making a position measurement.
2023-03-04 14:49:53 <thrig       > so like in Space Battleship Yamato?
2023-03-04 15:12:13 <MrMobius    > KipIngram: have you seen the experiments where people who have had the two halves of their brain separates are shown pictures with one eye covered?
2023-03-04 15:21:38 <gordonjcp   > ooo
2023-03-04 15:21:40 <gordonjcp   > speaking of
2023-03-04 15:30:26 <KipIngram   > MrMobius: Yeah, that's fascinating stuff.  Multiple personalitie situations are similarly fascinating.  One study documented a case where a patient with multiple personalities had had dreams in which multiple of the personalities participated, and in later interviews each personality could recall the dream from their own point of view.
2023-03-04 15:30:38 <KipIngram   > So it's like they were actually "together" in an artificial reality.
2023-03-04 15:30:44 <KipIngram   > Very bizarre.
2023-03-04 15:31:28 <KipIngram   > There's a guy who has a very specific idealism theory in which he posits that what's really fundamental is a single universal mind, and we are "dissociated personalities" of that mind.  That would make the world one of these "shared dreams."
2023-03-04 15:32:09 <KipIngram   > It's precisely the same scenario, with the caveat that our "physical world" is apparently much more stable and robust than the small one documented in that case.
2023-03-04 15:32:35 <KipIngram   > But that could have to do with it being occupied by such a large number "dissociated alters."
2023-03-04 15:32:58 <KipIngram   > In a minute I'll probably recall that guy's name.
2023-03-04 15:33:04 <KipIngram   > His work is interesting.
2023-03-04 15:33:29 <KipIngram   > Bernardo Kastrup.
2023-03-04 15:41:03 <Zarutian_iPad> KipIngram: sounds like how Archai in orionsarm.com is described to function in few regards
2023-03-04 15:45:54 <KipIngram   > I'm not familiar with that one.
2023-03-04 16:08:00 <tux0r-      > i found that we autists are often having "two personalities" as well, the public one and the private one
2023-03-04 16:08:07 <tux0r-      > i guess i have professionalized mine
2023-03-04 16:21:06 <gordonjcp   > tux0r: apparently I have a "telephone voice"
2023-03-04 16:22:04 <tux0r       > better than a telephone face, i guess
2023-03-04 16:22:09 <gordonjcp   > hah
2023-03-04 16:24:21 <gordonjcp   > apparently it goes <riiiing riiiiing> what the fuck who is this aw fuck no that moron fuck OOOOOFFFF christ what does he want <picks up>Hello, Comms Workshop? Oh, yes of course I can, yes, one moment please... Right, and you want that port cleared? Done! Anything else? Lovely, no trouble at all, do call again if you need anything <hang up> fuckwit
2023-03-04 16:25:13 <tux0r       > heh
2023-03-04 16:25:15 <gordonjcp   > I used to do radio comms for a massive bridge construction project, where most of the Very Very Senior Boaties were ex-Navy submariners, off nuclear subs
2023-03-04 16:25:20 <tux0r       > my ex-girlfriend was the same
2023-03-04 16:25:35 <gordonjcp   > I got quite used to being asked "so uh, what's your background then, exactly?"
2023-03-04 16:25:36 <thrig       > different languages are used for tribe-internal and external groups, or different sexes, or the mother-in-law, or
2023-03-04 16:25:43 <tux0r       > when a customer or her boss called while we were fighting. we fought a lot...
2023-03-04 16:26:00 <gordonjcp   > mentioned this to one of the Very Very Very Senior Boaties, who had indeed been at Faslane most of his career and he laughed
2023-03-04 16:26:08 <tux0r       > "YOU ARE AN ARROGANT ASSH <riiing> WAIT hi, what can i do for you? <3"
2023-03-04 16:26:20 <thrig       > I'm here to fix the mute button.
2023-03-04 16:27:03 <tux0r       > thrig: i am a different person for different groups, not only speaking a different language. when in public, i play the jester. it's fun.
2023-03-04 16:27:06 <gordonjcp   > "aha," he said , "You've got RT patter like us, but you're clearly not ex-Forces, so you don't quite sound like us, but now they want to know why you sound like us, and are you from somewhere we should be interested in? Like, did you work at Cheltenham, for example? Because you know a *lot* about radio and security..."
2023-03-04 16:28:00 <gordonjcp   > no no, I am not now and have never been a government spook, for our or any other government :-)
2023-03-04 16:28:11 <thrig       > of course not, that would blow your cover
2023-03-04 16:36:59 <Zarutian_iPad> naah, more cash in contracting work
2023-03-04 16:37:41 <thrig       > wouldn't growing work bring in more than a contraction?
2023-03-04 17:26:34 <KipIngram   > tux0r: One day 20 years ago or so I was in my office talking with our company's HR manager.  My wife called, and I spoke briefly with her and then told her I had to go.
2023-03-04 17:26:57 <KipIngram   > When I looked up, the HR lady was grinning, and she said "You are a completely different person when you talk to Julie."
2023-03-04 17:27:42 <KipIngram   > I always tried to be fair and reasonable, but I guess I was a fairly "stern" boss.
2023-03-04 17:28:03 <KipIngram   > No nonsense.
2023-03-04 17:49:18 <veltas      > I think most men talk differently to their wives
2023-03-04 17:49:20 <veltas      > I probably do
2023-03-04 18:14:40 <KipIngram   > Yeah, it seems like a natural thing to me.
2023-03-04 19:12:06 <KipIngram   > Ok, Sabine redeemed herself on the "two places at once" thing in this video:
2023-03-04 19:12:08 <KipIngram   > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b05IeSlMMDw
2023-03-04 19:12:34 <KipIngram   > Basically she blamed the editorial process - apparently you're not allowed to use the words you really need in a lot of popular science articles.
2023-03-04 19:13:15 <KipIngram   > I still think you can get there, though - Feynman was particularly good at describing this stuff in a properly corect way while still speaking in a way an audience of lay people could understand.
2023-03-04 19:13:23 <KipIngram   > But... he was FEYNMAN.
2023-03-04 19:13:41 <KipIngram   > We're probably not going to get another one like him.