h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

try watching the first few episodes of star trek deep space nine

they go into omniscience and understanding linear time in great detail

I've read the forum on Taliesin's page. In an act of omnicognisense, you'll already know o which side of the debate I'm going to come down on. It seem to me like you and RC are bating about notions of such incoherence, it's bewildering. I really struggled to follow your thinking. Really there are some of us for whom double-think is not a natural talent.

I've don't understand your obsession with mathematical infinities or the light cones of physics. As ever with (if you'll forgive the crass generalisation) you people it's this bizarre melding of real hypothesis and discovery with the wilder excesses of fantasy and delusion.

Clive
I understand ..
I'll see if I can't come up with a more concrete explanation, but it will be based on the same hypothesis, as you can imagine.
My bedtime

how to understand omnicenses

linear time:- you are stood on a road, ahead of you is the past, you can see it, behind you is the future, you dont know whats coming, you are stood in the present and you can see things apearing beside you, you are moving backwards down the road

omniwhatsit:- you are stood on a tall peak and can see everything, every direction you turn is like looking at the past, when you look at the future, its like looking at the past, you can see it all but you cant change it, because everytime you change it, it has allways been like that

Taff, not bad, a good attempt at exposing the fallacies of our perceptions of reality ..

Clive
>>I don't understand your obsession with mathematical infinities<<
It's because of our 'limited faculties' (Einstein's expression), that we have to contemplate in this way to understand omniscience and hence eternity.
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Hi Andy, I've just discovered this thread and find a slightly different tack than the ones on others that warner has hijacked.

The computer analogy has been worked over and maybe the point gets lost in the details so I'll try something from Steven Pinker.

Say you have a candle. A wax cylinder with a wick in the centre. When you apply enough heat, the wax in the wick melts, then evaporates, then the oxygen in the air combines with the hydrgen and carbon which have been split apart by the heat. This produces more heat than was consumed so the process continues until one of the physical parts of the system is lost. The wax runs out, the wick runs out, the air runs out or the heat is removed.

This is a question for you, warner. If there are two things here, a candle and its flame, one a material thing, the other a process, what happens if a puff of air comes and along strips the heat away faster than the flame can replace it?

If you are like most people you will say that the flame goes out. Steven Pinker points out that you can tell something about the way the brain works by the choice of words we use to describe something. In this case, we use the verb 'to go'

So, where did the flame go? You'll agree that it didn't 'go' anywhere, it simply ceased to be. The process, missing one necessary part, stopped.

Our brains work in such a way that we find it easy to see the beginning of something. The problem is that, once we have that image, we can't then let go of it. The image is physically composed of a state of neuron combination. Which persists. Like that annoying tune that you can't get out of your head.

It's easy to see oneself as existing, what's difficult, maybe impossible if your ego's big enough, is to see yourself as not existing. So we imagine an immaterial soul to get around the problem.

One day you will be lying in a hospital bed, then just your body will be lying there and people will say that you are gone. Only you won't have gone anywhere, your flame will simply have ceased to exist.

I wonder if Warner will answer my question regardig my up-scaled version of the Schrodinger puzzle?

Hi Clive,

I think warner can escape the question in one of two ways. If a cat has no soul then the question is unimportant, it doesn't matter if the cat is alive or dead. If the cat does have a soul then the poison can have no effect, the cat is always 'alive' in the only important sense.

Or he can quote scripture, no wait,.. that's three ways.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

But what about the person in the box: the second part of my question? He thinks people have souls, specifically souls which have inscribed upon them the finite and precise moment of termination.

When however, termination is the direct result not a piece of mechanical motion, (bullet fired from the book depository, with knowable position, speed, force and trajectory, destroys President's head...) but rather an event governed by an act of imprecise and undetermined probability (the random decay of a radioactive element triggering a fatal event) surely there is a conflict?

I'm trying to understand how Warner's theology copes with this hypothetical but based-in-reality thought experiment. I am lead to think that if Warner's reply, being forthcoming, is that God does indeed know the outcome of the probability governing the moment of radioactive decay in the element.(and therefore whether the person lives or dies) It implies that god must know the outcome of all such moments of probability.

For example he *might* say God doesn't need to know the outcome of *all* moments of probability of radioactive decay which given the size and age of the universe full of of thermonuclear fission machines called stars, would be an impressively large number of events to keep in mind, quiet apart from all the intervening in miraculous events, writing, books, having children and listening to prayers that is also supposed to go on, it might be merely *sufficient* that God knows the outcome of the probabilistic events that affect his creations, like the person that's sat in the box.

But this is to place a limit of what god can know, which since Warner also assumes God knows everything, I don't see that this is a move Warner can make.

I will find his answer, assuming it

a) tries to address the conundrum of my question, rather than merely remarking on the novelty of it

b) is coherent and sensible

c) doesn't rely on quoting scripture but is his own explanation of what he thinks would hapen and what it means.

I *will* be quite interested.

If it doesn't meet the conditions of a), b), or c) then I wonder why I put forth the effort?


I

Clive
I think you would accuse me of b) in my answer, due to you not accepting my proposal:
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You're right of course, that God knows everything, past, present and future simultaneously. Everything being the knowledge of every atom, and every thought of every creature. And as I said before, all creatures have souls, including men and cats

For those who accept the many words interpretation of indeterminacy, god knows the outcome of both cats. The live one and the dead one.

Just think, at any given instant, there are an infinite number of warners and god knows the outcome of every one. Maybe some of them are reasonable.

Many WORLDS interpretation. Freudian typo.

-And as I said before, all creatures have souls, including men and cats -

I'd be careful there. Laboratory biologists have already created new forms of life by playing around with bits of this and that complex material and are rapidly closing in on the ability to do it from scratch.

Will you say that they are gods since they have created life?

<>

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from these statements is it possible to come up with an estimate of the measure of gods intelect and express it in the form of computer memory size?????

>> your flame will simply have ceased to exist. <<
What's so upsetting about that?

>>t's easy to see oneself as existing, what's difficult, maybe impossible if your ego's big enough, is to see yourself as not existing. So we imagine an immaterial soul to get around the problem.<<

Please don't include me in that 'we'.
If I didn't understand anything about Almighty God, I would want to 'extinguish that flame' sooner, rather than later. What a relief it would be, to know nothing, simply not exist. This world is like a prison, it's full of lies and people wishing you harm. If you have no money, no food, no acommadation and are alone, what's there to live for?

Wow. You do have a depressing view of life Warner if that's what you think atheism engenders one to think life is like. Brief, finite, wonderful, but a prison of lies and fatalism?

>>if that's what you think atheism engenders one to think life is like<<
No, I don't think that being an atheist engenders one to think of life as depressing. More likely, the opposite, if anything.

"There probably is no god, now go enjoy life".

But what about those who can't enjoy life?

You make an excellent point there warner.

A major theme on these threads is playing with the idea of why people believe in god. It's never a mystery to those who do believe, it just seems natural. Like the christian love song goes "I can't be wrong when it feels so right'

Those of us who have been fooled by our feelings, who know well the expression, 'I can't believe my eyes' are the ones who find the question of belief more interesting. Just what is it that would make someone see something that is obviously imaginary and then deny that it's imaginary?

Maybe having the kind of personality that is too unsatisfied with life does it. Oh, reality is too dreary, there must be something better than this.

>>Just what is it that would make someone see something that is obviously imaginary?<<
It's no more imaginary than what you see when you open your eyes. A whole heap of atoms, in balance with each other, making the objects you perceive look solid. That's all perceived sight is, a reflection of electromagnetic radiation from 'energy fields'.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein

Imaginary - Hmph!