January 31st, 2023, 06:45 AM
From unicorns in the Bible to becoming invisible by the practice of yoga, we do of course need extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims.
Has there ever been any extraordinary evidence?
Or will ordinary evidence be sufficient?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_...gram%20Cosmos.
Last edited by ox; January 31st, 2023 at 06:57 AM.
The origin of life was quite extraordinary based on other natural events. It seems the most extraordinary of them all, with the exception of what started all of existence.Originally Posted by ox
But the origin of life has two conflicting and extraordinary claims - arising from inanimate chemicals, or by The Magic Wand. The latter can easily be dismissed as nonsense since there is no evidence such a wand, or its user, ever existed for any reason, much less kick-starting life. But the evidence for abiogenesis, the self-assembly of macromolecules and their ability to replicate, ultimately resulting in living organisms seems rather extraordinary. And while there is nothing revealing it as fact, the claim is nevertheless the only one which seems acceptable.
And the only reason for accepting it is the lack of a better alternative. The deviation between ordinary and extraordinary is somewhat nebulous in this regard. Most who accept science as the only truth will accept abiogenesis, even if does seem extraordinary. Those who reject it believe that such an origin is absurd and beyond belief. To them, only their extraordinary claim of a divine origin is believable.
Some might suggest that extraordinary claims and the evidence is another can of worms, depending on one's philosophy.
Last edited by Double Helix; January 31st, 2023 at 12:10 PM.
Life could be an accident of chaos. There is no obvious reason why it should exist at all.
Maybe it's to oxygenate CO2 as has been suggested.
Now here is an extraordinary claim.
https://www.newscientist.com/article...wards-in-time/
A mirrorverse which goes backwards in time.
All of existence could be an accident of chaos. And those endless notions of multiverses, and now a mirrorverse, are vastly beyond extraordinary claims.
They should be considered unbelievable extraordinary claims, without much chance for evidence of any kind.
Maybe we should wait for the second coming of our savior. At least that would finally put an end to the need for any evidence.
If there is no evidence then you are free to speculate, and you might become the new Einstein or Darwin.
Purpose of life could be to hydrogenate CO2.
http://www.labroots.com/trending/vid...he%20universe.
Science becomes like religion. Without faith there is no religion. Without evidence there is only faith.
If you subscribe to Dawkins then life has no purpose. Not even for genes as they are blind programmers.
I find that some evolutionary biologists do not appear to agree with Dawkins.
But I don't know one that doesn't agree with Darwin.
Dawkins' idea of consciousness is also highly questionable. Memes might add to it but do not build it.
Multiverses, mirrorverses, parallel worlds have little or no evidence to back up these ideas.
They are probably only fantasies.
However, there could be a simple explanation for life and consciousness. It's to collapse the wave function.
Without it the universe would not exist.
Last edited by ox; February 3rd, 2023 at 07:08 AM.
In the classic sense, science is a form of religion, the latter being defined as "a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance" (from Oxford Languages). It need not define a supernatural entity or being, but simply a compilation of "observations" on what the believers see as evidence for their "religion".
Religions devoted to the supernatural have been all the rage for thousands of years, and for no other reason than their "evidence" was cooked up by drugs, alcohol or other mind-altering activities. Or from dreams, typically by the most influential members of a society. Many are the times when dreams were proclaimed to have a divine inspiration, and held as a primary example of evidence. So in this case, dreams play a role as the subconscious affirmation of the conscious state for such primitive, unfounded religious beliefs.
Of course the religion of science is based on the collective consciousness of those who practice it, rather than the limited notions dreamed up by shamans and priests, etc. and foisted onto their followers. This new religion of science is fact-based and experimentally proven, so the collective has transcended faith into the consciousness provided by the confidence of their reproducible observations. The religion of science then appears a vastly superior system of beliefs in that it is largely unified by its many adherents, as opposed to all the other religions with highly variable beliefs, many of which are often at odds with each other. They will eventually disappear as the ultimate religion of science reigns supreme!
The simplest explanation for consciousness is Darwinian. It would seem a primary trait required to advance increasingly complex organisms since an accurate consciousness would be essential to the survival of a species, and its further evolution to higher levels of thought processes.
Yes but how did that arise?
So many scientists have tried and failed to explain consciousness.
Among them:
Dawkins and Dennett - memes.
Crick - neurons.
Jaynes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Or...Bicameral_Mind
They are biologists, not physicists. Biology is a branch of chemistry which itself is a branch of physics.
I'm using Occam's razor to provide the simplest answer which is the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics.
Consciousness is the collapse of the wave function.
Most treatments on consciousness involve the most advanced form - that of human thought processes. But consciousness is very complex to define, and even more so as to its origin*.
It seems only reasonable to believe that it arose long before humans, and began in some very primitive life forms with central nervous systems. How this evolved to the present state of human consciousness is a process requiring extraordinary evidence, which is entirely lacking, just like a proper definition for it is lacking.
But its appearance and evolution certainly occurred, and like all advances in the biological world, was driven by environmental factors. And like so many aspects of evolution since that first life form arose, its origins are likely to remain shrouded in our lack of understanding about such environmental influence on the countless organisms that played a role in its appearance, and advancement.
While some have suggested that all of this is controlled by basic physics, there is no evidence to support such a claim. It is pure speculation. And it would need to be extraordinary evidence since the claim is also extraordinary.
"Four-Dimensional Graded Consciousness"
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...erized%20below.
While I catch up on that reference, I will not rule out Roger Penrose, because nobody can ever rule him out.
https://nautil.us/roger-penrose-on-w...ompute-236591/
Quote from above: “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here.”
Dawkins claim: "Our genes made us. We animals exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines."
With Dawkins any sweeping statement like that has to lie within his own field of science.
Without evidence he goes on to say that genes made us body and mind.
This calls into question if the universe is a figment of our imagination.
Most would agree that only a conscious being might understand the nature of the universe - and that it exists if such beings understand it or not.
https://www.space.com/is-the-univers...consciousness.
I like the idea that particles might have a rudimentary form of consciousness.
If this is correct then some form of life should have evolved everywhere.
However, "The theory consists of a very complicated algorithm that, when applied to a detailed mathematical description of a physical system provides information about whether the system is conscious or not, and what it is conscious of," (Kleiner).
Then there’s always plants and are they conscious even if only a little. The person who wrote the following article thinks so…..
http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/c...n-and-More.pdf
If they do possess some degree of consciousness then where does it fit? I’m thinking that perhaps plants have some awareness of their environment, at least when it comes to setting down roots. Do plants have their head in the ground and ass in the air?
Some respond to touch and I even read where anesthetics can knock some out.
It gets worse: "plants possess a highly developed, conscious root brain that works much as ours does to analyze incoming data and generate sophisticated responses."
Did you know this about trees?
Cut them down and you can hear their cries.
They are one with each other if their roots connect.
As humans we go one better because we have 2 brains. One in the head, the other in the abdomen.
We must be living in the golden age of myth and fable right now.
And the biggest issue is figuring out what is fact, and what is myth and fable.
Maybe AI can help us sort this one out. There are too many gullible people out there who buy into baloney because they are too poorly educated to understand the difference.
It is arguably the biggest problem facing humanity. Facts are our only solution to the problems which confront us all.
Myth and fable will ultimately lead to our demise, and they seem to have a substantial edge based on world events.
The Geiger and Marsden experiment (a.k.a. Rutherford gold foil experiment) might be a candidate.
Fraudsters may find it very difficult to fool a quantum computer. What if it’s the govt trying to pull one over on their citizens? Then again a QC might know best way to fool itself…..but that doesn’t sound right. I think QC will be revolutionary in that we might have to be honest with one another. Think we’ll ever see a day when a QC gives testimony in a court case?And the biggest issue is figuring out what is fact, and what is myth and fable.
Maybe AI can help us sort this one out. There are too many gullible people out there who buy into baloney because they are too poorly educated to understand the difference.
It is arguably the biggest problem facing humanity. Facts are our only solution to the problems which confront us all.
Myth and fable will ultimately lead to our demise, and they seem to have a substantial edge based on world events.
Last edited by zinjanthropos; February 8th, 2023 at 07:04 AM.
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