93. University of Kentucky Researcher, Dr. Kevin Nelson Skeptical of Near-Death Exper

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

What established science would have to be chucked if "life after death" was shown to occur?

Probably conservation of energy. The second law of thermodynamics might be in trouble. There might be some issues with evolution. Depending on where our souls reside, there might be issues with the fundamental fabric of space-time.

Remember, I'm not a big fan of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," so I don't use it as an argument against life after death.

~~ Paul

[Ersby]

In my experience, it is always brought up in the context of probability and infinity.

Your version only had ten thousand monkeys. How can that illustrate infinity?

The rest of your post covers ground that I've already read from other sources on the subject. Bear in mind they aren't real monkeys.

Oh, and can anyone get hold of that citation? Thanks.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by larry4444

I think Pauls statement explains a lot! - about why skeptics fight so hard to discredit any paranormal research. If ones "world view" is being attacked and may have to be "discarded if the claim were true" then ones ego identity might be threatened.
Maybe subsumed would be a better word than discarded.

Thanks for the armchair psychoanalysis, larry.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by paqart

As far as I am concerned, what you call "psi" is the result of what can just as easily be called an interaction between the physical and the supernatural. I intend to continue using these words interchangeably, because I think that is the correct way to use them, your objections notwithstanding. If I adopted your usage to satisfy you, I wouldn't have any valid reason to do so. I'll take this objection as implicit in any response you should make in the future, to save you the trouble of typing it out too often.

Forget my objections. Can you give us a coherent definition of supernatural?

You are exactly right here. I do believe this is true, so telling me it isn't doesn't do much for me here. "Established science" can be defined in many ways. First, there are quite a few "established scientists" like Sheldrake, Stevenson, Tart, etc, who are "established" despite heavy criticism, but their research is critical of the scientists who criticism them, so these cancel each other out.

What does this have to do with what I said? I was talking about discarding established science, not judging scientists to see if they are bucking the establishment.

Another way to look at it is to look at the spiritual "sciences" (and this is how they are described, in their respective languages) of Buddhism, Yoga, Taoism, etc. If a materialistic worldview is correct, keeping in mind that it is a relatively recent idea, then millennia of these other sciences, or "established science" is tossed. In that equation far less is lost by dumping the materialist view.

Why are those other "sciences" tossed? Are they fundamentally incompatible with modern science?

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by paqart

What I mean to convey with the example is that even infinity, when it comes to probability, has structure. This structure is not truly random. For instance, if monkeys could be trained to do this, they likely would not see any reason to modify their behavior at a typewriter to vary the results. That is structure. This means that in an infinity of time, they may produce a wide variety of results that do not ever approach so much as the English text for the first page of a travel brochure. "Win a trip to the Caribbean!" may not occur once in the entire infinity the test takes place within, nor even that other gem, ";oreui.erhuerhruh". The reason is that the monkeys do not have a search pattern that creates new variations on what has been written without duplicating what has been written. To do that, they would need a designed structure. Once you have that, it is no longer random.

You're taking a trivial cliche and adding an amazing amount of complexity. The cliche could have used a computer with a random number generator instead of monkeys. The point is merely that an infinite string of random letters would include the works of Shakespeare.

pi = 3.1415926...19729715941700531415926095214704122509...

Now if you want to explore the subtleties of the cliche, you need to investigate the infinite monkey theorem:

Infinite monkey theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Check out the section titled "Real monkeys." You are almost certainly correct that real monkeys would produce no Shakespeare, but I don't think that is the point of the cliche, as opposed to the theorem.



~~ Paul

[Ersby]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Now if you want to explore the subtleties of the cliche, you need to investigate the infinite monkey theorem:

Infinite monkey theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Check out the section titled "Real monkeys." You are almost certainly correct that real monkeys would produce no Shakespeare, but I don't think that is the point of the cliche, as opposed to the theorem.



~~ Paul

The wiki article mentions that if you give a real monkey a keyboard, it hits it with a rock and defecates on it. Well, that's half The Bible Code done, then.

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Check out the section titled "Real monkeys." You are almost certainly correct that real monkeys would produce no Shakespeare, but I don't think that is the point of the cliche, as opposed to the theorem.



~~ Paul

Fair enough. Personally, I would like to see how long it takes a group of computers to randomly generate a coherent sentence. It would be fun to make a website experiment of this, with networked computers, constantly running a random typing algorithm combined with a word search/sentence identification routine to see what comes of it.

My keyboard, not counting keypad, arrows, function keys, and the insert/home/etc block, has 58 keys. By using key combinations, a minimum of an additional 51 characters may be generated. This is 109 options per keystroke, so the first sentence in this paragraph would have a 109 to the 101st power probability of occurring. I wonder if, after running that many tests on a computer (with a randomly designated range of 5 characters as a minimum for sentences like "I am." to 500 characters as a maximum, that one sentence, or any sentence with a similar number of words would pop up?

I realize that isn't the same as just letting the test run into infinity, but since that isn't possible anyway, it isn't a bad way to limit the test. To make it a little easier, it could be a 100 character sentence, and it doesn't have to match a specific sentence, it just has to be grammatically correct and a minimum of 100 characters. That is still 100 to the power of 109, but is more workable.

AP

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

pi = 3.1415926...19729715941700531415926095214704122509...

~~ Paul

As I understand it, pi is not truly "random" even if the pattern of numbers never repeat in their entirety. The reason is that pi is related to the circumference of a circle. This gives it structure, therefore it is not random. It may never completely repeat, but the first number is always 3, the second character a decimal point, second number a one, then a four, etcetera. That isn't randomness. It is a very long, but specific number. Sections of it may be repeated, as in your example, but you will never find an infinite variety of number combinations within it either.

AP

[David Bailey]

Kevin Nelson sounded exasperated, defensive, and was not always coherent.

When he said that "we know a lot about how the brain produces consciousness", I wanted to ask the question, "OK - so tell us how to make a conscious artifact. Even some skeptics here admit there we currently have any explanation for how consciousness is produced."

Knowing lots of details about neurotransmitter substances, etc. is NOT the same as having an understanding of how consciousness is generated.

David

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Probably conservation of energy. The second law of thermodynamics might be in trouble.

When Daniel Dennett made this point, physicist Henry Stapp responded...

'.. This argument depends on identifying 'standard physics' with classical physics. The argument collapses when one goes over to contemporary [quantum] physics, in which, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, trajectories of particles are replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which conscious choices can influence physically described activity without violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum physics. Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann form entails, an interactive dualism that is fully in accord with alll the laws of physics. Any perception merely reduces the possibilities.' - Physicist Henry Stapp[/B]

Nor should one assume long held materialist assumption based upon classical mechanics that the world is causally closed .... '...the Universe is fundamentally unpredictable and open, not causally closed.' - Physicist Anton Zeilinger, one of the leading researchers into quantum entanglement.