Not to belabor the point, but the kind of soul we’re talking about is not in it.
You misunderstand G’sIT; it only applies to things which are self-descriptive, and it does not imply “vulnerability”. My systems (like most systems) are not self-descriptive; they act on input and produce output, based on and constantly updating their current state. Just like the soul supposedly does. The theorem doesn’t apply.
Almost nothing is “sufficiently complex”; and G’sIT states ONLY that not all problems in a sufficiently complex system can be resolved to a truth value. Not that they don’t exist, or that all sufficiently complex systems will burst into flame the instant you write Godel’s symbols on paper. And it’s for systems only. It really has nothing to do with life, reality, or computer programming. You are misunderstanding and misapplying the theorem on a gross scale.
Oh, and “giving a system input” isn’t the same as “getting to it”, not if you’re talking about unresolvable input. There’s a big difference between TCP/IPing into a computer, and bashing it to smithereens with a hammer. The hammer, now, that’s unexpected input. The interface is just data; exactly what the system was designed to deal with. And you can’t ship a hammer down the T1 cable. No, for your purposes, you can’t “get at” souls.
What?! Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to all systems of sufficient power to represent the natural numbers.
**
Almost everything is sufficiently complex. **
** Um, no. The Theorem means that systems will always have “unsolvable problems”, which means that certain configurations of information will result in the system’s failure or crashing. Turing’s Halting Problem is directly related to G’sIT: G’sIT is the reason the Halting Problem can’t be solved in the first place.
The point is that there are always types of input that the system cannot be designed for. Cosmic rays, hammers, electrical surges: the system always has a vulnerability.
I’ve checked with my associates. Their conclusion is that you’re on crack; I find I must concur. You’re free to continue talking, but I’m not going to bother paying attention.
Correction in the name of precision: which means the body can change the soul in those ways necessary for the soul to perceive the body. I’ve agreed with you on this from the beginning; it’s stepping outside this claim, as you are doing, which I question.
No, of course it doesn’t go away if I close my eyes. Note that I said “capable of observing.” I suggest that this means the same thing “can observe.”
This is really a tangent, of course, but nevertheless… Let me try it this way, then. The lightcone is defined by… ds[sup]2[/sup]=0. Fortunately, we have this extra little condition: ds is a function of time. Draw the surface ds[sup]2[/sup]=0 at time t and at time t+dt. Note that the spatial slice at time t=0 (the beginning of the universe) is larger at the latter time. The observable universe is bigger. Period, end of story. The shape of the lightcone is the same; the length of the line segment ct = r (in the joys of flat space) is bigger. The observable universe is that part with r between 0 and ct, ignoring such trivial things as general relativity and the Hubble expansion.
In another way of viewing it, think of your 3D visualization. Run it backwards. You see, as time runs backwards, a sphere expanding at a constant rate. Note that the later I start, the longer it has to expand, and the larger the sphere. The sphere at time t=0 is the observable universe. Good enough?
So it seems. As your next statement makes clear, for you, reality is defined by those things which do interact. I would say that reality is defined as those things which can interact, regardless of whether they do so or not. For all I know, there’s some pandimensional little green man out there somewhere; the fact that he’s a pandimensional being and can’t in principle interact with me doesn’t mean he’s not real, it just means that I have no way of finding out whether he’s real or not, and I can ignore his hypothetical existence. His existence doesn’t depend upon my ignorance, any more than mine does upon his.
In the interest of fairness, I should admit that we must have the rule “things can happen.” More than that… well, I’m flabbergasted that you think so. A rule enables us to predict an outcome; if the outcome cannot be predicted, it doesn’t follow any rule in particular. Reality sure as heck seems to have a predictable outcome, but that needn’t be the case. Physics describes reality, but it doesn’t define it.
More to the point, the existence or nonexistence of rules says nothing whatsoever about what form those rules take. For us to assume that we can tell the universe what it should be doing is the height of hubris; the universe tells us what it’s doing, and we try to make sense of it. This does not mean that it is even in principle possible to make sense of it, just that we can try.
So? The system itself isn’t the paper on which it is written. When all records of mathematics cease to exist, mathematics won’t suddenly cease, and the universe won’t suddenly stop appearing to obey mathematical principles. 1+1=2 won’t cease to be true, it will merely cease to be relevant, comprehensible, or known. But the next time intelligent life stares up at the stars and ponders that big question of “why,” that life, it too, will eventually find that 1+1=2.
You’ve a point there. Let’s just say that I like the book but do not pretend to believe that it has anything to do with reality.
(And even though it doesn’t pertain to me, not just yet…)
**
Does hurling childish insults when someone persistently disagrees with you just make you feel good, or do you not understand the concept of civil discusion?
TVAA, I made the point before, and didn’t see a response: It could very well be that souls do not follow what we consider to be immutable laws. Souls could well be existant disproof of all scientific theories about the universe. Damned unlikely, of course. But until we can see a soul in a lab, we can’t say which laws of the physical universe it does and does not follow.
If you already replied to this, apologies, and please provide a link.
g8rguy, it’s called Argumentum ad hominem; a tactic often used when you have nothing else left. The appeal to unnamed authority in it was a nice touch.
Sorry, TVAA, but your associates’ suppliers must have got their files mixed up. I’m not on crack, I’m on dope. Straight Dope.
Waits out the applause and cheers…
That’s an example of an ad-hominem attack as well, though without the venom. Lucky for me I’m not trying to base my proof on it.
Sorry, TVAA but you and/or your sources are having a little problem. See, I have designed interfaces that were not vulnerable to attack. So, as I’ve seen a counterexample, you are most seriously disproven. Here are a few for you to chew on:
A BlackBox that takes digial input, interprets it as binary, interprets those as 8 bit numbers (range 0-127) and then sends back a string of equal length but with all the numbers divided by 3 no remainder. Any surplus bits on the end of the string are retained indefinitely to be prefixed to the next incoming stream of data. Data return is withheld until 8 bits are recieved fromthe input. If the cache is filled then the excess input is discarded without report.
Sad to say, sonny, this little BB is impervious to your hacking. It just spits everything back out, with minimal memory retention.
What you think that’s too simple? Okay, how about:
THIS BlackBox scans recieves a continuous stream of input, which it interprets as 8-bit ascii-encoded text. By comparing to an internal dictionary, it discards things that do not appear to be words. From this, it constructs an internal model that describes the speech style within the input. After it has enough input, as decided by its internal algorithm, it begins to send back messages that are in the style that the input has been in. Buffer overruns: flushed. While its output buffer is full it stops generating text.
Aha, you might say, but you can sabotage the effort by sending in random words! Sure, but that won’t stop the program. Again, nothing you can do will stop the program, shot of getting an axe out and pounding the box to death. And we’ve never said that souls can’t become misinformed, or downright STUPID, just that there is no reason whatsoever to think that any activity taken in the known physical realm can make them operate in undefined ways, if they are indeed metaphysical and well designed.
And after your medication kicks in you can reexamine:
Then what the heck are you talking about??? Tell you what, how about you, like, state your point, and then maybe we can discuss it. Last I checked, we were discussing the traditional conception of a soul (with a nod to g8rguy, who has his own conception which is not yet being discussed), and such a traditional concept includes: extraphysicality (ie: not operating within/under the rules of the known universe) and eternal existence. If that’s not what on your mind, perhaps you should let us in on the secret.
It doesn’t matter if souls violate all of the currently-understood physical laws. It doesn’t matter if souls disprove all of currently-understood physics.
If souls interact with other things, regardless of the means of their interaction, they’re vulnerable to disruption. They can’t be both changeable and eternal.
It’s perfectly possible to construct a system that can accept any input within a limited set; that’s why testing computer programs with data can be useful.
But there are always more possible interactions with the world than fit into that extremely limited set. If we know what input types we’re willing to allow, we can indeed make something that will always work for any “acceptable” inputs, but there will always be at least one unacceptable input that the system won’t be able to handle.
Of course, if we redefine “input” to mean “acceptable inputs”, both begbert2 and g8rbuy are quite right: systems can indeed be designed to accept limited data without problems. However, the word “input” is well-defined in mathematical theories of computation. Technically speaking, the moon’s gravitational pull is a form of input: it’s an interaction that results in the transfer of information. The fact that computers in general can accept this input without changing their output noticably is irrelevant. They’re still wrong in the more general sense: there will always be some interaction with the world that computers won’t be able to handle.
begbert2 and g8rguy: “Against stupidity, the gods themselves cannot contend.”
You can find it elsewhere, so don’t take this site’s word for it, but it’s clearly stated that G’sIT applies to any system complicated enough to represent “elementary arithmetic”.
This invalidates begbert2’s claims here:
I believe even a rudimentary examination of the links provided is enough to show that begbert2 is full of it.
I recommend that anyone who’s interested should go read one of the hundreds of high-quality books and articles about Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, its relationship with Turing’s work, and its implications for computer science and modelling in general. In all honesty, I’m not capable of explaining and presenting the Theorem in the manner it should. (This does not in any way change the fact that I understand the Theorem and its implications far better than begbert2 and g8rguy do.)
Then perhaps you don’t understand the scenario we’re talking about.
As I’ve said, one swing of the sledge is about all the “unexpected input” that a computer needs to disrupt its operation. In scenarios that allow complete access to the “physical” (or metaphysical) object, you betcha you can find a weak point.
However, and I had thought this was obvious, we’re talking about a soul that it outside the reach of physical reality. This does not mean that it follows no laws; however, it means that it is external to reality as we know it.
Think of it as all of reality being spread out diagram-like on a table, for the soul to examine and cherry-pick for information at will. The soul is obviously very picky; it takes most or all of its information from the physical state of the nervious system of a single individual. If that state does not conform to expected parameters, the soul ceases controlling that individual, who promptly drops dead.
Because the soul is choosing what to examine, and because its (meta)physical existence is not within the reach of things running around in physical reality, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that anything in physical reality is going to be able to find vulnerabilities in the soul. Which sure soundls like what you’re talking about.
This is a scenario that seems to adequately account for the purported behavior of souls, and which certainly doesn’t imlpy that they could be vulnerable to attack from the world as we know it. It even does this without denying your claim of omnipresent flaws guaranteed by G’sIT.
Which, I might add, you still seem to be grossly misapplying. You might want to examine your notes again. From one of your sources:
Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but we don’t apply the terms “complete” and “consistent” to physical (or metaphysical) reality either. Just systems that assert truth values.
And again from the same source, (this seems to speak directly of TVAA):
And thanks for the warning about the force it would take to point this out to you, but I plan to contend anyway. There may be hope for you yet.
First to blowero:
Sure. Have you ever seen an imaginary number? Ultimately, everything we observe, we describe with real numbers. That doesn’t mean that we don’t understand the concept of i, and that we don’t have knowledge of it. Just that we can never observe it.
I won’t claim to be a mathematical genius, but how about set theory? Geometry; ever seen a perfect circle? Degrees of infinity?
Now to TVAA: Do you read your own cites? In addition to what begbert has already quoted:
In other words, the universe is not a formal system, so the theorem does not apply.
**
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world; the real world is not a bloody computer. Have you not realized this yet? The universe does no computation; it is, no more. Subsections of the universe do no computation; they are, and no more.
I get the feeling that you really do believe that electrons wander around thinking “hmm… the Dirac equation tells me to take a 90 degree turn to the left. Better do it.” This is complete and utter idiocy; electrons do what electrons do; we model them with physics, but we do not define them. Nature is what it is; the fact that we model it with mathematics is completely and utterly irrelevant.
TVAA: Do you really want to shut down this debate by being a jackass? I ask you one last time to consider being polite. Although I’m not sure you even understand the concept.
You don’t understand: there’s no such thing as “incomplete access”.
It’s not as if you can decide by fiat that the rules the soul operates on simply fail to apply in certain circumstances.
Then it can’t be changed by reality, so it can’t represent our minds or act as any kind of a meaningful guide. We’ve been over this before, begbert2.
How can the soul choose what to examine? In order to sense the world sufficiently to make additional choices, the soul would have to be affectable, which opens up the vulnerabilities again.
The rules that describe informational systems (including these hypothetical souls) can indeed be considered “complete” or “consistent” – that’s why we apply them to computational systems in the first place.
“Computers do no computation, they are, and no more.” :rolleyes:
Computation is information manipulation; the universe is nothing more than information.
We don’t define them, but they have a definition. Human mathematics is ultimately merely a model of the basic principles inherent in the universe itself, but these principles remain regardless of our beliefs. Electrons consistently obey principles; we might say that they are those principles, and their inherent nature leads to certain requirements.
If souls exchange information with the human body – if they interact with the world – they are subject to the same restrictions any other information-processing systems are subject to. Primary among these limitations are those implied by G’sIT and Turing’s HP, the first of which has been shown to show that no such system can successfully run all programs (which is logically equivalent to determining the truth value of a statement) and the second of which offers a specific embodiment of the general principle.
If souls can be affected, they cannot be eternal: any ability to change inevitably means that some interaction will cause sufficient change to push the system out of the configuration range where it was meaningfully considered to function: the soul can be “destroyed” in the same way that any other object or system can be destroyed.
All logical systems, whether ‘material’ or ‘immaterial’, are subject to G’sIT if they’re sufficiently complex to represent the natural numbers. This applies to everything, one way or another, as anything can be considered part of such a system.
Any attempt to describe the nature of the universe is necessarily either fundamentally wrong or inevitably incomplete.
Have fun reiterating your positions, boys: I’m through.
But what I was asking for an example of was your statement that “not all realms of mathematics make observable predictions”. Imaginary numbers can be used to make observable predictions, because they can cancel out in equations, leaving a concrete result. There would be no point in having imaginary numbers if they had no use. Don’t most people consider such intangibles to be mere mathematical constructs that facilitate solving equations, and not actually representative of physical reality? In fact, the word “imaginary” itself seems very telling. If we were talking about imaginary souls, then I wouldn’t have a problem with the concept. The problem is, the soul is advanced as something that physically exists.
Again, aren’t these all ends to a means? Would the concept of infinity be of any value if we were unable to yield any tangible results from its use in an equation? If such equations had no predictive power?
TVAA you certainly are through; you also happen to be incorrect on a massive number of points. If you choose not to come back and reiterate your incorrect positions, that is also fine with me.
Your most blatant misunderstanding was likely taught to you; that however does not prevent you from unlearning it. As has been stated repeatedly throughout this thread and your sources, Godel’s incompleteness system states that no system that is able to make statements about its statements can via the manipulations of its symbology confirm the truth of all true statements. The has nothing to do with destroying anything, other than the preconception that a system could prove everything one way or the other. Whoever told you that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem was the harbinger of the last days was either an idiot with not a lick of the knowledge required to understand such a theorem (for no rational logician or mathematician would seriously say such a thing), was testing to see wether you could detect crap, or was someone who had, as you likely did, the same false and ridiculous notion taught to them.
Beyond the totally absurd notion you’re basing your arguments on, there are a few other of your positions you might want to reconsider.
By theorizing that the soul might not exist in the physicial plane, we are by definition assuming incomplete access. It’s not on the plane you’re on, remember? And, of course, there is the point that even in good old computerland, there is such a thing as “Access Denied”. I’m afraid that I understand your statement; it happens to be absurd and demonstrably false. Can you read my mind from there? If not, you have incomplete access. Your only avenue to my mind is this board. And whatever you do to hack the board, you’re not going to hack my mind through it.
False. I gave an example scenario where the “higher” level being can be changed by a “lower” reality at its discretion. Here’s another: You’re playing a text-based computer game. Your perception of the “game world” can be changed by the text you see, and you control your avatar within the game. If the game decides to mess with your mind it can feed you lies, and gibberish, but sorry, sucker, there is no “magic char string of death” that the computer can print on its screen to cause your head to explode. Unless you take Monty Python’s “the funniest joke in the world” as gospel.
False. You can examine a banana sufficiently to decide which bits are bruised and which bits are edible, and your head isn’t going to explode as a result. You are making the invalid assumption that merely because this reality seems massively complicated to you, it must seem so to souls. Perhaps they have the unified theory or something. Perhaps it’s just not the case that the “secret word of death” (which you are falsely assuming that Godel requires) is held within the universe as we know it. Perhps the soul keeps it safely locked in a box on the top shelf of its closet.
[quote]
The rules that describe informational systems (including these hypothetical souls) can indeed be considered “complete” or “consistent” – that’s why we apply them to computational systems in the first place.
[quote]
Tricky, here. Just because a descriptive system cannot discern the truth of all statements does not mean that the statements cannot exist. Your proof appears to be based on the idea that all statements creatable in a destcriptive system all are implemented/carried out by the thing to which the system is applied, AND that the universe, souls, or bananas give a rip about wether your calculation system can prove their truth or not. Neither of which is a true or even reasonable assumption.
Even if we accept your peculiar assumption that the universe is an information system, there could only be a problem if the thing was so desperately committed to being described in a “complete” and “consistent” that, in finding it cannot be described so, it would commit seppuku out of grief. So, there cannot be a Turing-Complete solver. Have you noticed that your computer still works?
And what cheesebar told you that the universe felt compelled to run all programs? Note that the proof is that not all programs can complete. That means, finish. Yes, your arguments argue that YES, things exist that if started, would NEVER STOP. Would you like to back off now, or should we point out that the soul might simply be one of those programs?
[quote]
If souls can be affected, they cannot be eternal: any ability to change inevitably means that some interaction will cause sufficient change to push the system out of the configuration range where it was meaningfully considered to function: the soul can be “destroyed” in the same way that any other object or system can be destroyed.
[quote]
False. Read your own sources, and note that you are misinterpreting them and they say so. Note that programs HAVE BEEN MADE that can withstand change; I gave two examples, one of which I could write in about ten minutes. And you can’t get to the soul with your sledgehammer, so forget the notion of having complete access. It was determined false in the scenario startup conditions.
The system, not the thing that it describes. Just because you can describe the weight of a banana with a natural number, does not mean that the banana suddenly somehow lacks in truth value, or that it explodes.
No. Any attempt to completely describe the universe will have unprovable assertions. However, that doesn’t mean that the universe is fundamentally wrong. Just that the systems are incomplete. Not the solar systems, the descriptive systems.
Fighting ignorance since 1973 (it’s taking longer than we thought)
Don’t get me wrong, blowero, I’m not claiming that imaginary numbers have no use. I am claiming that you can’t find a real life imaginary quantity of anything. You can’t observe an imaginary number, and you can’t place your hands on one. However, we still know about them, which is what I’m trying to get across.
Whether something has any real life application or not (imaginary numbers do, but pretty much any real life application you choose can be done, if much more tediously, with real numbers), I contend, is irrelevant to whether we know about them. The concept of something that we can’t use for anything may be useless, but it isn’t meaningless, and it is knowledge.
Actually, I would also add that imaginary numbers did have a use even when we didn’t need them for real-world calculation: we need them to make certain operations logically consistent. That is, if you accept that you can take the n[sup]th[/sup] root of something, then you need to define an imaginary number so that the n[sup]th[/sup] root makes sense, even if the imaginary number has in and of itself no bearing on reality, right?
As for TVAA: leave as you will. I find it interesting that when your own citations tell you that you’re wrong, you ignore them. This bespeaks a certain intellectual dishonesty, in my opinion, which does you little credit.
This
is sheer unmitigated balderdash. You might say that electrons are their principles. You would happen to be making an assumption; it is probably the silliest assumption you’ve made yet. And in your proof by contradiction, it is the one I would accept as false.
Now you’re being deliberately disingeneous; this is not surprising. A computer which is turned off does no computation; a computer which is in use does computation. This should be obvious to anyone with a shred of intellect.
After thinking about it, I think the concept of an immortal souls is simply a mechanism in order to ease anxiety over death. Death isn’t quite so scary if you believe that a fundamental part of yourself will exist forevermore in some happy-place.
Its also used as a vehicle to bring justice to the downtrodden. In other words, things may suck now, but if you follow the rules, you will be rewarded. A side benifit is that no-one as yet has come back to prove wether is true or not.
The soul is an idea people came up with so they wouldn’t be so scared about dieing.
I didn’t say you were. In fact, it is precisely because they DO have a use, that I pointed out they are not an example of a “realm of mathematics” that does not make observable predictions.
I’d say it’s more accurate to say we invented them. And I already understood your point; I just don’t think it supports your supposition that mathematics exists as an entity independent of empirical observation.
But why do you keep talking about things we “can’t use for anything”? You still haven’t given a valid example of such.
Sorry to keep harping on you for examples, but what sort of mathematical operation would need to be done that would yield no useful result? They didn’t just make up i for the hell of it. They said “how can I solve this equation?” Do you think it’s never been physically tested? You can solve equations using imaginary numbers, and you can test the results in real-world situations. If the results had come out as gibberish, the idea would have been discarded. Mathematics does not exist in a vacuum; it is only valuable to us because it allows us to make predictions of real-world events.
—You can see your eyes? In terms of direct experience you cannot, i.e. the unmirrored eye cannot see itself seeing.—
What does that have to do with anything? The point is: I can use a system to examine the system. Whether I manufacture and use other tools to help is beside the point. Perhaps there are things the system cannot observe: but this not necessarily the case, as you seem to be asserting.
We’re not talking about a logically descriptive system: it’s a thing, operating in a certain way, observing how it itself works. Godel doesn’t apply.
—The soul/consciousness has been called the unobserved observer, as it can observe all except itself.—
Oh: it’s been “called” that! What stunning evidence!
—We as observer cannot observe that which is aware of thought.—
This would apply that whatever thing you mean by “we as observer” is not aware of its own observations. If so, why call it an observer?
—Besides if souls—consciousness are nothing then what could be observed or perceived?—
Ah, well that’s a whole thread in and of itself, isn’t it? I seem to remember periodic outbreaks of the general “mathematics: invented or discovered” type threads. Obviously, you answer the former, while I answer the latter. But that’s not my key contention for this argument; my key contention is that logic told us that certain things about this mathematics which we either invented or discovered must be true; hence, we knew something. The fact that these things we invented or discovered later were shown to have real life applications is utterly irrelevant.
More accurate, I think, would be things we needn’t use for anything. Certainly I’m not fixated on useless things; I just don’t pretend to believe that all things must have a real-world manifestation in order to be known.
But I guess I don’t see a real life application of set theory. Or quaternion numbers. Or, for that matter, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Or a perfect circle or sphere. Heck, many things in math were discovered (or invented, if you prefer) before any real life application was found.
Here’s another one: 4-dimensional non-Euclidian geometry. The theoretical framework was worked out decades before Einstein. It just happened to be the case that it suited his purposes to describe the universe in these terms. If the universe is correctly described in these terms, then we’d have to discover (or invent) this branch of mathematics in order to make progress.
Yes; consistency of the theory requires that you be able to solve the equation x[sup]2[/sup]+1=0, so they invented i to allow us to do that. Why would they want to solve that equation, however? What real world thing does it describe?
In fact, complex numbers were discovered (or invented) in the 1500’s, as far as I recall, admittedly initially as a way to solve cubic and higher order equations. Physics a la Newton and the like started a century later; practical applications of complex numbers would therefore seem to me to postdate their discovery or invention. I don’t see solving a cubic equation analytically to have a great deal of real world usage, especially when you don’t have a theoretical framework with which to make real world predictions about phenomena of interest.
This is not to say that there were no pre-Newton scientists, by the way. And honestly, go talk to some of these hard-core pure mathematicians and see how many of them are doing things with real-world applications; they distinguish pure from applied math for a reason, eh?
