"Better to be too credulous than too skeptical." Is that true?

The middle ground is simply another proverb, ”Expect the worst and hope for the best”.

For the record, most folks that are either too credulous or too skeptical share one common trait. They have the hardest time believing the simplest truths.

I guess you could step from skeptical to cynical, but one can never be too skeptical.

” It’s equally true that one can be too skeptical. Those who accept nothing new, who always demand more evidence, are frozen in their understanding of things while the world marches on, leaving them behind.”

This is being cynical.

I was once an empiricist and accepted the blank slate position too credulously. I finally got enough evidence to convince me that there was something in innate ism.

“Those who believe everything they hear…”

That is indeed on interpretation of credulous. I personally have a slightly different definition.

Credulous to me, is seeing past the errors of a persons belief system, and seeing into the good intentions and good nature of everyone, no matter what their belief system. It’s very hard to do sometimes. Often I just want to argue for the sake of arguing. But in my more mature moments, I’ll dish out yummy kudos cookies to anyone that is at least genuine, even if they believe something in complete contrast to what I consider as true.

Basically, though I may not believe you, I do believe in you.

though I don’t suppose that really answered your question here. we can argue about that if you like

If you take a bayesian approach to it it would depend on the prior probability. So new evidence gets thrown in with your assessment before hand about how likely something to be true. I think the sweet spot is on a case by case basis. So if a relatively good study comes out saying some chemical causes cancer, there is little reason to doubt that. But whatever scientology puts out probably desserves all the skepticism.

@Blondesjon Sounds so nice for the credulous, but in fact the overly credulous believe simple truths, complex ones, and outrageously obvious falsehoods with equal ease.

@Neodarwinian I suppose you could define skepticism versus cynicism that way and then that would be true. But is that the dictionary definition of the two words?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies That’s certainly not the definition of credulous. I’m not sure what it’s called. I think you are talking about looking past potential errors in evidentiary support for beliefs, and in logic buttressing beliefs, and instead seeing the underlying human needs that lead someone to adopt a belief even if it is pretty obviously in error. Whatever that ability’s name is, it’s an excellent quality to have. It’s one I am chipping away at learning to practice.

@drhat77 I sure can’t argue against either of those assertions.

@ETpro “Whatever that ability’s name is, it’s an excellent quality to have.”

Yeah, probably not credulous. But I don’t know what it is either. And actually a little more than your expansion. More than looking past errors. But also realizing that person is on a journey, just like I am. Who knows one day they may come around to what I believe… and by that time, I may come around to what they believe.

I’d like to look beyond the urgency of any immediate momentary disagreement. I don’t know a word for it.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies If we can exclude the politics of the war on science and logical thinking, then I definitely agree. And I also think you are probably right that many paths lead to the same destination. But not all do.

I don’t know a word for it either, but it would make an interesting question. What is it, and if it doesn’t yet have a name, what name should we give it?

It’s equally true that one can be too skeptical.

I couldn’t disagree more. Being skeptical does not mean reject all evidence. It means look and examine the quality of the evidence and not just blindly accept results.

Not true. Better to be too skeptical than too credulous. Just think of fanatical young men who really seem to believe that 72 virgins are waiting for them.

I think it’s better to have an open mind, and believe that anything’s possible. I prefer the latter mindset because it still allows me to be sceptical if I don’t have enough evidence to support an assumption. Let’s not forget about the Semmelweis Reflex.

This topic reminds me of my view on the possibility of intelligent life outside of Earth. I suppose that I could state that I reject the existence of intelligent life outside of Earth until presented with enough evidence. I could also state that I feel that it’s possible intelligent life exists outside of Earth, but I won’t outright believe anything until presented with enough evidence. Perhaps more productive metaphors are created by one philosophy over another, but would this be true for every scenerio?

Sometimes science isn’t what we want or expect it to be. I think the key is being open minded, but not so much that your brain falls out. People have biases, and there’s simply no way around that regardless of whether one is a sceptic, fallibilist, agnostic, religionist, nonbeliever, etc.

@Paradox25 I have no problem with maintaining an open mind. And by open, I mean I will read and critically evaluate any credible evidence by using modern Bayesian thinking.

@Paradox25 I think you are missing the distinction between rejecting an assertion that is not sufficiently supported by evidence, and withholding acceptance of such an assertion.

Let’s say my friend tells me fire breathing dragons exist, and that he knows it because he has one in his garage. Many in the ancient world claimed to witness them, so I would want to go have a look in his garage and see for myself. But when he opens the garage door, all I see are some old paint cans on the shelving, a few old auto parts, and an oil slick where he usually parks his car. “I don’t see any dragon.” I exclaim, with a trifle of disappointment in my voice.

“Oh, he’s invisible.” My friend states. “But he’s here. I have eyes tuned to his undetectable ethereal energy, so I and only I can see him.”

“OK”, I say, “Let’s toss some white flour on the floor and watch as he makes tracks in it.”

“Won’t work.” he protests. “Dragons float in the air.”

“Then let’s toss the flour in the air and let it outline him.”

“That won’t work either.” he insists. “Ordinary matter goes right through dragons.”

“Then let’s use an infrared detector to sense the heat of his fire breath.” I suggest.

“Can’t do that.” he claims. “His fire is air temperature.”

I propose test after test, but none of them can work according to my friend. Now much as I would love to witness a real dragon, I’m not going to believe my friend. That doesn’t mean I outright reject the possibility that dragons exist. Maybe they do. Maybe my friend even has ethereal energy detecting eyes. It just means his “evidence” is insufficient to convince me there is a fire breathing dragon in his garage. I won’t believe that till evidence to support it comes along.

^^^^^ Exactly.

@Paradox25 “Sometimes science isn’t what we want or expect it to be.”

@ETpro “Let’s say my friend tells me fire breathing dragons exist…”

Your friend has indeed told you that fire breathing dragons exist ET. But the science behind didn’t turn out how it was expected to be. I say dragon because it was a false claim designed more to promote a business opportunistic agenda or defend research funding and tenure. Embryonic Stem Cell research for one. Have you noticed hardly anyone talking about Random Mutations anymore? Junk DNA has been found to be not so junky after all.

Yet there are those in science who defend concepts such as these with absolute religious fervor to the degree that it would shame Jim Baker.

I’m all about teaching science, and trusting in the methods that support it. But please don’t suggest this thread about what is “credulous” somehow acts to support the credibility of all scientists. TV evangelists have given religion a terrible reputation to overcome. What they market has nothing to do with religion. The sciences suffer the same deceptive agendas. There are many in both camps who’s only purpose is to get attention and the money that comes along with it.

These guys, from both sides, are also protecting reputations. It’s really difficult for anyone to let go of an entire career promoting a concept, and accept being told that what they’ve devoted their lives to has been demonstrated as wrong. That’s not a science or a religious thing. That’s a human nature thing. None of us want to face that devil.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies If you would point out to me where in this thread I said all scientist are immune to confirmation bias and right all the time, I would be very happy to correct my error. But of course, you can’t because I never made any such claim.

I would call UFOlogists pseudoscientists, for instance. The first letter in the acronym stands for unidentified. How do you seriously study something you have not identified and call that study a science? It is an inquiry. You’re looking for what explains strange things we see sometimes in the air. But until we nail some facts down, develop some solid evidence of what these things are (Identify them) it’s not a legitimate science, just something that may someday yield to the scientific method.

Here’s a graphic that notes the difference between science and pseudoscience. Is every scientist always true to all the ideals of the practice? No, of course not. They are not gods, they are human beings like you and me, subject to all our whims and passions. But the whole body of science is highly self correcting whereas the whole body of pseudoscience (astrology, channeling, crystal power, numerology, summoning of the dead, ancient alien theorists, lizard people conspiracy theorists, etc) is the exact opposite. Pseudoscience deals with questioning and review as an attack rather than a welcome tool to keep perfecting its knowledge.

As to the possibility that transposons, or Junk DNA may, in some cases or even in all cases, serve a useful purpose; that change in understanding does not invalidate the scientific method. It is EXACTLY what is meant by self correction and being open to rigorous peer review.

As to random mutations, some have misinterpreted the word random to mean that evolution itself is random. But random mutation has not been abandoned. It’s just important to understand that while the DNA changes that allow evolution to occur are random, natural selection of the properties those random changes make is anything but random. It is the interplay of those two forces that allows evolution to move, over a period of 3 billion years or more, from the simplest prokaryotes to life forms as complex as we see today, and to us.

BTW, there was an amusing piece on the WCVB.com The Boston Channel website today about UFOs. More reason to approach extraordinary claims (like having a fire-breathing dragon in my garage) with requests for extraordinary evidence. Often what looks like the paranormal has a very mundane explanation once investigated. We should always exhaust all mundane explanations before even entertaining the possibility that magic is at work. And we should never conclude that because we don’t know something, the explanation has to my magic or mysticism or God. We ought to be able to admit the truth and simply say, “We don’t know.”

Great answer ET.

@ETpro I’m missing something here I think, and I vividly disagree with your assumptions on how those individuals in science react to a change in a specific paradigm. Max Planck obviously disagrees with your assumption as well, and he was one of the greatest scientists to ever live.

I’ll use ‘sceptic’ Michael Shermer as an example for the following. He has clearly stated, as well as other sceptics that there’s enough evidence to reasonably conclude that a good deal of paranormal phenomena is real. However, sceptics such as Shermer and Wiseman have also stated that we should still remain sceptical of paranormal phenomena, despite the evidence supporting some of it. Why? Because they (sceptics) state we don’t have a viable hypothesis on how this phenomenon could exist currently.

Hold on here I say. I’m no scientist or philosopher, but correct me if I’m wrong with the following. Let’s look at the concepts of dark energy and dark matter. The universe is expanding at an unimaginably high rate, faster than anything we know about physics should allow. The universe should have been slowing down, not speeding up. Science had to react to the latter problem by inventing the concept of ‘dark energy’, despite the fact that it spits in the face of everything we know about physics.

Dark energy has some type of mysterious long range repulsion properties apparently, but yet mainstream science accepts this idea. Why do they accept the concept of dark energy? Because we observe its effects. Obviously there’s no viable hypothesis to explain dark energy, only assumptions. However, when anything pertaining to paranormal phenomena is observed, such as evidence of telepathy, energy healing or mediumship, they get written off. Dark energy and dark matter (another entity that we’ve invented due to observed effects) recieve the title of hypothetical entity, while anything associated with the paranormal or mind is written off as woo woo.

I also can’t understand even after many sceptics admitting that a good deal of paranormal phenomena has been demonstrated to some degree, that these same people continue to ridicule those who accept this evidence. Shermer has contradicted himself to a very high degree by equating anything considering paranormal/psi with santa claus, tooth fairies, common superstitions, flat earth, young earth creationism, etc, since he was one of those sceptics who has admitted there’s evidence to support the reality of psi.

Something is clearly wrong here when sceptics themselves are admitting there’s psi evidence, but yet ridiculing it along with those people researching it. So you guys are also telling me that those scientists whose careers have revolved around currently accepted paradigms would be willing to give everything up, including their own reputations, to support an alternative hypothesis over the null? With everything I’ve posted above, along with what many other scientists have said, it’s very obvious you’re wrong here. This is why we’ll continue to see pretty pictures of cosmic strings and multiverses on the covers on mainstream science magazines while phenomena such as near death experiences will continue to be ridiculed in them.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I don’t think it’s possible to be outside of space/time or science. Everything that occurs, including what is commonly termed as the supernatural, has to be some sort of natural event. If Mind/s created the universe than these entities would be a part of science, not outside of it. If telepathy and ghosts are real, or our minds survive the physical death of our bodies than these too would be natural phenomena.

@Paradox25 “I’ll use ‘sceptic’ Michael Shermer as an example for the following. He has clearly stated, as well as other sceptics that there’s enough evidence to reasonably conclude that a good deal of paranormal phenomena is real.”

Stop. No way. Where did he say this? Be specific and provide a source please.

@Paradox25 ”...what is commonly termed as the supernatural, has to be some sort of natural event…”

It is no secret that I don’t believe in the supernatual. If it happens, no matter how it happens, then it is perfectly natural for it to happen that way.

Even abnormal spikes on the data set are perfectly natural.

And seriously, if the stars truly hang from the scratchy hairs of a goats ass, then it is perfectly natural for them to hang in such a way. The problem arises when someone claims they hang from a goats ass, but cannot provide any evidence beyond an old story written by an ancient drunken goat herder who probably spent too much time sniffing mushrooms.

@Paradox25 “I don’t think it’s possible to be outside of space/time or science.”

Sure it is. First and foremost, every codified and non codified thought ever thunk is outside of space time. The mediums which express the thought are within space time. But the actual thought is knoware.

OK, this is deep, and hard to follow because our language to explain the concept is within space time. It’s the same reason we cannot see an actual tesseract in our space time reality. Our dimension doesn’t allow such phenomenon to be observed. We can project concepts of the tesseract within our realm, but we cannot actually ever see one.

Same thing goes for knoware (my term since there is no other). I cannot say that thoughts are IN knoware. Since the knoware dimension is without space or time, then concepts of IN simply do not apply.

Some thoughts of Fu Xi are represented with the I Ching. They are not IN the I Ching. That’s just a piece of parchment with ink on it.

Some thoughts of Abraham Lincoln are represented with the Gettysburg Address. They are not IN the Gettysburg Address. That’s just a piece of paper with ink on it.

I don’t know of any evidence to suggest that paper and ink can HOLD thoughts. I have plenty of evidence that paper and ink can represent thoughts. But it cannot hold them IN.

The pixels on your computer screen, and mine, do not hold our thoughts. Our thoughts are not IN the pixels. Yet we certainly both agree that thoughts exist, and are accessible to us. Otherwise we could never conduct this conversation.

A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW, the thoughts of Fu Xi, and Abraham Lincoln, and even you and I will still exist. They will be accessible to future generations. How could this be possible if thoughts of dead people didn’t remain existing for eternity and beyond any temporal medium which represents them?

Many (if not most) materialists have a major flaw in their world view of believing that destroying a medium is equal to destroying the thought itself. At most, they can only hide a thought. But it can NEVER be destroyed. And this flaw in the materialists world view would therefor put this entire concept also “outside of science”. Not that it couldn’t be studied. But the materialists inability to accept such a notion in the first place is what keeps it “outside” the realm of science, a human construct. Blame the dogma they cling to.

Remember… I didn’t say that thoughts are IN knoware. I said:

“the actual thought is knoware”… The qualifier of IN does not apply. Our language is broken to describe such concepts of realms that operate differently from our own. We must reject any notions of dimension or weight when discussing knoware.

@Paradox25 I have no idea what your first paragraph means. I do not know what assumptions of mine you are referring to, and thus I am at a loss to relate Max Planck’s ideas to those assumptions. But I will say this. Unlike other disciplines such as theology and theosophy, there are no absolute authorities. Max Planck contributed an enormous wealth of knowledge to science, but there is nothing in the proper practice of science that negates some lab assistant still working on his Masters degree, or for that matter an elementary school dropout who is self taught, from turning his most profound work completely on its head by discovering new experimental data.

Regarding Michael Shermer, I am in @Rarebear and @RealEyesRealizeRealLies camp. I’ve never read him saying that. References, please.

As to skeptics in general and the paranormal, there have been some well controlled studies that showed a very minor positive correlation between projected thought and a distant, isolated subject picking that answer in a 50/50 test. There have been other equally well controlled studies that showed exactly what you would expect by chance, and a few where the correlation was slightly negative. This is exactly what you would expect if you were studying a coin flip with no paranormal forces controlling its outcome. That does not mean that thought projection is bunk. It could be the electrons and protons of our neural synapses are quantum entangled, and thought projection can be carried out at 100% accuracy across many light years with no delay once we learn how. But we can pretty definitively say we have yet to learn how.

As to thoughts and their permanence, both @RealEyesRealizeRealLies and you might enjoy this bit of speculative physics. We used to think that when something fell into a Black hole, its information was forever lost. That appears to be false. To an infalling observer, time remains the same and they approach the event horizon at an ever increasing speed. But to a distant observer, the infalling person or spaceship seems to slow asymptotically as they approach the event horizon. They never fully reach the event horizon, but seem to flatten out within one Planck length of its inner core. Meanwhile the mass the infaller adds to the black hole increases its Schwarzschild radius, thus increasing the surface area of the event horizon just enough that it now has room to accommodate all the information the infalling person and craft contained, and that information also appears to be preserved within the increase in mass and increase in the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole itself.

I most definitely agree our language and our common-sense understanding of how things work is not yet ready to deal with such puzzles.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Fair warning, “this linK about how information is preserved:“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsbZT9bJ1s4&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs is well over an hour talk with several notable physicists. But I know you will love the almost open warfare between notable physicists like Steven Hawking and Leonard Susskind about the preservation of information within a black hole. If you can find time for it, it explores the holographic theory of information, and the panel includes Nobel Prize winner Gerard ‘t Hooft who won the Nobel for his pioneering work in the area. The discussion also delves into what happens when great minds clash. I thing you will enjoy it.

Thanks ET. I’ll be listening to that while catching up on some retouching today.

Before I watch though, I want to pre-empt a bias I have about these topics of information. It demonstrates just how broken our language is to discuss them. The word information, to physicists, means something different than it does to an information theorist. No offense, we all do it, but physics has hijacked the word to mean something entirely different.

Example… Take tree rings…

To a physicist, the tree, the rings, the forest, and everything is information. So your point about the black hole makes sense in that light, considering the space ship as information.

But to an information theorist, or anyone in the information sciences, the tree and rings, and the forest are simply observable phenomenon. We author information about them with code. The code represents the thoughts about an observation.

That’s why I promote that all scientific disciplines adhere to the same definition of the word information, as advised by Robert Losee in his paper A Discipline Independent Definition of Information as published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science.

The paper is long and detailed. But the abstract sums it up nicely as the “characteristics OF”, or the “output OF” a process. Information is “informative ABOUT”… and “This discipline independent definition may be applied to all domains, from physics to epistemology”. The paper goes into great detail about all disciplines it applies to. It covers all of Claude Shannon’s protocols too, as well as discusses the difference between belief and knowledge. It also addresses the often overlooked consequences of “Errors, Misinformation, and Bad Data”.

My point with this, is that by understanding how different disciplines define the word “Information”, I hope to approach your web discussion link a bit better informed so to speak. I would wager, that even before seeing the video, that many if not most arguments about information could be ultimately attributed to the different scientists using different definitions for the word.

If words truly represent meaning, then we should all be very thoughtful as to how we use them as tools to convey our thoughts with. Anything less renders intelligent discussion meaning-less.

Watching vid now!

Sorry about the botched link in my post above. It should be this.

Code. I knew he’s start talking about code… :-)

@ETpro “I have no idea what your first paragraph means. I do not know what assumptions of mine you are referring to, and thus I am at a loss to relate Max Planck’s ideas to those assumptions.” I’ll try to explain in my next post here. On the other matter though I definitely do not equate theology or religion with science. There are many theists who’ll claim that when science doesn’t know something, we make excuses. However, when theology or religion can’t answer something we ridicule it. A guy calling himself a true freethinker (Christian apologist) made those statements above, and I find those statements wrong. I think that’s called special pleading. I just don’t believe that the majority of the phenomena I’ve been argueing for needs to be tied to religion or theology, though they tend to get mixed anyways for obvious enough reasons.

@Rarebear I have articles where Shermer admitted there’s some psi evidence. He even seemed to have gone further than that (at least hinting wise) on others. Shermer did admit he doesn’t think the evidence is enough to overturn the current paradigm though. I have to dig for those articles so give me time, which I’ve been short on lately. I have plenty of information where other career sceptics have made similar remarks too.

It was my goal not to ridicule scepticism, or sceptics, but to give a very divided issue such as survival of death and other related phenomena a bit more respect. I really do feel that what’s coined as the ‘para’normal is going to be the next great frontier in science, regardless of one’s current opinions about the subject. I’m not done here, and I’ll be back with more information relating to what I’ve been talking about.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies “I don’t think it’s possible to be outside of space/time or science.”

“Sure it is. First and foremost, every codified and non codified thought ever thunk is outside of space time. The mediums which express the thought are within space time. But the actual thought is knoware.

OK, this is deep, and hard to follow because our language to explain the concept is within space time. It’s the same reason we cannot see an actual tesseract in our space time reality. Our dimension doesn’t allow such phenomenon to be observed. We can project concepts of the tesseract within our realm, but we cannot actually ever see one.”

I think we agree on alot, but your terminology is so much more different than the people whose material I’ve read. The term ‘Information’ obviously does has different meaning to different people.

As far as your genetic coding (I’m not great with biology) I’d figure something on that level would have to be preprogrammed. Some nonreductionists disagree with this, and think that inevitable order comes to energy fed chaos. Some chaos theorists have demonstrated the remarkable ability of chaotic systems to form extremely complicated patterns, as long as they’re provided with enough energy.

Some nonreductionists would also disagree with thought being an entity itself. There’s been strong debate even within my camp on what consciousness is. Some believe like you do, in a timeless proto-thought. Others believe that ‘thought’ is not an entity itself, but an inevitable effect that was the result of order coming to a highly developed machine aka universe. Perhaps I’ll continue this part of the discussion on another thread though.

“I have articles where Shermer admitted there’s some psi evidence. He even seemed to have gone further than that (at least hinting wise) on others. Shermer did admit he doesn’t think the evidence is enough to overturn the current paradigm though. I have to dig for those articles so give me time, which I’ve been short on lately. I have plenty of information where other career sceptics have made similar remarks too.”

Okay, you keep saying you have information, but you don’t post it. I am calling your bluff here. And you also are backpedaling. In your post above you stated that Shermer “clearly stated”. Now you’re saying that he’s “hinting”. Which is it?

@Paradox25 “Perhaps I’ll continue this part of the discussion on another thread though.”

Actually, I’d bet ET wouldn’t mind if we kept it right here between the four of us. I don’t think you’ll find a more informed set of members interested in these notions. And the benefit you have with this thread is that we’ve been discussing this type of shit for more than have a decade with each other. We’ve kind of gotten past the bullshit.

@ETpro I’ve watched that video twice, currently on my third. I know these guys are supposed to be the smartest in their fields. But as I suggested before, they are truly redefining the meaning of information to fit the physicists notion of what it is. They assume that just because something has molecules, that it’s made of information. That’s so wrong on so many levels, and it will lead the science down the wrong path. They use terms like “the black hole codifies the information”… Well, that means they believe the dumb cosmos can codify something. That it can author. That’s so wrong. And one guy even excused the process as a “miraculous confluence” because they don’t understand how it works.

I’m sorry. These guys just don’t know enough about the information sciences to be speaking intelligently on the subject. I wish they would just call their observations what they really are… Observable Phenomenon. But it is not information. And no fruitful progress will come from their attempts to explain black holes or entanglement or multiverse as long as they treat the words information and observable phenomenon as synonyms. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Let me remind you of the Wiki quote on information:
In 2003 J. D. Bekenstein claimed that a growing trend in physics was to define the physical world as being made up of information itself

This is a bad thing for physics to do. It will prevent physics from speaking on equal basis between different disciplines such as genetics and info theory. But they won’t realize they’re speaking about something entirely different. A bad place for science to be.

They should reboot to the Discipline Independent Definition of Information provided above. Or at least fall back to the words of their forefathers such as Norbert Weiner:
“Information is information. Not energy and not matter. Any materialism that does not allow for this cannot survive in the present”
Cybernetics, p147

I’m actually going to bookmark that video and debate it line for line at some point. Not for here. I have other places where this erroneous perception of what information is should be exposed. Science should not use words loosely or disrespect their established meanings. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s a complete accident, or if some uber materialist intentionally branded the concept to grad students who promoted it further within their community. I wouldn’t doubt it being a false flag just to confuse the issue, preventing any notions of an immaterial realm being considered by science. I’m not saying every physicist is in on some type of conspiracy. But there could have been a few who realized the implications of abiding by established definitions, and what the information age truly meant to the discipline of physics. However it happened, not adhering to established definitions across disciplines will send physics on a wild goose chase. And that’s not the biggest problem. Because there will be many who don’t understand the error, and proceed to hypothesize the wildest theories to support their erroneous path. I see this as very sad. It may take centuries for them to understand the error.

You could literally take that entire video, and replace each mention of “information” with the words “observable phenomenon”, and it would be closer to the reality of what they are actually trying to communicate.

@Rarebear “Code. I knew he’s start talking about code… :-)”

Doing everything I can not to say the “C” word. Believe me it’s hard. But you’ll notice that ET’s video was a 1.5 hour presentation about information, and not once was the “C” word mentioned. How can anyone possibly talk about information without using the “C” word?

But although they didn’t say “code”... They did say that black holes “codify”…

…mkay. I wonder if they are aware of Claude Shannon’s protocols which are necessary to codify something. Can’t do any codifying without a code to codify upon. And you can’t claim information exists without a code present to represent it.

I gotta admit I didn’t watch the video. Too busy today. I just had to give you a little crap because I knew you’d appreciate it. Besides I understand your point of view from the hours of discussions we’ve had over the years.

Just wondering what rabbit Paradox is going to pull out of his hat.

You will notice, at 9:14 on the video, a lamp is shown falling into a black hole, into a ”...realm basically of empty space, of darkness…”

@9:17
“it continues to be drawn to the center of the black hole, what we call the singularity”

@9:22
“where it gets crushed”

But notice, at precisely 9:19, as the lamp begins to stretch, it turns into “0’s and 1’s” to emulate it being information. Then it explodes at 9:22 “where it gets crushed”…

This is so misleading. To visualize those 1’s and 0’s, subliminally suggesting the lamp is codified by the black hole.

Brian Greene is narrating… “Every object, in some sense, contains information because it contains a very specific arrangement of particles…So where is the information that describes the arrangement of those particles? Where does it go?”
______

Mr. Green… The information that describes the arrangement of those particles is knoware. It was knoware from the moment the person who designed the lamp thought of it. The lamp was described with a code written by its creator. That code represents the information created by the designer.

Now if it was a rock… there is no code, and thus, no information. But please don’t suggest that a rock is equal to a lamp. They may be made of the same particles. But there is a vast chasm between a lamp created from information by a sentient designer, and a rock which is a temporal state of chaos.

@Paradox25 You also wrote this: ” I have plenty of information where other career sceptics have made similar remarks too.”

Who, exactly? And where? And what exactly did they say?

@Paradox25 Christian apologists are right that science sometimes makes up names for things we currently don’t understand. For instance, we know that the visible matter of the universe makes up for only a small fraction of the total mass and energy required for the universe to be behaving as it is. I won’t get into how we know that unless you are interested, but we have measured it in numerous ways, and all point to exactly the same answer. So we make up dark energy and dark matter as names for whatever it is that is causing these otherwise unexplained behaviors. That seems like the theist saying God did it. But it’s very different. Naming dark energy and dark matter is just the beginning of the search for answers. What are they? What made them? How do the operate? We have a massive search underway to answer these questions.

In contrast, saying God did it is the end of all inquiry. It cannot be questioned without doubting God, the penalty for which is eternal torture that is painful beyond all imagination, because God loves you and predestined you to question him and get tortured forever, eternally, for your thoughts.

Enough on that soapbox. I look forward to your next post explaining how I am at odds with Max Planck, and showing me where leading skeptics think Psi holds forth serious promise. There are studies where it got just slightly greater than statistically predicted results. But there are also plenty where it failed to even match chance. That’s exactly what you would expect if nothing special were going on. That doesn’t prove there are no psychic phenomena. It does come pretty close to proving that if there are, we don’t understand them well yet.

@Rarebear I’m looking forward to that, too. One of my fellow Boston Atheists has to appear for her first time on Ask an Atheist and she wanted some suggestions about how to field questions on one of the topics for discussion, “Your opinion on miracles.” I gave her this link to a Michael Schemer TED Talk and I don’t hear much waffling in it.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Confirming I am enjoying this discussion and while it may be off the topic of the OP, who knows if further discussion might take it right back there. These things do happen—perhaps even more often than we might expect by chance.

@Paradox25 Re your response to @RealEyesRealizeRealLies about thoughts lying outside the realm of spacetime, what proof do you have of that. They originate in a brain that is most definitely composed of matter. Disable a specific little corner of that brain, and you are suddenly unable to recover certain memories and can’t think about certain things. Neuroscientists can use electrical probes to temporarily shut down selected brain centers. One will rob you of the ability to remember the names associated with faces including your own. Another will leave you unable to think of the words for things. Yet another will shut down balance and the ability to orient ourselves in our environment. If specific types of thought and activity are centered in a specific area of the brain, why should we assume that it actually lies outside not just the brain, but the entire physical universe. There is zero evidence to indicate this is the case and a growing mountain of evidence to show it’s not the case.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I haven’t had a chance due to work pressure today to delve into your interest in code, but I would just say that it seems very arbitrary to claim that until humans came along to convert information to code, everything was without order and chaos reigned. In truth, the Universe, Solar System and Earth ran along just fine without us. I actually fail to see much evidence that our being able to reduce its information to code has improved much. And information in the Physicist’s meaning of the word is VERY useful to their pursuit of knowledge. I’ll be able to discuss it in more detail after reading J. D. Bekenstein paper. Thanks for the line.

@Paradox25 I’m only reading your posts in little bits because I can only take so much of them. But it’s entirely inappropriate to compare dark matter and dark energy to telepathy. In fact it’s so beyond the pale that I am agog. And I never use that word.

Dark energy and dark matter have some very good experimental and mathematical evidence behind it. We just don’t know what they are yet. The examination, testing, and discovery of these things is called, wait, the term will come to me, hang on one second it’s on the tip of my tongue, um…oh yes. “Science.”

Telepathy has none. Zilch. Zero. Efes (Hebrew for zero).

@ETpro ”...to convert information to code…”

I don’t believe you’re grasping my position. Information isn’t converted to code. It doesn’t even exist until code is authored to manifest it into a representable reality.

Thoughts which are codified about Observable Phenomenon are Information.

I don’t codify all thoughts about an observation. I might think “pretty”. But it’s not information unless I codify it as a description. I wouldn’t necessarily codify “pretty” on a scientific data sheet. So there is no information of pretty represented by that sheet. But I might write a poem about the same observation. I would codify “pretty” in the poem, and that codified thought would be equal to information. But I wouldn’t codify “dimension, mass, velocity” for a poem. Thus there would be no information about that available, even though I may have thought about it.

So sitting in one hand, I have a code that describes the phenomenon scientifically.
In the other hand, I have a code that describes the phenomenon poetically.

You only have access to the information about the phenomenon that I share with you.

As the paper states… information is a description about a phenomenon, or process. It is the “value OF” a phenomenon or process… but it is not equal to the phenomenon or the process.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I get that, but I think it is patent bullshit. The information that ran the universe predated human evolution by at least 13 billion years. My guess it it predated it by an eternity.

You seem fixated on one small corner of science and keep trying to claim that none of the rest of science exists, or is of any relevance unless it addresses only the domain that interests you. Your idea puts humans at the center of everything. My take is that stance displays the same human arrogance that led the ancients to assume to Earth was the center of everything, and the entire Universe was put here just for us.

“The information that ran the universe predated human evolution by at least 13 billion years.”

There was never, nor is there currently, any information that ran, or runs the universe.

The universe isn’t an engine. It doesn’t produce anything. It doesn’t consume fuel from another source. It doesn’t expel byproduct. We may call it a “system” for our own understanding, but it’s really not, and nothing runs a system that isn’t there.

It’s just pure static my friend. A field of temporal states of potentiality. Jupiter is nothing more than a blip of static that happened to pop in a certain manner at a certain time when sentient beings were smart enough to build instrumentation to see it and have a language to describe it, whereupon information is created about it. Don’t blink, because what we call the Jupiter blip will vanish soon enough, along with everything else we ignorantly call elegant. It’s only elegant because we call it that.

“My take is that stance displays the same human arrogance that led the ancients to assume to Earth was the center of everything, and the entire Universe was put here just for us.”

Based purely upon observation of the universe alone, I cannot claim “put” anywhere by anyone, or anything. But when that observation is combined with other observations about the human consciousness, then I can posit a hypothesis every bit as valid as a holographic reality. Especially when my hypothesis abides by established definitions of information, and the holographic hypothesis does not.

“Your idea puts humans at the center of everything.”

Actually, I put whatever creator that created humans as the center. But as to the world of reality that we know… consider that keyboard you’re typing on didn’t exist until a human authored it into reality from nothing more than the pure static of the cosmos. Humans have the choice to one day let it return to being pure static, or to maintain it as a form of thought.

What once was formless, has been in-formed.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies A book isn’t an engine either. It doesn’t produce anything. But we can read it and glean information from it.

The Planck constant is information. We didn’t “invent” it. We finally figured out how to read it from the Universe. The total mass and energy of the Universe at the moment after the big bang was information. It had to be in an exact balance, or we wouldn’t live in a flat universe as we do, we’d either live in an open of a closed one. Gravity’s exact force is information. General and special relativity are information. The Laws of thermodynamics are information. The behavior of electrons and how they form electron shells around the nucleus of an atom, how they can only exist in those shells and adding energy to the atom can cause them to instantly shift shells; all that is information. We know now that all these laws of how things behave have existed as they are now from the earliest stages of this Universe’s existence.

Just as reading a book does not create the information in it, looking at jupiter doesn’t create the information we read from it.

We’re back to your creator to explain it all, but that creator cannot be explained. This Universe we live in is an amazing thing and there are many parts of it none of us have yet been able to explain. But inventing a being that is superintelligent, eternal, all-powerful, undetectable by any means, and completely outside spacetime does NOT simplify the mystery. How such a being exists would be a mystery so much greater than dark energy and dark matter that it is beyond silly to propose this as an explanation for all existence and claim that settles the matter.

Oh, and by the way, I blinked. Wonder or wonders. Jupiter is still there.

>“A book isn’t an engine either.”

But I never said a book “runs” anything. That’s a far cry from claiming “The information that ran the universe predated human evolution…” I claimed nothing is running (operating) the universe… just as nothing runs (operates) a book. We would have to identify an operating system to support that premise. In the case of a book, a human intelligence is the operating system. And one could make an argument that humans are also an operating system for the portions of the universe they will to become manufactured and utilized as tools… of course, only after repurposing static as codified information.

>“The Planck constant is information. We didn’t “invent” it.”

Planck’s constant is an equation which describes an observed physical constant. The equation was authored (invented), and thus information was created about an observation. The physical constant was not invented. It was observed and described. Just like all laws of the universe are simply descriptions of observed phenomenon. The description creates information.

>“We finally figured out how to read it from the Universe.”

Careful where you’re going here my friend. The universe is incapable of authoring anything for us to read. In order to support that claim, one would have to identify the alphabet A that it writes with, and establish that it satisfy all Shannon protocols to make it mappable to alphabet B for proper translation.

More likely humans just observe a phenomenon and describe it. I don’t believe the universe is talking to us.

>“The total mass and energy of the Universe at the moment after the big bang was information.”

Your argument is with Norbert Weiner, not me.
“Information is information. Not energy and not matter. Any materialism that does not allow for this cannot survive in the present” Cybernetics p147.

>“It had to be in an exact balance…”

There is nothing mentioned of balance in Shannon protocols of Information Theory.

>“Gravity’s exact force is information. General and special relativity are information. The Laws of thermodynamics are information…”

They are observable phenomenon. They are not information. They are not encoded to satisfy decoding by humans. They are not translated from language A to language B. They are simply observed and described… unless one believes the universe is somehow attempting to speak… the universe doesn’t tell us anything. It’s incapable of telling.

>“We know now that all these laws of how things behave have existed as they are now from the earliest stages of this Universe’s existence.”

The laws have only existed for as long as humans have been around to author them. The phenomenon have existed since, as you say, “from the earliest stages”.

>“Just as reading a book does not create the information in it, looking at jupiter doesn’t create the information we read from it.”

A book has an accepted mechanism to account for the information represented by it. Anonymous authorship is no exception. No one claims the book wrote itself. Jupiter has no identifiable mechanism to account for its purported information. Thus we cannot claim that Jupiter has, or represents any information whatsoever.

>“We’re back to your creator to explain it all, but that creator cannot be explained.”

Not to your satisfaction.

>”...inventing a being that is superintelligent, eternal, all-powerful, undetectable by any means, and completely outside spacetime does NOT simplify the mystery.”

I didn’t invent that being. I acknowledged its existence based upon what science demands that I acknowledge. Code is the smoking gun which determines sentient authorship. It’s good enough for forensic science to determine the presence of a life form. It’s good enough for SETI as the determining factor for identifying intelligence among the static of the cosmos. What I propose is well within scientific methodologies.

When forensics identifies a life form from code, it doesn’t necessarily know anything about the personality or intentions of the life form.

If SETI ever identifies a genuine code sent from outer space, they will not know anything about that life form, other than it is intelligent. They may not even be capable of translating the code at first. But there are specific identifiers that will tell them a genuine code satisfying Purlwitz, Burks, and Waterman definition has been identified. SETI doesn’t get that from Jupiter. As far as SETI is concerned, Jupiter is just a bunch of noise on the line preventing any real information from being communicated to humans.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies @ETpro I’m not engaging with you guys mostly because I’ve had this debate before with Real and I know where it goes. I am enjoying it though.

I’m having fun calling @Paradox25 out, who now seems to have left the thread. But maybe he’s just busy.

@Rarebear I’m done with it with @RealEyesRealizeRealLies. It’s a waste of valuable time.

What do you want me to say ET? That physics hasn’t redefined the word information to mean something different than all other disciplines? Everyone else has it wrong? That SETI is mistaken to attribute a genuine signal as evidence of intelligent authorship? That Jupiter is information instead of noise making SETI’s job harder? That we read Jupiter somehow, but that doesn’t mean the universe is speaking to humans? Really, what do you want me to say?

@ETpro Don’t get frustrated! I learned long ago that we don’t change people’s minds, we just learn more about their point of view.

Now lets’ go back to calling out @Paradox25 as I think we can all be united on that front.

@Rarebear Perhaps you are right.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Of course different disciplines use the same word in different ways. My point is that doesn’t invalidate the discipline. It just means that to delve deeply into a specific scientific discipline, you have to adapt to how they use particular words—what they mean by them.

@Paradox25 Where are you?

@Rarebear I can’t believe you’re not reading between the lines here. I never claimed that there’s no evidence for a phenomenon causing the universe to expand faster than it should, or that there’s no evidence that something other than mass may be keeping galaxies (or their matter/energies) from drifting apart. Where did I deny these observable events? I have some papers documenting some evidence for telepathy, in both humans and even animals, but, like usual, you likely won’t accept these as evidence.

The entire point of my post was to point out the contradictions in many sceptical arguments concerning what they accept as evidence. I clearly pointed the following point out above, that mainstream science seems to be accepting of some evidence due to observation, in spite of lack of foundation or sound theory.

As far as other sceptics are concerned, some of them have made even more contradicting statements than Dr. Shermer did. Let me guess, you want a list of those remarks by other sceptics too. I’ll be happy to oblige if you want.

The entire point of my post is the dogma in science against anything concerning ‘mysticism’ or intelligent design. Why do many sceptics continue to ridicule those who accept the possibility that our egos survive physical death, or other phenomena, when they themselves have admitted that under normal circumstances there’s enough evidence to support some of these claims? I’m not quite as dumb as I feel you perceive me to be, and I can back those statements up as well if you want me to. No rabbit holes required here, and I’m having fun too, but I can do without the cynicism.

@ETpro Like I’d said above, I’m not going to be on here everyday in the near future. I wanted to respond to your other post on the karma thread, since my answer on there was meant for this thread anyways.

I’m probably getting off topic here a bit, but I think it may be required here to make my points. I’m not denying there’s no hard scientific evidence for our egos surviving physical death, or other anomalous phenomena such as telepathy. However, different sciences use different methods all of the time to determine a likely conclusion. The fact is that many sciences use inference (hence named inferential sciences) to create their paradigms.

I really do believe that the methods used to acquire knowledge of the events we encounter in life are going to be varied. Just because something doesn’t rigourously pass the scientific method, it doesn’t mean that there’s no evidence for its existence or reality. Researchers in the inferential sciences use mostly logic, including deduction and intense research, to come to an almost undeniable conclusion. I feel the latter point is true for some paranormal phenomena too, and maybe even in the case for an intelligent designer.

I really do feel that I can offer the strongest case (more so than anybody else on fluther) that our egos likely survive pysical death, or even telepathy, just by using pure logic by posting a combination of documented cases and scientific research. However, I still don’t expect to convince most sceptics anyways, since like rarebare pointed out above, minds will not change nevertheless. This would also require me to turn fluther into a literal encyclopedia, so I’m not going to attempt that. I’ll continue to address these issues on threads devoted to single topics though.

I’m aware of the hit or miss experiments not getting better than chance results. Example: There was a 50% chance that a random LED machine would light up in a certain pattern vs the other pattern. Subject with alleged psychic powers manages to ‘will’ the lights in a certain direction against chance results, by like 52% of the time. The odds of that occurance may well be very high, like a chance of one in a million. However, the failures need to be considered here as well, so if that same ‘psychic’ manages to get hit and misses on a pattern that is parallel with chance results overall, then getting by the one in a million odds need to be dismissed as evidence in themselves. Yes, I get that, though there was another experiment that I’ve been reading about, of which is supposed to consist of more quantum willing, but I have to look at it more before discussing it here.

Also, I never claimed that we can investigate phenomena or entities outside of space-time. I thought you really had meant to respond to realeyes, at least until I’d read the post further. I’m a theist who believes that nothing can be outside of space-time, nor transcendental. I do think that knowledge of certain things can be outside of our current knowledge and ability to perceive though, which do not make these events truly transcendental in my opinion.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Ten years? Wow. The sceptics on fluther debate much more differently than the sceptics on other forums, so it’s been a struggle for me on here. Also, most people in my camp (not too many of us) use much more different terminology than yourself too.

I’m on the side that intelligent design does not have to include a supreme omnipotent deity. I prefer to state that the universe is governed by Mind rather than God. For example, I built a kick ass flashlight that you can wind up and get several hours worth of light out of it without batteries or continual cranking/shaking. I’m not sure I’d call myself a god (unless I’m an egocentrist), but a mind did build it nevertheless.

I’m not sure whether if this creator does exist, that it would be omnipotent or eternal. I suppose that if the potential energies to create a universe have always existed, that it could very well be just as possible to for an eternal sentience of sorts to have existed forever as well.

I guess that when Christian apologist John Lennox asks the nontheist what created their creator that perhaps he’s on to something there, but then I could ask him or Ross that same question too. Despite yourself agreeing with a good deal of material from Ross’s website, it doesn’t appear that he’s argueing for the existence of the same type of creator you are.

@Paradox25 A great deal of what we thought we knew strictly by inductive reasoning and logic has turned out to be utterly false. Here’s a good explanation as to why.

I’m fine with studying things we can apply deductive reasoning and scientific testing to, but I do not regard the findings of such efforts as very compelling. All I will accord them is that they are a very rough guess at truth, and may be the best guess we have now. If I were studying such a pursuit, I wouldn’t even let inductive reasoning guide my development of hypotheses. I’d be much more inclined to strike out into what seems illogical, because the truths are so often totally illogical.

@Paradox25 Let me cut and paste what you wrote. It’s very simple.

“I’ll use ‘sceptic’ Michael Shermer as an example for the following. He has clearly stated, as well as other sceptics that there’s enough evidence to reasonably conclude that a good deal of paranormal phenomena is real.”

This is a very clear statement. You said, emphasis mine so you can read it, “HE HAS CLEARLY STATED” My question to you is, very simply, “Where and when?”

The second statement you said, is this: ” I have plenty of information where other career sceptics have made similar remarks too”

My question to you is, “Who?”

If you can’t answer those simple questions, then you’re just blowing smoke.

Oops, In the first sentence of my second paragraph, I meant inductive rather than deductive. Sorry.

@Rarebear I can invite you to a website full of friendly people, consisting of many scientists and other very intelligent people (most are secularist, not religionists), and you can ask questions. Many of these individuals were at many seances, such as Scole, so I can’t speak for them. Professional magicians post on the site too, and some of them were at Scole and other seances. They’ll answer your questions in a friendly manner (and I’m sure you’ll have many questions, because I know I did).

I’m actually in close contact with many of these people, and I email them regularly as well. As a result I have more knowledge than the averge New Ager or ‘believer’. This is beyond debating on fluther here, so you would have to ask these people the questions yourself. I’m not going to post the link publically, but if you want I’ll send it to you privately. Well I’m out, have a good one.

@Paradox25 I’m not interested in joining another social network. If you can’t answer my questions, I’ll assume that you lied in your initial statements.

@Rarebear This is why I’m not fond of debating about this issue on site where I’m horribly outnumbered. How about I ask this: if I post these sceptics and their statements concerning psi (paranormal) what difference would it make? Would you really change your mind? I’ll play along, and I’ll post them. We’ll see where this goes, but I’ll post these sometime tommorow or during the weekend. It’s going to be a very detailed response too.

Shermer clearly admitted we should be sceptical of the evidence if you would have read the article in its entirety. I feel that the guy contradicts himself by poking fun at those open to psi, while admitting there’s evidence which we should still be sceptical of due to lack of a base hypothesis. Dr. Shermer literally compares people who’re open to loved ones surviving physical death, ghosts or other phenomena to young Earth creationism, superstitions, conspiracy theorists, pink unicorns, etc.

Also, you don’t have to join the site, you can just ask questions.

@Paradox25 ” Dr. Shermer literally compares people who’re open to loved ones surviving physical death, ghosts or other phenomena to young Earth creationism, superstitions, conspiracy theorists, pink unicorns, etc.”

He is correct.

But for the 4th time (and I’ll just cut and paste my prior post because you seem intent on not answering it)

“I’ll use ‘sceptic’ Michael Shermer as an example for the following. He has clearly stated, as well as other sceptics that there’s enough evidence to reasonably conclude that a good deal of paranormal phenomena is real.”

This is a very clear statement. You said, emphasis mine so you can read it, “HE HAS CLEARLY STATED” My question to you is, very simply, “Where and when?”

The second statement you said, is this: ” I have plenty of information where other career sceptics have made similar remarks too”

My question to you is, “Who?”

Answer those two questions please.