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We haven't yet created a scientific means of detecting the soul.
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Jun 10, 2021 22:41
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Raenir Salazar posted:We haven't yet created a scientific means of detecting the soul. It’s probably a good thing even if it does exist. Every time it happens in fiction souls start getting harvested for energy.
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Jun 10, 2021 22:43
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Nitrousoxide posted:It’s probably a good thing even if it does exist. Every time it happens in fiction souls start getting harvested for energy. depends, do i get to be a wizard
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Jun 10, 2021 22:54
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DrSunshine posted:Wh-what? I don't know, but I've never seen it proven that reincarnation would require a soul, or even what a soul would be, or even what consciousness is so I'm going to disagree when someone makes the claim that reincarnation would require a soul. If someone's make a falsifiable claim about a soul that hasn't been proven false, then please share. Bug Squash posted:This is stoner logic. Nice contribution. My logic is that there is no basis to believe in alien visitation and it's fine. Antifa Turkeesian posted:There’s no such thing as incarnation because there’s no such thing as a soul, which is to say that every model of the universe works just as well with it as without it. There’s no way to investigate the soul because no criteria can exist for its detection, the same as lizard people who change their shape and are identical to regular humans. You can investigate souls or lizard people in the same way that you investigate aliens on Earth. There is no more or less reason to believe in alien visitation vs reincarnation/society of lizard people. Any theory focuses entirely on unfalsifiable claims. Fart Amplifier fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 23:02
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Fart Amplifier posted:I don't know, but I've never seen it proven that reincarnation would require a soul, or even what a soul would be, or even what consciousness is so I'm going to disagree when someone makes the claim that reincarnation would require a soul. Incarnation is literally the process by which a body becomes inhabited by nonphysical consciousness, what ancient people understood to be a soul. How do you get to the idea of incarnation without also believing in a nonphysical spirit that drives your body around like Voltron? This is different from consciousness, which can be described adequately without reference to magic.
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Jun 10, 2021 23:30
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We knew flight was possible because we could see birds and poo poo do it every day. Alien visitation on other worlds is possible -- albeit insanely difficult and extremely unlikely -- because we've done it ourselves, as has been pointed out. To suggest that speculating about a spacefaring civilization reaching another planet is the same as speculating about souls and reincarnation is absurd. That's like saying flight and god are equally probable. They aren't. We've never seen any process or evidence that can be extrapolated in the same way.
typhus fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 23:39
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I think I agree with the claim that many specific claims of alien visitation to the planet Earth, like those of Budd Hopkins or John Mack, are unfalsifiable and rely on the same kind of logic as supernatural claims about ghosts and reincarnation, but the argument’s been made poorly and could stand to be stated directly without all the “oooh, I gotcha!” dancing and weird hostility.
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Jun 10, 2021 23:45
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Nitrousoxide posted:It’s probably a good thing even if it does exist. Every time it happens in fiction souls start getting harvested for energy. Yeah but look at what we could do with that sweet rear end Argent Energy.
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Jun 10, 2021 23:54
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:I think I agree with the claim that many specific claims of alien visitation to the planet Earth, like those of Budd Hopkins or John Mack, are unfalsifiable and rely on the same kind of logic as supernatural claims about ghosts and reincarnation, but the argument’s been made poorly and could stand to be stated directly without all the “oooh, I gotcha!” dancing and weird hostility. I was objecting to a claim was that reincarnation was a "crackpot theory" in a thread that takes seriously the idea that UFOs are aliens. typhus posted:To suggest that speculating about a spacefaring civilization reaching another planet is the same as speculating about souls and reincarnation is absurd. I wasn't talking about speculating. I'm calling out labelling one unsupported unfalsifiable theory "crackpot" while insisting that another unsupported unfalsifiable theory is somehow better.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:14
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This thread definitely doesn’t take seriously the claim that there are alien spaceships visiting the Earth. You might be thinking of the cspam ufo thread, which also doesn’t do that, but is a few layers of irony thick.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:21
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:This thread definitely doesn’t take seriously the claim that there are alien spaceships visiting the Earth. You might be thinking of the cspam ufo thread, which also doesn’t do that, but is a few layers of irony thick. My mistake then, sorry
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Jun 11, 2021 00:29
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Boris Galerkin posted:I don’t even know how to respond to that. "Wrap it up boys, these guys figured out Quantum Gravity and the origin of all UFO phenomena! They explain it clearly and completely in their...paper? No...um, in short, ambiguous language on their website." Anxiously awaiting their Nobels.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:59
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For a ring world I'd imagine building it roughly moon orbit size, and just putting a roof on the drat thing to hold the air in. Put the roof ~30km up, and have dozens of fusion generators spaced out around it hanging on a track that they make their way around to create a day/night cycle.
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Jun 11, 2021 02:21
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Why would you waste all that light in non-visible wavelengths using a black body emitter rather than LED’s?
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Jun 11, 2021 02:27
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Nitrousoxide posted:Why would you waste all that light in non-visible wavelengths using a black body emitter rather than LED’s? I believe the nicer parts of Ceres in The Expanse use LEDs for Day/Night. You could put a roof over the Halo-type ring world's, it isn't like you need to launch spacecraft from the "land" portions instead of stations on the outside facing out side of it. I'd be worried what happens if something was to crash through the roof though, and how well it can tolerate it until repairs can be made. Ideally you want like, enough of an atmosphere that you don't have like explosive decompression as a result, people should be able to safely stand on the ground even directly 100km below and live their lives while work crews fix the whole, first with a temporary measure to stop the atmosphere from leaking and then slowly build something permament.
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Jun 11, 2021 02:37
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I believe I've seen estimates that even on something the size of an O'Neill station you would have a surprisingly long amount of time before a human sized hole leaked out enough atmosphere to be an issue. If your planet size station has sustained a big enough impact to leak out a dangerous amount of atmosphere before it can be patched you probably are having a bad day regardless.
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Jun 11, 2021 03:40
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Senor Tron posted:I believe I've seen estimates that even on something the size of an O'Neill station you would have a surprisingly long amount of time before a human sized hole leaked out enough atmosphere to be an issue. I always like when people say you can’t terraform Mars because the atmosphere would be gone in only thousands of years. Like thousands of years isn’t longer than all of written history. People always have weird time scales when talking about space stuff.
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Jun 11, 2021 05:02
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We shouldn’t terraform Venus because it’ll be uninhabitable within a billion years. 
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Jun 11, 2021 08:31
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ashpanash posted:"Wrap it up boys, these guys figured out Quantum Gravity and the origin of all UFO phenomena! They explain it clearly and completely in their...paper? No...um, in short, ambiguous language on their website." Sean Carrol has a new AMA episode where one person goes “I have my own interpretation of quantum mechanics,  ” and Sean responds with something of the effects of “until you have math and specific details to show no you don’t.” Made me think about this UFO “theory” lol.
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Jun 11, 2021 13:34
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Zesty posted:We shouldn’t terraform Venus because it’ll be uninhabitable within a billion years. It's not real terraforming unless you make a world habitable for at least three billion years. 
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Jun 11, 2021 14:20
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DrSunshine posted:It's not real terraforming unless you make a world habitable for at least three billion years. You can usually squeeze out the tech tree victory condition long before that! Speaking of megastructures, did the thread cover VVV-WIT-08 already? quote:The researchers believe that VVV-WIT-08 may belong to a new class of 'blinking giant' binary star system, where a giant star 100 times larger than the Sun is eclipsed once every few decades by an as-yet unseen orbital companion. The companion, which may be another star or a planet, is surrounded by an opaque disc, which covers the giant star, causing it to disappear and reappear in the sky. The study is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.  Just look at this
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Jun 11, 2021 14:31
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] pass between us and the distant star and we can only speculate what its origin is," said co-author Dr Sergey Koposov from the University of Edinburgh.
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Rappaport posted:You can usually squeeze out the tech tree victory condition long before that! Well The Great A'Tuin does get around after all
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Jun 11, 2021 14:47
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Rappaport posted:You can usually squeeze out the tech tree victory condition long before that! Huh! It's probably another weird dust formation, but I wonder what an actual solid alien megastructure would look like if we observed it?
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Jun 11, 2021 17:10
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Raenir Salazar posted:There are a lot of things about the human brain, thought, and consciousness, we don't scientifically have a complete understand of. I could see reincarnation actually being real, that there is some connection in which information of what constitutes "you" gets split apart and recombined in a new vessel separated by however many years, generations, and geographical location. This is not really true. The big gaps in our understanding of the brain are in how all the biochemical and biophysical processes play together to creat complex phenomena. We are pretty confident that we understand all the fundamental mechanisms and they are all chemical and physical. There is really no room for dualism/a soul in science anymore.
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Jun 11, 2021 23:38
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GABA ghoul posted:This is not really true. The big gaps in our understanding of the brain are in how all the biochemical and biophysical processes play together to creat complex phenomena. We are pretty confident that we understand all the fundamental mechanisms and they are all chemical and physical. There is really no room for dualism/a soul in science anymore. So you're suggesting that the hard problem of consciousness is solved?
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Jun 11, 2021 23:59
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Fart Amplifier posted:So you're suggesting that the hard problem of consciousness is solved? That’s literally the opposite of what they said. You need to work on reading comprehension.
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Jun 12, 2021 00:07
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Fart Amplifier posted:So you're suggesting that the hard problem of consciousness is solved? This is loving tedious. Science doesn't need to do this to rule out your crackpot theories. When you die, the chemical processes that are you will cease. there is no soul, there is no essence, there is no you beyond your electrical meat signals. I swear to god this thread just attracts the woo like a loving honey pot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ
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Jun 12, 2021 00:10
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:This is loving tedious. Science doesn't need to do this to rule out your crackpot theories. I don't believe in a soul or essence
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Jun 12, 2021 00:11
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:This is loving tedious. Science doesn't need to do this to rule out your crackpot theories. I think they thought they were dunking on ufo believers but didn’t do it very well and came off like they believe in souls.
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Jun 12, 2021 00:22
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Fart Amplifier posted:So you're suggesting that the hard problem of consciousness is solved? The space of a model can still be infinite even with restrictions. There are an infinite number of integers. There is a cardinally higher infinite set of real numbers. The space of integers, though infinite, is still constrained. There's so much we don't understand about consciousness. So, so much. There still exists stuff we've effectively ruled out. That's not a failure, it's an understanding. Edit: Upon consideration, understanding is too strong a word. It's a lead. We have reason to think it's fruitful. We will find out, over time, whether it is or not. ashpanash fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jun 12, 2021 |
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Jun 12, 2021 04:06
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:This is loving tedious. Science doesn't need to do this to rule out your crackpot theories. I think that's too much of a leap to go from "we understand chemical processes" to "there's no soul"; science has distinctly not ruled our or disproven the soul. I feel like that would've caused a new round of book burning somewhere if such a definitive answer existed.
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Jun 12, 2021 05:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think that's too much of a leap to go from "we understand chemical processes" to "there's no soul"; science has distinctly not ruled our or disproven the soul. I feel like that would've caused a new round of book burning somewhere if such a definitive answer existed. While I agree with your central point (that science has not - and likely cannot - rule such a thing out,) I think your secondary point shows a misunderstanding about science. If science could prove such a thing, the scientific world would be more likely to display the error and the new information proudly. There's little scientific interest in removing or deleting longstanding old ideas. There's a lot of scientific interest in attempting to show how clearly our new understanding actually invalidates and corrects older ideas. To put it in another (extremely reductive) way, there's not much use in bragging about something unless people have some indication of what it is your bragging about. Science has tons of confidence. Societies that burn books have very little confidence.
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Jun 12, 2021 06:13
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The main point is we still have some major things left to figure out, like saving a copy of your consciousness and figuring out what that entails digitally. And I think that kind of effort is going to result in a lot more information to give us as you said earlier, a higher understanding as to what "the soul" entails in a way that can be scientifically described. To put it another way, in the past we understood lightning bolts to be armaments and munitions of an angry god. We now know what makes up lightning bolts; and our scientific understanding of lightning and by extension electricity suggests something that isn't a magical divine spear but something else; but lightning still exists and is still the name of that phenomena even if our understanding and description of it is now different.
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Jun 12, 2021 06:18
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Completely agreed.
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Jun 12, 2021 06:24
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ashpanash posted:While I agree with your central point (that science has not - and likely cannot - rule such a thing out,) I think your secondary point shows a misunderstanding about science. If science could prove such a thing, the scientific world would be more likely to display the error and the new information proudly. There's little scientific interest in removing or deleting longstanding old ideas. There's a lot of scientific interest in attempting to show how clearly our new understanding actually invalidates and corrects older ideas. I think you misunderstood Raenir, he probably meant if science could 100% prove that there is no soul, religious people would do the book burning (and the science people burning), not that other scientists would ignore the truth. As long as science says "we don't know" to questions like "Is there something divine?" and "Is there an immortal soul?", religions can just shrug. As soon as scientists come up with a definitive answer, it's war. And people like Heck will burn at the stake.
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Jun 12, 2021 06:40
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Libluini posted:I think you misunderstood Raenir, he probably meant if science could 100% prove that there is no soul, religious people would do the book burning (and the science people burning), not that other scientists would ignore the truth. Oh yeah, I hadn't realize there was a misunderstanding; yeah I was saying that if science did have a definitive answer then like the religious right would go mad and do all what it can to plunge humanity into a new dark age.
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Jun 12, 2021 06:59
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Raenir Salazar posted:Oh yeah, I hadn't realize there was a misunderstanding; yeah I was saying that if science did have a definitive answer then like the religious right would go mad and do all what it can to plunge humanity into a new dark age. Oh, then, yeah, sorry; that went straight over my head, as things often do.
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Jun 12, 2021 07:19
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It's worthwhile doing a speedrun on why we are where we are on the soul. So we assume that there is an organ that creates thought, that survives our death. Despite our best efforts going in and digging around, we cannot find this organ. If it didn't exist that would make us sad. We don't wish to be sad. Therefore it exists. But it must be immaterial in order to evade our search. But now we are left with a philosophical problem. Our thoughts cause our body to do things. I think "move my arm", and my arm moves. How can an immaterial organ interact with material body? If it can, then it is detectable by scientific methods. If it can't, then it's not really a soul then is it? On top of this, we see people who have suffered brain damage changing in fundamental ways. Are our immaterial souls being altered by these material changes? Is this damage altering the interface of the soul to the body? It all heavily implies that consciousness is produced entirely within the brain, and that there is no immaterial soul organ involved. We don't know how a brain produces consciousness, but then we don't know how a soul would produce consciousness either. So why believe that an extra organ exist, except to be less sad about death?
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Jun 12, 2021 07:27
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To play devil's advocate here, it's not as if some out-there concept like the "reception" theory of consciousness can ever be disproved - the idea that our brains are 'receptors' for some sort of 'consciousness field', and these 'receptors' can be damaged. This, of course, fails to explain why we do not detect this 'consciousness field' within any experiments we can devise, even our most sensitive detectors. But a damaged 'receptor' can still pick the signal, only it scrambles it? Now I've fully stopped being a devil's advocate, towards this particular idea, anyway. I believe we have extraordinarily abundant evidence that in order for anything to change, some energy is required to enable that change. And though we can't tell you exactly what 'energy' is, we are extremely good at detecting and quantifying it. And no measure for any sort of energy in a hidden field that contains consciousness has stood up to any kind of scrutiny. So we should be pretty confident that this sort of concept is bunk, at least until we can get better or more reliable sensors.
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Jun 12, 2021 07:42
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Actually. I like that idea. Imagine we just exist and have evolved to provide bodies for Boltzmann Brains to have bodies; and when we die the Boltzmann brain loses its information it had accumulated and searches for a new body (newly born infant) to dial into.
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Jun 12, 2021 08:19
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