blowfish posted:

the ancient Greek poets' wine dark sea was not described as blue most likely because the colour blue had yet to be invented as a distinct colour from that of crappy wine (there nobody talks about things being a beautiful shade of blue in ancient Greek poetry).

blowfish posted:

Now for another great example of how human senses are imperfect and how the search for ultimate truth is a fool's errand: Colour perception and language see here for a layman's example. Not all cultures differentiate colours equally - for example, until very recently, the Chinese and especially the Japanese (until post-WW2 western style education in this case) did not have a distinction between blue and green - both were called "fresh-coloured", and the ancient Greek poets' wine dark sea was not described as blue most likely because the colour blue had yet to be invented as a distinct colour from that of crappy wine (there nobody talks about things being a beautiful shade of blue in ancient Greek poetry). As you go through different cultures, there is 1) a broad trend for a matching set of colour categories given a particular number of different colour words in the language (it makes sense to start with dark/light, and go on to blood red, and for some reason blue and green are almost always separated late), but 2) many interesting exceptions to that, such as the tribe in the example I linked. You would be hard-pressed to pick out different shades of green that are considered entirely different colours by these people, who are probably weirded out by us lumping grass green and beech tree leaf green together as being basically the same. As evidenced by the Japanese postwar education reform thing, these differences in colour perception are purely cultural - we learn to adjust our idea of the world to that of everyone around us, and that is often useful, rather than towards to the world's ~true~ colours. RBG code 1,1,230 is not meaningfully different from 1,2,229 to us, but if it is the difference between a staple crop and a poisonous plant you better learn to distinguish that poo poo in the blink of an eye and experience it as different colours.

"Is your green the same green as my green? Because it is and therefore magic!", says effectronica - "Probably no, because I don't know what 'green' is supposed to be, but I really don't need to care."

quote:

Your entire argument assumes that people are automagically right about things. When shown evidence that people are not, in fact, automagically right but need to learn from others who know more than they do, you pretend it's irrelevant.

quote:

Unless the mere existence of your hypothetical volcano cricket is physically impossible, any definition of supernatural that includes it boils down to "things that are improbable but in principle possible", and loses all meaning.

blowfish posted:

This reminds me, I just fed a pet gecko and accidentally stepped on one of the crickets I wanted to dump in its terrarium. Maybe we could discuss the armchair-philosophical implications of this event.

HappyHippo posted:

Drop the persecution complex already. I'm asking a pointed question and you've done nothing but respond with snark and bad attempts at dodging around it. I've laid out how this is essential to your argument, and you agree it's relevant, so answer already.

Effectronica posted:

Apart from that, this is ridiculous because it just puts things onto another person, boiling down to some Prime Mover. Lmao. Strong atheism there.

quote:

Okay, so since materials can survive the heat of an active volcano's lava, animals that can do so are unremarkable. Mhm.

rudatron posted:

Wow, not even responding to me. Okay then.

You know, you started this thread as a troll attempt, but the longer it goes on, the more it seems like you're losing control. You're certainly not coming off as a puppet-master here. Out of everyone posting, the one acting the most emotional has been yourself. Really, it just seems sad, I feel sorry for you.

Effectronica posted:

I don't believe that this sort of linguistic analysis actually concludes that no difference existed between what we call forest green and what we call navy blue, visually, but that they were all considered one category of color. It's basically the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis renascent.

rudatron posted:

The 'necessary' part of your quote of me was in reference to 'necessarily true' (as opposed to it being likely to be true). The point was that some thought-forms/intelligences (like inductive reasoning) have a tendency to result in true beliefs, which means the probability of having many true beliefs isn't that extreme - if you have some, then it's much simpler to have many. This is because, again, beliefs aren't selected for, intelligences are. This means that your false-but-adaptive reasoning also falls apart - A false argument form is more likely to false beliefs than true beliefs, and false beliefs are more likely to be maladaptive than true beliefs.

I don't 'think you're really acknowledging anything anyone has said to you. Is this entertaining to you? If not, how are you trolling?

rudatron posted:

Wow, not even responding to me. Okay then.

You know, you started this thread as a troll attempt, but the longer it goes on, the more it seems like you're losing control. You're certainly not coming off as a puppet-master here. Out of everyone posting, the one acting the most emotional has been yourself. Really, it just seems sad, I feel sorry for you.

blowfish posted:

Now, now, empathise with Effectronica's situation. It's hard to be so completely and utterly wrong about everything, and so completely and utterly hated for being the biggest possible idiot in any situation. Developing a persecution complex is not entirely improbable under those circumstances

You can't idiot proof an argument, because Effectronica always manages to be a bigger idiot.

The prime mover does not need to be in any way supernatural, magical, superhuman, or what-have-you. If a human (or other thinking organism) at some point perceived that constrictor snakes constrict and that venomous snakes inject venom and talked/wrote about it, that's enough. e: any argument that humans will inherently arrive at the same conclusions without actually observing snakes directly or through communication with others or inference offers no explanatory value and needs strong empirical support to be worth taking seriously

quote:

Way to miss the point
As a biologist, I would think that any animal that can survive volcano heat is really loving cool and needs to be studied further, but that would not qualify it for any reasonable definition of "supernatural". Protip: defining "supernatural" as "unexpected" or "remarkable" results in a dumb and useless term.

blowfish posted:

The fact that we can't reliably distinguish colours clearly different to others who have the same eye and brain physiology and vice versa certainly suggest that colour perception is calibrated to an arbitrary standard (within physiological limits) rather than approaching a universal ideal.

Effectronica posted:

Well, I don't actually think that everyone would agree that magic is not supernatural, even within the field of philosophy.
...

Buried alive posted:

And those types of corrections are easily made without reference to the immaterial, so I'm not sure why you're invoking the possibility of the immaterial for other types of corrections that we are able to make. Whether something is supernatural or not (going by the rest of philosophy anyway) is an ontological question, not an epistemic one. If it's material and exists, it is natural. If it is immaterial and exists, it is supernatural. Even if this new species of cricket was magical, as long as those magical properties are grounded in materialistic ones it's still natural.

Effectronica posted:

Except that people are able to learn how to distinguish these colors from one another. Kant's noumenal world is not knowable by physical experience.

Effectronica posted:

Well, blowfish, I think you've missed the point by quite a long way, in your eager to castigate. You've just displaced the real argument for some insane reason, and then made a hilarious argument that I will internally rewrite to make some more sense. So with that in mind, the argument is that there is a distinction between belief and behavior, and beliefs that are false but promote safe behaviors nevertheless don't exist. There is hardly a sign of their existence, save through extended academic reasoning, and in terms of everyday belief, they have been so quashed as to be invisible. Which is somewhat remarkable, this ability to see truth outing.

quote:

Well, I feel for the biology journals in your country of residence, knowing that they have to deal with you. The issue, here, is that animals are, by all that we know, physically unable to survive in such an environment, lacking the means extremophile microbes use. So such an animal would need to have something that is not known to exist within the natural world, nor is there any reason to believe that it exists currently. It is outside nature, though the discovery of such an animal would quickly bring it within the bounds of nature.

Effectronica posted:

Kant's noumenal world is not knowable by physical experience.

Buried alive posted:

Well, sure. If all philosophers agreed on everything, there wouldn't be so much of it.


You never answered the bolded part. Also..


Are you going to draw a distinction between a belief which is true and one which counts as knowledge? Because if not I do believe you just talked yourself into a contradiction.

Effectronica posted:

Well, rudatron, live your life as a vampire's victim, bloodless and undead.

Effectronica posted:

Sure, for our purposes here, not for all time. A true belief is one that is consistent with observable reality, while a known belief is one that the believer is consciously aware of. For example, I may believe that spiders are dangerous without being consciously aware of this, only experiencing unease around them. Within this context, beliefs about noumenal reality cannot be considered to be true or false, since they cannot be verified.

quote:

My belief that the phenomenal world is very similar to the noumenal world is an axiomatic statement.

rudatron posted:

Wow, not even responding to me. Okay then.

You know, you started this thread as a troll attempt, but the longer it goes on, the more it seems like you're losing control. You're certainly not coming off as a puppet-master here. Out of everyone posting, the one acting the most emotional has been yourself. Really, it just seems sad, I feel sorry for you.

blowfish posted:

It is absolutely unremarkable once you realise that true (or more approximately true) mental models/sets of beliefs are more likely to produce useful predictions and therefore are also more likely to produce useful behaviours (which boils down to the same thing as adaptive), as evidenced by literally every single time humans have tried to understand something and stumbled into more useful models which almost invariably are more true or similarly true rather than less true compared to the previous understanding. It becomes even more remarkable when you, personally, realise you know little about most things compared to other very much non-supernatural humans and don't actually have true knowledge about many things. Baby's first coherent line of thought is not `~*~supernatural~*~.

quote:

Extremophiles exist. Centralised multi-celled heterotrophs exist. There is no reason why the two categories should be mutually exclusive. Even though we do not currently know of any extremophile centralised multi-celled heterotroph, any such organism that exists would only be outside the parts of nature we have already discovered and not outside the parts of nature. If none actually exists right now, it is still possible for it to evolve given how nature ~nature~ works, and thus it would still not be supernatural unless you uselessly define literally everything that could potentially exist but doesn't yet/anymore as supernatural.

rudatron posted:

I don't 'think you're really acknowledging anything anyone has said to you. Is this entertaining to you? If not, how are you trolling?

Effectronica posted:

I am using extremophiles, specifically thermophiles, as an example. So while I am wrong about this, I can still recast it without it actually affecting the argument. So, to continue it, if thermophilic archaea had been discovered before discovery of the enzymes that allow them to survive at high temperatures, they would have been part of the supernatural in my definition, until such a time as the discovery of their enzymes allowed them to become part of the naturalistic world. Another, better example, is plate tectonics, which was proposed in the 1910s but not adopted until the 1960s, because the means by which continental drift could occur were not discovered until that time. While plate tectonics was true, it was also outside the bounds of naturalism because there was no natural mechanism by which it could happen.

Effectronica posted:

Wow. All the people who got mad because I used binary true/false as a simplification, and here they are ignoring you using it as the centerpiece of an argument that amounts to assertions.

blowfish posted:

If, when pressed, you do not know whether you believe spiders are dangerous it is hard to argue you actually have a belief on whether spiders are dangerous. A better explanation would be that you are wary of spiders through instinct and thus without any belief.

e: an alternative, and more interesting, explanation would be that through observing others' wariness about spiders you have started to act wary around them yourself - however, while you may have never been explicitly told that spiders are dangerous, at this point you most likely have an actual if weak belief that they are because most things people are wary around are dangerous.
Have you considered that your axiom may be false?

Effectronica posted:

Another, better example, is plate tectonics, which was proposed in the 1910s but not adopted until the 1960s, because the means by which continental drift could occur were not discovered until that time. While plate tectonics was true, it was also outside the bounds of naturalism because there was no natural mechanism by which it could happen.

CommieGIR posted:

By 'trolling' Efftronica just starts a thread or jumps in one, starts raising asinine points and then never answering anyone, instead reverting to name calling and hollier than thou self-praise.


No natural mechanisms known, that doesn't make them supernatural, just that evidence could not at that time be observed. It does not make it supernatural, just unknown.

Plate tectonics was not above and beyond nature, it was simply undetectable at the time. It was happening all the time in nature.

Smudgie Buggler posted:

As opposed to all the arguments that don't amount to a string of assertions?

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

So, then, are you proposing a means presently thought of as supernatural is influencing the adaptation and evolution of lifeforms, and we only need discover the mechanism for it to become natural?

Effectronica posted:

Okay, so you object to the definitions, and probably believe in fixed definitions, which were handed down by God Science.

Effectronica posted:

All you can do is snipe and cheerlead, it seems.

CommieGIR posted:

Yes. I object you your blatant abuse of Philosophy and your borderline Metaphysics bullshit.

You're a pretty boring troll.

Effectronica posted:

Stop capitalizing things like a schizophrenic, you rear end.

Effectronica posted:

Are they, universally? How does knowledge that sperm are not homunculi produce more adaptive sexual behavior?

quote:

I am using extremophiles, specifically thermophiles, as an example. So while I am wrong about this, I can still recast it without it actually affecting the argument. So, to continue it, if thermophilic archaea had been discovered before discovery of the enzymes that allow them to survive at high temperatures, they would have been part of the supernatural in my definition, until such a time as the discovery of their enzymes allowed them to become part of the naturalistic world. Another, better example, is plate tectonics, which was proposed in the 1910s but not adopted until the 1960s, because the means by which continental drift could occur were not discovered until that time. While plate tectonics was true, it was also outside the bounds of naturalism because there was no natural mechanism by which it could happen.

Effectronica posted:

So in other words, you define beliefs differently than I do, which is fine, but it renders the argument not really a meaningful one because it's just semantics. Or you're arguing that unconscious beliefs do exist but not in this case, which is unlikely to be fruitful.

quote:

That explanation is unlikely because infants are predisposed to associate spiders and snakes with fearful voices. http://www.psychologicalscience.org...ng-infancy.html

quote:

Sure, I have considered that life is a lie and truth is unknowable, for about ten seconds.

Effectronica posted:

All you can do is snipe and cheerlead, it seems.

blowfish posted:

Effectronica posted:

This is what I think is most likely to be the case, but I am willing to accept that there are alternative explanations.

CommieGIR posted:

Let's be honest Blowfish, he ignores any post that he can't just dance around as part of his troll with pseudointellectual bullshit

blowfish posted:

Poe's law is in effect here.

Disinterested posted:

With regards to this specific example, it is just as likely, as first postulated by Gladstone, that Homer was in fact colour-blind - this is a view that has been taken up in some of the more modern scholarship of his work. Although it is true that blue in particular seems to be very malleable between cultures.

Effectronica posted:

Okay, so your argument is that we don't perceive reality accurately. Very well then. I disagree, but there's not much that can bridge that gap.

blowfish posted:

Your statement only makes sense under the assumption that post-enlightenment human knowledge is shaped directly by natural selection. I have repeatedly mentioned that it is implausible for most particular pieces of knowledge to be a direct product of natural selection. Natural selection only made us able and willing to seek knowledge.

In the context of human thought and free will (even if you believe we technically have no free will because determinism it is useful to assume its existence to model human behaviour), natural selection on the organism or gene can become entirely irrelevant and the patterns of thought we have become able to use can run wild. There is even a field called memetic evolution which deals with this issue, and in particular also with how untrue or irrelevant beliefs propagate across many human minds.


You will recall that I brought up the very plate tectonics example to illustrate that your definition of the supernatural as anything not currently described by a theory is useless and asinine. Thanks for proving me right, I guess .
Explain how instinctive fear involves belief - it is a mechanism akin to clockwork, which given a certain input will produce an according output regardless of why you think it should give that output. Defining belief might help.
Which I have already mentioned re. savannah monkeys (I sure am pointing out things I already said but which you originally ignored a lot). Evidence for instinct, and therefore an uninteresting automatic predisposition/response where any statement about truth is relevant.
You should consider harder.

Smudgie Buggler posted:

It's demonstrably the case that we are, by our own standards of accuracy, extremely bad at mentally modelling reality. I mean, what the gently caress do you think the map - or any other piece of technology assisting the gathering or storage of information - is for?

Effectronica posted:

Okay, well, you could go back to my initial post, and, assuming you can read things, you could engage with the proposition that beliefs are not acted upon by natural selection, and we could move from here, if you were inclined to conversation rather than asininity and whatever "you should consider harder" is meant to mean. The rest of this is basically down to assuming inherent definitions, which is, um, well, not really philosophically materialistic in nature.

HappyHippo posted:

I tried to do exactly this and now you're ignoring me.

HappyHippo posted:

I tried to do exactly this and now you're ignoring me.

ShadowCatboy posted:

He called me a worm whereas I am obviously a catboy. An atheist catboy who believes there is nyo God.

Effectronica posted:

Because you started demanding answers to a yes/no question, and I decided that I was going to treat something that walked like a duck as a duck. Maybe you could quickly rephrase it?

HappyHippo posted:

"Beliefs" are essentially the world model constructed by the brain. An accurate world model is essential to effective behaviour, so there is selection pressure to produce brains which construct accurate models of the world. Brains get beliefs and act on them through instinct, inference from sensory experiences, and information shared by others. Since the brain is the product of evolution and there is selection pressure to produce brains which construct accurate world models, evolution directly shapes these processes in order to make them more accurate than chance.

CommieGIR posted:

He's already admitted the entire thread is about baiting and trolling.