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Do rainbows exist objectively?
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2019-09-11 at 3:52 PM UTCAlso, there's a really interesting book out by Donald Hoffman called the Case Against Reality. I'm about 4/5th done with it and while I'm not 100% onboard, he does makes some very interesting points about our projection of reality vs reality itself.
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2019-09-11 at 4:31 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2019-09-11 at 4:33 PM UTCBTW, I started "From Bacteria to Bach and Back" and got to the part where he started talking about how design can exist without a designer, and it just didn't make sense to me and I lost interest. Feel free to use this thread to talk about that too.
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2019-09-11 at 5:31 PM UTC
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2019-09-11 at 5:32 PM UTC
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2019-09-11 at 5:32 PM UTC
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2019-09-11 at 6:34 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe BTW, I started "From Bacteria to Bach and Back" and got to the part where he started talking about how design can exist without a designer, and it just didn't make sense to me and I lost interest. Feel free to use this thread to talk about that too.
Evolution by natural selection designs without there being any intentionality.
He gives an example of early Polynesian naval development. The Polynesians were not engineers, they didn't have some great grasp on buoyance, fluid dynamics, center of mass etc. They simply tried different designs and sent them out to sea. The boats that came back from sea were copied and iterated upon, similarly without knowledge and somewhat randomly, to try to go further. This is a selection algorithm. In a very real way, the sea herself designed those ships.
He often gives the example of a termite castle versus the La Sagrada Familia. You can see clear parallels between their designs, but one was created by virtue of a bottom up process where no termite knows what it is doing, whereas the church is made by a top down designer who knew what he was doing. The fact that one designed it intentionally and one came about from a bottom up process where it is favoured, doesn't make one any more designed than the other.
And in fact, even our concept of design emerges from a bottom up process, via our brain. There is no "grand general" in your brain, even though there seems to be in the form of "you". Your brain's neurons are active agents that compete for connections and your brain operates in the same bottom up manner.
That bottom up process happening in your skull isn't special and it isn't privileged for what makes something design. That just happens everywhere in nature. It's just that human design itself has been focused to a pin point by natural selection, and we are very fast, potent agents of change by virtue of how many degrees of freedom we have evolved.
Bottom up processes can create things with capabilities and competencies that none of their constituent parts could ever have or be able to understand, without someone making it so intentionally. You don't need a clockmaker to make an intricate, powerful clock. All you need is an active environment that selects for clocks. -
2019-09-11 at 6:40 PM UTC
Originally posted by Rear Naked Joke Evolution by natural selection designs without there being any intentionality.
He gives an example of early Polynesian naval development. The Polynesians were not engineers, they didn't have some great grasp on buoyance, fluid dynamics, center of mass etc. They simply tried different designs and sent them out to sea. The boats that came back from sea were copied and iterated upon, similarly without knowledge and somewhat randomly, to try to go further. This is a selection algorithm. In a very real way, the sea herself designed those ships.
He often gives the example of a termite castle versus the La Sagrada Familia. You can see clear parallels between their designs, but one was created by virtue of a bottom up process where no termite knows what it is doing, whereas the church is made by a top down designer who knew what he was doing. The fact that one designed it intentionally and one came about from a bottom up process where it is favoured, doesn't make one any more designed than the other.
And in fact, even our concept of design emerges from a bottom up process, via our brain. There is no "grand general" in your brain, even though there seems to be in the form of "you". Your brain's neurons are active agents that compete for connections and your brain operates in the same bottom up manner.
That bottom up manner happening in your skull isn't special and it isn't privileged for what makes something design.
Bottom up processes can create things with capabilities and competencies that none of their constituent parts could ever have or be able to understand, without someone making it so intentionally.
You don't need a clockmaker to make an intricate, powerful clock. All you need is an active environment that selects for clocks.
Ok, but doesn't everything in the universe happen through a "bottom up process"? Wouldn't everything in the universe be designed in this sense? Doesn't the word become meaningless at that point? -
2019-09-11 at 6:48 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe Ok, but doesn't everything in the universe happen through a "bottom up process"? Wouldn't everything in the universe be designed in this sense? Doesn't the word become meaningless at that point?
No, it becomes a spectrum. There is intentional design as we do it and unintentional design as nature does it. But our intentional design isn't magic or special.
And everything in the universe is a bottom up selection process, no. But many things are.
If you were to walk along the shoreline, one might naively think that since the beach is nearly ordered into sand, small pebbles, large pebbles, small stones, large stones, huge stones, small boulders, large boulders, slabs... It must have been ordered by someone. But really, the waves just push differentially on different sized particles the sand sized stuff goes farthest up the shore on the same energy of a wave. However I wouldn't call this design because there isn't really a selection orocesa, even though there is a sorting process.
Also, read my edits. -
2019-09-11 at 7:45 PM UTC
Originally posted by Rear Naked Joke No, it becomes a spectrum. There is intentional design as we do it and unintentional design as nature does it. But our intentional design isn't magic or special.
And everything in the universe is a bottom up selection process, no. But many things are.
If you were to walk along the shoreline, one might naively think that since the beach is nearly ordered into sand, small pebbles, large pebbles, small stones, large stones, huge stones, small boulders, large boulders, slabs… It must have been ordered by someone. But really, the waves just push differentially on different sized particles the sand sized stuff goes farthest up the shore on the same energy of a wave. However I wouldn't call this design because there isn't really a selection orocesa, even though there is a sorting process.
Also, read my edits.
Okay. -
2019-09-11 at 8:06 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2019-09-12 at 12:09 PM UTC
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2019-09-12 at 12:10 PM UTC
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2019-09-12 at 12:36 PM UTC
Originally posted by vindicktive vinny i dont think he will.
defining stuffs takes lots of responsibility.
It's funny that you responded to Obbe of all people asserting that I'm the one who doesn't define my terms. Which is rich.
Design is when something is fashioned for a specific purpose. That specific purpose doesn't need to be the result of a conscious human choice for something to fit the criteria of design. Meanings and purposes evolve. -
2019-09-12 at 12:58 PM UTC
Originally posted by Rear Naked Joke It's funny that you responded to Obbe of all people asserting that I'm the one who doesn't define my terms. Which is rich.
Design is when something is fashioned for a specific purpose. That specific purpose doesn't need to be the result of a conscious human choice for something to fit the criteria of design. Meanings and purposes evolve.
What is purpose and meaning? -
2019-09-12 at 1:26 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe What is purpose and meaning?
However you define teleology. I'm really not interested in playing this game with you. However you define teleology, there is definitely something teleological in our evolutionary design: survival in the environment. Even our human meanings of teleology, and of design, are highly rooted in our evolutionary environment.
Listen you are obviously having trouble with words so I'll put it really clearly: your brain is a bottom up system that produces any and all conceptions of design, meaning, purpose you can identify. You are not special you stupid snowflake retard.
If the response you'll shit out again is "heh lol I think meaning, purpose are incoherent ideas that don't even mean anything, it's just particles doing what they do maaaaan" I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself you fucking shitwit mongtard, because I'm not going to try to teach you how words work again. -
2019-09-12 at 1:49 PM UTCHence why discussing disjointed philosophy is fucking stupid 99% of the time.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2019-09-12 at 1:55 PM UTC
Originally posted by Rear Naked Joke However you define teleology. I'm really not interested in playing this game with you. However you define teleology, there is definitely something teleological in our evolutionary design: survival in the environment. Even our human meanings of teleology, and of design, are highly rooted in our evolutionary environment.
Listen you are obviously having trouble with words so I'll put it really clearly: your brain is a bottom up system that produces any and all conceptions of design, meaning, purpose you can identify. You are not special you stupid snowflake retard.
If the response you'll shit out again is "heh lol I think meaning, purpose are incoherent ideas that don't even mean anything, it's just particles doing what they do maaaaan" I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself you fucking shitwit mongtard, because I'm not going to try to teach you how words work again.
You don't have to be this rude. I just wanted to hear how you define those words. I don't know what teleology means.
Stop being a cunt, and I will listen to what you think and I will say "okay".
Also I never said we were special. -
2019-09-12 at 1:58 PM UTC
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2019-09-12 at 1:59 PM UTC
