Is there a God?

[hyzmarca]

You can have an all knowing god and a non-deterministic universe, though. The key is to throw out the concept of linear time. If we assume a deity that is spatially omnipresent, that is one that experiences all points in space at all once, then we might as well assume temporal omnipresence, as well.

A deity that experiences all points in time all at once would have the ability to predict the future without relying on determinism, as it wouldn't be predicting so much as watching the future as it unfolds.

The contradiction only really exists because some people are hung up on linear time and causality. But relativistic universe + FTL senses = time travel and broken causality no matter how you cut it. If you're going to assume an omniscient deity you might as well just go whole hog and embrace the time paradox.

[Grek]

Not entirely. According to some (stupid) views of how time, the universe and everything works, there is a "now" that is constantly moving into the future. You will only ever do one thing, but what you will do is not determined and is not determinable until you do it.

That's a retarded stance to take emperically, of course, since the universe doesn't really work like that, but before you sit down to look at the evidence, it seems plausable enough.

E: That's in response to the post before the one before mine, not to the one directly above.

[DSMatticus]

In either case, you're only going to ever do one thing, and that thing will be based on your preferences, knowledge and who you are. The outcomes are all the same, so there is no change to free will from switching between determinism and nondeterminism.

To make the claim that outcomes won't change between a deterministic model and a non-deterministic model of the universe, you are assuming a deterministic will. Imagine two universes, one deterministic and one non-deterministic, with identical states. A deterministic will will produce consistent results with repetition; a non-deterministic will need not. So to say that switching between determinism and nondeterminism doesn't affect the outcomes, we have to begin from the assumption of a deterministic will.

Now, it's easy to see why assuming a deterministic will might be invalid, but that's not where I'm going to go with this. I'd just like to note that's a problem before moving on.

So, deterministic will. That right there is the key discussion point. You claim that a deterministic will is a free will. That is really fucking weird and stupid, because that's not something anyone cares about. If you are seriously a deterministic will that has been built by deterministic (or even nondeterministic) events outside your control, then what the fuck does free will even mean? Nothing. You didn't choose your will, it was chosen for you by external events.

Now, the fact that any concept of free will except for the type you describe is stupid is intentional. Not because we're trying to strawman the free will argument, but because free will is a genuinely stupid concept to begin with. There is nothing free about anything you do, whether the strings you're dancing on are immediate (gun to your head) or distant (mommy never loved you). Compatibilists do not save the day by coming in and redefining free will to mean "free to act on the state conferred to you by external forces." They just confuse an otherwise really simply, really straightforward problem.

To drive this point home: what are the ethical ramifications of compatibilism? Can we use it to derive individual responsibility in a deterministic universe? No, we can't. Which means you are modelling the exact same fucking thing as hard determinists using different words.

[Grek]

The fuck? When does the universe ever repeat itself? There's no rewind button you can press to go back to last tuesday and see if everyone will do everything over again. That's not a test you can do.

There are other reasons to beleive in determinism, and those are good reasons, but any argument where you justify determinism on theoretical experiments involving resetting the world back to initial conditions to see if it will repeat itself is a non starter.

---

As for individual responsibility, yes, you totally can derive that. It goes something like this:
1. GIVEN, that the world is deterministic; the laws of physics can tell us what any person will decide in any situation.
2. GIVEN, that a deterministic person and a non-deterministic person are equivilent to eachother iff they make the same choices.
3. GIVEN, that our ethics are consequentalist; a person is responsible for what they do and only for what they do, no matter why they do it.
4. THEREFORE, a deterministic person has the same degree of responsibility for their actions as an equivilent non-deterministic person.
5. THEREFORE, it is OK to use a non-deterministic abstraction when judging what deterministic people are and are not responsible for.

[DSMatticus]

The fuck? When does the universe ever repeat itself? There's no rewind button you can press to go back to last tuesday and see if everyone will do everything over again. That's not a test you can do.

1) There is a deterministic will in a deterministic world of state A with a 100% chance of choosing X.
2) There is a nondeterministic will in a nondeterministic world of state A with a 90% chance of choosing X, and a 10% chance of choosing ~X.

It is trivially easy to see how nondeterminism and determinism can lead to different outcomes. The way to resolve this is to take 2, and make the will deterministic such that "choice" is a deterministic process in a nondeterministic world, and we're back to a 100% chance of choosing X. But the point is that means you are assuming the existence of a deterministic will. Then I granted that for sake of argument and went on to talk about it. This wasn't a "ergo, the universe is deterministic" statement. This was a: "for that thing you just said to make any fucking sense at all, the will has to be deterministic. So let's talk about what a deterministic will means and why it's stupid to call that free will."

As for your argument about individual responsibility, what the fuck? Comparing a deterministic person and a non-deterministic person is not the correct fucking way to do that. And the problem is you have a very critical, very bullshit implicit assumption: you assumed that the non-deterministic individual is responsible for his decisions. Do I really need to explain why non-determinism does not, in fact, imply responsibility? Spoiler: the answer involves coin flips.

And that's not even the only fucking problem:

1. GIVEN, that the world is deterministic; the laws of physics can tell us what any person will decide in any situation.
2. GIVEN, that a deterministic person and a non-deterministic person are equivilent to eachother iff they make the same choices.
3. GIVEN, that our ethics are consequentalist; a person is responsible for what they do and only for what they do, no matter why they do it.
4. THEREFORE, a deterministic person has the same degree of responsibility for their actions as an equivilent non-deterministic person.
5. THEREFORE, it is OK to use a non-deterministic abstraction when judging what deterministic people are and are not responsible for.

A starving hobo:
"I killed and ate that puppy because I'm a sadistic sociopath."
"I killed and ate that puppy because I was starving."

[tzor]

If you're only going to do one thing in a given situation, you are deterministic. That's what determinism means!

No it's not. You can do only one thing in a given situation because you only do that one thing once.

Determinism is when given a multiple number of options (and enough information) you can determine the outcome ahead of time. It only applies to the specific (the one thing you do only once) because otherwise the law of averages can easily support knowing how something will behave "on the average" while not knowing specific instances and allowing for absolute free will.

[Username17]

If you're only going to do one thing in a given situation, you are deterministic. That's what determinism means!

No it's not. You can do only one thing in a given situation because you only do that one thing once.

Determinism is when given a multiple number of options (and enough information) you can determine the outcome ahead of time. It only applies to the specific (the one thing you do only once) because otherwise the law of averages can easily support knowing how something will behave "on the average" while not knowing specific instances and allowing for absolute free will.

This.

If you will only do one thing and that thing is knowable with certainty beforehand, then you're deterministic. If you will only do one thing and that is not knowable beforehand, then you are non-deterministic. You not being deterministic is a prerequisite for Free Will, although it is not sufficient for Free Will.

Quantum Mechanics salvages non-determinism in several interpretations.

-Username17

[tzor]

If you will only do one thing and that thing is knowable with certainty beforehand, then you're deterministic.

But that's the question isn't it? How can you know "with certainity" and what happens if you are actually right? The laws of probability break down completely at the single instance. You predict an event and it happens? Does it happen because that was the only thing that could happen or because you just got lucky?

There is a little joke here with quantum mechanics. At one level it messes with the question. You simply can't measure enough to actually know anything "with certainty" so you can't even start to consider the question of determinism.

[Username17]

If you will only do one thing and that thing is knowable with certainty beforehand, then you're deterministic.

But that's the question isn't it? How can you know "with certainity" and what happens if you are actually right?

Actually, the really interesting part is what happens if you're wrong. If you can know everything about an event and still be wrong, then the universe is nondeterministic.

Unfortunately for the experiment, we don't have a good approximation of omniscience, and in fact every version of quantum mechanics current in vogue tells us that we can't have a good approximation of omniscience. Therefore we are unable to distinguish the states of an incorrect prediction because the universe is nondeterministic and an incorrect prediction because of a deterministic cause that we were unaware of.

-Username17

[Daiba]

Quantum Mechanics salvages non-determinism in several interpretations.

I'm a bit out of date, but I'm pretty sure that non-local hidden variables have yet to be ruled out, so the universe could operate deterministically. The statistical interpretation is still the most popular at the moment, however.

[Username17]

Quantum Mechanics salvages non-determinism in several interpretations.

I'm a bit out of date, but I'm pretty sure that non-local hidden variables have yet to be ruled out, so the universe could operate deterministically. The statistical interpretation is still the most popular at the moment, however.

Sure. And the Copenhagen Interpretation rejects counter-factual definiteness, claiming that particles actually don't have velocities unless you actually measure them. When we get into different quantum mechanics interpretations, they get really weird. As in, there are people who are saying with a straight face that particles do not have properties outside the lab. I'm pretty sure that's not how things work, but in QM, solipsism is considered a valid interpretation by many physicists.

The point of pulling out Quantum Mechanics is not that it supports any particular answer about determinism and choice, but that it is sufficiently confusing and contentious and we know so little about how it "really works" that you can make it compatible with most philosophical stances. But while you can make it compatible with Choice, Fate, Nihilism, and so on and so on, you still can't make omnipotence logically possible.

Does God exist? The short answer is no. The long answer is noooooooooooooo, but if you’re willing to alter your definition of God enough, you can make it work!

-Username17

[Cynic]

So, I've been toying with the idea of writing a story about a culture/species/X which has no religion or any discussion on this matter are introduced to the modern world with its mishmash of religion and philosophical discussion on the matter.

What would this race's reaction be to our world? How would such a culture behave? Both in its own environment and also around humans.

A Roger Zelazny story called A Rose for Ecclesiastes keeps coming to mind.

[Username17]

I don't think it is possible for a species to have "no religion". There are questions, so you have to answer them. Even if you're answering questions with pretty good guesses, some of those guesses are going to be wrong and some of them are going to lead you into weird dead ends.

Consider the Skinner Pigeon Studies:

One of B.F.Skinner's experiments back in the early days of the discovery of learning theory involved pigeons in boxes. The boxes had a food pellet delivery chute that dropped a pellet to the pigeon on a completely random feeding schedule. They used a random numbers table so that no one--including the experimenter--knew when the food pellet was going to come rolling down the food chute.

Skinner's pigeons did a very interesting thing. Whatever behavior they were doing just before the food came rolling down, they did more of. When it came down the next time, whatever they were doing before that, they did some more of.

Within a short length of time the pigeons are walking around . . . bobbing their heads, shaking their tails . . . and checking that food chute.

Assuming that your species is at least as conscious as a fucking pigeon, it's going to perceive patterns in events. It's going to see apparent patterns in coincidental events. Because the world is really big and a lot of shit happens every day, and there are some damn weird coincidences. So you're going to notice that the planting time for the winter corn happens just a day before a bunch of people get sick three years in a row and you're going to try to do something to stop that, and as soon as people don't get sick the day after planting time you'll have a yearly ritual on your hands. Get a few more rituals in the calendar and you'll be stuck trying to get a system that ties them together. And once you have four rituals with a common narrative you have a religion.

The thing is that religions really aren't some sort of ultimate response by the human psyche to the big questions of the universe. They are simple maladaptive responses to unpatterened events.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

This is a slight hijack, but, I've always wondered something:

Would it be possible to have a sapient species that are not as odious (or rather, sociologically maladaptive) as human beings? I mean, it seems that you need the right combination of, aside from obvious things like spare appendages to manipulate things:

[*] Biological inefficiency. Otherwise you get something super-efficient like jellyfish and you stay more-or-less the same for the lifespan of biology.

[*] Size. Too big and you hit a hard population limit before civilization can take hold. Too small and you end up not being able to manipulate your environment too well (you won't even be able to break sticks) and your civilization still stalls out. I personally can't see any sapient species being larger than Yao Ming or smaller than a beaver. Alternatively this could just be an argument from incredulity and a species of super-intelligent mice could just 'make do' with chewed up leaves or something, but still.

[*] Competitiveness. Did you know that the ancestors of human beings lived alongside several other hominids but out-competed them? This kind of makes you an asshole. But still, the superintelligent wolf or monkey line will spread their genes faster by surpressing/killing off competitors. Not to mention that in the pre-civilization stage populations are continually at 'starvation' level; a group that's eager and willing to kill those seen as threats will perform better than those willing to live in peace. This doesn't work in the long run, really (see wolves) but in the short run it gives you an advantage. And yet even though that we know that too much competitiveness is actually maladaptive in the long run, in the march to sapience it's a great trait to have, especially because such creatures will have:

[*] Hierarchy. Crazy as it sounds, you need some kind of hierarchy in order to get out of the nomadic stages. Creatures like cats and tigers are probably never going to become evolved because they're not organized enough to pass the benefits of civilization.

[*] Status-quo bias. Sad is it is today, you pretty much need this back when you're a marginal species like Homo Erectus; you simply can't just up and change your way of life if there's the hint of something better because way back then that would've gotten you killed even though this creates incredible problems nowadays. And since the early stages of civilization last much longer than the later ones this trait would've been genetically fixed.

[*] Longetivity. If you don't live very long then most of behavior will have to be dictated by instinct or you'll have to learn very quickly. But it takes a finite amount of time to learn any process. So unless you're an Ork or something chances are you'll die before being able to spread your prime spear-building techniques on to the next generation. Moreover you're also running up against the status quo bias, too.

The paradox of this of course is that if a species is too long-lived then the status-quo bias will stifle any innovations. So a species needs to be able to live in a sweet zone of about 10-150 sapient years. If it's too long then they'll be stuck at the 'hardening spears in fire' phase, making it very probable for some extinction-level event like the Ice Age killing them off or reducing them to a rump before they can make the appropriate transition.

When you put all of this together it seems like any species that evolves to intelligence will be warlike assholes in their youth.

[Koumei]

Consider the Skinner Pigeon Studies:

Come on, this is a roleplaying forum, there is a better example of superstition: lucky dice/all dice building up luck/lucky rolling methods. For a generally secular group, we tend to be very fucking superstitious, we make gods all the time.

Sport fans are just as bad though ("The last three times uncle Jim put his drink down, our team scored"/"If I wear my lucky pants we'll win" etc.)

And in the words of Colonel Fry, it is very hard to find a definition of superstition that doesn't also cover religion. Which is probably why every religion is so quick to denounce other ones as silly superstitions.

[tzor]

My sports superstitions are based on "logic."

"YOU KNOW IF YOU SHOOT THE PUCK AT THE GOAL ONE DAY IT MIGHT GET IN."

[hyzmarca]

This is a slight hijack, but, I've always wondered something:

Would it be possible to have a sapient species that are not as odious (or rather, sociologically maladaptive) as human beings? I mean, it seems that you need the right combination of, aside from obvious things like spare appendages to manipulate things:

I think you're underestimating exactly how nice humans are all things being equal.

Most humans have an instinctual aversion to hurting, and especially to killing, other humans (and cute things that they can humanize). It takes a lot of work to overcome that and doing so is often traumatic in and of itself.

Even the goddamn motherfucking Nazis had to psychologically distance themselves from the killing that they were doing.

[DSMatticus]

Most humans have an instinctual aversion to hurting, and especially to killing, other humans (and cute things that they can humanize). It takes a lot of work to overcome that and doing so is often traumatic in and of itself.

But we're also really good at dehumanizing things. There was a time when some people had more sympathy for bunnies than people with skin darker than their's.

Human niceness really boils down to how that person has chosen to define social groups and who they are putting where. Frame the social context such that groups are shared, and you get good ol' niceness. Frame the social context such that they're different, and the behavior's a lot less predictable but more prone to competition. It's harder to do that the more interconnected the groups are, which is why you have soldiers who feel bad shooting at eachother and Nazis who felt bad about the whole ethnic genocide thing.

[Gx1080]

Natural selection rewards sociopathy. Duh.

[hyzmarca]

Most humans have an instinctual aversion to hurting, and especially to killing, other humans (and cute things that they can humanize). It takes a lot of work to overcome that and doing so is often traumatic in and of itself.

But we're also really good at dehumanizing things. There was a time when some people had more sympathy for bunnies than people with skin darker than their's.

Human niceness really boils down to how that person has chosen to define social groups and who they are putting where. Frame the social context such that groups are shared, and you get good ol' niceness. Frame the social context such that they're different, and the behavior's a lot less predictable but more prone to competition. It's harder to do that the more interconnected the groups are, which is why you have soldiers who feel bad shooting at eachother and Nazis who felt bad about the whole ethnic genocide thing.

It's a bit more complex than that. The ability to do large-scale violence to other humans is a result of feedback loops in our social instincts. Peer pressure and obedience to authority, specifically.

The person giving orders is distanced from the act because he isn't doing the act. The person doing the act is distanced from it because he's just following orders and not making the decision himself.

In groups this is often magnified because people trust the judgement of their peers and don't want to be the one who goes against the rest.

[DSMatticus]

Natural selection rewards sociopathy. Duh.

Except it doesn't, or else we'd all be sociopaths. But we aren't.

Natural selection operates on multiple levels; the gene, the individual, the group, etc. Groups with high amounts of sociopathy cannot remain cohesive. If there is a high chance that your neighbors will slit your throat in your sleep to take your things, you won't want them as your neighbors and you will get far, far away from them. And we depend on cohesive groups to survive, because alone we're pretty pathetic. There isn't much a primitive human could do to survive in the wild alone. And they certainly can't breed.

If you allow sociopathy within the group, your group falls apart. So at the group level, you select for an intolerance of behaviors that harm group cohesion (sociopathy, you're calling it). Now, this changes the environment in which we view what is individually advantageous. If you are a member of a group which will kill you (or exile you to starve) for being a sociopath, natural selection will now trend away from sociopathy because sociopathy is something that will get you killed. As a matter of fact, natural selection will now trend towards behaviors that make the group perceive you favorably. Like empathy and philanthropy. But only to such extent that you don't harm yourself, and only to such extent that it's within your group.

Now, the interesting point: what your brain defines as a group is pretty much completely arbitrary. You can convince young school children from the same classroom to show group favoritism by putting them in different color shirts. We can evoke these sort of distinctions along arbitrary lines. Group competition is a part of human nature, but how we label the groups is a social construct and perfectly mutable.

[fbmf]

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... -revisited

Follow up to the original article.

Game On,
fbmf

[MfA]

You can have an all knowing god and a non-deterministic universe, though. The key is to throw out the concept of linear time. If we assume a deity that is spatially omnipresent, that is one that experiences all points in space at all once, then we might as well assume temporal omnipresence, as well.

What a semantic circle jerk ... if the universe has a single possible state knowable by any entity it's deterministic as any reasonable person defines it. Religious types are prone to twist words in their heads till they can rationalize their belief system, but it's hardly convincing to anyone else.

[hyzmarca]

Rejecting causality does not require a single possible state. In fact, causality is itself deterministic and rejecting it produces an explosion of possibilities.

[Kaelik]

Apparently months later... He posts again, and the best possible response is exactly what I said last time.

To whit:

Luckily for me, clearly God exists, because I already decided that if you accept that a computer is God, this computer exists.

I HAVE SOLVED THE GREATEST PROBLEM EVER, AND I DEFINITELY DIDN'T JUST REDEFINE THE QUESTION INTO MEANINGLESSNESS!