EvC Forum: Human Intelligence

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Message 16 of 193 (82651)
02-03-2004 2:59 PM

Reply to: Message 11 by Yaro
02-03-2004 1:37 PM

Yaro writes:

Everything is the result of a cause, things knocking in to each other etc.

I'm afraid that quantum indeterminism disagrees with you, my friend. Many things at the quantum level are acausal. An example I've used before is the resulting spin of a pion that is emitted from the decay of a muon with spin 0. Is it possible to precisely predict the resulting spin of the pion? Nope. We can only calculate the probabilities of the of possible spin-states. Each and every resulting spin value is still a surprise.

I suppose that this doesn't totally eliminate the possibility of an undetectable cause or "hidden variable" as it's been called before, but if we're going to expect others to accept such untestable hypotheses, we might as well start saying that God did it.

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Message 18 of 193 (82657)
02-03-2004 3:05 PM

Reply to: Message 12 by Skeptick
02-03-2004 2:40 PM

Skeptick writes:

You are so right. But what caused the cause? And the cause before that? Maybe we're asking "where did it all begin?" Where did the energy orignate that caused the first "thing" to build up speed to "knock" into another "thing"? Maybe we're asking where did the "superatom" come from? Or the energy to make it spin? Or explode? Or where did God come from? Who made God? Where did God get his energy? What is the real purpose of our question here?

Be careful when you begin with either of the premises "everything has a cause" or "everything came from somewhere" and then try to deduce from those premises that there must therefore be one thing without a cause or that didn't come from somewhere. Both are contradictory.

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Message 19 of 193 (82658)
02-03-2004 3:07 PM

Reply to: Message 17 by crashfrog
02-03-2004 3:04 PM

crashfrog writes:

Let's say you enter the lottery, you among 1 million other people. There's exactly one million tickets, and one that wins. There's a ticket for everybody that enters, and one person for every possible ticket.

As it happens, you win. Congratulations. Now, given that somebody was guaranteed to win, does it make it an "accident" that you won? "Accident" makes it sound unlikely. And it is unlikely that you of all people wouldwin. But it was guaranteed that somebody would win.

No argument, just commenting that this is an excellent analogy.

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Message 23 of 193 (82748)
02-03-2004 5:22 PM

Reply to: Message 21 by Yaro
02-03-2004 5:05 PM

Yaro writes:

An accident implies intention (or lack therof), thus, to say that humans are here by accident, or that the universe formed by accident, seems to me a silly statement.

I completely agree.

In my previous post I was just being nitpicky, as I'm often wont to be.

Your point is still valid.

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