If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

I think the whole idea is silly.
I would guess that when Dawn Bertot says "everything" he isn't really thinking of everything.For example...I could be responsible for an AI by using my genius level intelligence to create it in a computer at home. Then I use my omni-benevolence to give my AI a connection to the internet.
The AI would still have freewill in what it scanned or interacted with from the internet... but if I unplugged my PC or stopped paying the electric bill... then the AI would cease to exist.I'm responsible for it, but it still has free-will.Then again... this scenario would include me not-being-responsible for the internet. Therefore... I'm not responsible for everything, only everything-that-the-AI-requires-to-exist.So we could tweak the example and also say that because of my coolness, unmatchable biceps and trillionaire monetary status... I am also responsible for powering the entire internet and without my input it would also shutdown.I'm responsible for everything in a way... but not affecting freewill.However, if we take "responsible for everything" to it's extreme end... I would have to be responsible for all the things that are posted on the internet... responsible for all the choices everyone makes.
If there's freewill... then there's something someone else decided and then I wouldn't be responsible for everything.In that extreme sense... freewill and someone-responsible-for-everything is simply an oxymoron and the two cannot co-exist.So, yeah, I think Dawn Bertot just didn't really think about the extreme end-of-the-line when he said that.
But, of course, I wonder where his line is drawn? Or perhaps he really doesn't believe in freewill?*flexes biceps* (How many pecs do you have? I have 13!!)
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I would agree with you.If we cannot tell the difference between an illusion and reality... then the illusion is reality.The problem people are trying to show you, though... is that you have no way of comparing any illusion we may (or may not) be seeing to "reality."Take your table example.If there is a table holding up a plate... you can compare it with another table holding up a plate.
Can you touch it as you can with the known-normal table? Is it simply a laser-light show in contrast to the known-normal table? Can you move it like you can the known-normal table?These questions, when dealing with "a table" can be answered. You can have your "normal table" and your "possibly-fake table" and compare the two.The problem with telling the difference between illusion and reality with reality itself is that we have no other "normal reality" to compare "this reality" with. We only have the one.Is it fake? Is it real? We don't know because we have no "normal reality" meter-stick in which to measure this reality against.You keep saying "if there's no difference between an illusion and reality..." but, we only have 1 reality. Therefore, you cannot possibly be comparing our 1 reality to another regardless of which is possibly illusion and which is possibly reality. Therefore... you can never make this comparison when dealing with reality itself simply because you have nothing to compare it to.That's why this "no difference between illusion and reality" argument is bullshit when discussing reality itself. You have no idea if the illusion is actually equal to reality... you can only tell if what you're experiencing is equal to itself... that tells you nothing about how "absolute" it is. It simply tells you that you're experiencing something. Which is one of those "trivial absolute" statements again.Edited by Stile, : Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner... 'cause then I'd know reality was an illusion.

Sure. We can consider anything you'd like.The point is that with kg (or anything else)... you can have plenty of different ones within this reality to which you can compare. Some will be more, others will be less. You can create a standard. You can say what's "normal." You can create a baseline.The continuing issue is that we still only have 1 reality. You can't compare 1 reality with another simply because we only have 1.Yes... there are many, many different things within this 1 reality to which we can compare against each other.But if you want to discuss the "reality" of reality itself... it doesn't help to compare things-existing-within-that-one-reality vs. other-things-existing-within-that-one-reality... do you not see the circular hopelessness of such a procedure?What you're doing is saying "Okay... Mario and Luigi love to break bricks while jumping... I can compare lots of their jumps over and over again... the brick-breaking is absolutely real!!!!" But it's not, is it? It's only "absolute" within the reality of Mario and Luigi. Something that is only absolute within a certain scope is not totally "absolute." This is the possibility you have no hope of verifying one way or the other as long as we only have 1 reality we can access.Comparing multiple "anythings" against each other that are all contained within the 1 reality does nothing to serve any sort of comparison against that reality.You're still stuck with 1 reality and nothing to compare it to. Without a comparison... you cannot say what is "real" or "fake" or "normal" or "strange" or "messed up" or "absolute" because you have nothing else to measure it against.In order to move forward with your argument you'd have to have access to hundreds (maybe thousands?) of different realities to compare them to each other in order to see which are "real" which are "fake" what parts (if any) are "absolute" and what parts are "unique."As long as we only have access to 1 reality... you're dead in the water with this argument. It certainly does.Such persistence of a single reality alone, however, doesn't allow us to make judgments that would require multiple realities and the ability to compare them against one another.We simply do not have the required ingredients to bake the cake you're asking for.

Sorry ProtoTypical, I didn't see this reponse until today. I agree.
Just as we don't need two realities to know that we have one.But we're not talking about knowing whether or not we have one reality.
We're talking about knowing whether or not our reality is "absolute."Let's say we have a copy of the Mona Lisa. How do we know if it's 'absolute?'
Wouldn't we compare it to what we know of the original?If we can confirm it to match everything about the original... then we can say we know it is the "absolute" original Mona Lisa.
If it does not match.. then we know it is a fake.If you have another method to verify whether or not the Mona Lisa is absolute without comparing it to the original, please let me know.Otherwise, we are still left with only 1 reality and no known "original" or "absolute" to compare it to.
Therefore... even using the example you've provided... we have no way to know whether or not this reality is "absolute" because we have nothing to compare it to.It's like someone giving you a fake Mona Lisa and your job is to identify whether or not it is a fake.
Except you don't know anything about the Mona Lisa... you don't know if the smile is supposed to be weird or if the landscape in the background is supposed to line up. You don't even know if it's supposed to be a picture of a woman or some mountains or just some blue squares. If you don't know what "an absolute Mona Lisa" is supposed to be... how can you possibly identify whether or not the single copy you have is an absolute?If we don't know what "an absolute reality" is supposed to be... how can we possibly identify whether or not the single reality we exist in is an absolute?You would need to provide knowledge that is currently impossible for you to have (what an 'absolute reality' is supposed to be like).Provide such knowledge first, and then we can identify whether or not this reality is absolutely real.

I completely agree with this statement.What I do not agree with is how you jump from this statement to saying that we can somehow know or identify parts of reality that are, indeed, "absolute."What is your method of doing so? Let me start with something simpler, again, I like your Mona Lisa example The Mona Lisa we look at is either real or it is fake.
If the Mona Lisa is real, then it is absolutely real.
(I totally agree so far).But... how do we know that the Mona Lisa is real (ie... not a fake)?Maybe we watched it get painted and mounted and hung in our house.
But then... we went to sleep.How do we know it wasn't swapped out without our knowledge while we slept?We would get up in the morning, it would look like the Mona Lisa... but it would not be the "absolute" Mona Lisa.How do we get around such a problem with reality?
How do we know if reality is "absolute" or not without being able to compare it against something to identify such a tribute?What if reality was an illusion? Then, yes, that illusion would be "absolutely real to us".
But that's not the question.. the question is how do we know if reality is 'acting like it's absolutely real' or if it's actually 'absolutely real'?I think the answer is that we cannot know.
I also think that the answer is practically useless. Who cares if there's no difference?I do not care.But, just because I don't care doesn't mean I start lying to myself about what I actually can know and can't know.

Sounds good to me. Kind of.
I do actually agree that "if reality is absolutely real, then it is 100% absolutely real."I would just say that our knowledge of such a thing is all probabilities after that.Which is more a reflection on the way we currently acquire knowledge as fallible entities then it is a reflection on the "realness" of reality.

One would just have to gather the data from all stones dropping from such a height over all time, past and future, and then see which made it and which didn't.Since we do not currently have that information, we cannot currently make such a calculation.I agree that it would be nice to be able to 100% know-for-sure such things.
Unfortunately, reality does not have to conform to our desires.

That's exactly true.
Can you name a probability that we are able to calculate?Of course, we can calculate probabilities of things within a system we control. Like drawing a certain card out of a deck of cards.
Without controlling reality (or, at least, knowing all the possibilities) we cannot calculate probabilities.We can calculate probabilities based on past performance... but they always include that little asterisk since we are currently unable to know the future.

Yes, that's true.In that thread, I distinctly made it very clear from the beginning that I was using the word "know" in the every-day colloquial sense that actually includes this sort of asterisk.Here, we've been very clear that we're actually using the word "know" at it's furthest, 100% for-sure-sure's range. Which would obviously exclude this sort of asterisk.Such is the difference, and such is the weakness of English

Right. All based on past performance. Very well.
Our current model of reality seems to be very close to absolutely matching whatever it may be.
Does it exactly match? How can we ever tell?
If all our calculated probabilities are off by 0.25%... wouldn't they still "serve us well" and not absolutely match reality? What about 0.000015%? What about a smaller difference?
When you say "absolute," do you mean "absolute" or do you mean "just pretty close?" I'm using the word to mean "absolute."Just because someone comes up with a number by doing some calculations does not mean they absolutely calculated the real, actual probability.If you mean to talk about practicality, I agree that we are able to calculate many extremely practical probabilities.
But I thought we were talking about mapping probabilities of absolute reality. How can we do that without knowing everything about reality absolutely?You seem to keep coming around to saying things along the lines of "but our practical applications are really good and extremely useful!"
I don't disagree with such an idea. I just didn't think that was what we were talking about.

Except for the fact that you cannot rigorously prove this.
All we can do is prove it beyond any reasonable doubt.What if our perception of reality is skewed in such a way that we only think Lester Moore is dead but he actually isn't?
The only way to rigorously get rid of that issue is to know that our perception of reality is not skewed that much.
The only way to rigorously know how much our perception of reality is skewed (if at all) is to compare the reality we perceive against "the real reality."Unfortunately, we cannot do that.
Therefore, unfortunately, Lester Moore is not absolutely dead and there is some gray area there.Unless you just want your version of the word "absolute" to ignore the facts of our reality.
And then, yes, of course it's "absolute" if we ignore the possibility of our error... but that's a strange use of the word absolute.What you're doing is akin to living in a small box and saying "there are absolutely no birds!"
I then tell you that birds may exist outside your box.
You then look around your entire box, look at me like I'm weird and then say "There are absolutely no birds!"...If you ignore the limits of your abilities, then of course you can say things are 'absolute' when all you mean is that things are 'absolute within the limits of your abilities'.We know our abilities have limitations.
We do not know how big those limitations are.
It is incorrect for us to say we know anything "absolutely" until we fully identify those limitations or we ignore them.You're doing the latter.Edited by Stile, : This post was absolutely perfect.Edited by Stile, : Or is it?

I don't understand your response.
You seemed to have written a whole post that disagreed with me... and then concluded with a sentence that completely agreed with me.I don't know what sort of response you're looking for, if any. If you have any further specific questions, just let me know.

My bolding in the following quote: That is, apart from the unlikely answers that you failed to discuss.
What I'm talking about is all the possible answers that we just don't know because we don't know everything.The only way you can limit it to any certain number of possibilities (even 10, 648 or so...). Is if you know everything.
I don't believe you know everything.
I don't believe it's even possible for you to know everything.Therefore, it's possible for Lester Moore to be alive in a way that you just don't know.
Therefore, it cannot possibly be absolute that Lester Moore is dead.My argument is really very simple:Your knowledge has limitations.
The only way you can say you know something "absolutely" is for you to fully identify and understand those limitations (know everything) or ignore them (not really 'absolute').Clearly, you are ignoring the fact that you do not know everything.
Therefore, what you say is "absolute" really is not.There is only 1 way out of this argument: You can describe how you do, in fact, know "everything."
Without doing that... you're simply ignoring your limitations and therefore ignoring the possibility that you could be wrong.I don't see a way around it.
I don't like it either.
That doesn't make it go away.

For you to convince me that you know everything or convince me that there is no way for you to be wrong. Exactly. Only sometimes.
If you want to convince me that something is absolute, you need to convince me that a cigar is always a cigar.Edited by Stile, : I like Big Feet, those little red chewy candies. They're yummy.

Well, no. The problem isn't in finding a definition we agree with.
The problem is in confirming that "something in reality" actually matches any definition that we come up with.Even if we do agree on a definition, how can we ever confirm absolutely that the reality we perceive matches the definition?
Even if we simplify the definition of death to "there is a tombstone that says Lester Moore RIP." (Or whatever it was, sorry, I forget the text...)
Even if you and I are standing directly in front of the tombstone.
Even if the entire world sees the tombstone.
Even if we have pictures and video and infra-red and density readings and a probe constantly hitting the tombstone...How can we ever say there is absolutely no room for the smallest of errors?
Everything we observe about reality relies on our perception of reality. Our perception of reality is not absolute.Let me put it another way: Have you ever done statistics in science?When any experiment is done in science, it is always followed with a statistical analysis.
The basics of the statistical analysis are to take measurements of the possible sources of error, average them over however-many-samples-you-took, and then it lets you know the confidence of your accuracy for your results.Due to the nature of the math for the statistical analysis, as long as your error margins are reasonable... the more samples you take generally results in a higher confidence level for your results.
However... also due to the mathematical and realistic conditions... the only way to reach 100% confidence is to take an infinite number of observations. You can get 99.9...a-whole-whack-of-9's-....999% confident. But it is a strict impossibility to ever "be done" and reach 100% confidence."Absolute" = 100% confidence.Science, which is our best-known-method for 'knowing things' has a statistical system that can be mathematically proven to be impossible to ever reach 100% confidence.Therefore, even science says we can never be 100%, "absolute" in anything we know.The trick isn't in defining a structure.
The trick is in matching reality to our definition.
The process of matching reality requires some sort of observation or measurement of reality (the tombstone is x feet high by x feet wide...).
If we cannot know that the observation is absolute... how can we ever say that the conclusion-based-on-the-observation is absolute?We can certainly say that we are 99.9...whatever % confident that we are accurate in describing the existence of this tombstone and therefore we are 99.9...whatever % confident that death occurred.
...but that's not 100%, is it? It's not "absolute."You want to go from having a 99% accurate observation into a 100% absolute conclusion.
It just doesn't follow.
Not logically, and not even mathematically.We do not have direct access to reality. We only have a perception of reality.
Until we get direct access, we cannot take direct values.You want to say that the tombstone is absolutely there?
Then show me your absolute, direct measurements of reality that do not rely on our perception of reality and have absolutely no error margins of any kind in any way whatsoever.That is currently impossible.
That is why knowing anything 'absolutely' is currently impossible.