Our eyes remained focused, it was now a battle of will, I had to force them to stay down, and with all my might I pressed.

Who are we? Who am I? Is my eyes remaining focused a problem?

How did I force my eyes to stay down? Or is it not my eyes whom I'd forced to stay down?

>>I forced their sorry body into the planks, preventing them from any motion.

Whose sorry body?

>>By this time I had a suspicion, I was almost sure it was Gylsahm, but I needed to continue; out of principle. I could see a fragment of his eye peering at me, and within it's murky fire I saw a twitch of fear.

In whose eye?
**** suspense, dude, I want to know what's going on.

I know this might not sound very helpful right now.
I will try to read in full at a later time (closer to 4/20, lulz), along with addressing the comments on the Punk Girl story (which, truth be told, isn't all that great, but it's okay, like Grant said) because I'd promised to do so.

I have to do 10 more pullups. Shower. And go to work.

I pass the mic
back to MC.

Thank you for following up on that. I'm still curious about where you thought the comments were wrong and why, but I was beginning to fear you just sort of forgot about finding the time to do it.

.

Lots but eh.

So, one, the epistemological problem with science is that induction is impossible. The good news here is that scientists have internalized this fact, so all published evidence now is attached to a probability of incorrectness. The bad news is that most scientists are really bad at statistics. This means you get things like, A (p < 0.05) and B (p < 0.05), well, there's a 9.75% chance that your theory A&B=>C is unfalsifiable. This is really just a social and educational problem, though; outside of the formal sciences there aren't too many undecidable problems, so there aren't a lot of questions that science straight-up can't answer given enough time.

The enzymatic processes in the brain are subject to probabilities.

Godel's incompleteness theorems put simply: mathematics is not based on empirical fact, it is based on a set of "facts" called axioms, which mathematicians invent out of convenience. Not all sub-disciplines use the same sets of axioms, and even today there is contention in areas as foundational as set theory. The first incompleteness theorem basically says that you can never find a Grand Unified Axiom List unless some of those axioms contradict each other. The second incompleteness theorem basically says that if a set of axioms can be used to prove that none of the axioms contradict any others, then the axioms actually do contradict each other. Important, but really it places limits upon the metatheory rather than on mathematics.

here, this seems more up your alley what with the whole NOTHING HAPPENING IS MAKING SENSE ANYMORE that seems to blanket this thread.

I'm currently picking at a road rash scab on my knee and it's less painful than your flaccid attempts at self aggrandizing

E:and more successful, as well

.

Well basically.

In studies you're trying to reject what's called the null hypothesis, which is the inverse of what you're actually trying to prove. There are four possible outcomes to this:

1.) Fail to reject a true null hypothesis - the theory is incorrect, and it also didn't get published.
2.) Fail to reject a false null hypothesis - the theory is correct, but the paper didn't get published.
3.) Reject a false null hypothesis - the theory is correct, and the paper got published.
4.) Reject a true null hypothesis - the theory is incorrect, but the paper got published. sadface.

"p<0.05" means there is a 5% chance of getting option 4, or iow a 95% chance of landing elsewhere. Which means if alpha=0.95 for studies A and B, there's only a 90.25% chance that A&B is actually true. And if A&B is false, it can't really imply anything.

am i helping you write a paper?

Stochastic doesn't imply unpredictable, and predictable doesn't imply deterministic. The weather is "deterministic" because it is the confluence of an absurd number of stochastic effects under a measurable probability distribution. What's deterministic at the scale of a single protein? A fluctuation in the underlying quantum field might be the difference between remembering your mugger as black or white.

Free will is a deep question and I'm not offering you answers. I'm just saying that the argument so far for a deterministic brain is neither necessary nor sufficient.

I'd need to reread. It's not really something that comes up a lot.

.

.

I only compete with myself.
I do not care if you are better, I do not care if you are worse. You do not understand this, and are hostile (and Reid is right about my grammar degrading in certain situations).

Today a girl told me, "I think animals are better than humans."
"Why?" I asked.
"They do not take pleasure in doing evil."
And I couldn't really argue.

That is all.
**** the horse. Ride the snake.

Gee, you only compete with yourself, yet you think you will improve in comparison to others. What a novel concept.

No, I think I will improve in comparison to myself.

I have to do 10 more pullups. Shower. And go to work.

I pass the mic
back to MC.

I guarantee Koobie kips when he does pullups.

Nope. I have half of a BILLY shelf of stats books, they weren't cheap. If you're in school the best bet is to take a course there, an intro course will usually have labs so you can apply what you're learning.

What does deterministic mean, really? Let's say God created a perfect black box RNG. Every time we press a button we get a random number, so we think this system is "truly" stochastic. But we can't see inside, so we don't know. It could be a deterministic finite state machine which was initialized to some state which makes it generate perfectly unpredictable numbers. But we have no way of measuring that state, copying it, or restoring it.

So maybe the universe is deterministic, but we have no way of measuring that determinism. The laws of physics forbid it.

No the literal opposite. If the brain is deterministic it means our behaviors are exclusively informed by our past, which was something we are ultimately subjected to as infants. I think a proof of our brains' determinism is sufficient to prove that free will is an illusion.

This thread is about philosophy now. Stop making every thread about yourself.

This is an extremely valid point. This thread is in fact literally about Jon`C, so since Jon`C has moved on, any prior topics are no longer salient.

Determinism is infinitely more interesting anyway.

.

No it isn't. For example, a computer is a deterministic finite state machine which, from certain states, generates random numbers with a finite period. We call such algorithms pseudo-random number generators because they will eventually reveal a pattern over a period which is a function of some chosen constants. If God built a black box RNG he would know exactly how large of a Mersenne prime to choose in order for a Mersenne twister to never repeat itself, so even though the black box is a modern, human-like computer running a human-invented algorithm, it would still be externally indistinguishable from a true RNG.

Which is the point I was getting at. Even if at some level the RNG is deterministic, we have no way of opening the black box. It's not only impossible for us to know for certain, but even if we did, we could never make use of this fact.

There are lots of deterministic systems. Computers and engines, for example, barring external influences or mechanical failure. They aren't terribly common in nature because randomness is what drives adaptation, as well as being incredibly convenient for the sorts of computational problems organisms need to solve.

...No, I mean you literally can't capture the full state of a particle. You can't open the black box.

Yes, I've read those papers.

It always seemed to me like a terrible conceit to assume that the only important part of the brain is the part that we assume houses our consciousness. Despite what they pretend, all anybody is capable of measuring is bloodflow and electrical field. So there's a signal that we think means "making a decision" which the rest of your brain generates a few seconds before you realize you've made a decision, but what IS the signal, really? Nobody knows. Your brain is an enormously complex and interconnected neural network, so it shouldn't be at all surprising when influences governing a decision come from distant portions.

http://escapepod.org/2010/07/29/ep251-unexpected-outcomes/

Tim Pratt will never be half as good a writer as Jon'C, of course, but the story fits the (current) theme of the discussion. I've read the original in an issue of Interzone, so I can't vouch for the audio version, but in my experience Escapepod usually puts up good stuff.

This thread is about philosophy now, not writing. Stop making every thread about yourself.

I've made this thread about you, Jon'C. It helped me learn more about yourself, your friends Antony and Dormouse, and, surprisingly, Reid and FGR. The short story is relevant to the determinism and "What if we live in the Matrix?" discussion that seems to be going on here. But this thread is really about you, so don't worry, I'm just throwing in bits of info that may be interesting to the very few people on this forum who don't care that much about you but are interested in good free stories. Have a nice evening.

This thread is about philosophy now. Stop making every thread about yourself.

(Aside: holy wow you did not understand a single word of this discussion. We are discussing metaphysical and epistemological challenges in the philosophy of science, not simulism. You literally could not be more wrong.)

Aside: I've skipped through most of what you guys wrote, but basically it seemed to be about free will and the idea that we would not be able to understand / apply the knowledge if we suddenly realized we are all living in God's sandbox, right? Maybe not. I don't really care, Jon'C. You know why? Because I think you are dumb as a ****ing cork, and what you think doesn't really matter to me.

STOP MAKING EVERY THREAD ABOUT ME, JON'C.

I pass the mike
back to MC.

Peace & Love though am I right, Koobie?

No, you're wrong, I'm on a smoking break until 4/20.
Or 4/19 because that's when the tattoo saloon is open.

This thread is about philosophy now, not your drug addiction. Stop making every thread about yourself.

EDIT: [Massassi is better when smoking / talk to yall closer to 4/20]

EDIT: [Massassi is better when smoking / talk to yall closer to 4/20]

I'm glad that Koobie wants to turn the thread he made about Jon`C into a blog about his inevitably doomed dating escapades.

If it's not about Koobie, it's not important.

And I'm really glad you drank an entire bottle of wine prior to calling a woman. Tell us again how you don't have a substance abuse problem by way of self medicating.

This thread is about philosophy now, not about your inability to talk to women while sober. Stop making every thread about yourself.

If you're going to talk about free will, you need to clearly define what free will is. I find that any definition of free will that is contradicted by determinism is either an arbitrary definition that has nothing to do with will or simply incoherent.

If free will is the ability of an individual conscious mind to make decisions that are not determined by influences that are external to that conscious mind, then it is incoherent, because all parts of a conscious mind are ultimately determined by external influences, such as genetics, experiences, or physical/chemical interactions with the environment. Even if the universe is not deterministic, random quantum decisions are still external to the system that comprises a conscious mind, and are thus still an external influence.

Now, on the topic of a nondeterministic universe, consider the multiple worlds interpretation. If it is correct, then you could flip a coin five times, and there would be at least one 'timeline' in which every possible outcome occurs. You could argue that, given sufficient knowledge of the state before the experiment, you could have predicted the outcome, but the version of you in all 32 timelines would be making the same argument, and you couldn't all be correct.

In this model of the universe, the outcome of the experiment is subjectively 'truly stochastic', and in fact not determined by anything, even if the system overall (which includes every timeline) is still deterministic.

STOP MAKING EVERY THREAD ABOUT ME, ANTONY.



I guess because I don't really drink a lot?

STOP MAKING EVERY THREAD ABOUT ME, ANTONY.



This thread is about whatever we want it to be. Also, I wasn't talking to you. STOP MAKING EVERY THREAD ABOUT ME, JON'C.



The ability to make your own choices, regardless of what the Supreme Leader, God, or other people think or want you to do.

Free will is choice, not the illusion of choice.

Goddamn. STOP MAKING EVERY THREAD ABOUT ME, FLIRBNIC.

I pass the mic
back to MC.

In summary: no u

No. You.

I pass the mic
back to MCs.

You wanna know the difference between you and me, Koobie?