Why I believe in determinism (fate) ...

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All matter appears to function based the predictable laws of chemistry and physics.

Thus, even our brain cells function based on such laws.

So, they control us; we don't control them.

It appears to me, to believe in some form of indeterminism, requires one to believe brain cells function outside science's predictable laws?

Anyone care to share their thoughts? Thanks in advance.

BRAIN CELL

Actually, our current knowledge of the laws of chemistry and physics is insufficient to explain consciousness.

Or to phrase it slightly differently: consciousness exists outside [our understanding of] the laws of chemistry and physics.

My money is on the "our existence is a simulation being run by an intelligent life form" due to a theoretically rickety but romantic paper I read some time back arguing that, assuming we're the necessary conclusion of the necessary evolutionary route to intelligent life that could create AI... factored to our evolutionary speed and some probability for hospitable interstellar habitats... it is more likely than not that we are not the first civilization to get to this evolutionary and technological point.

However, the civs who beat us should have kept developing tech and have interstellar messaging if not travel, but we don't see or hear from them. So what if there's this apex of technological development any civ can hit before it destroys itself with that tech?

But that's basically assuming some kind of universal law of ethics/dharma/what have you.

The more... realistic scenario is that a civilization at some point in history before us developed AI and we are [at least some of] it.

That's why we've never heard from them...

Shhhh!
They may have a policy that if a subject becomes self-aware, it must be terminated.
Like waiting until there's a Sim swimming in the pool before removing the ladder...

Here... have a talk by Bruce Lipton...

I'm getting to be increasingly convinced of Penrose and Hameroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction - it goes to explain why we're doing a lot better than the 37 bits Max Tegmark often cites and it goes a ways also explain a lot of experiences people have, not just NDE'ers but a lot of people who are practical researchers of mysticism and magic when they peel away the frills to see what's actually there - its quite reminiscent of another phase of thought touching base with other objects and implied journey of consciousness from host organism to host organism to develop, eventually, stand-alone coherence without the need of a physical substrate.

Even there I have to admit I don't understand indeterminism either. I was watching a really good lecture actually last night where it was cited that Penrose's explanation for why a moment of consciousness would follow one part of the fork of probabilities rather than another had something to do with objects in the symmetry of space that dictated how collapse would go - that's still far from any kind of indeterminism.

It seems like with indeterminism you would need a cause that's constantly uncaused. Such a perpetually virgin cause isn't provided no matter how supernatural or woo you get. Thus far I've been an absolute determinist and I see no reason to change my outlook. Like anyone else of course I mind my data and live as if I have custodial responsibility for my mind, my body, my morals, and how my life works but I also recognize myself as a component that will forever be reacting and when I'm reacting less directly I'm seeking ways to amplify certain systems and competencies relevant to my existential situation (which again is still a reaction to a container).

I have trouble accepting that since there seems to be no proof of it.


Funny.

Right ... like in the movie 'Animatrix' where the runner briefly leaves the Matrix, and becomes aware of the Sim.

I have watched most of Hameroff's lecture videos and consciousness videos on youtube.

His ideas are interesting.

However, physics experts argue the brain is not suitable for QM because "it is considered too 'warm, wet and noisy' to avoid decoherence".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestra ... _reduction

I have not seen him provide any explanation to address this.

There is an indian god called Vishnu who comes to earth in the form of avatars like in a video game

He exists outside of the universe and is depicted as someone reclining on a sofa.(made of snakes)

He can 'create infinite universes' and when his snake sofa thing uncoils time in this universe stops, that's like pausing the game

AFAICT he doesn't have to go far - seems like its getting less controversial to say that plant photosynthesis occurs along the lines of decoherence.

As for explanations of why it could work in a warm and wet environment he starts in on that and the particular diagram related to it around 1:10:00 of this vid, though his presentation starts at 48:00 and he goes into a lot of really important aspects of how his theory operates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXBfXNW6Bxo

I believe fate exists, but it is foolish to believe we can know, with absolute certainty of what this fate is. Even if we get all our models right, there is no way we can take into account all the variables involved, and calculate objective outcomes (of our brain at large) with infinite reliability.

I don't believe fate is necessarily incompatible with free will too.

I disagree. What neurologists and computer scientists are discovering from two different angles is that our consciousness is really nothing all that special. Animals with varying degrees of neural complexity have what we'd consider varying degrees of consciousness. Likewise, by trying to create automatons that can do what we do either physically (like walk) or mentally (like accurate, contextual speech recognition), computer scientist are discovering that some fair part of what we assumed was consciousness is actually the end result of hardwired behaviors, signal aggregation, sensory input, processing, and the meatware methods of storing experiential learning. On top of that we have a layer that at this point appears to be a representation of our body, our stored experiences, and something like a supervisor. That last layer appears to aggregate everything below it and current sensory input in order to try to predict what is about to happen next. And then act on it. Oh, and throw in a bunch of neurotransmitters and hormones that make everything wildly dynamic. Some of this has been determined by functional comparison after injury, but more recently most has been sussed out by following individual connections, stimulus and processing.

Illusory free will?

Determinists acknowledge we have illusory free will.

I am so glad to have found you posters. You are exactly the kinds of thinkers I was hoping to find on Wrong Planet. I love and respect your posts, but of course I'm going to argue with them.

I have nothing of substance to add to the "scientific" debate, except to remind you that "science" is as much faith-based as any other religion. Aside from the recognition of "unknowables" that the concept of "singularities" dances with, scientific findings are based on the game of math, with all its postulates, and on inter-observer verification. For people like us, whose minds "observe" differently than the "neurotypical," neither of those bases should seem intuitively sound.

While I'm a great fan of the religion of science for purposes of quotidian understanding, prediction and control of "naive reality," I'm far from convinced of its value for questions like determinism and other non-local "truths".

Are there any Buddhist or Hindu members here who can explain their ontology?

We don't have free will. This doesn't mean that we don't make decisions, but it means that we ultimately don't control our decision. People think they have free will when they do what their conscious mind wants, but really this is just them being happy with and accepting what they have done.

And science is not religion. Science is based on testable theories, results that can be reproduced. Religion teaches that accepting things specifically without evidence (faith) is not only acceptable, but virtuous. That is completely unacceptable in science. Not all religions do this to the same extent, but they all do.

You just reminded me of a wonderful lecture on Free Will that I *think* was given by one of my profs some long years back. The essence of it was that if you wanted to go from one room to another to get a bottle of water, your only free will was to decide whether or not to satiate your thirst, and whether to do so in that particular manner. There were several important points, IIR. First, your thirst was instinct driven and while you hypothetically could decide not to drink the water, eventually you'd die and that would be the end of your free will. Second, how you satiated that thirst was limited by the available options. And if you decided upon the bottle of water as your solution, being a physical being you were limited in how you could get to the water. He ended the lecture with a little joke - when you get there the bottle, it turns out, is empty.

That is not consciousness you are talking about. That is emergent behavior. Many processes in our brain certainly are deterministic and can be duplicated by machines. But actual sentience is something that computer science has failed to duplicate let alone come anywhere close. Do not confuse NLP and conversational generation with self-awareness.

Neuroscience has demonstrated that consciousness has many holistic properties that do not yield to reductionism or even emergentism.