Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

"may exceed" - and how the devil would he know that there is far more information generated by emergent things in a universe than material to carry it?  He's in possession of all this information, is he? That would be pretty delusional, and as suggested, not very sane.

Oh no, Underpants is back and he's Gaslighting.
Davies doesn't know of course, but it would I should think be possible to take a small part of the universe measure the matter in it and then measure the amount of information about that part of the universe. Of course he doesn't know, that's why the word may was used.

He doesn't know of course just like reductionists don't know whether emergent entities aren't really resultant entities but they believe it by an act of faith.

[Nearly Sane]

Oh no, Underpants is back and he's Gaslighting.
Davies doesn't know of course, but it would I should think be possible to take a small part of the universe measure the matter in it and then measure the amount of information about that part of the universe. Of course he doesn't know, that's why the word may was used.

He doesn't know of course just like reductionists don't know whether emergent entities aren't really resultant entities but they believe it by an act of faith.

Could you summarise your understanding of what Davies is saying using information theory because it feels as if your approach seems very confused?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Could you summarise your understanding of what Davies is saying using information theory because it feels as if your approach seems very confused?

It was in a back copy of the New scientist I don't have any more. Davies is still writing books on emergence.

[ProfessorDavey]

Paul Davies for instance suggests the amount of information generated in part by emergent things may exceed the amount of material available in a universe purely made up of resultants by a huge factor.

What the hell does that even mean.

How do you measure information and determine how that stacks up against the amount of material. That makes no sense whatsoever - what is the 'information' equivalent of 15 tonnes of material Vlad?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Could you summarise your understanding of what Davies is saying using information theory because it feels as if your approach seems very confused?

My understanding is that according to Davies, reductionists see material as the substrate on which information is 'recorded' so if reductionism is right the amount of information should be commensurate with the amount of material. Davies thinks there could be more information than substrate. This would go against the reductionist position and point to a strong emergence i.e. The emergence of information for which material substrate cannot be the medium of recording.

[ProfessorDavey]

It was in a back copy of the New scientist I don't have any more. Davies is still writing books on emergence.

Is it this article Vlad - not that I can read it all because it is behind a paywall:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133532-800-the-black-hole-paradox-that-thwarts-our-understanding-of-reality/

In which case it seems to relate to the black hole paradox - a well known paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox

However - I'm struggling to see what relevance this has in the slightest to emergent properties.

[Nearly Sane]

My understanding is that according to Davies, reductionists see material as the substrate on which information is 'recorded' so if reductionism is right the amount of information should be commensurate with the amount of material. Davies thinks there could be more information than substrate. This would go against the reductionist position and point to a strong emergence i.e. The emergence of information for which material substrate cannot be the medium of recording.

Hmm this seems to imply either that Davies has no clue about information theory, or perhaps more likely you don't understand what he's saying.


As ever your inability to write clearly makes discussion pointless

[ProfessorDavey]

Like that explanation very much.

Thank you.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Hmm this seems to imply either that Davies has no clue about information theory, or perhaps more likely you don't understand what he's saying.

Paul Davies is an eminent physicist so even you probably aren't fit to tie his shoe laces on this. If you don't like my interpretation then get his.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Davies on information: https://physicsworld.com/a/life-the-universe-and-everything-an-interview-with-paul-davies/#:~:text=The%20underlying%20bedrock%20to%20unifying%20all%20of%20these,and%20adapts%20to%20the%20network%20it%20flows%20within.

Here's an excerpt:

In an attempt to answer these big questions – what exactly is life, how and why does it emerge, and what distinguishes the living from the non-living – science writer and physicist Paul Davies offers his latest book, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information are Solving the Mystery of Life. A self-confessed manifesto of sorts, this book is the culmination of decades of research done by Davies and his team at the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, at Arizona State University in the US.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Is it this article Vlad - not that I can read it all because it is behind a paywall:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133532-800-the-black-hole-paradox-that-thwarts-our-understanding-of-reality/

In which case it seems to relate to the black hole paradox - a well known paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox

However - I'm struggling to see what relevance this has in the slightest to emergent properties.

No, it isn't that article...perhaps that's the reason you are struggling.

[ProfessorDavey]

... emergentism with the emergent not deducible or calculable from the components ...

But how can you ever determine this.

I asked you previously, but you didn't answer.

Do you mean:

1. that the emergent properties have not been deduced from understanding of the properties of the components and their interactions, or

2. that the the emergent properties can be deduced from understanding of the properties of the components and their interactions

If 1 then this is merely an argument from ignorance - so if our knowledge and simulation power increases we may be able to determine this link. So in effect something is either emergent or not emergent based on our ignorance. So that makes no sense, so perhaps it is:

2 - but in which case this is unprovable in a Popper black swan sense - the only way we could determine whether the emergent properties can be deduced from understanding of the properties of the components and their interactions it to show that they can. If you have not done some it proves nothing - you may be able to do so at some point in the future, the challenge being lack of current knowledge and/or simulation power. So this means that nothing could ever be considered emergent as either it has been deduced (so not emergent) or has not yet been deduced, but you cannot be sure that it cannot be (in which case you cannot be sure it is emergent). This is errant non-sense.

Now actually I see where this is going - it is yet another of those circular - look we've proved god exists, supernatural exists. Effectively that the only way we can say something is emergent if emergent means it cannot be deduced is to conclude that the relationships and interactions are unknowable and therefore sit outside the material/natural realm - wizzz, must be supernatural. And because there are emergent entities therefore there must be supernatural stuff. Problem is that you are using a circular argument - the only way you can conclude that there are emergent entities by this non-sense definition is to presume the supernatural, and the 'proof' of the supernatural is the presence of emergent entities. Classic non-sense circular argument.

[ProfessorDavey]

No, it isn't that article...perhaps that's the reason you are struggling.

Then I suggest you find the article - if it by him and from New Scientist it should be pretty easy for you to identify.

No point in continuing discussion of this particular point until we can actually see what Davies is proposing.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Then I suggest you find the article - if it by him and from New Scientist it should be pretty easy for you to identify.

No point in continuing discussion of this particular point until we can actually see what Davies is proposing.

For pitys sake you are supposed to be in a university with all the access to information that entails. Find it yourself and grow up.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But how can you ever determine this.

The argument from CD Broad is 'Broadly' outlined here.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/broad/#Eme

I asked you previously, but you didn't answer.

Do you mean:

1. that the emergent properties have not been deduced from understanding of the properties of the components and their interactions,[/quote]There are certainly resultants that we do not know but will but that does not guarantee that all emergents will be resultants.

2. that the the emergent properties can be deduced from understanding of the properties of the components and their interactions

Not all things can be known according to Broad....see link to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/broad/#Eme

[ProfessorDavey]

For pitys sake you are supposed to be in a university with all the access to information that entails. Find it yourself and grow up.

How on earth am I supposed to know that article you read Vlad. Having access to huge amounts of high level information doesn't gain me access to your mind ... hmm maybe there is a reason why huge amounts of high level information and your mind are strangers to each other

[Walt Zingmatilder]

How on earth am I supposed to know that article you read Vlad. Having access to huge amounts of high level information doesn't gain me access to your mind ... hmm maybe there is a reason why huge amounts of high level information and your mind are strangers to each other

Yes I could be recovering from a stroke.

[Gordon]

No, it isn't that article...perhaps that's the reason you are struggling.

Since you are advancing this article, Vlad, it would be good manners to both provide a citation and summarise the content. Since you refer to it, and presumably you've read it, then it should be easy-peasy to provide the details/link.

[Gordon]

Yes I could be recovering from a stroke.

Not funny, Vlad: a distasteful comment.

You should know better.

[Udayana]

Then I suggest you find the article - if it by him and from New Scientist it should be pretty easy for you to identify.

No point in continuing discussion of this particular point until we can actually see what Davies is proposing.

There is an article in the 5 March 2005 NS where Davies discusses information and emergence:
eg. The emergence of "life" and the emergence of the classical physical world from the quantum.

"So is there any way to tell if there is some substance to the strong-emergentists’ claims? For almost all systems, the Landauer-Lloyd limit is nowhere near restrictive enough to make any difference to the conventional application of physical laws. But certain complex systems exceed the limit. If there are emergent principles at work in nature, it is to such complex systems that we should look for evidence of their effects.

A prime example is living organisms. Consider the problem of predicting the onset of life in a prebiotic soup. A simple-minded approach is to enumerate all the possible combinations and configurations of the basic organic building blocks, and calculate their properties to discover which would be biologically efficacious and which would not."

... and so on.

It is an interesting read - you should be able to get to it through OpenAthens.

I've no idea how it relates to WZ's claims (as I don't understand much of what WZ posts!) but Davies has two more recent pop sci books considering information in depth: "Information and the nature of reality" and "The demon in the machine" - I've not read them - but I expect he has moved on from the dualistic (information vs matter) assumptions in the 2005 article.
 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There is an article in the 5 March 2005 NS where Davies discusses information and emergence:
eg. The emergence of "life" and the emergence of the classical physical world from the quantum.

"So is there any way to tell if there is some substance to the strong-emergentists’ claims? For almost all systems, the Landauer-Lloyd limit is nowhere near restrictive enough to make any difference to the conventional application of physical laws. But certain complex systems exceed the limit. If there are emergent principles at work in nature, it is to such complex systems that we should look for evidence of their effects.

A prime example is living organisms. Consider the problem of predicting the onset of life in a prebiotic soup. A simple-minded approach is to enumerate all the possible combinations and configurations of the basic organic building blocks, and calculate their properties to discover which would be biologically efficacious and which would not."

... and so on.

It is an interesting read - you should be able to get to it through OpenAthens.

I've no idea how it relates to WZ's claims (as I don't understand much of what WZ posts!) but Davies has two more recent pop sci books considering information in depth: "Information and the nature of reality" and "The demon in the machine" - I've not read them - but I expect he has moved on from the dualistic (information vs matter) assumptions in the 2005 article.

Thank you very much indeed sir.

[Dicky Underpants]

How on earth am I supposed to know that article you read Vlad. Having access to huge amounts of high level information doesn't gain me access to your mind ... hmm maybe there is a reason why huge amounts of high level information and your mind are strangers to each other

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/fifthmiracle.htm&ved=2ahUKEwi1wqj3vbH8AhVzi_0HHQDVD0kQFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3S1vQNPrY8UgfYmkc-lZq4
In the absence of the cited article, here's a link to an interesting review where it was reported that Davies WAS charged with reviving Vitalism, and had to make rapid qualifications to his theories which sound dangerously close to backtracking.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/fifthmiracle.htm&ved=2ahUKEwi1wqj3vbH8AhVzi_0HHQDVD0kQFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3S1vQNPrY8UgfYmkc-lZq4
In the absence of the cited article, here's a link to an interesting review where it was reported that Davies WAS charged with reviving Vitalism, and had to make rapid qualifications to his theories which sound dangerously close to backtracking.

My goodness you really seem to have it in for Davies. Long back in this thread I merely said that Reductionists could be wrong. There was then a bit of not wanting to identify as or owning being reductionist indeed Hillside said he wasn't reducing anything as there was nothing to be reduced thus giving himself away as an eliminativist. Reductionism colours one's approach to consciousness as does emergentism of course.

C.D. Broad is a chief critic of reductionism applied to consciousness and he does so on emergentist grounds. There is no supernaturalist woo since Broad is an emergent materialist.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/broad/#Eme And yet you and Davey have declared critics of reductionism as Mad and confused. This is peculiar and peculiar in science since reductionism in terms of showing that all things are described in terms of their components is far from having demonstrating that that is the case. Indeed science has only ever been able to produce models of systems. Certainly Godel kicked reductionist ideas on describing systems purely in terms of it's components into touch.
And talking of mathematicians, Roger Penrose has apparently not been best pleased at the antics of reductionism as I understand, but of course he must be mad or confused.

The behaviour of certain shy reductionists on this thread makes me think they have mistaken what they do in their Job for what the universe is like. But I could of course be wrong and they right. Nobody knows though, it's a matter of belief.

Reductionism though has been roundly challenged and that challenge is larger, I think, than the Professor cares to let on.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Now actually I see where this is going - it is yet another of those circular - look we've proved god exists, supernatural exists. Effectively that the only way we can say something is emergent if emergent means it cannot be deduced is to conclude that the relationships and interactions are unknowable and therefore sit outside the material/natural realm - wizzz, must be supernatural. And because there are emergent entities therefore there must be supernatural stuff. Problem is that you are using a circular argument - the only way you can conclude that there are emergent entities by this non-sense definition is to presume the supernatural, and the 'proof' of the supernatural is the presence of emergent entities. Classic non-sense circular argument.

I don't think you have to be a theist to propose real emergence rather than universal resultancy. CD Broad's credentials are as an emergentist materialist, Chalmers is a dualist when it comes to consciousness and I don't think he's theist or even Davies, Penrose isn't a theist and yet there are areas of reductionism that bother him. I could believe the universe actually is a machine, fully determined and explicable in terms of parts and still believe God made it and the only freedom available was to follow the builder or reject him.

I could also say though that reductionism is a construct to eliminate consideration of anything but materialism. To ensure the purity of a very real faith since you have an awful lot of collation of components of every system known, discovery of systems unknown and then on top of that calculation of all the resultants before the faith can be declared concrete knowledge.

[ProfessorDavey]

C.D. Broad is a chief critic of reductionism applied to consciousness and he does so on emergentist grounds. There is no supernaturalist woo since Broad is an emergent materialist.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/broad/#Eme

Hmm - you mean CD Broad who spent over 20 years of his working life as president of the Society for Psychical Research - an organisation whose stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal.

I think CD Broad was absolutely wedded to supernaturalist woo, as you describe it.

But there is a further issue. He died in 1971 - most of his work was from the 1930s to the 1950s. Quite understandably he would have had no knowledge whatsoever of the astonishing advances in knowledge of brain function that have occurred over the past 50 years, nor for that matter the similarly astonishing advances in understanding of the universe, its nature and formation etc. So his 'philosophical' positions are necessarily based on a level of ignorance which is greatly reduced now. So where he may claim no link between cause and effect within a neurological context in the 1950s we probably have very strong evidence to demonstrate that there is a link. But I guess if you are wedded to psychic and the paranormal then he probably wouldn't want to listen to that evidence.