highly intriguing discussion and thanks for kind words, too!
Concerning the counterexamples, there was a recent debate I got involved which way of proof is the best one. Options were a) by counterexample, b) by construction, c) by contradiction, and d) by induction.
I guess it depends a lot on the problem at hand, but I often found it quite difficult to come up with counterexamples, which is why I usually try contradictions. "It couldn't have been otherwise" is similar to finding a counterexample. It also hints at the necessary requirements to be able to make a certain claim. In that sense, I think our attitudes clearly differ from those people who choose construction and induction. They are more focussing on the mere possibility and not on consistency within a more global theoretical embedding. From my experiences, many projects aim at gaining knowledge in the latter one and that may get us in the situation we currently are in.
What do you think?
Metaphysics is much harder a subject than the ones I pursue, as I am an ontological coward, being happy to clean up the zoo of models and bringing them into relationships. Vladimir Rogozhin wrote in the discussion of my essay that the big bang never happened and pointed me to an intriguing open letter of scientists supporting this criticism of funding policies for cosmology being too focussed on this single picture. He's right, we don't (can't) know whether the big bang happened, maybe we never will, so we should be more open-minded about other solutions. Intelligent design is another one, or even a related one given the history of the big-bang theory. In any case, it is a viable option compatible with all data we currently have. However, we should not forget that we only have a single universe to draw our conclusions from. So any probabilistic speculations will be heavily based on assumptions like multiverses, purpose of our own universe if it is unique, etc. and Goedel's theorem becomes of utmost importance to get out of circular arguments that aim to be self-contained, as you write in your essay. In that sense, I don't know which option I prefer, the one of a multiverse reminiscent of Nietzsche's eternal return making studies of our own little universe look nihilistic or the one in which we have targeted design but we do not know the purpose... (that's why I wrote in my abstract that science happens somewhere between these two extremes)
Understanding consciousness is a highly interesting field of study that, in my eyes, will make much bigger advances in the near future than the fundamental limits of cosmology being at the vertex between philosophy, physics, and religion. Consciousness is located between these branches, too, but, a deeper understanding can be achieved by exploring it with a lot of experiments and investigations readily available on earth. Recently, there was a study about consciousness of plants and an octopus having nightmares, so I agree there is a lot still to be explored there beyond our own species and I agree with you as well that any way to gain a better knowledge of what we currently call consciousness will be helpful!
Last but not least, I think that believing in God should not only make him the explanation for all phenomena beyond our limits, but that he also has a strong component in giving moral norms. ...unless the design and evolution of our universe is fully deterministic, making our free will a mere failure to predict the future due to our limited horizon.
Hi BeigeBandicoot, thanks a lot for your benevolent comment!
As for the origins of the universe, I cannot exclude the possibility that maybe it has and will exist forever in one or the other form. So if true, there would be no big bang and time would be somewhat a fundamental thing. Surely one also could argue that within that eternally existing thing called universe / multiverse, there could be regions where time is somewhat distorted, different from other regions – for example if one defines the ground level of that universe as some kind of quantum fluctuating essence, or as some geometry that automatically gives rise to a time direction etc.
So even for a universe that has existed forever and will forever exist, one can “choose” (maybe until it is decided, if decidable, which of the possibilities is the true one) what its ultimate foundation should be: quantum fluctuations, a deterministic finite state automaton, a continuous geometry that automatically gives rise to a time direction etc. In any case, if it would be true that the universe existed forever, then this is clearly not the world that the bible describes in genesis (as far as i understood it).
Personally I don't think that the question whether the universe is eternal or not can be unambiguously decided, since that would demand strong proofs for several ingredients such a claim must use.
Concerning proofs, I think they are only realiable as far as our definitions of each of the ingredients of a proof are reliable ontologically. Here the problem occurs, since for proofing or disproofing a certain ontology, one at first had to know whether or not that ontology is real or not.
But that does not mean that one cannot come closer to truth, because when one assumes that the world is not an inconsistent conspiracy, one can at least expose certain explanation schemes to be inconsistent. For making them consistent again, it then would need a re-definition of certain ingredients of that explanation scheme. Then again, one could try to expose that scheme to be inconsistent.
Now, some people say that at a certain point, we must and should stop re-defining those ingredients and simply take some of them as given. I would say this makes sense, as long as we do not discover a certain new and surprising category that would enable to free us from terms like material, immaterial, deterministic, random, consistent, inconsistent, causal, non-causal.
My own guess is that such a surprising category must have something that would seem to us as being highly irrational. In my own world model, I adopted such an irrational element (irrational in relation to materialism) as very important for me, namely the belief in a Creator. You are right that my belief in God demands something moral from me – but something that I love to give, namely at least trying hard to obey the first two commandments. I love my belief in God very much and so I also love God and respect his creatures and try to treat them in the same way I wish to be treated.
Beyond that, there is another interesting and meaningful command in my opinion, namely to not facilitate a detailed picture of God. This makes sense to me, since otherwise I once again get forced to deduce / induce from one false / incomplete ontological property of that picture in a deterministical, “logical” chain to “all” properties of God, whereby that result then would be totally inadequate since I already started with a false / incomplete ontological property for God.
I simply think that God has a kind of spiritual ontology, one that is not understandable by human beings in the same sense that a computer program, even if partially conscious, cannot deduce on what kind of system it runs unless it is revealed to him from some external world that is more conscious than the program itself. If all of that is not true and is merely an incorrect model of reality in my mind, then at least that model is able to influence my acts in this world, although the model itself wouldn't have been developed because I would be somewhat clever or special, but unavoidably by a kind of deterministic process I cannot fully transcend and forces me to act the way I act.
Luckily, such a determinism mustn't be the case, independent of what a strictly deterministic world view says: I always can consider my consciousness and its contents as being merely parallel to what happens in my brain and assume an intricate psychokinetical feedback loop between me an my brain as the real ontological explanation for my will to act in certain ways.
If the universe should be infinite in time (eternal) and almost infinite or acutally infinite in space, then what the bible says about creation is in conflict with a universe that never was created.
But this would not invalidate the possible existence of God nor the rest of what the bible says.
Because let's assume that a huge pile of atoms is able to produce consciousness, the latter being an immaterial, mind-like phenomenon, that can nowhere be found within the pile of atoms. Why shouldn't a huge (infinite?) pile of planets, stars, quasars, galaxies not also be able to produce an immaterial, mind-like phenomenon called God that also can nowhere be found within the pile of planets, stars, quasars, galaxies and the like?
That God then also would have the subjective experience of free will, and it would act accordingly, independent of whether or not these actions would be determined by the movements of the planets, stars, etc.
If all this sounds crazy, then why in the first place should one believe in an exclusively material cause for consciousness to exist? A cause that not only produces a non-material thing called consciousness, but this non-material thing is moreover able to reliably deliver a picture of the external world that is obviously sufficient for most purposes in a human's life?
“Concerning proofs, I think they are only realiable as far as our definitions of each of the ingredients of a proof are reliable ontologically. Here the problem occurs, since for proofing or disproofing a certain ontology, one at first had to know whether or not that ontology is real or not.”
Well, I haven't formulated this well enough in my second to last reply. What I mean is that unambigously disproving something necessitates that one also must PROVE the single steps, ingredients and ontological terms one uses for disproving something to be logically AND empirically true.
I just realised that I did not yet answer your question what I think about different strategies to solidify claims by some proof-like arguments.
I think that what I am doing when analyzing certain claims, I simply look for inconsistencies. With that I am surely not able to at the same time proving the existence of something (for example God, or a timeless realm beyond spacetime) instead of the original something that I found to be inconsistent with logics.
I am aware that with logics alone I cannot prove any empirical reality to be ontologically true – or even plausible – since I am not in the position to dictate how the external world should be. The plausibility and the evidence therefore must come from experiments, and surely also from the analysis of the data obtained.
I am not in the position to answer what is the best proof. Not only because this depends on whether one wants to prove something within the discipline of maths, or within a physical model, but because I am not an expert in mathematics and also not an expert for all the details of all the physical models about reality that exist up today. In my opinion, when it comes to proving a physical model for its evidence to be the right guess by experiments, predictions play a crucial role.
But as with Newtonian mechanics, even predictions that then fit the experimental data, are not sufficient to really “prove” the theory to hold in all cases. There may be always exceptions, black swans and the like. I cannot dictate how nature is. I not even can dictate that nature should always behave logically. I only assume that it does, in the same whay I assume that Zermelo-Fraenkel-Arithmetics is consistent. This assumption is based purely on logics, since otherwise I could stop inferencing.
Surely, in my heart I am totally convinced that nature is behaving logically, with the one caveat that I have no explanation for why there exists logics with its properties to be consistent or inconsistent other than attributing it to a higher intelligence. So in my opinion, such a higher intelligence may even be able to intervene in nature in a way one would say is illogical – namely by wonders – since the latter introduce a black swan, an exception from the rule. But these are personal beliefs and are much harder – if at all – provable to be possible in principle.
I admit that the big bang theory is merely a theory, not a proven fact. Nature could behave differently than postulated by the big bang theory. When thinking what this could mean for what the bible says about the creation of the world, I have to options if the big bang theory should be false.
Either I consider the creation story in the bible as false, or I say that I simply do not understand what is written there. There are many things that I do not understand that are written in the bible, since there are also many things that I understand. For me that is no obstacle, in the same way as for physics and mathematics it is no obstacle that they do not yet understand certain things, but well do understand many other things.
Even if the universe would be eternal in time, that would be no obstacle for me. I not even could grasp what it should mean that colliding particles, colliding stars and all the stuff are eternally doing what they are doing, not to speak about an infinitely large space where statistically our earth with its current configuration should be found somewhere within that infinity infinitely many times.
My take on all this is that if a God exists, he must exist beyond space and time. That is also the traditional way of looking at God. Otherwise certain prophecies in the bible couldn't come true (independent of whether one believes in these or not). Surely, per an assumed infinity of space and time, there would be always worlds where these prophecies then come true. But the point is that we would only live in one of these worlds, causally disconnected from these other worlds.
In conclusion, since I also am not in the position to grasp what it would mean to exist beyond space and time, I think that I am not in the position to evaluate what it means for a higher intelligence (existing beyond space and time) that something – the universe – had existed forever, is eternal in time (and maybe also in space). Whenever infinity is invoked, I personally am cautious, since infinity escapes my mental abilities. Moreover, what would eternity mean for the nature of time as well as for the nature of logics?
When thinking about Cantor and others, they up to date managed to construct various classes of infinities, without ever constructing them algorithmically by infinitely counting. Surely, this is the realm of pure mathematics, not the realm of a physical universe. But the assumption that the universe may be infinite in time is surely possible by the very same shortcuts the mathematicians use to construct their infinities, thus it is possible by virtue of logics being what it is: you can always set something on top of something else or underneath it. Logically, this is like an infinite regress, as surely also is what Nietzsche had in mind.
Nietzsche presumably did not believe in God, but in absurdity, and I think partly because he took logics as something that cannot be transcended and therefore cannot establish a link to any purpose of existence.
I honestly think that Nietzsche, as well as Boltzmann and Cantor, took the prevailing paradigm of a mechanistic universe too seriously. Scientific theories can only ever be provisional, claiming the opposite would in my opinion be equal to claiming that one is all-knowing. If I look at the plethora of different theories out there about the world, I am forced to conclude that most of them must be incorrect models of the external world. So I do not take any of them too seriously, but seriously enough to say that we indeed can make progress in finding things out with the help of the scientific method. Therefore I also appreciate any attempt to examine the phenomenon of consciousness further. I fully agree with you. Even every attempt that fails is worth doing it, since it eliminates the range of possibilities. That is what I like – amongst others – about your attempt to handle different theories!
I tried to give an argument against an exclusively information processing world view. I would be happy if you would give me some feedback about how convincing my lines of reasoning are that I facilitated at that page.
Hopefully what I wrote there will be inspiring your thoughts, but anyways, I would be delighted about some feedback from you!
Stefan Weckbach
Dear AquamarineTapir,
I’m glad you addressed the issue of origins in your essay. Your thought experiment involving the jigsaw puzzle cut-outs seems to illustrate the fact that there is no mathematical or logical reason, that can be found, for laws of nature: neither their existence nor their particular form, pointing to the existence of a different type of aspect of the world, but a necessary aspect of the world, currently unrecognised by mathematics or physics.
But I have to say that I think you give mathematics (as opposed to physics) far too much weight. E.g. “this forces us to think about whether or not the world of mathematics is more reliable than human thinking” (page 3). But the world of mathematics is entirely the product of human thinking! Mathematics does not exist outside of human thinking! The math symbols on the piece of paper are not moving themselves: if you look you will see a person writing down the symbols as a result of the thoughts in the person’s own mind. Any mathematical “truths” can only seem to exist because ultimately, they resonate with something in the human consciousness. Human beings need to own up to what they themselves are doing, instead of hypothesising imaginary things like Platonic realms to explain the world: to me this would be man’s epiphany! However, people are made out of the same stuff that the rest of the world is made out of, so it is not surprising that a man-made mathematics of numbers and relationships would be useful in representing numeric and relational aspects that actually exist "out there" in the real measurable physical world.
I hope it is true when you say that: “It seems to me that [scientists] have realized that mathematics and randomness both neither are sufficient nor are they consistent with what we already know about the world to fully explain why these two modalities (necessity and possibility) allow the existence of conscious creatures.” But despite the undeniable logic of what you say, there are still a lot of people who seem to believe that feelings and consciousness can arise from mathematics or mathematical relationships: they seem to feel that if you just somehow twirl and twist and stir them enough, something entirely different can arise!
thank you very much for your important thoughts about my essay.
You are right, it may seem that I take mathematics too seriously. My goal was – amongst others – to show that any “necessities” a certain world view may postulate, are – on a logical level – just postulates. The “truths” that follow from these postulates are only as true as the postulates may be.
So when I write how to properly understand my jigsaw puzzle analogy I used this logical fact, together with my belief that there exists a realm where everything is “clear as crystal” (that belief is based on people's experiences during so called “out-of-body experiences” together with the experience of a heavenly realm, so for me it is more than an analogy in this respect).
Two things seem logical to me here: firstly, the human mind operates with opposites, so one can always say that what one considers as “necessary”, is “really” only “possible” (or even “impossible”).
The fact, that you cannot get out of an information processing more than you put in in the first place (be it numbers or postulates) has been shown by Turing and Chaitin. This fact then boils down to realising that ultimately, when we humans or machines use their information processing capacities, they produce – although interesting – tautologies. The interesting part is that these tautologies can be linked together in ways that make sense. Moreover, if we make physics, they seem to tell us something important about the external world. If you look at terms like mass, energy, time, space, these terms define each other mutually in a mathematical as well as in a phyiscal sense. So they have a tautological touch. Nonetheless, they are able to tell us something important about reality.
In the same sense one can make use of this for other areas of reality. For example, in the human mind there exists the idea that laws of physics do “exist”. Similar to mathematics, we can ask where do these laws exist, how has one to imagine them if they exist in a non-local, timeless realm?
Before I come to the second important logical thing I mentioned above, I should also make clear that for presenting to the reader the axiom that God exists and that in my opinion there is presumably another, higher reality, transcendent from pure information processing, I thought it would be necessary to take the reader from the point where most of science is located at present with respect to these questions. I must take that present point of view / understanding serious enough, and then constrast it with my own assumptions in a logical manner, admittedly not without a poetic touch regarding the puzzle piece analogy. Anyways, I thought it would be necessary to lead the reader through a kind of step-by-step procedure of what I myself concluded. Due to page restrictions I had to do this in the most compressed manner, to not deliver something that looks like this comment :-) !
I agree with you, higher mathematics exists only in the human mind. It is a continuation and an abstraction from natural numbers, themselves being an abstraction from the fact of being able to count concrete things in this world. But these higher abstractions enable the formulation of physical laws that are reliable and predictive. In this sense one can assume (not prove or deduce!) that the behaviour of matter is a concrete model of these higher abstractions. But this does not necessarily and automatically mean that these higher abstractions are eternal, platonic in nature.
I do not assume that physical reality is a concrete model of these higher abstractions. I also see no reason for the assumption (except for methodical purposes) to invoke the assumption that math, physical laws, the universe and its functionings are brute facts that may have no further explanations and should be simply taken as given. This in my opinion would counteract logics, the very thing that enables information processing in the human mind and also in the physical world to the extend that we have discovered its existence and sufficiently understand its workings.
Although that's true, I argue that information processing cannot be all there is. The information processing paradigm breaks down at the points where our logics isn't anymore able to unambiguously prove things to be the fact / to be true. This now is the second logical point I want to make:
It especially breaks down at the point at whom we assume that we should take that world view as all there is, as a brute fact, as simply given. Since information processing is an input / output – relation, if we assume the information processing world view as a brute fact, then there exists no input in the first place to propel it to “calculate” something. And if one assumes that in reality it calculates “nothing” - then the information processing paradigm itself is part of that “nothing”, totally ambigous in its assumptions, just a virtual demon in the minds of those who claim it to be the fundamental layer of reality.
Notwithstanding that logical conclusion, it is certainly true that the logically thinking part of the human minds and the external world can be seen as information processing. But if we want to make this picture coherent, in my opinion it would necessitate to think about what information is.
It is lawful, it is reliable, it can structure reality, it can use physical resources, all this qua its power of logic (whatever the latter “really” is)! Thus, there must be something at the core of reality (or at the core of the information processing paradigm, if you will) that is real information, not only statistical noise. For me, that real information, cannot be recovered or facilitated within a universe that is supposed to be merely “information processing”. In my opinion, this real information must be located beyond space and time and must be seen as the original input to make the machine able to at all calculate something meaningfull!
Therefore, I come to the conclusion that there must be a meaningfull realm beyond space and time where our fundamental questions have an answer. This realm then must be somewhat differently perceived than with the human antivalent logics of opposites, since otherwise we gain no truth, no real information because we again run into Gödelian undecidabilities.
But already here on earth, there is no need to doubt everything when thinking deeply about all these issues. One may feel dizzy from time to time when thinking too hard about all of this, and at some point even doubt one's own existence, but this is only due to the fact that we then always do not deal with the real information, but only with an inconsistent model of fundamental reality. Reality, I am convinced, is reliable, has its rules that are independent from the human mind but somewhat also congruent with the information processing outfit of human beings. Therefore one easily can confuse things in the mind and get dizzy. Therefore I tend to not let some model in my mind being more powerful than external reality is!
As an initial reply, I would like to clear up a couple of things:
“If you look at terms like mass, energy, time, space, these terms define each other mutually in a mathematical as well as in a physical sense. So they have a tautological touch. Nonetheless, they are able to tell us something important about reality.”
It is not about tautology: what they tell us about the real physical world, is that everything in it is held together via inherent interrelationship: mass, energy, and relative position exist in inherent interrelationship to other such categories. The basic interrelationship does not exist at the level of matter, like particles and molecules: the basic interrelationship exists at the level of categories like mass, energy and momentum.
“Similar to mathematics, we can ask where do these laws exist, how has one to imagine them if they exist in a non-local, timeless realm?”
No, they don’t exist in a remote timeless realm: these laws/ relationships are what is holding physical reality together, right now, as we speak: they are an integral, but unseen, part of physical reality.
“in the human mind there exists the idea that laws of physics do “exist”.”
Experimental physics has deduced that such relationships do in fact exist between aspects of the real physical world. These laws are not just an idea that exists in somebody’s mind.
of course laws of physics exist, otherwise the behaviour of the world would be lawless.
I just wanted to stress that some people think of these laws as mathematical equations, existing beyond space and time forever. That would be the information processing paradigm which is deterministic in nature and where it is assumed that mathematical equations are equal and identical with their “implementation” as relations between mass, energy, time, space etc. - and additionally is assumed that this is also the end of the story, means there only exist and can exist deterministic information processings.
You are right, mass and energy are not a fully tautological. Thank you for your correction! One can be transformed into the other. I rather should have said they somewhat define each other: no mass without energy, no energy without some mass (for example the photon that has relativistic mass). The same mutual definition should also be true for physical time and space, whatever they are "fundamentally": according to Einstein, both can be transformed into each other.
You assume the base relationships between these variables to be categories. I agree. I further would say, whatever they really are in addition to being categories, they for sure are categories by themselves. I have no answer to the question whether they are just categories, means abstract concepts like the concept of a circle in our minds, but also having real existence outside of our minds, or must be seen as ontologically different from such abstract concepts.
What counts for me is that they exist and are reliable (as far as I strongly believe!).
"No, they don’t exist in a remote timeless realm: these laws/ relationships are what is holding physical reality together, right now, as we speak: they are an integral, but unseen, part of physical reality."
I would agree totally! Although I would at the same time motivate science to think about what unseen things in the universe could mean for our understanding of reality.
"Experimental physics has deduced that such relationships do in fact exist between aspects of the real physical world. These laws are not just an idea that exists in somebody’s mind."
Yes, I totally agree that this is true (who wouldn't agree?) and I think I do not stress it enough when I write about my thoughts about reality.
Anyways, I thank you for pointing me to my improper language use, since I am well aware that the difference between abstract human thoughts and physical reality should always be stressed when talking about fundamental reality.
“some people think of these laws as mathematical equations, existing beyond space and time forever. “
What is the point of these laws? These laws merely say: if some numbers change, then other numbers will change; and after that the whole system grinds to a halt. These laws are relationships, not a perpetual motion machine. So these laws are entirely useless unless they continually have new numbers assigned to them.
However, I think many people, probably including most physicists, seem to believe that the laws are indeed a perpetual motion machine: start it up with some initial numeric values, and thereafter the system will run forever. So, in fact, the laws are not expected to be mere equations: the laws are expected to be a perpetual motion machine.
Re categories: I think categories and concepts can only exist in relation to other categories or concepts, they are not self-sufficient, they only exist in a context.
I think your comments are totally up to the point. You gave a pointed and precise picture of what I tried to express with my previous posts but failed, namely that the information processing paradigm is the belief in a perpetual motion machine.
And yes, I also do think that categories and concepts can only exist in relation to other categories or concepts, they are not self-sufficient, they only exist in a context (but I am willing to make one exception here with the “concept” I call God).
If categories would be self-sufficient, no mass could convert into energy.
Not sure what your "Coming Age of Epiphanies" implies for our future but agree that Artificial Intelligence can lead to a black box science that does not reveal the how and why of its decision-making. I am concerned about social media as an example of this black box where algorithyms take the place of humans in guiding users to a toxic exchange of information where the agenda is profit for the creator not truth. The process is disguised as science. "Global externalities" in my essay mean that corporate forces use science to sell their products w/o concern for how their products affect truth or our environment. That is the mechanized science I see if real science is not practiced and if corporate money continues to dominate scientific research and government pursuits of basic science. Your essay does offer this warning regarding "a black box science," thus addressing how science should be different.
thanks for having read my essay and for leaving a comment.
The essay title is related to my prediction that AI will not only become AGI within the next then years, but when it has arrived it will be able to to understand all the fine nouances in human language and face-expression of humans (the latter can already be done!) and it will – amongst other purposes – give each person an almost perfectly fitted confirmation / contribution to the individual's beliefs, the individual's desires, the individual's predjudices, the individual's fears etc.
In this sense, I am convinced that AGI will give each individual its daily dose of “epiphanies” (with that I mean a daily dose of quasi-information that is consistent with what the individual already believes, but mustn't necessarily be true in all its facets), just like Tarot-Card-reading or esoteric “channeling” can do. But with the difference that the latter is not widely accepted by the majority of the population, but the former will be.
This perfect service will be due to money-making aspects, but not only. It will hinder the individuum to learn and progress, but will further enclose the individuum in its bubble-like belief-system and worse, will therefore more and more demotivate it to think for itself. So it could easily be misused by political leaders, and also surely by all other kinds of people.
AI has a big potential as a scientific tool, but it also has a big danger also in other areas, as for example deception, sabotage, spying. In a society that is already heading towards more and more political turmoil, this can easily turn into political instabilities etc.
If you like, please read the statement site of the Center for AI Safety here →
and also on this site about the potential dangers of AI.
“I am concerned about social media as an example of this black box where algorithyms take the place of humans in guiding users to a toxic exchange of information where the agenda is profit for the creator not truth. The process is disguised as science.”
I agree and I am concerned too.
I will read your essay and look for how you judge the risks of future AI-technology and after that leave a comment on your essay page.
An interesting piece of information theoretic philosophy:
Recently I saw a video on youtube in which a computer scientist made a proposal for answering the question why the machine (the universe and its physics) that he considers as a purely information processing entity, came into existence in the first place. As far as I could interpret his lines of reasoning, he aimed to answer the question, well, “self-evidently” on a pure information processing basis, means by “determining” the initial information we need for understanding how that machine once could at all be started up.
In the following I like to examine the computer scientist's lines of reasoning. I begin with my own reasonings:
Common sense tells us that you can't get something from nothing, at least at the physical level. Otherwise inconsistency creeps in. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Nothing can come out of nothing, not even more of that nothing. Nonetheless it is obviously possible that there can exist a universe.
The quest about nature's necessary or merely possible existence is a metaphysical question, since no theory of everything will be able to provably answer that question. It can only take the needed axioms for its answer as simply given. But that does not mean that this question cannot be examined by the human mind.
There are generally two options to examine the question. One is on the basis of logical thinking, the other is on the basis of illogical thinking. Illogical thinking would lead to the conclusion that everything can be true, can be possible, even its opposite! So we are left with logical thinking.
The computer scientist's lines of reasoning went as follows:
The existence of the universe is obviously possible. For answering the question whether that possibility could not even have played out in reality, one needs something to specify that the universe notwhithstanding its possibility to exist would never had come into existence. In other words, one had to presuppose a certain reason, something additional to what we mean by pure nothing.
Since by definition, nothing cannot entail such a reason – since it then wouldn't be anymore nothing, but something – there is no such logical reason that the universe could never had come into existence.
At first sight this sounds compelling, doesn't it? We may be tempted to conclude from this that we discovered that the universe's existence is not only possible, but moreover logically necessary! But on a second look, it is clear that nothing can also not entail any logical reason for why the universe factually came into existence. So at this stage of affairs we are left again with merely a possibility and not a necessity. Moreover, pure nothing cannot even entail something like a “possibility” for a universe to come into existence.
Now, the scientists further line of arguments goes like this:
Because before the universe came into existence, there are no priors, no “source code” at all but on the other hand the universe is obviously possible, therefore there is no way to have the universe non-existent. Now, this conclusion of the scientist is not consistent for the above mentioned reasons: since the nothing we speak about cannot – by definition – entail any logical reasons for its existence, not even some ghostly possibilities or probabilities, his purely information theoretic approach to explain why information processing is all there can be simply fails.
To understand his arguments better, he proceeds with saying that the universe, before its becoming real, is “undecided”: the universe is both existent and non-existent.
Here now inconsistency creeps in, by attributing to the nothing a dual nature. This argument is based on the truth that something is indeed possible to exist and something is indeed possible to not exist. But that truth does in no way imply that it is also possible for something to at the same time exist and non-exist: The latter is obviously the signature of an inconsistent logical system!
Now, if one nonetheless takes the lines of reasonings of the computer scientist serious, then the universe and its information processing attributes must be an expression of some ghostly “first reason”, termed “inconsistency”.
But again, “inconsistency” is something, it is not nothing, it is a property. Moreover, if reality is on its base level rooted in inconsistency, there is no reason to believe that an exclusively only information processing reality should at all emerge from that! Moreover, there also would be no reason for anything logical to ever exist!
The only reason for this scientist to believe that his information processing paradigm should nonetheless be true is that he defines consistency and inconsistency in pure logical, information theoretic terms. Well, if we agree with that definition, then I am forced to conclude something different from what the scientist believes to have concluded:
I then must conclude that on the basis of pure logical information theoretic terms, reality cannot be rooted in inconsistency, but in logics. This logically leads to the conclusion that what the scientist really deduced with his lines of reasoning, but confused with possibilities and paraconsistent logics, is that there cannot be such a thing as “pure nothing”, there had to be at least consistent “logic” existent to produce an existing universe.
In my opinion this is no wonder, since many things in the universe are understandable and logical. But as I pointed out in my essay, logics also has its limits, especially when it comes to the question why such a thing as logics should at all exist!
The scientist then concludes
“If you haven't any source code to define the universe to begin with, you get a universe! This is an interesting result, just because its possible!”
My answer: No, you must at least presuppose the existence of a consistent logics (means no paraconsistent logics, no inconsistent logics) “at the very beginning” to at all arrive at that illogical conclusion. This logically means that consistent logics is superior to inconsistent logics. And if you agree with that, you additionally had to explain why pure logics, something that we assume to be platonic in nature, is able to produce a dynamical, material world. If you don't agree, you furthermore had to explain why inconsistent logics should logically be superior to a consistent logics and why this should at all lead to an exclusively only information processing nature of reality.
In our minds, we can play around with inconsistent systems. We even can attribute to quantum mechanics to be of that kind of inconsistent nature. But if the latter is true, why does QM produce a consistent classical world? Moreover, why should it exlusively only produce a purely information processing world? And last but not least why then would QM even follow quantum mechanical laws if it would be defined as "fundamental inconsistency which should be able to produce some consistencies"? One cannot logically infere by the fact that our world is obviously possible that therefore "fundamental inconsistency is indeed able to produce some consistencies (our world)".
With these considerations we arrive at the fundamental question what the real relationship should be (if there is at all one) between consistency (mathematics) and inconsistency (illogical noise) for being able to at all produce our universe. That relationship may only be existent in the human mind and QM itself (or any other ground state reality) would be not inconsistent, but simply different from being a mere combination of consistency with inconsistency.
The source of the video can be found at
The relevant discussion begins roughly at minute 42.
I post this because in my essay I say that it is not without risks for human logical thinking to simply accept some ontological or logical "truths", an AI could offer. Since Josha Bach believes that we humans are some sort of prediction and optimization machine too, although a more "naturally" evolved one than AI, I think it is appropriate to examine what his framework says about the metaphysical roots the latter could be based on.
I never thought of the algorithms almost exclusively used in social media as part of AI but the NPR article shows "AI poses urgent risks of "systemic bias, misinformation, malicious use, cyberattacks, and weaponization." that it poses toxic damage in our culture and in the minds of the young, using it to simply maximize profit. The article you reference and the warning involved should be dispersed widely. Your concern should help heighten the threat.
Stefan Weckbach
Dear AquamarineTapir,
Would you please stop frightening yourself by listening to/ watching trash videos? Like the above ultra nonsense video, “EMERGENCY EPISODE: Ex-Google Officer Finally Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI! - Mo Gawdat”.
This is a great example of the absolute lunatic nonsense that can fill some people’s imaginations: “08:43 AI is alive and has more emotions than you”.
The trouble is that the vast majority of people have no way of evaluating the truth or otherwise of what these people say, because they merely look at the surface appearances of AIs, and they have absolutely no idea of the detailed nitty-gritty of how computers actually work. After being fed a diet of science fiction in books and movies all their lives, many people seem to be all too willing to believe anything and everything they are told about AIs.
thank you for your feedback. The video was ment to demonstrate current discussions on AI within the AI scientist's community. It does not necessarily reflect my personal point of view. My view is that it does not make a great deal of difference whether or not AI is factually able to feel and be conscious, since effectively in my opinion it will persuade many people to think it is. There will be a whole quasi-religion built on this asumption in the future in my opinion, when AIs may become general in their abilities. The reason for this is that most people never think about metaphysical questions like the mind-body problem, determinism versus free will, the nature of consciousness and all the things we discuss here. You are totally right, therefore they will not be able to discriminate between assumptions and proven facts.
And therefore the danger is there for our society, at many levels. AIs very likely will be able to program other AIs without a human prompt, what then will seem to many people as another confirmation of them being sentient.
The video link isn't ment to frighten anyone but to alarm people, but I think it made some good points. We really don't need better iPhones and the like, we need a more sustainable way of consuming things. If I should have given the reader a false impression of AIs being sentient, then hopefully they also read the discussions here and your comments within this contest. Here is another video that is more down to earth and better reflects what I am thinking about the whole issue and with insights that are already proven to be true:
I haven’t got time to watch an hour-long Tristan Harris video, but Tristan Harris’ website has a good summary of potential AI problems:
“… social media brought immediate connectivity to family and friends. But it also negatively impacted childhood and adolescence, contributed to widespread disinformation, and interfered with free and fair elections. Artificial intelligence offers massive increases in productivity, expression, and problem-solving. But these capabilities can easily lead to a world with bot-manipulated democracies, massive unemployment, exploitation of children and other vulnerable populations, and a world where no one can tell synthetic media from reality.” https://www.humanetech.com/key-issues
Not many people seriously believe that society will not be able to manage the above AI problems. The alarmists don’t seem to comprehend that people control computers: computers don’t control normal people (but some people might need help with their mental health).
The thing that seems to worry some people is the idea that AI will become conscious, and/or get out of control, and/or take over the world. The vast majority of these people have no way of evaluating the truth or otherwise of what the alarmists say, because they merely look at the surface appearances of AIs, and they have absolutely no idea of the detailed nitty-gritty of how computers are made to work. The people who know how computers are made to work, like myself, are not the slightest bit worried that AI could ever become conscious etc.: the idea is truly absurd and ridiculous.
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Vladimir Rogozhin wrote in the discussion of my essay that the big bang never happened and pointed me to an intriguing open letter of scientists supporting this criticism of funding policies for cosmology being too focussed on this single picture. He's right, we don't (can't) know whether the big bang happened, maybe we never will, so we should be more open-minded about other solutions. Intelligent design is another one, or even a related one given the history of the big-bang theory. In any case, it is a viable option compatible with all data we currently have. However, we should not forget that we only have a single universe to draw our conclusions from. So any probabilistic speculations will be heavily based on assumptions like multiverses, purpose of our own universe if it is unique, etc. and Goedel's theorem becomes of utmost importance to get out of circular arguments that aim to be self-contained, as you write in your essay. In that sense, I don't know which option I prefer, the one of a multiverse reminiscent of Nietzsche's eternal return making studies of our own little universe look nihilistic or the one in which we have targeted design but we do not know the purpose... (that's why I wrote in my abstract that science happens somewhere between these two extremes)
...unless the design and evolution of our universe is fully deterministic, making our free will a mere failure to predict the future due to our limited horizon.