I think i just conclusively proved fate or a soul exists - just for fun discussion

[B4DD]

My friend has been trying to make this point to me for awhile, but I continue to say "I will to believe what I want,i.e. god, until you have proof." He continues to assert his correctness and even went as far as to say "You know those pictures where some people see a face and some people see a dolphin. Well I'm saying that it is correct to see the dolphin." Pretty sure he was kidding. Anyway, you need to have more proof before your THEORY is anything more than that.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

However the brain is a closed system.

No, it's not. Transporting ions across membranes is a major reason for why your metabolism is efficient enough to keep you alive.

As I said in my initial post, I don't mean a true closed system. But it isn't as if nitrogen atoms crashing into your head are effecting electric signals.

Yet those same atoms enter your bloodstream via respiration, pass through the blood-brain barrier and enter your brain via circulation. The brain is not closed in any way shape or form. For example, heavy metals like Mercury tend to wind up there after handling or ingesting them. So to say that the outside will not interfere with your thoughts is just wrong.

 

[Biosophilogical]

it just means that our model while close to correct, may never bee 100% correct. This does NOT invalidate the concept of predetermination, since just because we don't know the rules doesn't mean they don't exist.

Thank You! I've been reading this thread waiting for someone to say something along these lines. But I'd like to take it this whole debate a step further (well, more like 'to the left' rather than 'further', but bear with me). The concept of free will (truly free) would mean that every thought we have, and every action we perform as a rsult of a conscious decision, is not affected by outside influences or by cause-effect laws. So even if you account for the supposed probability of quantum mechanics, the point is that the events affect you in ways that you are not completely in control of. So sure, the ways in which particles affect each other may be less than 100% predictable, or they may be perfectly prediactable and our laws/understanding is just wrong, but the point is, you have no true separation of your self and a cause-effect reality. True free will requires (as the OP put it) a 'soul', which, for this purpose, is defined as the essence of a being that is unaffected by anything, even itself, because if it has a cause-effect relationship with itself, then it isn't free will, it is just a case of determinism/cause-effect applied to a system with a uni-directional relation with the natural world.

 

[Liudeius]

As I said in my initial post, I don't mean a true closed system. But it isn't as if nitrogen atoms crashing into your head are effecting electric signals.

Yet those same atoms enter your bloodstream via respiration, pass through the blood-brain barrier and enter your brain via circulation. The brain is not closed in any way shape or form. For example, heavy metals like Mercury tend to wind up there after handling or ingesting them. So to say that the outside will not interfere with your thoughts is just wrong.

If you would bother to have read my first post you would have already noticed that I mentioned respiration. While admittedly I did not say the exact word my "(other than nutrients)" was referring to the circulatory system.
I know that, but I am saying the kinetic motion of the atom is not affecting your brain. As I have said multiple times, I am not saying the brain is a closed system, I am saying that outside influences such as the air and the desk I'm slamming my head into do not DIRECTLY effect your brain based on their prior movement. How does air get into your lungs? Your brain sends electric impulses to them and they act on the atoms making them move differently than they would have been predicted to. (Note for the desk I know that slamming your head into a desk causes your brain to move in your skull. I was joking, but it seems I must spell everything out exactly.)

Also, "to say that the outside will not interfere with your thoughts is just wrong." So you are on the side of the debate that says the OP is right. What was that about being "just wrong" again? (or are you just referring to things everyone already knows like cold and drugs? In that case I would suggest rephrasing)

 

[Flauros]

This post made no sense.

Summary

If i got an F on my exam,
ill have to retake this class

I just conclusively proved i didnt get an F.




hmmm.........

 

[Kiltguy]

If the soul exist or not, we can only ponder.

Two (2) things in life is certain, beginning and end, birth and death, other than that you can always choose, ALWAYS. Heck, you can even choose to end it. Not choosing is also a choice.

If choice is beneficial or not is irrelevant, you can still choose.

That is the beauty of the human mind. You decide.

 

[Womplord]

I agree with OP. That's why I believe in determinism.

 

[Raven's Nest]

I am not, in fact, an atheist, I just hate people who do no research on a subject then claim that they have proved something profound. Seriously, if it was that easy, don't you think physicists would have mentioned it already?

An unwise assumption to make. Anyone is capable of a profound discovery, they just may lack the means to recognise it. I wouldn't make the assumption that nobody realised what the effect of gravity was before the apple landed on Isaac's head... He was just the first to explain it...

It's commendable that the OP was even capable of producing a theory at all, it matters not that he wasn't correct, it's possible nobody ever thought about it in the same way to the point anyone actually investigated it.

A microscope existed long before someone thought to use it to look for germs...

 

[thethingthatlurks]

As I said in my initial post, I don't mean a true closed system. But it isn't as if nitrogen atoms crashing into your head are effecting electric signals.

Yet those same atoms enter your bloodstream via respiration, pass through the blood-brain barrier and enter your brain via circulation. The brain is not closed in any way shape or form. For example, heavy metals like Mercury tend to wind up there after handling or ingesting them. So to say that the outside will not interfere with your thoughts is just wrong.

If you would bother to have read my first post you would have already noticed that I mentioned respiration. While admittedly I did not say the exact word my "(other than nutrients)" was referring to the circulatory system.
I know that, but I am saying the kinetic motion of the atom is not affecting your brain. As I have said multiple times, I am not saying the brain is a closed system, I am saying that outside influences such as the air and the desk I'm slamming my head into do not DIRECTLY effect your brain based on their prior movement. How does air get into your lungs? Your brain sends electric impulses to them and they act on the atoms making them move differently than they would have been predicted to. (Note for the desk I know that slamming your head into a desk causes your brain to move in your skull. I was joking, but it seems I must spell everything out exactly.)

Also, "to say that the outside will not interfere with your thoughts is just wrong." So you are on the side of the debate that says the OP is right. What was that about being "just wrong" again? (or are you just referring to things everyone already knows like cold and drugs? In that case I would suggest rephrasing)

I actually did read your first post. Let me try to explain this in a different way: on this planet, there is no such thing as a truly closed system, or a truly isolated one. The amount of interaction between individual particles is minute, but it is still there. My scientific interest deals primarily with these small interactions, and how they can en masse have immense impacts. While the probability of a single collision between say nitrogen (its a molecule btw, not an atom) and your head causing a drastic change in your thinking is minuscule even by quantum standards, one cannot deny that it is possible albeit unlikely to happen. I'll give you a different example: astronauts sometimes report seeing flashes of light when they close their eyes. This is likely caused by neutrinos striking water molecules in their eyeballs, tiny things interacting with even tinier things still having an effect.

I'm not really on the OP's side. I know the limitations on predictability imposed by quantum theory quite well, and there's also the p=np-esque problem associated with accounting for all possible outcomes of all possible effects. Fate is a strange concept, and constrained randomness seems more likely an explanation.

 

[Trolldor]

*snip*Meaning from the second the universe was created every particals movement and collisions, and such ALL subsquent collisions are all 100% predicatable, assuming you had the computing power or brainpower to do this.*snip*

Quantum physics. Nothing is 100% predictable because on an atomic level, everything is left to chance. That doesn't mean that all possible outcomes won't resolve themselves somewhere. The many worlds theory states that all possible resolutions do occur in an alternate reality. As there really isn't a way of figuring out exactly which one you're in (computers can't currently contemplate the infinite, and neither can we). Truly, everything is, in a way, predetermined but the choices you make are yours. They are not set and while someone else will make a different one, somewhere else, the choices you made are not theirs and theirs are not yours.

Essentially, the outcome of any event is predetermined, but your choices alone determine which outcome you arrive at. If that makes any sense.

Not entirely true. It's not chance but probability, and the most probable outcomes are the ones we expect to find, but the observation principle means it's possible to manipulate the outcome and even the history of the particle.

Bit of a mindfuck of a thing.

 

[Dango]

That's assuming the big bang as we know it is even correct in the first place.

 

[Trolldor]

I am not, in fact, an atheist, I just hate people who do no research on a subject then claim that they have proved something profound. Seriously, if it was that easy, don't you think physicists would have mentioned it already?

An unwise assumption to make. Anyone is capable of a profound discovery, they just may lack the means to recognise it. I wouldn't make the assumption that nobody realised what the effect of gravity was before the apple landed on Isaac's head... He was just the first to explain it...

It's commendable that the OP was even capable of producing a theory at all, it matters not that he wasn't correct, it's possible nobody ever thought about it in the same way to the point anyone actually investigated it.

A microscope existed long before someone thought to use it to look for germs...

It's not a theory, it's not even a hypothesis. There was no testing, no basis fvor the conclusion, just conjecture.

 

[Super Toast]

snip

I can see where you're coming from, that argument was quite popular in the 19th century I believe, however then this came along:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

As Wikipedia puts it:

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured.

Published by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the principle implies that it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and the momentum of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty. This is not a statement about researchers' ability to measure the quantities. Rather, it is a statement about the system itself. That is, a system cannot be defined to have simultaneously singular values of these pairs of quantities. The principle states that a minimum exists for the product of the uncertainties in these properties that is equal to or greater than one half of ©¤ the reduced Planck constant (©¤ = h/2¥ð)

The low-down is that it is impossible to know everything about a system, not because of limitations due to the measurer, but down to the fundemental uncertainty in the universe.

Edit: Damm, ninja'd

Pretty much this. Thanks for saving me from having to write a wall of text.

 

[flamingjimmy]

It seems obvious to me that there is no such thing as free will.

However the universe is complex enough that for all intents and purposes, we do. Free will is an illusion, but a good enough one that I don't think we'll ever be able to see through it.

Also, how on earth does your new found determinism constitute proof of the existence of a soul?

 

[uc.asc]

Seems like a lot of people are getting caught up in the details. It's probably impossible to calculate the future, but that is beside the point.

What the OP is saying is that, if everything in the entire universe follows the same set of laws, then its entire history was set in stone from the beginning. Free will doesn't exist, and the entire universe is clockwork toy marching toward heat death.

Possibly depressing, but I have a way around it: At some point in the past I came to the conclusion that philosophy is bullshit. The reason philosophical debates cannot be resolved is that they are meaningless, due their topics being concepts which were invented by humans and which have no basis in reality.

I learned later that that this position is actually a philosophical stance known as logical positivism, which came about as a rejection of the intellectual wanking which comprises most of philosophy. Logical positivism holds that for any concept or statement to be meaningful, it must be possible to test it.

In the real world, the concept of free will is meaningless. Whether or not it exists has no effect on our reasons for doing what we do, nor does it change whether our actions are meaningful.


Don't get your hopes up though, because it's increasingly likely that 'our' actions aren't even ours.

The human mind is one of the most heavily studied systems in existence, and quite a bit of research points to it being basically a mess -- a piecemeal collection of cludges and hacks to turn sensory data into information which allows us to interact with our environment, whether or not that information actually represents reality. Often it doesn't, and we never even know; look up inattentional blindness sometime.

Put someone in an fMRI and have them make a decision. It is possible to see what the subject will decide before they are even aware of it; sometimes as much as ten seconds before.

So forget free will, because measuring actual reality gives us plenty of terrifying questions to ask already. Does the person behind our eyes, which we perceive as our 'self,' actually do anything? Or are decisions made in parts of the brain we aren't consciously aware of, and only afterward does the consciousness find out about it and trick us into believing that 'we' made the decision?

 

[Jonluw]

If i knew the location and speed of every partical when the big bang started i could put them all into a super computer, apply physics, and let it go. And perfectly simulate the universe as we know it, from beggining to end.

Except you can't. Refer to the uncertainty principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
'it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and the momentum of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty'

You can know where a particle is, but you can't know how fast it is moving.
You can know how fast a particle is moving, but you can't tell where it is.

QED

The main thing I don't understand about the uncertainty principle is this: Sure, you can not know the exact speed and position of a particle; but that shouldn't need to mean that the particle in question does not actually have an exact location and speed at any given moment. The way I see it right now, the particle would still have to move in accordance to its position and speed, but we would never be able to predict its movements since we can't know both speed and position.

In short: I don't quite see how the uncertainty principle disproves a predetermined fate.

I don't think there are any physicists around here, so I'll explain it: yes, you are measuring both speed and position of a particle simultaneously, and that is not the problem. The issue arises from the non-commutativity of the position and momentum operators (quick refresher, commutativity: a*b=b*a, just not in quantum mechanics). This then means you can only establish the wavefunction, that is the little function that tells you everything you need to know about the particle for either momentum or position. It's really difficult to put into words, but it is fundamentally impossible to exactly determine any further information from that data that is not exclusive to either position or momentum. Let me give you a real life example: you are reading this on a computer, which were designed with much input from quantum theory. Most specifically from scattering theory. This states that a particle with x energy has a nonzero probability of passing through a barrier of >x energy, which enables the construction of semiconducters. An explanation for this is the uncertainty principle, as the kinetic energy (analogous to momentum) is known, so the position is not.

tl;dr: no, uncertainty is absolute. It cannot be circumvented, and it absolutely disproves predetermination on the quantum scale.

I fail to see how this proves anything but the fact that you cannot know said predetermined fate.

If a ball is flying past me behind my back at the same time as someone tells me its exact speed, the ball will still have a position which will factor in on how it moves from there (if it will crash into a wall etc.). Its position is merely not known to me. I cannot determine the ball's postition, so I can't predict the ball's predetermined path, I fail to see how this proves it doesn't have one.

Is there something I'm not getting here?
Is it that Schrödinger stuff that "since we can't know the ball's position, it doesn't have one"?

 

[Raven's Nest]

It's not a theory, it's not even a hypothesis. There was no testing, no basis fvor the conclusion, just conjecture.

I don't know about you but most people I meet are completely uninterested in understanding the world around them. They only care when something immediately affects them (like climate change and the introduction of green taxes). A politician announces that people should get the bus more to reduce their carbon footprint and suddenly most people find out that cars actually produce fumes which damage the environment. Lest they find out that car factories produce tenfold more gasses than a regular car does by comparison mind...

I'm celebrating this guys thirst for knowledge, not his methods or abilities. Its never a bad thing to think...

 

[Trolldor]

It's not a theory, it's not even a hypothesis. There was no testing, no basis fvor the conclusion, just conjecture.

I don't know about you but most people I meet are completely uninterested in understanding the world around them. They only care when something immediately affects them (like climate change and the introduction of green taxes). A politician announces that people should get the bus more to reduce their carbon footprint and suddenly most people find out that cars actually produce fumes which damage the environment. Lest they find out that car factories produce tenfold more gasses than a regular car does by comparison mind...

I'm celebrating this guys thirst for knowledge, not his methods or abilities. Its never a bad thing to think...

There is nothing about it that even rudimentarily brushes on the cusp of knowledge seeking. It is mindless assertion.
The guy is under the delusion that he has "conclusively proved fate or a soul exists" based presumptions. No evidence, no supporting data, no logical coherency.
Celebrating that is no different to celebrating a man who claims the world is made out of ice-cream because rock melts.