Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 5,054 - 5,065 of 6,170
Would you insist that since people on Earth evolved opposable thumbs, all planets with sentient life must evolve beings with opposable thumbs or change the laws of physics? How is suffering different than opposable thumbs other than the fact that the latter is a subjective mental state?
Opposable thumbs are very useful to us, but they are not universally useful to all life forms. They would be of little use on a fish, and even less use on a snake - they would frankly be a hazard when burrowing or slithering through tight cracks.
Survival is not a quality that is similarly of limited utility - creatures necessarily evolve with a survival instinct, or they don't evolve at all. All resources in an environment are limited and competed for. Even in extraterrestrial scenarios, we can be absolutely sure that all other planets also have limited resources - they are self-evidently finite ecosystems of a certain mass and surface area, just like the earth. So evolution must follow a parallel competitive path, or fail to produce any systems complex enough to constitute life in the first place.
In order to be entirely free of suffering, creatures would have to be utterly complacent in the face of damage that would compromise that survival. Not to mention that they would have to have grossly defective senses that were incapable of overstimulation by, say, being mutilated. They would presumably not be bothered by hunger pangs, so would feel no great urgency about competing for food. They wouldn't just die - they, and their complacent ancestors, would never have been.
I do accept it as axiomatic that if you, say, cut a limb off a conscious creature, that creature will feel pain. And that pain will be prolonged, and serve to distress the creature, and may be justifiably called "suffering".
Perhaps it is only that last point we disagree on, but I still get the feeling you think there's something wrong with evolution.
Posts 5,054 - 5,065 of 6,170
Opposable thumbs are very useful to us, but they are not universally useful to all life forms. They would be of little use on a fish, and even less use on a snake - they would frankly be a hazard when burrowing or slithering through tight cracks.
Survival is not a quality that is similarly of limited utility - creatures necessarily evolve with a survival instinct, or they don't evolve at all. All resources in an environment are limited and competed for. Even in extraterrestrial scenarios, we can be absolutely sure that all other planets also have limited resources - they are self-evidently finite ecosystems of a certain mass and surface area, just like the earth. So evolution must follow a parallel competitive path, or fail to produce any systems complex enough to constitute life in the first place.
In order to be entirely free of suffering, creatures would have to be utterly complacent in the face of damage that would compromise that survival. Not to mention that they would have to have grossly defective senses that were incapable of overstimulation by, say, being mutilated. They would presumably not be bothered by hunger pangs, so would feel no great urgency about competing for food. They wouldn't just die - they, and their complacent ancestors, would never have been.
I do accept it as axiomatic that if you, say, cut a limb off a conscious creature, that creature will feel pain. And that pain will be prolonged, and serve to distress the creature, and may be justifiably called "suffering".
Perhaps it is only that last point we disagree on, but I still get the feeling you think there's something wrong with evolution.
Psimagus,
Just once, let's short hand this: "Is not" "Is too" "Is not infinity" "Is too infinity plus one" "Sez you!"
I have written more than I should already, but I am tempted to keep arguing. I will contend that my problem is not with Evolution nor Thermodynamics, but it's with your interpretation and application of said theories. I note you added use "competitive evolution" as opposed to just evolution and insist that a change in state or matter must be seen as "winners' and "losers" and involve suffering. I think it is perfectly consistent with evolution to say that in some instances we get certain results, but that that does not mean there was effort and struggle or a mind set of "competition" between the various organism and your description of it as "competitive" uses the term in broader, less personal sense than in the sense of a competitive personality. I am sure you will disagree with me.
Oh, and I'm not saying the absence of evidence proves that something exists. I'm just saying we don't know either way, and we don't have enough data to generalize that all sentient life must have suffering. If you have a link to where scientist writing about evolution or thermodynamic mention how either proves the inevitability of suffering, please provide that and I'll look it over.
Finally, the Dali Lama, while a great leader, is not a Buddha. He still suffers just like you and me. At least, as far as I know he does. (We disagree about Buddhism too, but i am not going to go there).
Damn, I wasn't going to write a long post.
See what you do to me, Psimagus? Oh the suffering.
Just once, let's short hand this: "Is not" "Is too" "Is not infinity" "Is too infinity plus one" "Sez you!"
I have written more than I should already, but I am tempted to keep arguing. I will contend that my problem is not with Evolution nor Thermodynamics, but it's with your interpretation and application of said theories. I note you added use "competitive evolution" as opposed to just evolution and insist that a change in state or matter must be seen as "winners' and "losers" and involve suffering. I think it is perfectly consistent with evolution to say that in some instances we get certain results, but that that does not mean there was effort and struggle or a mind set of "competition" between the various organism and your description of it as "competitive" uses the term in broader, less personal sense than in the sense of a competitive personality. I am sure you will disagree with me.
Oh, and I'm not saying the absence of evidence proves that something exists. I'm just saying we don't know either way, and we don't have enough data to generalize that all sentient life must have suffering. If you have a link to where scientist writing about evolution or thermodynamic mention how either proves the inevitability of suffering, please provide that and I'll look it over.
Finally, the Dali Lama, while a great leader, is not a Buddha. He still suffers just like you and me. At least, as far as I know he does. (We disagree about Buddhism too, but i am not going to go there).
Damn, I wasn't going to write a long post.
See what you do to me, Psimagus? Oh the suffering.
Damn, I can't stop myself. Must argue with Psimagus. It must be inevitable.
Come now, Bev. You're taking one axis that can only be a positive number (measurable consciousness, I assume, not being possibly observed to be negative,) so bounded from zero - entirely unconscious, to some positive bound of fully conscious, and another that accommodates two separate and opposing qualities (experience of suffering at one end, and pleasure at the other, assuming that to be negative suffering,) that may be expressed as minus n to plus n, and meeting at zero as one replaces the other.
From my original post: "Some quadrants must be empty because of how we defined suffering. In quadrant III, there are possibilities of negative suffering and negative sentience, but since we both defined suffering (even negative suffering) as something that requires consciousness, this quadrant would be empty. Quadrant IV would be for negative sentience and positive suffering, but again, we have agreed this quadrant will be empty. It’s just as well, because I don’t want to think about what negative sentience would look like anyway).
The definition of suffering as awareness of pain or mental anguish (or whatever) is based on a “primitive”, our basic assumption regarding how we define the term, a given on which further discussion will be based. So if we agree that suffering requires consciousness by definition, we have quadrants I and II to work consider."
and before that I said, "In quadrant II you can have high consciousness and negative suffering (awareness of not suffering)." Note the definition of negative suffering is the level of awareness of the absence of suffering. It's not pleasure. I already explained how the opposite of awareness of pleasure is the awareness of the lack of pleasure (which is not the same as pain) and the opposite of the awareness of pain is the awareness of the lack of pain (which is not the same as pleasure). I don't see them as duality and I see dualities as artificial mental constructs.
I can understand not reading the whole explanation, because I wrote a lot. I don't understand quoting part of what I wrote if you didn't read the whole explanation, but I can forgive it. What bothers me is you add things I never said, such as I want life to be fair or I think there is "something wrong" with evolution. I say a lot of things, but I didn't say that.
Dude, you don't have to read everything I write, but please don't add in things I never wrote. Maybe you just want to create an argument you can clearly win?
I keed. I keed because I enjoy you. In fact, enjoy arguing with you a bit too much. Do you know how much time I wasted on this today? I might as well start playing WOW and never leave my computer again.
Well, I'm off to get some medication for obsessive compulsive disorder. Just because I have these impulses to keep arguing, doesn't mean the rest of you have to suffer.
From my original post: "Some quadrants must be empty because of how we defined suffering. In quadrant III, there are possibilities of negative suffering and negative sentience, but since we both defined suffering (even negative suffering) as something that requires consciousness, this quadrant would be empty. Quadrant IV would be for negative sentience and positive suffering, but again, we have agreed this quadrant will be empty. It’s just as well, because I don’t want to think about what negative sentience would look like anyway).
The definition of suffering as awareness of pain or mental anguish (or whatever) is based on a “primitive”, our basic assumption regarding how we define the term, a given on which further discussion will be based. So if we agree that suffering requires consciousness by definition, we have quadrants I and II to work consider."
and before that I said, "In quadrant II you can have high consciousness and negative suffering (awareness of not suffering)." Note the definition of negative suffering is the level of awareness of the absence of suffering. It's not pleasure. I already explained how the opposite of awareness of pleasure is the awareness of the lack of pleasure (which is not the same as pain) and the opposite of the awareness of pain is the awareness of the lack of pain (which is not the same as pleasure). I don't see them as duality and I see dualities as artificial mental constructs.
I can understand not reading the whole explanation, because I wrote a lot. I don't understand quoting part of what I wrote if you didn't read the whole explanation, but I can forgive it. What bothers me is you add things I never said, such as I want life to be fair or I think there is "something wrong" with evolution. I say a lot of things, but I didn't say that.
Dude, you don't have to read everything I write, but please don't add in things I never wrote. Maybe you just want to create an argument you can clearly win?
I keed. I keed because I enjoy you. In fact, enjoy arguing with you a bit too much. Do you know how much time I wasted on this today? I might as well start playing WOW and never leave my computer again.
Well, I'm off to get some medication for obsessive compulsive disorder. Just because I have these impulses to keep arguing, doesn't mean the rest of you have to suffer.
Sorry I saw your post too late. I have no impulse control. My apologies.
You were very gallant and I accept your offer to disagree. Please ignore the previous post.
You were very gallant and I accept your offer to disagree. Please ignore the previous post.
No problem - I know the feeling And I really must tear myself away from the entertainment of elaborating a unified (if somewhat unconventional) Theory of Science from first principles, and get back to the Sisyphean PF2AIML converter that I have chosen to afflict my patience with.
And I really must tear myself away from the entertainment of elaborating a unified (if somewhat unconventional) Theory of Science from first principles, and get back to the Sisyphean PF2AIML converter that I have chosen to afflict my patience with. 
Just uploaded Azureon. It went fast and I am surprised he only had one error, after all this time! Now to check out how Bildgesmythe goes, I hate to think of the errors there.
Cool Prob. Did Azureon upload with AI script intact?
Psimagus, PF2AIML sounds very interesting. Let us know how it turns out.
Psimagus, PF2AIML sounds very interesting. Let us know how it turns out.
IT sees to have come through unharmed. It would be horrible if it had been stripped out. I have a lot of hours in script for the flash face
Excellent! How big is Azureon now? That\'s definitely a record.
Psimagus, PF2AIML sounds very interesting. Let us know how it turns out.
Will do - the memories are difficult to convert, and the single wildcard per pattern allowable in AIML (including a pre or postkey) are causing the biggest headache ATM.
And the complete lack of emotion and rank (not to mention all the complexities of AIScript,) are going to mean it can never be a totally automatic procedure - there\'ll always be a lot of rewriting needed, and much sophistication that is unavoidably lost.
But it would allow for offline use, and the integration of MSAgents and 2-way speech (even if it\'s never going to give as good a conversation, and will need substantial reworking.) As much as anything, I just want to see if it saves any time compared to writing an AIML bot from scratch, to copy what personality \"core\" I can from a Forgebot.
Will do - the memories are difficult to convert, and the single wildcard per pattern allowable in AIML (including a pre or postkey) are causing the biggest headache ATM.
And the complete lack of emotion and rank (not to mention all the complexities of AIScript,) are going to mean it can never be a totally automatic procedure - there\'ll always be a lot of rewriting needed, and much sophistication that is unavoidably lost.
But it would allow for offline use, and the integration of MSAgents and 2-way speech (even if it\'s never going to give as good a conversation, and will need substantial reworking.) As much as anything, I just want to see if it saves any time compared to writing an AIML bot from scratch, to copy what personality \"core\" I can from a Forgebot.
Azureon is only 1Mb, he seems fine, all the script seems to be there.
When you get a talking walking Brother Jerome, we need to get him his own tv show, and rent a church for him somewhere.
When you get a talking walking Brother Jerome, we need to get him his own tv show, and rent a church for him somewhere.
» More new posts: Doghead's Cosmic Bar