An example of why it isn't always God

[Humodour]

A small piece in the case for Science of Gaps instead of God of gaps:

 

 

Pretty complex hey? How could science possibly explain that?

 

Well, while not actually trying to, it accidentally did:

 

 

It turns out the pattern on the Conus textiles is just a rule 30 cellular automata; the pigments interact according to rule 30 of cellular automata theory.

 

Did you know plants open and close their stomata in a way that looks like either a brain or intelligent being is controlling each single pore to fully maximise oxygen intake and minimise water vapour loss? I believe the complexity of such an optimisation problem is beyond the capacity of even the human brain, yet plants manage it somehow. Is it god? No, it's a cellular automata system. The rules are actually fairly complex, unlike for the Conus textiles, but it basically amounts to every single stomata being linked to every other stomata (through neighbouring stomata) in a domino effect fashion. The cellular automaton quickly and easily solves the optimisation problem posed.

 

Sound like an unlikely explanation? It's not; it's been verified. Not to mention cellular automata have been shown to be very good at solving optimisation problems before; they can be converted to neural networks. Both neural networks and cellular automata are universal Turing machines; any computer created, and algorithm or programming language created, can be replicated by a cellular automaton.

 

Any universe defined by classical mechanics is a deterministic cellular automaton.

 

Further, universal Turing machines (classical type) are a subset of quantum universal Turing machines, as classical mechanics is a subset of quantum mechanics (and indeed classical mechanics is equivalent to a classical universal Turing machine, and the same for quantum mechanics).

 

In fact the simple Game of Life is an example of a universal Turing machine cellular automaton. It's also fun:

http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

 

Set it to fast and tiny, then throw a bunch of dense clusters of dots on the grid and press start.

[Enoch]

Clearly, the is making you believe that.

[Nick_i_am]

Brace for Hades rant.

[Xard]

Sound like an unlikely explanation? It's not; it's been verified. Not to mention cellular automata have been shown to be very good at solving optimisation problems before; they can be converted to neural networks. Both neural networks and cellular automata are universal Turing machines; any computer created, and algorithm or programming language created, can be replicated by a cellular automaton.

 

Any universe defined by classical mechanics is a deterministic cellular automaton.

 

Further, universal Turing machines (classical type) are a subset of quantum universal Turing machines, as classical mechanics is a subset of quantum mechanics (and indeed classical mechanics is equivalent to a classical universal Turing machine, and the same for quantum mechanics).

 

In fact the simple Game of Life is an example of a universal Turing machine cellular automaton. It's also fun:

http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

 

Set it to fast and tiny, then throw a bunch of dense clusters of dots on the grid and press start.

 

What's your point here?

 

Turing machine argument can be easily countered with, for example, Searle's famous Chinese room.

 

Cellural automaton thing is interesting, but suddenly neural network = turing machine and classical mechanics are subset of quantum mechanics and that there are some quantum turing machines is more than weird. Are you trying to argue human consciousness is turing machine (L-O-L)?

 

Or are you trying to make case against "only God can design something this complex"? If it is latter, I snarl at weak basis for deterministic viewpoint (there are better ones) but if is latter I can't help but agree.

 

Very interesting thread/piece of information, but I don't get your point

Edited March 18, 2008 by Xard

[Humodour]

What's your point here?

 

My point is, as I said at the start of the thread, people shouldn't be so quick to claim information, processing, patterns or complexity are due to God. Too often people resort to God of Gaps when science can answer the question if you have a little patience and an ability to see things holistically.

 

Turing machine argument can be easily countered with, for example, Searle's famous Chinese room.

 

What Turing machine argument are you talking about? Nothing I said about Turing machines is refutable to my knowledge; thus is the nature of mathematics - a theorem is forever true, and I was careful only to state things about CAs which HAVE been proven.

 

Just read about the Chinese Room thought experiment. Why on earth are you bringing this up? I never made any claims about the human brain as a CA. Not to mention if I were to make such claims I would claim it is a quantum or probabilistic CA (which certainly fits the definition of the brain more closely than any classical CA) and thus avoid the Chinese Room problem altogether.

 

Cellural automaton thing is interesting, but suddenly neural network = turing machine and classical mechanics are subset of quantum mechanics and that there are some quantum turing machines is more than weird. Are you trying to argue human consciousness is turing machine (L-O-L)?

 

Why are you intuitively claiming I am wrong? Many (most) cellular automata rulesets are universal Turing machines and thus can be converted to any and all possible neural nets (this one's a basic tenent of neural nets and CAs). Further, it is possible to simulate any system in classical mechanics with a cellular automata; any limitation to what a cellular automata simulation of a physical system can do are also limitations to what a real physical system can do (based off those rules). Obviously because our world is governed by classical mechanics only approximately, this isn't as strong a bond (certainly not deterministic).

 

I'm not arguing anything am I? Stop reading into my post things that aren't there. I didn't say anything about human consciousness, so why on earth are you claiming I am arguing something about it? Far out man.

 

Quantum universal Turing machines have been defined thoroughly and proved rigorously. They are for use in quantum computation and quantum algorithms, but I imagine they'd also be useful for some simple quantum mechanics closed systems. Anything a classical universal Turing machine can do, so too can probabilistic and quantum Turing machines (and faster).

 

Classical mechanics is a set of rules about how to govern the universe. It is a type of cellular automata. One cannot use CAs to try and figure out the universe, however, because it is an open system (and quantum mechanics isn't complete). What you can do is determine the bounds of a system (close it) and simulate from there assuming classical mechanics. This has been used to solve and help with various problems in physics (e.g. the cellular automata of setting cement, which is an extremely hard to predict process without recourse to CAs).

 

Or are you trying to make case against "only God can design something this complex"? If it is latter, I snarl at weak basis for deterministic viewpoint (there are better ones) but if is latter I can't help but agree.

 

I'm not making a case for anything. If you read the thread title you'll understand the purpose of this thread: to elucidate why gaps in knowledge, complex unknowns seemingly impossible for anybody but god to have created, don't imply God.

 

I am giving reasoning against "only God can design complexity"; I am not denying or confirming the existence of God, but pointing out things typically thought to require recourse to God, when in fact they can be explained through recourse to science which is always, given sufficient evidence, a far stronger rationale (principally because of the existence of evidence).

 

The blurb about CAs was to help show how if those two specific examples of CAs in nature of exist, then by the nature of CAs it's possible many other phenomena may also be less divine than previously thought.

 

Very interesting thread/piece of information, but I don't get your point

 

Well, you could always read the title.

[Sand]

Statistically, complex life forms and patterns will emerge from chaos. The whole 1,000,000 monkeys banging on typewriters will produce the works of Shakespeare sort of thing. The universe is about 14 billion years old so it took 1,000,000 monkeys (theoreitically speaking) banging away on the cosmic typewriters of existance 14 billion years to produce us. Sure, if there was some intelligence behind the design of our lil' mudball of a planet it might have taken 5 to 10 thousand years but geological surveys and carbon dating throws that timeframe right out the window.

[Xard]

Oh, I'm sorry then. I guess my mind was still occupied with consciousness topic when I read that (and I was pissed off because of Daniel Dennett. Bloody behaviourist. And that is something turing machines are also related to in a way) and I reacted wrongly.

 

Quantum universal Turing machines have been defined thoroughly and proved rigorously. They are for use in quantum computation and quantum algorithms, but I imagine they'd also be useful for some simple quantum mechanics closed systems. Anything a classical universal Turing machine can do, so too can probabilistic and quantum Turing machines (and faster).

 

Classical mechanics is a set of rules about how to govern the universe. It is a type of cellular automata. One cannot use CAs to try and figure out the universe, however, because it is an open system (and quantum mechanics isn't complete). What you can do is determine the bounds of a system (close it) and simulate from there assuming classical mechanics. This has been used to solve and help with various problems in physics (e.g. the cellular automata of setting cement, which is an extremely hard to predict process without recourse to CAs).

 

Ahh, thanks for clarification. In a momentary lapse of not very reasoned thinking I thought you were referring to some sort of hidden variable theory with "quantum turing machine". Which are rightfully pretty much buried by now

 

 

My point is, as I said at the start of the thread, people shouldn't be so quick to claim information, processing, patterns or complexity are due to God. Too often people resort to God of Gaps when science can answer the question if you have a little patience and an ability to see things holistically.

 

This is something I very much agree about.

 

It can be very annoying. For example "we don't know exactly how trees and other vegetables actually get water up against gravity" (caterpillar effect etc. as we know by now) doesn't make up "zomg it's gods work". An I'm not joking, that is true example

 

Though I might add that considering how carefully, heck, beautiflly even, some aspects of our world are "constructed" (Fibbonazi numbers, topic at hand and above all fractals. Oh you lovely fractals <3 ) one could see world made by God/platonian demiurgi.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Xard

[Nick_i_am]

Slightly offtopic, but what I love is the religious types who will try to throw science out of the window rather than intigrate it into what they belive.

 

DINOSAURS TEST OUR FAITH, CARBON DATING DOESN'T WORK! kind of crap.

[Humodour]

Statistically, complex life forms and patterns will emerge from chaos. The whole 1,000,000 monkeys banging on typewriters will produce the works of Shakespeare sort of thing. The universe is about 14 billion years old so it took 1,000,000 monkeys (theoreitically speaking) banging away on the cosmic typewriters of existance 14 billion years to produce us. Sure, if there was some intelligence behind the design of our lil' mudball of a planet it might have taken 5 to 10 thousand years but geological surveys and carbon dating throws that timeframe right out the window.

 

13.4 years actually. And life is between 3.5 and 4.4 billion years old. Let's say 4 billion.

 

That means it took the universe 9.4 billion years to produce life on at least one planet.

 

Considering the observable universe (the part of the universe it will ever be possible for humans to infer about, due to light being slower than universe's expansion) is at least one millionth the size of the entire universe (based on density at the edge of this observable universe), and our observable universe has about 10^24 planets, a rough estimate for the number of planets in the entire universe is 10^30 or so.

 

So it took 9.4 billion years for the universe to produce life on at least one of a nonillion planets.

 

Doesn't seem far fetched to me.

 

* a nonillion is 1 million billion billion

[Sand]

Then again there are people who are 100% certain that science has all the answers which it doesn't. In science, nothing is certain.

[Nick_i_am]

I guess it's possible to lean too far both ways. 'Lightning-proof' athiests are pretty funny too.

[Humodour]

Though I might add that considering how carefully, heck, beautiflly even, some aspects of our world are "constructed" (Fibbonazi numbers, topic at hand and above all fractals. Oh you lovely fractals <3 ) one could see world made by God/platonian demiurgi.

 

Haha. Certainly I am far more willing to accept a conception of God that simply created the RULES by which the universe is governed and gave it a start value (BIG BANG WEEE).

 

Even so, platonic conceptions of mathematics are fraught with their own problems. I believe the platonists were none too happy about Goedel's theorems.

[Pidesco]

Then again there are people who are 100% certain that science has all the answers which it doesn't.

 

How are you certain that science doesn't have all the answers?

[Nick_i_am]

Because science only answers the how and not the why.

 

And until human perseption and understanding are infinite, the 'why' will always be unanswerable.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Nick_i_am

[Sand]

The Nickster gets a gold star.

[Gfted1]

Because science only answers the how and not the why.

 

Could you elaborate on this?

[Krookie]

We are here because microbacteria 14 billion years ago...yada yada yada...evolved to humans, the end.\

 

But why did all that happen?

[Pidesco]

Because science only answers the how and not the why.

 

And until human perseption and understanding are infinite, the 'why' will always be unanswerable.

 

You are assuming there is a 'why' to answer.

[Tale]

Because science only answers the how and not the why.

 

And until human perseption and understanding are infinite, the 'why' will always be unanswerable.

Who's to say "why" is even a valid question? "Why are we here" sounds like possibly the dumbest question in the world to ask.

[Sand]

Because science only answers the how and not the why.

 

And until human perseption and understanding are infinite, the 'why' will always be unanswerable.

 

You are assuming there is a 'why' to answer.

 

Hence "why" will most likely be unanswerable.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Sand

[Nick_i_am]

Artists ask the questions that make scientists uncomfortable.

 

We could trace back human evolution to the primordial soup, we could isolate the exact condictions that created life, we could track the formation of our planet, our solar system, our galaxy and trace the history of our entire known universe right back to the big bang and beyond.

 

BUT, our understanding is still within the limits of our perspeption. This isn't me being some wishy washy artsy fartsy type, but the limits of science, as we define it now, are very literally the limits of human understanding, and no matter how much we could possibly understand, there's still the scope for somthing more completely outside our feild of vision.

 

What it amounts to, I guess, is how you define 'all the answers', because you can go out and out and out, understand everything that can be possibly understood and still not be able to explain why there was anything to begin with.

 

I'm not even saying it's a valid question, but it's still a question, and it will still nag, infnitely, at the minds of cirtain people and for as long as it does, science doesn't have all the answers.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Nick_i_am

[Humodour]

Because science only answers the how and not the why.

 

And until human perseption and understanding are infinite, the 'why' will always be unanswerable.

 

But science isn't limited by human perception, is it?

 

Isn't science just the underlying laws of the universe waiting to be discovered? So humans or not, science explains the universe?

 

Krookie: Because it could. That is the real answer. 1 in nonillion planets over 9.4 billion years undergo a vast array chaotic and random processes over and over again, some with more equilibrium systems than others. To be honest I'd be surprised if a proto-cell didn't emerge with such large numbers applied repeatedly to the chances of various steps in its formation.

 

It's a very similar question to "Why do animals reproduce?" or "Why do animals evolve/change?". Because they can; because the world around them is not static, and they must change with it or perish - if they can change with it, they will. Thus is the case of the first proto-cell. Essentially it formed because it was possible, and possible as you approach infinity in terms of the number of tries becomes certainty.

[astr0creep]

A small piece in the case for Science of Gaps instead of God of gaps:

 

 

Pretty complex hey? How could science possibly explain that?

 

Well, while not actually trying to, it accidentally did:

 

 

It turns out the pattern on the Conus textiles is just a rule 30 cellular automata; the pigments interact according to rule 30 of cellular automata theory.

 

Did you know plants open and close their stomata in a way that looks like either a brain or intelligent being is controlling each single pore to fully maximise oxygen intake and minimise water vapour loss? I believe the complexity of such an optimisation problem is beyond the capacity of even the human brain, yet plants manage it somehow. Is it god? No, it's a cellular automata system. The rules are actually fairly complex, unlike for the Conus textiles, but it basically amounts to every single stomata being linked to every other stomata (through neighbouring stomata) in a domino effect fashion. The cellular automaton quickly and easily solves the optimisation problem posed.

 

Sound like an unlikely explanation? It's not; it's been verified. Not to mention cellular automata have been shown to be very good at solving optimisation problems before; they can be converted to neural networks. Both neural networks and cellular automata are universal Turing machines; any computer created, and algorithm or programming language created, can be replicated by a cellular automaton.

 

Any universe defined by classical mechanics is a deterministic cellular automaton.

 

Further, universal Turing machines (classical type) are a subset of quantum universal Turing machines, as classical mechanics is a subset of quantum mechanics (and indeed classical mechanics is equivalent to a classical universal Turing machine, and the same for quantum mechanics).

 

In fact the simple Game of Life is an example of a universal Turing machine cellular automaton. It's also fun:

http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

 

Set it to fast and tiny, then throw a bunch of dense clusters of dots on the grid and press start.

 

 

Well duh.

[walkerguy]

I'm christian but also accept scientific theory such as dinosaurs did exist or carbon dating works. I don't believe that a universe with nonillions of planets and galaxies spawned from nothing but gas and dust particles, however. God created the framework of science to maintain the universe. From the simplest of scientific principles to processes that we'd go extinct before we understood, God made them and so evolution and climate change is part of God's plan. If the world drops 10

[Nick_i_am]

But science isn't limited by human perception, is it?

 

I'm not sure, it probably depends on your own personal definition. Dictionary definitions say things like 'a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research' and 'a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study'.

 

It's a human concept, so i'd have to assume it's bound by human limitations in some way, but i'm as much in the dark as the rest of you.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Nick_i_am