Your counterexample is not valid. This thread is about the “odds of humans evolving”, which means that present evidence should supposedly be used to judge the probability of past events. This corresponds to a situation where we already know that you threw six full houses in a row. It is an established fact, so what does probability have to do with it?
I can agree that “the probability, which existed yesterday before you started playing the game, of you throwing six full houses in a row” is a valid concept, but clearly this is also a case where the probability of a temporally future event is assessed. A time t1 is assigned as the moment when a given probability “existed”, and the event which the probability concerns is assigned a LATER time t2.
In principle we could make an awkward attempt to apply the same reasoning to the question of human evolution, but then the probabilities we calculate would have to be based on the evidence we know was available at t1, not on present evidence. But evidence at t1 also assumes an observer at t1, an observer who is ready to judge the probabilities! It should be evident that this is not going to be a fruitful chain of reasoning.
I don’t deny that the probability that an event actually did happen when indeed it did happen is 100%. You can’t change the past. But that’s slightly different from the question: what is the probability that the event would have happened exactly as it did if we were to go back in time to before it’s happening? You can only answer 100% if you are hardnosed determinist. Otherwise, you concede that it might not turn out exactly as it did in reality, and you’d have to assign it a probability other than 100%.
I see what you’re saying, but if you get this strict about what we can use as knowledge, there is no basis for knowledge about the universe and man’s evolution whatsoever. We assume that we know the raw makeup of the early universe, and from that we try to construct models describing how the present state of affairs came to be. But all that is based on what we see and deduce from the present. By your rationale, all theories about evolution are invalid, because we assume an observer in the past. I do not think that is a fruitful chain of reasoning either, if we stick to the context of evolution.
So I object to your objection, but only in the context of evolution. I think it is relatively safe to assume that the same formative conditions are constantly operative throughout time. What these conditions are is unclear - I personally conclude from the present, which is quite structured (I am not falling apart as we speak, as thermodynamics would have it) that they are not adequately described as randomness.
Basically what we are saying amounts to the same thing; that seen from the present, the idea that life came into existence by chance is false. Life is a fact, and theoretical science would logically be based on that, instead of on the increasingly untenable assumption of uninterrelated particles which, by haphazard chance, happened to behave in a very unlikely way, and are coincidentally continuously behaving in that way.
This corresponds to my earlier post where a probability existed at t1 and the corresponding event occurred at a later time t2. In my opinion, this question runs into philosophical problems because a probability existing at t1 assumes an observer at t1, preferably a human observer I suppose. To me, probabilities are “created” when someone makes an assessment of the available evidence, I can not in good conscience see them as independently existing entities.
I don’t think this is the case. It is completely legitimate to study present evidence in order to find out what happened in the past. I am only objecting to the assumption that a mathematical probability concept can be used to evaluate how probable different “alternative histories” were at a given point in time. My point is that mathematical probability is a strictly defined concept as far as temporal direction is concerned. If you want to speak of probability as a precise concept, you must be aware of the fact that only future events can be assigned probabilities. As far as probability mathematics is concerned, past events are established facts.
But historical sciences such as human history, evolutionary biology and cosmology are restricted by the nature of probability only if they use it. To my knowledge, precise probability calculations are not included in any of these sciences, so everything seems to be in order. Scientists in these disciplines may use vague terms such as “it is probable that…” to express how strong a given piece of evidence appears to them, but they do not (and cannot) make statements such as “3.204 billion years ago, the probability that modern humans would evolve was 0.000…%”.
I would like to add another epistemological comment: as I’ve explained earlier, probabilities can only be calculated into the future from present evidence. Even if we imagine that a probability for man’s evolution existed 3 billion years ago independently of any observer, there’s absolutely no way that we can assess this probability today because we can not gain access to the evidence which was available at that time to make this assessment. Evidence is available only in the present. In Jakob’s example of a game of cards, the evidence is mathematical and hence “timeless”, but natural data of any kind is not abstract or timeless.
I think that the problem is also the fact that we don’t know by what process the probability of an event can occur. We don’t know what the starting pont is in terms of atoms, molecules, forces etc. It is wildly different from a game of cards where the elements are well defined and the mechanisms are well defined. In that case you can talk about probability. But in the case of biology - evolution and especially the formation of the first living cell, we have no idea what the building blocks were, the forces, the dynamics. How on earth can we even talk about probability in such an unknown world ?
Del’s supporting arguments aside, I do see your point as well.
If every moment in the past was untethered from determinism, what would that represent? That every particle and every motion in existence had “free will”? Options?
I would say that the odds that anything occurs is then zero since things are so whacked. I mean if the laws of physics don’t exist, how does anything work?
I mean, if we went back in time a day, what would change? And if something changed, why would it change? I’ve never heard a valid answer to this question supporting the random nature of the universe.
BTW, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Timequake” is a great deterministic read. The plot is basically that reality has timequaked back 40 years, and the same 40 years are going to play themselves out exactly as they first occurred. Even though people are aware of the future! They can’t break the absolute of determinism and must make the same mistakes again and again (although really their minds should have been reset as well).
It doesn’t have to be as black and white as that. Quantum mechanics tells us that there is a very subtle degree of non-determinacy in everything that happens. It says that not everything that happens was destine to happen, just very very very very very very very very very very very very close to destined.
Almost everything. It would be easier to identify those things that would NOT change, because the list would be shorter. Basically, anything that’s mathematically predictable using a linear equation would not change measurably. Everything else – well, might change. Or might not. Can’t actually say with certainty that it would.
Because the laws of physics permitted it to change.
I’m of the school of Einstein (and Vonnegut) that says the perception of non-determinacy is human error. If things were reset to the previous day, everything would be the same and quantum non-determinacy would be disproved. I know thinkers of the Bohr school reject this.
I could flip a coin a thousand times and the results would appear random. But I believe there is ultimately something determining the results. In this case, the causes are observable and understandable; in the case of quantum mechanics, perhaps not so.
Membrain, I just had an insight. I think this might come down, at root, to an image we each hold of the cosmos and are comfortable with.
You seem to feel comfortable with an image of the cosmos as a mechanism.
I’m much more comfortable with an image of the cosmos as an organism.
Both of those are metaphors, of course. The cosmos is neither literally a mechanism nor an organism. But my own sense that it is “alive” – or anyway, that life is no stranger here, but a natural outgrowth of the underlying nature of matter and energy – makes me have no problems with physical processes making free “choices” within parameters set by the laws of nature, because that’s what living things do. But for you, something like that is a very sloppy and untrustworthy mechanism indeed.
I don’t mean to say that an electron (for example) sits and ponders its options as described by the probability distribution and comes to a decision based on the costs and benefits when a measurement is taken. There’s nothing about it that can think – but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing about it that can choose. We speak of making an “informed choice,” which implies that our thinking is separate from (but interactive with) our choosing. The choosing part seems to me to be very primal indeed, going back to the very roots of reality, which also chooses. The thinking part is more modern, and more restricted to entities with brains, or something that can take the place of brains.
So your attitude toward the indeterminacy implied by quantum mechanics and chaos, compared to mine, comes I think from that underlying image we have of the cosmos. You want to reject it, and so you find reasons to justify doing so; I am comfortable with it, and so I accept it without looking for those reasons.
But I am comfortable with chaos too. I just don’t extrapolate it into the ontological realm. That makes me uncomfortable. The thing that I am comfortable with is the knowledge that subjective reality is flawed.
My forum name comes from this book and the idea that perhaps the critical evolutionary step between primordial ooze and the creation of the first single-celled organisms was the evolution of the… membrane.
First, subjective reality exists as the body’s five senses, neurons and synapses, and the machinations of the brain (the entire body can be included, but some would agree that these parts make up the majority of subjective experience). And so these things are not the objects being observed themselves, they are conceptual “mock-ups” approximating reality in a simulated way; they cannot be as accurate as objective reality since they are neurological constructs; fakes. These mental creations are sufficiently complicated that two people cannot even have the same subjective experience in communicating anything. Every word represents a brain-function that is probably unique in all of human history.
Second, in the example of the “infinite decimal places” example, there is no such thing as a completely accurate measurement; we always cut off the decimal places to some point that is convenient for us, ignoring the infinite amount of decimal places that always are inherent in a measurement.
Third, there are an infinite amount of examples of people being wrong.
Fourth, mental illness can create flawed reality.
Fifth, quantum mechanics is a great example of subjective reality being unable to figure out objective reality.
Sixth, getting back to the brain, the brain is extremely limited in what it can visualize. It is capable of basically only being able to conceptualize one concept at a time. By this I mean, we can conceptualize a mock-up of an atom including sub-atomic particles, but we can’t at the same time conceptualize a larger object made up of those atoms, For example, if I say “think of the atoms that make up a chair” our brain parses the sentence out word by word: “think” “of” “the” “atoms” “that” “make” “up” “a” “chair”, and then we are left with a residual mock-up of the general feel of the sentence. We are incapable of conceptualizing the complicated nature of objective reality with our albeit powerful brains. For example, we can’t visualize every atom that makes up a chair.
And I’m sure there are many other examples of subjective error, some of which compliment every subjective experience. These are just a few that I could come up with off the top.
Membrain, your obections to subjectivity as a means to determine objectivity are not entirely valid, I think, because you seem to overlook that there is such a thing as determinable fact. Mathematics alone, as a field of knowledge, proves that objectivity can be determined by subjective eyes. A triangle’s angles will amount to two straight angles, given that the observer is not on acid or blind.
it is true that in quantum scale, the blend of Netwonian physics and mathematics does no longer appear viable. This does not mean, however, that mathematics as objectivity is no longer viable, perhaps it is only Newtons atomism, which says that the cosmos is composed of separate particles, that needs to be challenged. Yet whatever the outcome, we will still need mathematics, as a system which’ behaviour is exactly the same from every perspective, to produce automobiles, computers, buildings , etcetera. In this sense objectivity is highly important to what we can know.
So what you are saying is not that subjective reality is flawed, but that subjective perception is untrustworthy.
The difference between those two statements is this. “Subjective reality” is the reality we experience. It’s the primary reality: all of our concepts of “objective” reality are derived empirically from subjective reality; they are, operationally speaking, models that allow us to predict future subjective experiences. To speak of “subjective reality” as being “flawed” in any sense except maybe a moral or aesthetic one is meaningless.
However, in the context of trying to build those models of “objective” reality that will allow us to predict future subjective experiences, subjective perception – which is not quite the same as subjective reality – is untrustworthy and prone to error. Yet it is a tool that we have to use, since it’s the only way we have to obtain data on the world, and so we employ corrective methods to cross-reference multiple subjective viewpoints to find common factors, and to iron out personal bias. All of this is built into the scientific method, of course.
But here’s the nub of the question. If you find subjective perceptions so flawed that you are unwilling to accept its results even when they are corrected by scientific method – as is the case with the discovery of quantum indeterminacy, of course – what are you putting forth in its place?
I recognize the validity of subjective perceptions and their usefulness. It is their limitations that I stress for this example. Some are very inaccurate, some are highly accurate. I was just pointing out that they are always inaccurate to some degree, and in some ways, just wholly separate synaptic constructs that are just mock-ups of reality.
In a lot of ways one can imagine the human brain to be quite laughable.
I mean, sure, we kick buttox compared to all other animals on the planet; but just imagine a brain that was 10,000 times as big. Ours would seem pretty puny probably, yes? How much of a picture of objective reality would a brain 10,000 times the size of the human brain be able to grasp compared to our own? Probably much better, yeah?
