Thread: February 1, 2019...

My God, Clyde, how fast do you type? Or how much free time do you have?

I see no reason why there would be in any "hidden" knowledge, and even if there was, it could be uncovered by some other method, because there is no other method, either you apporach things from a logical stand point or you don't.

It is rigorously proven, actually, that there are "hidden" truths.

>It is just as much a "lump of flesh", as any other part of you or I is a "lump of flesh", as much as a CPU is just a "lump of silicon".<

So, you see no difference between our brains and computers' processors (excluding the technical differences of course), that both do basically the same thing: compute?

What is your definition of life, Clyde?

I'm very curious about these.

Edit: By "life", I mean lifeforms and such.

Edit again: Dammit, there's too many uses for "life". Think biology here.

"So, you see no difference between our brains and computers' processors (excluding the technical differences of course), that both do basically the same thing: compute?"

The conscious mind does exist, there can be no denying that, there can also be no denying that we currently fall short of an acceptable answer for how. That doesn't make invoking magic any more valid.

When you say i see no differences, i see many differences, but yes they are both made of matter and so yes they are both ultimately governed by the laws of physics.

My point was demonstrate that you cannot conclude much about the function merely from the general composition. Just as a CPU can do a huge amount and can be thought of as "just a lump of silicon", to too the brain can do a huge amount and yet can be thought of as "just a lump of flesh".

"What is your definition of life, Clyde? "

This used to be an important question, a big question in fact, what is the difference between a brick and a rabbit? What quality does one possess that the other lacks, etc. etc.

But you see the question faded as we learned more and more about biology, writing down a fixed definition is difficult because doing so inevitably means we have to include things that don't normally fit into the bracket we call "life".

On Earth a complex (well can't actually say how complex) chemical system formed, said system was capable of replication and of mutation, that is life.

However the definition is still far from satisfactory, why chemical? Why not plug in a replicating system capable of mutation into a computer, is that then alive?

Well the answer is that it doesn't really matter whether we call it "alive" or not, thats simply a word, what matters is that we have an understanding of the principles involved.

The question "what is life", has now fallen by the wayside (in scientific communities) because it is no longer interesting, it is now a problem not with our understanding but merely with our language, some people feel that same fate lies ahead for the question "What is consciousness?", guess we will just have to wait and see.

Hmm really? Please explain.
Its been proven that we will not be able to mathematically derive "everything", although quite how meaningfull "everything" is in that context remains to be seen, in anycase it is not neccesarily a stumbling block if that is what you mean.

Considering the universe and all our methods of inquisition (deduction, induction, etc) as one very large, endlessly complex formal system, it follows that there are true facts that we cannot possibly come up with.

Pht hardly "rigorously proven":

I'm not quite sure what Pht refers to?