Just finished it, have to take a while to collect my thoughts. Powerful stuff though. Written by the creator of Dilbert of all things.
I would have answered "Probably not five hundred times." An even split is the most likely outcome (actually, 501-499 is more likely if you don't care who wins), but it is still not very likely. Even if you only flip ten times, it's a good bet that the outcome won't be a tie. If ties were more likely, arguments in favor of voting would be a lot more convincing. When you flip a coin a thousand times, the chance of a tie is only about 2.5%. And this is with a fair coin; voters tend to number more than 1000 and have a bit more bias. I had to think about this. First I thought of an explanation based on weight and shape, like the narrator. Then I thought of Feynman and thought the best answer would be “That, nobody knows.” Finally I decided that the coin is part of a thought experiment in which it is defined as an object that comes up heads fifty percent of the time. It's a given.“If you toss a coin a thousand times, how often will it come up heads?”
“I meant why does the coin come up heads fifty percent of the time?”
It's a pretty good answer, and the whole 'fair coin as a theoretical object' thing has a lot of merit. But Feynman nails it. From my personal study of peoples belief, science is thought of as entirely rational, and reasonable. From a certain, admittedly unexamined perspective this is true. But at it's fundamental levels, scientific thought breaks down, because induction is self-referential. (Patterns have held true in the past, therefor patterns will hold true in the future) I've been working for several months to try and refine my personal philosophy and ethic, and I find that I can't base it on faith (Belief without logic or justification) and I also cannot base it on pure rationality and logic, because these too break down under examination. Maybe some people would see this as a trivial, probably narcissistic thing, but it's the only life I have, and the only way I have found to live with the fewest regrets, is to act in accordance with what I believe.Finally I decided that the coin is part of a thought experiment in which it is defined as an object that comes up heads fifty percent of the time. It's a given.
Haven't read more than the first section and a half, but I couldn't resist coming back to reply-- in my philosophical thought I've consistently come to the conclusion that induction is the underlying principle on which all rational thought is based. Like you said, it's self-referential, but it's at the core of our entire conception of the universe. Without induction, our whole system of understanding breaks down. And I think that's why on some level we're all drawn to the belief in some fundamental laws of physics which define everything that has happened and will happen. But I'm increasingly drawn to total skepticism-- a skepticism so complete that it carries with it skepticism of skepticism itself. That is to say, there's no reason that the belief that no belief can be proved is any more reasonable than any other belief. I'm just still trying to wrap my head around the implications of holding that belief in my personal life.
Induction is the root of all rational thought, but it has problems. Serious problems. Watch this video Then this one The essential problem is, induction states 'The future will be like the past.' Which is both untrue and logically indefensible.
Yeah, definitely. What fascinates me about the problem of induction is that our whole system of understanding is based on such a flawed concept. The thing about induction is that the assertion that the future will be like the past often also implies that certain parts of the world are similar or consistent, i.e. when we encounter some thing x and then some thing y, we tend to assume that our present experience of y will reflect our past experience of x. Thus I think the principle can really be further simplified to "the universe is in some way consistent." And the job of modern science seems to be to disprove this whenever possible.
I'm convinced that whenever whenever we encounter a paradox, or some kind of self-referential/circular portion of how the universe works, we're observing the very bound of human perception and thought. Things like 'It is, because it is,' or various time travel paradoxes are the outer limit of the reality we are capable of conceptualizing. We are only vaguely able to identify the 4 dimensions we are certain we exist in (As long as you agree that time IS a dimension, which isn't a consensus), but there is no reason to believe that further dimensionality is impossible.
OK, yeah, I'm out. I got as far as "God's Free Will" and I agree with flagamuffin -- way too one-sided to be worth much. Reading the first section frustrated me because the logic is kind of shit but there's nothing I can do about it. Sort of like how I feel about some parts of Russell's The Problems of Philosophy, which I'm currently reading for a class in Epistemology.
I did think the bit about the relationship between package and deliverer was interesting. You tend to think of the deliverer as having agency because they choose to deliver the package to the address listed on it, but the Avatar's claim that the package plays just as much of a part in its own delivery forces you to rethink that assumption. I'm not sure whether such an assumption really merits reconsideration, but it was interesting. It was really when he got into free will that the narrative structure started to fall apart, IMO. Far too many writers fall into the trap of using dialogue as a means of building strawmen and propping their own arguments up rather than genuinely seeking a balanced examination of an issue.
I got practice in avoiding that this summer. My medical ethics class required a dialogue between two 'informed individuals' each week discussing one of the issues we were studying. It's a good exercise. With the whole package thing, I think of it like this. Were it not for a person, the package would not arrive. Were it not for the package, the person would never have cause to go to the place where the package was to arrive. Both a person, and the package are required for either to end up in that place. So, there are two 'gates' that would determine if the package and person arrive at the destination. The first 'gate' is the presence of the package. If: Package Then: Impetus to deliver package. The second 'gate' is the presence of a person to deliver the package. If: Fedex guy/gal Then: Deliver package. Both are necessary, but is there a difference in the degree of necessity? Is there even any meaning to asking that question? Far too many writers fall into the trap of using dialogue as a means of building strawmen and propping their own arguments up rather than genuinely seeking a balanced examination of an issue.
One thing I liked in the preface is how he described writing a story around a character who knew everything. In order to portray this he picked shorter answers as the 'felt' more persuasive than longer or more complex ones. The usage of probability as an alternate perspective on how things like gravity works tied with quantum fluctuation was interesting, my rudimentary knowledge of physics allowed this to seem possible. I'll finish the rest of it when I get a chance.
If I've had a toke, and I think about this in a way that I want to make sense of it, I think of it in terms of frequency. The smallest particles observed vibrate, or have some element of periodicity as they wink in and out of existence. So, everything that I can perceive or interact with is 'vibrating' at the same frequency that I am, else I wouldn't be able to perceive it. So, is it possible that there are... Things (For lack of a better word) that exist on a different frequency? Things that are simply impossible to observe or quantify with tools that exist in our frequency?The usage of probability as an alternate perspective on how things like gravity works tied with quantum fluctuation was interesting, my rudimentary knowledge of physics allowed this to seem possible.
Yea that's how I thought of it too, similar to the way your eyes can see certain wavelengths in the electro-magnetic spectrum but anything beyond their range is invisible. As far as your eyes are concerned those other wavelengths don't exist even though we know they do. I get what he is saying with the analogy of things blinking in and out of existence with their location being determined by probability at an atomic or sub-atomic level. But it leads to more questions, like what sets the "vibration" rate? If I could alter my atomic vibration rate would I transition to a different universe. If the universe you are in is decided on your vibration frequency then that implies a finite range of possible frequencies doesn't it? Or does the frequency somehow tie to their universe affecting how time is perceived, in other words a slower vibration in this universe would move you to another where the vibration "appears" to act at the same rate in the original. This rabbit hole gets deep pretty fast and although its fun to burrow down, I cant escape the feeling that i'm really just daydreaming.
I'm daydreaming real HARD today.I don't think so.
My feeling on it was that the vibration frequency will need to be short enough to be almost imperceptible, As it is now. If it get longer it becomes more visible so there is an upper bound on how long it can get.
Conversely there is likely a lower bound close to zero beyond which it stops vibrating.
So far (26/144) this reads like a freshman in college tried to write the Crito dialogue. It's fun enough, but I just spent an hour with Neal Stephenson and Anathem and this is a bit of a come down. We'll see what I think in ten minutes. Halfway point. Getting slightly more interesting, but I stand what I said earlier. Conversation is far too one-sided to be interesting. Will finish tomorrow.