My lowered respect for philosophy

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23 May 2011, 10:50 pm

At least the first few couple chapters of this are worth a read:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm

It's surprisingly vibrant and energetic. If you know a bit about philosophy and have lost respect for it, you should enjoy it.

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24 May 2011, 12:15 am

dionysian wrote:

Reading Nietzche can cause advanced brain rot.

ruveyn

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24 May 2011, 12:38 am

ruveyn wrote:

dionysian wrote:

Reading Nietzche can cause advanced brain rot.

ruveyn

Don't be afraid.

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24 May 2011, 12:40 am

dionysian wrote:

Don't be afraid.

F.N. was nutsy fagin and barking mad. In addition to which, he was illogical.

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24 May 2011, 12:42 am

ruveyn wrote:

dionysian wrote:

Don't be afraid.

F.N. was nutsy fagin and barking mad. In addition to which, he was illogical.

ruveyn

Can you pull out 3 or 4 examples of his illogic?

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24 May 2011, 10:07 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Kon wrote:

One can fully agree with this (I do) but I still believe in cognitive closure. To use an analogy used by those who espouse this view, the set of prime numbers is infinite but does not exhaust the set of all natural numbers.

In any case, you'll have to also explain the analogy as well.

Human knowledge may have no limit and continue to grow but that doesn't imply that we can know everything or that there are no limitations to human knowledge. The analogy above is to show that just as some infinite set of numbers are larger than others, human knowlege can be infinite and yet still not encompass all knowledge.

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24 May 2011, 10:20 pm

Kon wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Kon wrote:

In any case, you'll have to also explain the analogy as well.

I wonder why the concept of encompassing all knowledge is considered a laudable goal. Every aspect of every relationship has the fifty million monkeys flavor with overwhelming quantities of useless material camouflaging whatever incisive material that might be vitally important. That the inquisitorial mind is able to dig out useful knowledge where ever it is required is surely sufficient for any effort.

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24 May 2011, 11:14 pm

Kon wrote:

The issue is that "no limits to human knowledge" doesn't have anything to do with infinite human knowledge, only that human knowledge can expand as far as we can know. I mean, after all, if there are a finite number of atoms, that can only interact in a finite set of ways, then it seems to be the case that there are only a finite set of facts about the physical world. So, the argument about infinite knowledge really doesn't do anything for me, because even IF there is infinite knowledge, only a finite amount of it is likely practical/relevant anyway.

91
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25 May 2011, 1:41 am

Even wildly optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil admit that we may not actually be intelligent enough to totally reverse engineer ourselves. We may be below that threshold.

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25 May 2011, 1:44 am

91 wrote:

Even wildly optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil admit that we may not actually be intelligent enough to totally reverse engineer ourselves. We may be below that threshold.

Perhaps that is where creating an artificial intellect with greater potential than ourselves might come into play

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25 May 2011, 1:48 am

dionysian wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

RedHanrahan wrote:

I concur, and would add that the accademisation of 'philosophy' has made it the sport of an elitist and often overly pompous group of contemplative technocrats, I would posit that philosophy which cannot be comprehended by your average person has become somewhat useless?

Well, that feature happens somewhat necessarily. The common person is just going to be rather inept, and unable to follow where an advanced chain of arguments leads. However, this does not mean that such an advanced study is useless.

So called "advanced" study of philosophy is the reason it makes so little progress. The greatest advances in philosophy were not made by unimaginative minds accumulating and refining their jargon. They are made by vivid thinkers illustrating vibrant, provocative, inspirational and novel ideas. Most academics treat philosophy as a set of parlor tricks they can use to outmaneuver their opponents.

What he said [ I am too much of an ignorant and superstitious prole to string the words together myself :wink:

]

peace j

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25 May 2011, 6:36 am

91 wrote:

Even wildly optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil admit that we may not actually be intelligent enough to totally reverse engineer ourselves. We may be below that threshold.

But that really might not be intelligence, but rather the sheer difficulty in unpacking a massively interconnected system.

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25 May 2011, 7:47 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

91 wrote:

Even wildly optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil admit that we may not actually be intelligent enough to totally reverse engineer ourselves. We may be below that threshold.

But that really might not be intelligence, but rather the sheer difficulty in unpacking a massively interconnected system.

Which is a problem. And intelligence is the ability to solve problems.

Bottom line: We are not smart enough to reverse engineer ourselves.

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25 May 2011, 12:18 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Which is a problem. And intelligence is the ability to solve problems.

Bottom line: We are not smart enough to reverse engineer ourselves.

ruveyn

ruveyn, you haven't proven either point. My point about complexity has two different aspects:
1) Some problems are not solvable mathematically.
2) Other problems require too much data to solve.

The human mind is potentially one or the other, or even both, and in either case, a failure isn't a failure of intelligence. It just is beyond the capabilities for any entity to solve certain problems.

In any case, I have difficulty imagining a problem that is soluble that is not soluble by human beings using some form of method. Using methods and so on and so forth, doesn't require that human beings be individually that smart, the same as division of cognitive labor, and so on. All it requires is sufficient ability to follow through.

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25 May 2011, 12:24 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Which is a problem. And intelligence is the ability to solve problems.

Bottom line: We are not smart enough to reverse engineer ourselves.

ruveyn

ruveyn, you haven't proven either point. My point about complexity has two different aspects:
1) Some problems are not solvable mathematically.
2) Other problems require too much data to solve.

Fine. In any case the problem is not solved. And given the role of self reference it is likely the problem is unsolvable.

Whatever the case, we have not reverse engineered ourselves, and we are unlikely to do it in the foreseeable future.

And I still don't think we are smart enough to do it. We will probably have to invent gigantic computers to -simulate- a solution. But you know how it is about simulations. Do you need an umbrella and overshoes for a simulated rain storm?

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25 May 2011, 12:28 pm

ruveyn wrote:

And I still don't think we are smart enough to do it. We will probably have to invent gigantic computers to -simulate- a solution. But you know how it is about simulations. Do you need an umbrella and overshoes for a simulated rain storm?

ruveyn

Well..... ok? Gigantic computers are fine, by that definition we aren't smart enough to do some things man currently claims to "know". However, if we say that something is beyond man's ability to know, I'd think this would include any set of tool we devise. After all, if our tool knows something, and is not an independent agent, then it's knowledge can often be attributed to ourselves as the designers who can also read the programming.(and who would almost certainly be able to read and understand that programming)

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