Friday, January 16, 2015

How does the Mind Works? --- Easy.

"What we haven't been able to figure out are the proper algorithms to make it happen and there is a huge ongoing research effort at the moment to reverse engineer the brain to figure out what kind of algorithms it employs."

I figured this out a number of years back. It's an evolutionary algorithm. In fact, understanding that evolution is the mechanism by which intelligence works also explains a lot of distinct phenomenon like why human brains recognize intelligence in clearly evolved things like trees and such. A well done, open ended algorithm, slated with predicting future events given very sparse data would necessarily develop an embodied reality simulation, and allow us to understand things like what we mean to understand things. We have an accurate model by which we can predict the activities of such elements. And to borrow terminology from other known evolutionary algorithms like science (amazing how children learning and science seem very similar), consciousness is like having a theory of self much like it's accurate to say children have a theory of mind. And as far as useful organs go, predicting the future is basically worth dedicating a massive amount of resources towards, it's just that doing that requires one to accurate predict what's going on during the present. And it does this by testing the world with the senses, rather than brains processing the senses it's more akin to the brain predicts what should be happening and the sense check whether that's consistent with their perceptions, so from basically no information we evolve an understanding of the world such that our eyes, that cannot see what we see, can tell us whether or not our impressions of what's going on are right or not. -- One will find under this model basically every observation about brains and consciousness are explained.

An explanation for why Jesus adds to 74:

Wiser cutey diagnose likely faithing bullheaded dumbos error, godson balderdash causing dignify diction baloney; simple flukes between objects implode brainy organs.

Jesus adds up to 74. This is amazing because...

Quick script and...

JESUS
ABANDONER
ABERRATED
ABIOSIS
ABLATION
ABNEGATES
ABOITEAU
ABOMINABLE
ABOUGHT
ACCESSES
ACCORDING
ACCRETES
ACCURSED
ACERBATES
ACEROLAS
ACETATES
ACHALASIAS
ACIDNESS
ACONITIC
ACQUIRE
ADDITIVE
ADENOMATA
ADEQUATE
ADJACENCIES
ADRENALS
ADVECTS
ADVERBIAL
ADVERSE
ADVOCACY
AEROBATIC
AFREETS
AGALACTIAS
AGEDNESS
AGGRIEVE
AGNOMINA
AGONISED
AILERON
AILMENT
AIRILY
AIRPARK

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Finetuning the universe by luck, because there is no God.

It turns out that the Wall Street Journal published some religious guy's article claiming to be all sciencey. And I've had to use my go to explanation of the Fine Tuning Argument and it's flawed a couple times. So since I put my stuff here for boilerplate purposes. Here's why it's actually an argument against God.


The Fine Tuning Argument's biggest flaw is that it's generally looking at the math wrong. The proper four question to any such thing are:

1) Given the universe as we know it, what are the odds it got this way given atheism?
2) Given the universe as we know it, what are the odds that it got this way given theism?
3) How many other ways could the universe be if atheism is true?
4) How many other ways could the universe be if theism is true?

Those are the proper values for a Baysian analysis. And interestingly enough the argument for Fine Tuning is almost always limited to saying the odds for #1 are vanishingly small! But, that doesn't actually seem to be true. However, the more serious problem with the argument is that #3 is basically very few. And #4 is pretty much every single universe imaginable if God could just magick it into being functional.

The universe is vast, like hugely hugely vast. And old, very very old. If it were the case that, there was no God, the only way to get life like ours would be random chance followed by evolution. And for that to work we'd need a vast universe with lots of chemicals and eons of time to mix them randomly to churn up something that could replicate. And against all odds, we have that. -- If God existed, he wouldn't have to make a universe that looks exactly like one that should exist if atheism were true, he could literally just make one star and one planet, or one planet that is made magically warm enough to allow things to work out, etc. Only atheism needs billions and billions of years and 100 trillion planets. Theism could poof anything as a solution, and certainly would have no need to make the universe look exactly as the universe would need to be if there were no God.

Contrary to how the argument is often offered, the Fine-Tuning argument if properly looked at under a Bayesian lens, is a fantastic argument for atheism.