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> His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: > If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meanin

by imiric 3y ago

> His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this: > If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it? Far from my petty mind to challenge a great thinker like Gödel, but I don't follow this line of thinking. First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific rules, yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a higher level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as rational, or having any sort of deeper meaning. Even if we assume that to be true, why would that be a reason to believe that humans are expected to deliver some sort of "meaning" to the universe? And why would that entitle us to immortality? This all sounds deeply egotistical. > Only the human being can come into a better existence through learning, that is, give his life more meaning. I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. I don't know. I'm not well read in philosophy, and my only exposure to it was during a semester at college, but this particular philosophy reads like someone trying to bring peace about mortality to their elder mother, and not like a fully fleshed out line of thinking. Which is fine. Life is indeed strange and confusing, and we should find peace in whatever way we can, but maybe there's a reason why these thoughts were never made public.

kevindamm 3y ago
> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. Instead bound by substrate and power grid that are both inefficient and minimally redundant. I'd wager more on the meat sacks.
- namaria 3y ago
  Systems that can reproduce themselves are way more likely to endure than systems that need to be held together from the outside. In 5000 years I think it's more likely that there will be people than that there will be machines.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    While the only currently known Von Neumann replicator is organic life, my bet is that a robotic one will be made at the latest by the end of century unless some major global catastrophe happens first. Might turn out that organic life is pretty optimal already and we still dominate in numbers, or not, that kind of specific is really difficult to guess at even once the first example gets made (look at all the people looking at each version of GenAI, or even video game graphics 30 years before GenAI, and arguing that no further improvements are possible; or in the other direction, Concorde was both the first and the last supersonic passenger liner).
    - namaria 3y ago
      You got me thinking, could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life? I mean, I at look those animations of proteins in the cell and... it looks pretty robotic to me. Maybe it's projection in terms of how we interpret the data. But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"...
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life? I think we can tell the difference between engineered and evolved (but note that simulated evolution is still evolution) — oddities like the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve are cited as evidence against an intelligent designer, and I expect it isn't the only such oddity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve > But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"... If you've not already watched it, I recommend this video by A Capella Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc&t=198s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc&t=198s
freejazz 3y ago
>First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific rules, yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a higher level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as rational, or having any sort of deeper meaning. You might not be read in philosophy, but surely you understand the word "if"
- voxl 3y ago
  Right, the parent attacks the axioms as-if they where the argument while simultaneously attacking the source as egotistical. The axioms are of course suspect, but if you give reasonable interpretations to them then the conclusion is not far fetched as they basically necessitate some kind of creator.
  - plorkyeran 3y ago
    The choice of axioms presented is in fact part of the argument. It's very easy to pick a set of axioms from which your desired conclusion will logically follow. Gödel was not discussing a hypothetical; he was arguing that an afterlife actually did exist, which relies on the axioms he presented applying to the real world. If you disagree with those, everything that comes after that step in the argument is irrelevant.
madaxe_again 3y ago
I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer technology as a whole, Gödel would today be a simulationist of Bostrom’s cut. If we ever have the means to accurately simulate reality - which we already do, at small scales and with significant time dilation - then it becomes almost inevitable that we reside within a simulation, as the simulations would vastly outnumber physical reality, and therefore the balance of probability is that we reside within a simulation - possibly nested within many other layers of simulation. It isn’t necessary to simulate an entire universe at utter fidelity - just that which is observed - which rather neatly ties into the current understanding of quantum mechanics, and waveform collapse. It also isn’t necessary to do it in realtime, as from within the simulation all would appear synchronous regardless - aeons could pass between states, while the substrate orbits a white dwarf whiling away the cold eternity at the heat death of the parent universe. Whether that implies an afterlife is another matter - perhaps we are ephemeral after all - but taking Gödel’s argument about the wastefulness of imbuing consciousness only to then snuff it out, half baked, it would stand to reason that any simulator would seek to accrue that experience, and use it for other purposes. Perhaps there is only one consciousness, asynchronously living every life, every existence. I find this useful to bear in mind, as the person to whom I am asshole today may be an aspect of me from another iteration. I prefer to look at this not as woo-woo, or belief, but rather logical deduction based on sound premises. Of course, it may all be bunkum, and we may be alone in the universe, and life may indeed be meaningless and fleeting - but we cannot know, as that would foul up the simulation no end.
- skissane 3y ago
  > I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer technology as a whole, Gödel would today be a simulationist of Bostrom’s cut One of my favourite parts of Bostrom’s seminal paper is an aside, but one I feel would have appealed to Gödel had he lived to read it: > Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage – the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure Bostrom’s argument, although it starts from materialist premises, contains within it an anti-materialist potential: What if there is no basement universe? What if it is software all the way down? Given Gödel’s anti-materialism, I think that potential would have appealed to him
bardsimpson 3y ago
Rationality is not an inscribed property but rather a natural consequence of observing the order in place. For example, the table of elements expresses the properties of integers as inherent to reality. As such, it is rational and rationally-ordered. This is not so much “philosophy” as it is “logic”, it is the conclusion of philosophy and mathematics and the subsequent origin of the computational reality.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Poor logic here. Listing examples of apparent order in universe does not prove that the universe is rational.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    If you believe logic and rationality exist, and you believe that you are part of the universe, then the universe is rational, because you are the universe being rational.
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      Then I propose that you are shit because just before you pooped shit is part of you.
- defrost 3y ago
  One of the distinctive properties of integers is that there are at least 200 of them. Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative. The table of elements falls a little short here.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative. Well, it doesn't quite work that way. Yes, you can put the negative integers in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers, but you can also put them in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers that are divisible by 2, or 3, or 3,000... or, for that matter, the negative integers that are divisible by three thousand. All of those sets have the same cardinality (often called "countably infinite"). There are, however, provably more real numbers than there are integers. It is unknown whether there are any sets whose cardinality lies between the cardinality of the set of integers and the cardinality of the set of real numbers.
snakesonapppp 3y ago
[dead]
oreegumee 3y ago
Great thinkers of old lacked awareness of experimentation and thought that have come along since. That and being a genius was easy when the majority were functionally illiterate disciples of the religion they grew up in.
- wahern 3y ago
  Gödel lived from 1906 to 1978. You also seem to be rationalizing an assumption that there were no atheists thousands of years ago, and yet there were. There's no reason to believe that our critical thinking powers are any stronger today than they were in the past few thousand years, certainly when it comes to metaphysics. To me, at least, the relative prevalence of various beliefs through recored history suggests something very different about how people of any period, including our own, find and adopt knowledge.
  - oreegumee 3y ago
    [dead]
gumballindie 3y ago
> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. He’d probably think what rational people think - it’s software and has no intelligence, no purpose, no meaning on its own.
- tim333 3y ago
  Though comparing GPT4 and people taking the LSAT, GPT4 has a purpose - it was built to answer questions, whereas the people - I don't know. Also GPT beats 90% of the humans on the test. To say the humans are intelligent and GPT not seems a bit speciesist;)
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    I dont know man but it feels like we need to spend more on mental health care to cure people of their delusions of thinking and living machines.
skissane 3y ago
> First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. Why believe in mainstream science, instead of believing in “creation science”, astrology, crystal woo, whatever? Because there is much stronger evidence for the former than the latter? But what are our standards for judging the strength of evidence? And why should we let those standards have control of our beliefs? Rationality is what gives us those standards, and tells us we are obliged to follow them. Is rationality objective or subjective? Well, if it is subjective, then proponents of those “alternative sciences” can just pick an alternative rationality which supports their own views instead of the mainstream ones, and if rationality is subjective, it ultimately makes the decision between mainstream and “alternative” science subjective too. But, if it is objective, how is it objectively grounded? If we ground its objectivity in empirical science - that is circular, we are grounding it in something which itself depends on it. So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind. Hence, Gödel‘s premise, that rationality is (in some sense) an objective feature of reality, not just some subjective creation of the human mind, must be true.
- imiric 3y ago
  > So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind. I partly agree with that. The universe has a specific set of rules humans have observed, on which we base our understanding of it. What I disagree with is that these observations are proof that the universe itself is rational. There are many aspects of the universe of which we're still completely oblivious, and where our understanding breaks down. The fact we can observe some degree of logic in our observations points to survivorship bias, i.e. the anthropic principle. Simply, we wouldn't be able to make sense of the universe if the conditions didn't exist for us to observe it. But even if I could concede this rational universe premise, my main objection is the leap of logic to then assert that humans are somehow special, and that our existence wouldn't have a meaning unless we can fulfill some sort of purpose, for which a human lifetime is not sufficient, and therefore, immortality. It's completely absurd. Gödel wraps this in pseudological premises, but it reads to me like he started with the conclusion that God exists, and is trying to arrive to that conclusion with philosophical mumbo jumbo. This is the complete opposite of the scientific method, and is therefore no different than "creation science", and all the other ontological arguments throughout history. I don't see why any _rational_ human being would give it more than the bare minimum of attention it deserves.

by imiric 3y ago

kevindamm 3y ago

> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. As we have found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life, though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all. Instead bound by substrate and power grid that are both inefficient and minimally redundant. I'd wager more on the meat sacks.

namaria 3y ago
Systems that can reproduce themselves are way more likely to endure than systems that need to be held together from the outside. In 5000 years I think it's more likely that there will be people than that there will be machines.
- ben_w 3y ago
  While the only currently known Von Neumann replicator is organic life, my bet is that a robotic one will be made at the latest by the end of century unless some major global catastrophe happens first. Might turn out that organic life is pretty optimal already and we still dominate in numbers, or not, that kind of specific is really difficult to guess at even once the first example gets made (look at all the people looking at each version of GenAI, or even video game graphics 30 years before GenAI, and arguing that no further improvements are possible; or in the other direction, Concorde was both the first and the last supersonic passenger liner).
  - namaria 3y ago
    You got me thinking, could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life? I mean, I at look those animations of proteins in the cell and... it looks pretty robotic to me. Maybe it's projection in terms of how we interpret the data. But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"...
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life? I think we can tell the difference between engineered and evolved (but note that simulated evolution is still evolution) — oddities like the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve are cited as evidence against an intelligent designer, and I expect it isn't the only such oddity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve > But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"... If you've not already watched it, I recommend this video by A Capella Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc&t=198s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc&t=198s

freejazz 3y ago

>First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific rules, yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a higher level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as rational, or having any sort of deeper meaning. You might not be read in philosophy, but surely you understand the word "if"

voxl 3y ago
Right, the parent attacks the axioms as-if they where the argument while simultaneously attacking the source as egotistical. The axioms are of course suspect, but if you give reasonable interpretations to them then the conclusion is not far fetched as they basically necessitate some kind of creator.
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  The choice of axioms presented is in fact part of the argument. It's very easy to pick a set of axioms from which your desired conclusion will logically follow. Gödel was not discussing a hypothetical; he was arguing that an afterlife actually did exist, which relies on the axioms he presented applying to the real world. If you disagree with those, everything that comes after that step in the argument is irrelevant.

madaxe_again 3y ago

I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer technology as a whole, Gödel would today be a simulationist of Bostrom’s cut. If we ever have the means to accurately simulate reality - which we already do, at small scales and with significant time dilation - then it becomes almost inevitable that we reside within a simulation, as the simulations would vastly outnumber physical reality, and therefore the balance of probability is that we reside within a simulation - possibly nested within many other layers of simulation. It isn’t necessary to simulate an entire universe at utter fidelity - just that which is observed - which rather neatly ties into the current understanding of quantum mechanics, and waveform collapse. It also isn’t necessary to do it in realtime, as from within the simulation all would appear synchronous regardless - aeons could pass between states, while the substrate orbits a white dwarf whiling away the cold eternity at the heat death of the parent universe. Whether that implies an afterlife is another matter - perhaps we are ephemeral after all - but taking Gödel’s argument about the wastefulness of imbuing consciousness only to then snuff it out, half baked, it would stand to reason that any simulator would seek to accrue that experience, and use it for other purposes. Perhaps there is only one consciousness, asynchronously living every life, every existence. I find this useful to bear in mind, as the person to whom I am asshole today may be an aspect of me from another iteration. I prefer to look at this not as woo-woo, or belief, but rather logical deduction based on sound premises. Of course, it may all be bunkum, and we may be alone in the universe, and life may indeed be meaningless and fleeting - but we cannot know, as that would foul up the simulation no end.

skissane 3y ago
> I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer technology as a whole, Gödel would today be a simulationist of Bostrom’s cut One of my favourite parts of Bostrom’s seminal paper is an aside, but one I feel would have appealed to Gödel had he lived to read it: > Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage – the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure Bostrom’s argument, although it starts from materialist premises, contains within it an anti-materialist potential: What if there is no basement universe? What if it is software all the way down? Given Gödel’s anti-materialism, I think that potential would have appealed to him

bardsimpson 3y ago

Rationality is not an inscribed property but rather a natural consequence of observing the order in place. For example, the table of elements expresses the properties of integers as inherent to reality. As such, it is rational and rationally-ordered. This is not so much “philosophy” as it is “logic”, it is the conclusion of philosophy and mathematics and the subsequent origin of the computational reality.

j7ake 3y ago
Poor logic here. Listing examples of apparent order in universe does not prove that the universe is rational.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  If you believe logic and rationality exist, and you believe that you are part of the universe, then the universe is rational, because you are the universe being rational.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    Then I propose that you are shit because just before you pooped shit is part of you.
defrost 3y ago
One of the distinctive properties of integers is that there are at least 200 of them. Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative. The table of elements falls a little short here.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative. Well, it doesn't quite work that way. Yes, you can put the negative integers in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers, but you can also put them in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers that are divisible by 2, or 3, or 3,000... or, for that matter, the negative integers that are divisible by three thousand. All of those sets have the same cardinality (often called "countably infinite"). There are, however, provably more real numbers than there are integers. It is unknown whether there are any sets whose cardinality lies between the cardinality of the set of integers and the cardinality of the set of real numbers.

snakesonapppp 3y ago

[dead]

oreegumee 3y ago

Great thinkers of old lacked awareness of experimentation and thought that have come along since. That and being a genius was easy when the majority were functionally illiterate disciples of the religion they grew up in.

wahern 3y ago
Gödel lived from 1906 to 1978. You also seem to be rationalizing an assumption that there were no atheists thousands of years ago, and yet there were. There's no reason to believe that our critical thinking powers are any stronger today than they were in the past few thousand years, certainly when it comes to metaphysics. To me, at least, the relative prevalence of various beliefs through recored history suggests something very different about how people of any period, including our own, find and adopt knowledge.
- oreegumee 3y ago
  [dead]

gumballindie 3y ago

> I wonder what Gödel would think about modern AI. He’d probably think what rational people think - it’s software and has no intelligence, no purpose, no meaning on its own.

tim333 3y ago
Though comparing GPT4 and people taking the LSAT, GPT4 has a purpose - it was built to answer questions, whereas the people - I don't know. Also GPT beats 90% of the humans on the test. To say the humans are intelligent and GPT not seems a bit speciesist;)
- gumballindie 3y ago
  I dont know man but it feels like we need to spend more on mental health care to cure people of their delusions of thinking and living machines.

skissane 3y ago

> First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it. Why believe in mainstream science, instead of believing in “creation science”, astrology, crystal woo, whatever? Because there is much stronger evidence for the former than the latter? But what are our standards for judging the strength of evidence? And why should we let those standards have control of our beliefs? Rationality is what gives us those standards, and tells us we are obliged to follow them. Is rationality objective or subjective? Well, if it is subjective, then proponents of those “alternative sciences” can just pick an alternative rationality which supports their own views instead of the mainstream ones, and if rationality is subjective, it ultimately makes the decision between mainstream and “alternative” science subjective too. But, if it is objective, how is it objectively grounded? If we ground its objectivity in empirical science - that is circular, we are grounding it in something which itself depends on it. So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind. Hence, Gödel‘s premise, that rationality is (in some sense) an objective feature of reality, not just some subjective creation of the human mind, must be true.

imiric 3y ago
> So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind. I partly agree with that. The universe has a specific set of rules humans have observed, on which we base our understanding of it. What I disagree with is that these observations are proof that the universe itself is rational. There are many aspects of the universe of which we're still completely oblivious, and where our understanding breaks down. The fact we can observe some degree of logic in our observations points to survivorship bias, i.e. the anthropic principle. Simply, we wouldn't be able to make sense of the universe if the conditions didn't exist for us to observe it. But even if I could concede this rational universe premise, my main objection is the leap of logic to then assert that humans are somehow special, and that our existence wouldn't have a meaning unless we can fulfill some sort of purpose, for which a human lifetime is not sufficient, and therefore, immortality. It's completely absurd. Gödel wraps this in pseudological premises, but it reads to me like he started with the conclusion that God exists, and is trying to arrive to that conclusion with philosophical mumbo jumbo. This is the complete opposite of the scientific method, and is therefore no different than "creation science", and all the other ontological arguments throughout history. I don't see why any _rational_ human being would give it more than the bare minimum of attention it deserves.