some notes on The Atheist's Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg
The second law of thermodynamics states that the universe tends toward disorder, or entropy is the rule of the universe (and entropy tends to increase over time). Processes must produce a NET increase in entropy. An increase in order in one place will result in a decrease in order in another.
All the other laws of basic physics allow for both the forward and backward motion of atoms and molecules (and fermions and bosons) except for the 2nd law. (Does all this hold in the quantum world too? And is there a degree of belief involved here?)
This is also why there is time, I think. Because the universe or nature tends toward entropy, it has direction. it goes "forward", and it is very difficult for it to go backward (but not impossible). This forward movement is time.
Natural Selection=reproduction (or replication), variation and inheritance
An organism always experiences variants in traits. The variants provide for different levels of fitness in the organism. Those traits that allow for survival are passed on to the next generation. This replication though is not always perfect and occasionally the trait that is passed on changes in the process (mutates). The environment plays a role because it allows some trait variations in an organism to lead to survival while others lead to death--in interaction with the environment. In a different environment, the outcome might be different. Also, there is no looking to the long run in these variations. So a variation might occur now that is actually not a very conducive to a future variation so there's a bunch of jury rigging. It is blind variation. Nature is passive in this process. Variation just occurs--the organism interacts with the environment and survives, passing on the variation, or dies, ending the variation. The variations that are replicated are not leading to any more complex variations down the road. Variation does not plan for the future.
Variation in traits is the rule in biology
Variation in traits is the exception in chemistry
Evolution is a mess because of the second law.
Because there is no forward planning in variation, variations have to make do with what came before while also honoring then tendency towards disorder.
Given that reproduction is a primary process of evolution, it is just one more example of the second law that it is so incredibly inefficient (of a million sperm, only one is likely to fertilize an egg). Organisms produce lots and lots of copies of something and then destroy most of them.
(If all of these "pieces" are required to accomplish one thing--like DNA replication which apparently takes at least 16 enzymes--then it is not surprising that it is so difficult for us to find "explanations" for complicated human behaviors or illnesses. There could be millions involved in one thing even though maybe only 1 out of those millions actually accomplishes the goal and maybe sometimes none do).
Rosenberg argues that natural selection shaped our brains to seek out stories with plots and that this adaptation is our biggest obstacle to actually find out truth. If that is true, does that mean that seekers of other stories are fighting against their biology? Have adaptations that direct them otherwise? Or that this shaping is fluid and as we develop can be reinforced one way or the other more or less? Or some combination of all?
Rosenberg argues that the brain was constructed to seek out stories because it needed short cuts in reasoning in order to survive in a hostile world (you couldn't do science experiments in the midst of an attack by wild beasts). There's not a lot of time for thinking in a hostile world. Now that the world isn't hostile we do have the time but still find it very difficult. Clearly, just because something is the result of evolution does not make it correct.
One of the more difficult ideas to understand is Rosenberg's contention that our brain does not think "about" anything. There is no "about"; there is just neural circuitry firing. Still not sure I get that, but he adds, evolution has crafted a very convincing illusion that our brain is thinking "about" things. Why? Because evolution needed a quick and dirty solution to the problem of mass extinction when we moved to the Savannah and that required communication, cooperation and language quickly. So the quickest way to communicate our plans to one another was what was reinforced and evolved, but it's a poor substitute for reality and it's why we have such difficulty communicating and predicting what others and our self will do. (If this is true, then what does it say for psychology which is all about deducing ideas from behavior and then treating the ideas . . .) . This illusion is also what reinforced our desire to hear stories and to resist science. The first "makes sense" in our illusory world; the second, not so much.
Rosenberg argues that any "law" that humans uncover happens within a limited local equilibria, which will inevitably change so the law is only good as long as the equilibria lasts. Some equilibria last longer than others. Reminders of why social science is really not science at all--yet how come it persists? I guess it doesn't really matter because its persistence is just a local equilibria that will eventually alter.
What Rosenberg concludes is that pretty much everything is determined in the sense that you are headed where the physics of you goes . . . yes you can change your neurology (reading does it) but you can't determine how it will change. . . I think. What I don't get is why would one person's neurology change to become more "scientistic" and another's wouldn't? I guess it just has to do with the previous neurological make up and its interaction with the new neurology. But it seems then that this is not entirely random. It isn't just as likely that I will adopt these ideas as it is that a conservative would adopt them. And, I guess that's because my neurology is different. But if that's the case, wouldn't we have some impact by choosing what we interact with that changes our neurology? Do we "choose" to read one book over another? It seems so . . . but maybe that's a delusion.
Is it possible that the neurological structure of our brains is such that we believe we are making choices? And that because we "be" in our brains and not in the quantum world, we have to proceed as if that is the truth?
In the New York Review of Books (June 20, 2013), Isaiah Berlin states: " Empirical observation seemed too narrow a criterion of meaning, and he suspected that the search by philosophers for absolute certainties was an illusory quest."
Quote from John Archibald Wheeler: "Nature conserves nothing; there is no constant of physics that is not transcended; or in one word mutability is the law of nature" (quoted in Coming of Age with Quantum Information by Christopher Fuchs, p, xxvi). Doesn't this contradict all that Rosenberg concludes?
All the other laws of basic physics allow for both the forward and backward motion of atoms and molecules (and fermions and bosons) except for the 2nd law. (Does all this hold in the quantum world too? And is there a degree of belief involved here?)
This is also why there is time, I think. Because the universe or nature tends toward entropy, it has direction. it goes "forward", and it is very difficult for it to go backward (but not impossible). This forward movement is time.
Natural Selection=reproduction (or replication), variation and inheritance
An organism always experiences variants in traits. The variants provide for different levels of fitness in the organism. Those traits that allow for survival are passed on to the next generation. This replication though is not always perfect and occasionally the trait that is passed on changes in the process (mutates). The environment plays a role because it allows some trait variations in an organism to lead to survival while others lead to death--in interaction with the environment. In a different environment, the outcome might be different. Also, there is no looking to the long run in these variations. So a variation might occur now that is actually not a very conducive to a future variation so there's a bunch of jury rigging. It is blind variation. Nature is passive in this process. Variation just occurs--the organism interacts with the environment and survives, passing on the variation, or dies, ending the variation. The variations that are replicated are not leading to any more complex variations down the road. Variation does not plan for the future.
Variation in traits is the rule in biology
Variation in traits is the exception in chemistry
Evolution is a mess because of the second law.
Because there is no forward planning in variation, variations have to make do with what came before while also honoring then tendency towards disorder.
Given that reproduction is a primary process of evolution, it is just one more example of the second law that it is so incredibly inefficient (of a million sperm, only one is likely to fertilize an egg). Organisms produce lots and lots of copies of something and then destroy most of them.
(If all of these "pieces" are required to accomplish one thing--like DNA replication which apparently takes at least 16 enzymes--then it is not surprising that it is so difficult for us to find "explanations" for complicated human behaviors or illnesses. There could be millions involved in one thing even though maybe only 1 out of those millions actually accomplishes the goal and maybe sometimes none do).
Rosenberg argues that natural selection shaped our brains to seek out stories with plots and that this adaptation is our biggest obstacle to actually find out truth. If that is true, does that mean that seekers of other stories are fighting against their biology? Have adaptations that direct them otherwise? Or that this shaping is fluid and as we develop can be reinforced one way or the other more or less? Or some combination of all?
Rosenberg argues that the brain was constructed to seek out stories because it needed short cuts in reasoning in order to survive in a hostile world (you couldn't do science experiments in the midst of an attack by wild beasts). There's not a lot of time for thinking in a hostile world. Now that the world isn't hostile we do have the time but still find it very difficult. Clearly, just because something is the result of evolution does not make it correct.
One of the more difficult ideas to understand is Rosenberg's contention that our brain does not think "about" anything. There is no "about"; there is just neural circuitry firing. Still not sure I get that, but he adds, evolution has crafted a very convincing illusion that our brain is thinking "about" things. Why? Because evolution needed a quick and dirty solution to the problem of mass extinction when we moved to the Savannah and that required communication, cooperation and language quickly. So the quickest way to communicate our plans to one another was what was reinforced and evolved, but it's a poor substitute for reality and it's why we have such difficulty communicating and predicting what others and our self will do. (If this is true, then what does it say for psychology which is all about deducing ideas from behavior and then treating the ideas . . .) . This illusion is also what reinforced our desire to hear stories and to resist science. The first "makes sense" in our illusory world; the second, not so much.
Rosenberg argues that any "law" that humans uncover happens within a limited local equilibria, which will inevitably change so the law is only good as long as the equilibria lasts. Some equilibria last longer than others. Reminders of why social science is really not science at all--yet how come it persists? I guess it doesn't really matter because its persistence is just a local equilibria that will eventually alter.
What Rosenberg concludes is that pretty much everything is determined in the sense that you are headed where the physics of you goes . . . yes you can change your neurology (reading does it) but you can't determine how it will change. . . I think. What I don't get is why would one person's neurology change to become more "scientistic" and another's wouldn't? I guess it just has to do with the previous neurological make up and its interaction with the new neurology. But it seems then that this is not entirely random. It isn't just as likely that I will adopt these ideas as it is that a conservative would adopt them. And, I guess that's because my neurology is different. But if that's the case, wouldn't we have some impact by choosing what we interact with that changes our neurology? Do we "choose" to read one book over another? It seems so . . . but maybe that's a delusion.
Is it possible that the neurological structure of our brains is such that we believe we are making choices? And that because we "be" in our brains and not in the quantum world, we have to proceed as if that is the truth?
In the New York Review of Books (June 20, 2013), Isaiah Berlin states: " Empirical observation seemed too narrow a criterion of meaning, and he suspected that the search by philosophers for absolute certainties was an illusory quest."
Quote from John Archibald Wheeler: "Nature conserves nothing; there is no constant of physics that is not transcended; or in one word mutability is the law of nature" (quoted in Coming of Age with Quantum Information by Christopher Fuchs, p, xxvi). Doesn't this contradict all that Rosenberg concludes?
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