Quote from: David Lucifer on 2003-04-07 10:40:43   

How would you list werewolves, Mother Goose and the xtian god in order from least probable to most probable? For purposes of this exercise assume that the xtian god is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly benevolent.

As ridiculous as it sounds, the only one I'd even consider is Mother Goose, because like ol' Kris Kringle, she is rumored to have been based on an actual person. I wouldn't, however, consider the fairy tale version of Mother Goose. When dealing with constructs in which there is so little evidence to support them, it is difficult really to rate the likelihood of their existence in relation to one another. In fact, one could posit that it is as difficult to relatively rate unlikely ideas as it is to rate likely ideas. How would I rate the existence of my monitor, mouse, and keyboard relative to one another. I know there is a high probability that they exist, though not absolute (they could be an illusion, I could be in a coma on some sort of Jacob's-Ladder-esque trip). There's so much evidence to support their existence that it would be impossible to say one is more likely than the other. I might argue that since I am experiencing the keyboard through more senses than I am the others (sight, hearing, and touch) that it is more likely to exist, but at any time I could experience the others through the same senses, or all the senses.

I started to go to far off course for a second there. ADHD. The point is, when I say probability, I mean it more intuitively rather than literally or numerically. Like, what's the probability that I'll eat today, or that my car will start, or my mother will call me. For all of those I'd say the probabilities are pretty good. Could I rate them? Well I eat everyday, my car starts everyday (and I keep up on the maintenance), and my mother calls... yes, everyday, so they're all rather equal. Now how would I rate the chances of the Earth spinning chaotically off into the solar system, money growing on the tree in my front yard, or Cameron Diaz showing up wearing nothing but those Underoos she had on in Charlie's Angels? In weighing all the evidence, there's little reason to expect that any of those things will happen that rating them is meaningless.

I more-or-less find all three ideas to be ridiculously infinitesimal possibilities. Though I agree with the standard Atheist argument, that to be omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly benevolent, all at the same time is paradoxical, which I suppose would make the existence of God to be the least likely. As for Mother Goose, well she was never claimed to had existed (other than being modelled after an actual woman), so there's no point to considering her. Now werewolves (to play devil's advocate), besides their scientific improbability (impossibility even)... who knows? It sounds absurd, but we would have said the same thing about the radiowave or the sonic tooth brush a thousand years ago. Who knows what forces may be out there that we just haven't invented the sensors to detect yet. New species are discovered every year, though mostly of the bug variety. Of course, there's absolutely no credible evidence supporting the existence of werewolves in the entire history of mankind, so to believe in them would be moronic. I would suppose I'm more a skeptic than an agnostic.

Just because a poet or playwright talks about the soul, and lends their own descriptions, doesn't mean that's what it is.

Just because most people might give vaguely similar, and entirely subjective definitions doesn't mean that they're correct.

Think about how all these same romantics might describe the heart, associating it with what's unique about Man or it being one of the things that separates us from other animals. Quite often the descriptions given for the effects of the soul are exactly the same as descriptions offered for the effects of the heart. "Your mind tells you what is best, but your heart tells you what is right," and romantic crap like that. Of course, we know that biochemistry, and not the heart, is what is responsible for our passions.

Because someone submits to poetic license and renders an emotional definition does not mean that they are right. To say that you can understand what they mean when they refer to "the soul" simply means you can relate to their emotionalism on the topic. Consensus does not equate to truth.

I would say that the common definition of the soul is: whatever makes us "us", from where our passions derive, which existed before our birth and will exist after our death (naturally or supernaturally, not on some trillion terabyte floppy disk), and other spiritualist psychobabble. To say that science will capture the soul by copy our brain patterns is contrary to the common assumption of what the soul is, since the common assumption of the soul is that it transcends physicality. It is the spirit and its formless. To equate this to whatever science can grab from the gray matter would be erroneous.

Really, all this talk of souls is ridiculous. No matter how far we remove ourselves from religion, we still think in religous patterns. Souls. Marriage. Good and evil. Mankind is guilty of the sins of CoV: apathy, dogmatism, and hipocrisy. Combined, we might initiate social revolution through collaboration. Instead we're all here trying to seek validation through agreement or just trying to one-up one another.

Here is the problem I find with such technology:

Is it realistic to think that an exact copy of our memories and thought patterns will constitute a copy of us? I would think that the precise geometry of our nervous system has some impact on how we think.

By "precise geometry," I am referring to the interrelation of nerve locales, the chemistry of the nervous system, the actual physical shape of the nerves, the actual shape of the brain, the physical relationships of one brain cell to another, even the molecular geometry of our nervous system.

How much "thought" actually takes place throughout the entire nervous system, not just the brain, and is affected by the actual geometry of the system? If we were to remove the memories and thought patterns from the specific human body in which they were developed and input them into a computer (or maybe, in the distant future, even into another body), wouldn't the geometry of the new host effect the way in which new thoughts and memories were developed, the manner in which new experiences were processed.

Are you losing something by switching bodies? Aren't you, in fact, creating an entirely new being that merely "remembers" the other? Considering some of the geometric factors: the physical relationships of the circuits, the shape and make-up of each digital component, electromagnetic radiation and feedback within the system, and even the materials with which the system was constructed.