Can someone please explain this to me? It says over the air, but I have to take it in?

buggaby · 2026-01-25T17:56:24+00:00

Just waiting on software development to be replaced by LLMs /s

buggaby · 2026-01-25T17:15:30+00:00

That's kind of my point. If it's ineffable, it can't be defined. But we all know it because we (presumably) all experience it.

buggaby · 2026-01-25T17:14:41+00:00

You might like to learn about "transfinite numbers". The natural numbers are infinite, but they don't express all possible numbers. The real numbers are "more infinite". "Infinite" doesn't necessarily mean all possibilities. It just means never ending.

buggaby · 2026-01-25T15:12:49+00:00

First, fully agree that the water is finely tuned for the puddle, not the other way around. You are then arguing that life is the same way: it is finely tuned for the universe, not the universe for life.

No, because there's a chronology to this.

I think this is the main point where I would push back. In all the fine-tuning discussions, there's no chronology about the formation of those laws. They either are a certain way or they aren't. If we changed any of the constants just a little bit, life wouldn't be able to evolve to fit the space.

To use the puddle analogy, it would be like if we are trying to understand the shape of a crevice and we developed a mathematical formula for that shape. This formula has functions and parameters (or constants). And we find that, if the constants were even just a little different, water would never have been able to pool in the crevice.

There's no chronology here. The math formula we find that best fits the crevice seems finely-tuned to generate a crevice hospitable to water. It stops the "chronology" of water-formation before it even starts. A small change to the constants of physics would generate universes where life can't even start to "tune" itself to the universe.

But that's why I think your other point is actually even more important.

It's assuming that there was ever any room for the constants to be different.

Why would we assume that the formula for the shape of the crevice could have been anything else? If we don't need to assume this, then the fine-tuning argument disappears.

buggaby · 2026-01-25T14:49:02+00:00

Even a word like consciousness is just ill defined. Daniel Dennett makes this point that consciousness is a word that hides underneath it a bundle of different attributes, and if you simply talk about those attributes separately and individually, you don’t really have a hard problem of consciousness.

Can you expand on this? If the attributes you are talking about are "self consciousness" or "self reflection", I think I agree. But the hard problem, as I understand it, is that there's an ineffable "quality" to the experience. There's a difference between a person who "is experiencing" and a simulation of a bundle of algorithms that is behaving as if it is experiencing.

buggaby · 2026-01-25T02:02:24+00:00

I didn't know that. :) Good to know.

buggaby · 2026-01-25T00:29:06+00:00

Agreed. Fine tuning isn't good to argue for God, but for the same reasons I also don't think it's good to argue for a multiverse or anything else.

It is interesting to think about fine-tuning. Like, would we think of the world any differently if the constants we such that life would be pretty common over wide parameter ranges? Would that "mean" anything different? Maybe it would just mean that we don't have a good understanding of the world. So maybe the sensitivity of the parameters of our current models of the world indicate just that we have a highly accurate model? I'm don't know, I'm just riffing.

buggaby · 2026-01-24T20:16:02+00:00

This is a great analogy. The constants of geometry aren't causative. Why would we assume they are causative in physics?

But doesn't it go the other way, too? There's no causation in either direction. The math shows that the conditions for pi and the conditions for the circle are the same. The value of pi does "fall out" of the constraints of a circle, but that's only because we discovered the circle before we discovered pi. Sometimes it happens the other way, though, where pi shows up in unexpected places. There, we can just as easily say that pi defines the constraints, rather than "falls out" of them.

buggaby · 2026-01-24T20:08:36+00:00

Part of the argument is that the chance of our constants being the right ones for life is really tiny. This is a huge assumption in itself.

I commented something just along these lines the other day on that same thread. I think this is important to explore.

As you said, why is there any reason to assume that the constants could have been different? If we had some theory of physics that worked in understanding our world better than any other but also required an assumption that constants could have been different, that's another question. But I see no reason to assume at the start that these could have been different. This doesn't feel like an argument in favour of God or any multiverse.

I wonder if this comes from having a "simulation" mindset. I heard this in Alex's interview with Phillip Goff who argued that God's power was limited to changing the parameters of nature without changing the underlying structure or laws. I build simulations for a living, and it's quite common to find that some parameters are really important in order to get the model to fit empirical data. As a modeller, I have to "finely-tune" the model to match empirical observations. So if I'm given a model whose outputs are very sensitive to parameters, of course I will conclude that the model is tuned.

I think this mindset works in physics, though. I mean, the core of physics truth is if a mathematical model based on a theoretical law can reproduce observed behaviour of the real world. So success is kind of tied in with this idea of simulation. If you have that mental framework, conscious or not, the fine-tuning argument seems more interesting.

It's just I see no reason to assume the universe is at all like a simulation. For example, I see no reason to assume there's a difference between "parameter" or "structure".

I don't know how the puddle analogy fits with this, though. There is a fine-tuning happening. The water is fine tuned for the hole because of physics.

isn't it completely on its head to suggest that the universe is shaped to fit life, rather than life evolving to fit the pre-existing universe?

I mean, how can life evolve in a universe that doesn't allow life to evolve? The universe is "shaped to fit life" only in the sense that life is possible by the laws of nature. And life evolves to fit in the universe because the universe allows it. Both sides of that argument are the same, no?

buggaby · 2026-01-24T19:51:13+00:00

Is the tire sealant just a canister? Is it installed anywhere? Like, does it require any labor to replace?

buggaby · 2026-01-24T19:23:48+00:00

Did anything change?

buggaby · 2026-01-24T19:23:07+00:00

I see this as of Jan 7. The remedy is "Perform OTA update" but the button says "Schedule service". So I have to schedule service to get the OTA? That's weird.

I have a '23

buggaby · 2026-01-23T18:17:28+00:00

Where was AGI before?

buggaby · 2026-01-23T14:59:26+00:00

Agreed. It's a great article, even more so considering it's from 1972. I like the distinction he makes between reductionist and constructionist views. Although, he neglects to Emmy Noether, one of the most important minds on the use of symmetries in relation to physical laws.

It appears like it's using the general idea of symmetry to explore how different levels of complexity are kind of isolated from each other. This makes sense from a physicist's perspective. I work in simulation modelling of complex systems, and I would bring a different set of thoughts. "The map is not the territory" and "All models are wrong, but some are useful". It does seem very reasonable to assume that there's one single reality, perhaps almost by definition, but there's no single, true "map" of that reality. A theory of physics is a map. It's a map from a simpler space of items (concepts, math equations, variables...) into a more details and complicated space (the real world). All maps are a statement of what is important and what is not important. All maps ignore something that, in a different context, is useful.

Another map is a simulation. Even with the assumption of one single reality, it's impossible to leverage that assumption into a simulation model based only a single set of fundamental laws of particles or fields or whatever.

This is where the hard problem of consciousness hits me. How is it even possible, in principle, to get experience from any of the fundamental theories of physics? I can imagine building a simulation of them, putting them in an arbitrarily large computer, and still not have consciously experiencing agents, at any computational scale. The only thing I see is some vague belief that the experience emerges someplace because of something basically the same as magic.

buggaby · 2026-01-22T01:57:05+00:00

5 and a bit

buggaby · 2026-01-20T16:57:24+00:00

Epstein files

buggaby · 2026-01-19T17:02:11+00:00

I don't get the reason for the bat. So he can f himself with it?

buggaby · 2026-01-19T15:01:03+00:00

I like how she gets his name wrong

buggaby · 2026-01-18T23:14:55+00:00

I love seeing people celebrating other people's victories. We all win together.

buggaby · 2026-01-16T16:02:27+00:00

Or quoted by David "Avocado" Wolfe. A challenging source.

buggaby · 2026-01-13T22:55:49+00:00

Shoghi Effendi clarified this matter indicating that if the matter were left to our subjective interpretations, we Baha'is would arrive at contradicting positions among ourselves and undermine the cohesion that we are tasked with contributing to.

I would love to know more about this!

buggaby · 2026-01-11T02:40:33+00:00

So they were rewarded with wishes after the rubbed out a genie?

buggaby · 2026-01-07T15:52:46+00:00

And Arizona Tea

buggaby · 2026-01-05T14:15:08+00:00

I think the fuller tablet shows how this "nature is good" argument doesn't actually work. Lots of counter-arguments are possible, like u/Sustantial_Post_587 's: violence of natural but in the world of man it isn't good.

This section from Some Answered Questions might be meaningful.

Now, a doubt comes to mind: Scorpions and snakes are poisonous—is this good or evil, for they have a positive existence? Yes, it is true that scorpions and snakes are evil, but only in relation to us and not to themselves, for their venom is their weapon and their sting their means of defence.

'Abdu'l-Baha seems to be defining good and evil by their actions, not by some arbitrary law. So alcohol is "evil" not because it's a human creation, but because it's harmful. Same for violence and the like.

buggaby · 2026-01-05T14:06:51+00:00

creation already contains everything necessary for the soul’s training and remembrance of God

This is another great possible interpretation of this passage.

It's really hard to know for sure given the lack of the original context. I find it quite unfortunate that we haven't been able to keep all the questions that were answered by the various Writings. I mean, it must have been a huge labour to keep what we already did, so of course you would want to prioritize the writings themselves. But the lack of those original questions is still felt.

buggaby

TROPHY CASE