[RD] Why is there so much suffering in the world?

[Farm Boy]

So far as I can tell there are zero promises in return for the call. Yet the call is, as a matter of belief.

 

[Akka]

how can you say that animals suffer when both the word and the concept are man-made, though?
that is what I tried to say with "humanity is literally the author of all suffering". we may (even this is kind of weak, but let's not resort to qualia arguments here) be able to measure animals experiencing pain or somesuch, but that is not the exact same thing as suffering. for suffering there must be "being" first.

Well, that's what I was hinting when asking the question in the third sentence of the post you quoted :

Unless you're speaking of metaphysical suffering and so on, but I was more literal here.

I'm speaking about the pedestrian suffering from the dictionary, so something about :
the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.

And THAT didn't need any sort of philosophy to exist in the first place

 

[Modder_Mode]

And why isn't it applicable to the universe without the need of an intermediate creator ?

God would not be affected by time space or matter.

 

[Akka]

God would not be affected by time space or matter.

That doesn't answer the question.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe. Or, 'yes', if we're talking about any type of much-smarter entity. To the best of my knowledge, the universe is not actually predictable because quantum events are probabilistic. We know that rolling a d6 a million times will have ones turn out about 1/6th of the time, but there is not actual way to know the exact percentage ahead of time.

Math probability isn't directly tied to the external world, though, as can be seen from a simple experiment like throwing dice. In math probability indeed there is a 1/6 chance of any of the sides of the dice being up, but in an experiment this would never be true, even if it was run millions of times. That is because the experiment has physical parameters (how the dice is thrown) and can be deterministically accountable. More easy to see with some machine throwing the dice, cause even including 'randomness' it will be throwing in determined ways - of course one could tie the throw to more alterable parameters, like room temperature, but this just provides another, hidden parameter, equally deterministic (if even not moreso). In practice the dice won't fall in a set way 1/6 of the time.
I always loved probability. It actually was the one subject I reigned supreme in during the very difficult (for me) final year of secondary education. But it is imo even easier to notice with it just how split pure math is from the physical world. I view math as anthropic, while the cosmos seems to be a thing by itself, its properties picked up by us not its own but some translation of a fraction, if not mostly a type of environment-observer dependent projection.

 

[Modder_Mode]

That doesn't answer the question.

I'm not sure what you were asking then?

 

[Kyriakos]

I tend to be of the view that it is unlikely for any entity worth being termed a god to be conscious in the way we understand the term. I mean, it may be conscious in our way/similar, and just be a deity when compared to us (eg some alien running an experiment with us as parts of it), but I am not imagining something which is cosmically a god and is also conscious in some way like we are. For starters, why would anything be conscious if it is in such a position? Consciousness usually serves a purpose, like enabling change, and presupposes that the being has also a non-conscious part to balance with. A god's subconscious is a rather bizarre idea, though, no?

 

[Akka]

I'm not sure what you were asking then?

Why would the Universe would require a Creator but the Creator wouldn't itself require another Creator ?
Adding a Creator only add un-needed complexity to the question and fall to Ockham's Razor, and it's very obviously more a psychological need from humans than an actual reality requirement.

 

[Kyriakos]

fall to Ockham's Razor

It's not like reality cares about that plea to simplicity.

 

[Hygro]

Why would the Universe would require a Creator but the Creator wouldn't itself require another Creator ?
Adding a Creator only add un-needed complexity to the question and fall to Ockham's Razor, and it's very obviously more a psychological need from humans than an actual reality requirement.

I agree with this and yet I still point to a God.

 

[Hygro]

It's not like reality cares about that plea to simplicity.

That’s true but it has been a useful heuristic to find the simpler explanations for already existent things.

 

[Akka]

It's not like reality cares about that plea to simplicity.

It certainly does work much better than human's need to give meaning.

 

[Gorbles]

Occam's Razor is a principle, and not a law embodied by the Universe. Something failing Occam's Razor is not, in fact, an actual argument against its existence.

There are many arguments for and against a higher power (or any higher power), but these arguments trend to complexity, not simplicity. They shouldn't be dismissed just because they contribute to a convoluted explanation of how this reality came to be.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Certainly their sense of self is not the same as ours, but why should that matter?

I like to think of

life / existance / consciousness / being as different. they're not a hierarchie or a chain, just different concepts with none being superior or inferior. life is the biological dimension of movement, reproduction, energy, cellular activity and so forth. existance is more of a physical dimension to me, dealing with space, time and the universe. existance is basically material presence at any point in a temporal-spatial dimension. now on consciousness I take a stance relatively similiar to yours. since I love inventing buzzwords I would call it a quantum-enforced pantheistic interconnectedness. the idea being that consciousness is not necessarily tied to a brain or any cognitive apparatus, but is an arising phenomenon out of action and response, which exists basically down to the smallest level. now being is probably the most esoteric out of all these distinctions. certainly heidegger or buddhist philosophy could inform us well about this, but since I'm not versed at either I'l just try to explain my thoughts on being.

what is being? asking this questions means asking: what do we mean when we say: "I am", "Water is wet", "You are beautiful". for this we need to circle back to existance. "being", imo, means existing as a self-reflective embodied entity. I also think that being neccesitates all three: life, existance, consciousness. the statement "I am", if you really want to tear it apart, is itself already a reflection on our state in the world. to say that, one needs to not only exist, but be cognizant of his own existance, his own being alive, his own embodyment and consciousness. being is an abstract quality, and deals in abstract qualities. beauty does not exist (in the way I define existance), but we encounter things that feel beautiful to us, or maybe more accurate would be to say that we see beauty in things. I have no idea where this leads, but I feel that being is the quality that deals with embodyment, experiencing time and the human condition. Interestingly enough I think Heidegger makes another distinction, one more than I do, between "being" (everything that exists) and "beings" (things/entities that exist). In German he uses the word Dasein (being-there in the world).

 

[El_Machinae]

Math probability isn't directly tied to the external world, though, as can be seen from a simple experiment like throwing dice. In math probability indeed there is a 1/6 chance of any of the sides of the dice being up, but in an experiment this would never be true, even if it was run millions of times. That is because the experiment has physical parameters (how the dice is thrown) and can be deterministically accountable. More easy to see with some machine throwing the dice, cause even including 'randomness' it will be throwing in determined ways - of course one could tie the throw to more alterable parameters, like room temperature, but this just provides another, hidden parameter, equally deterministic (if even not moreso). In practice the dice won't fall in a set way 1/6 of the time.

There's an additional factoid I'm working with. At the quantum level, things aren't predictable as much as they are probable.

There are oodles of the macro universe that seem deterministic, the dice-rolling machine is one for sure.

But with things like photon generation or radioactive decay, it's probabilistic.

The gamma particle that hit the DNA that caused a tumour was not guaranteed to travel the path when it did. It just happened to be released at that time. Or, more clearly, we don't think there's an underlying determinism

Go back far enough, and a great deal of the macro was determined by probabilistic events, not determined ones.

 

[Kyriakos]

There's an additional factoid I'm working with. At the quantum level, things aren't predictable as much as they are probable.

There are oodles of the macro universe that seem deterministic, the dice-rolling machine is one for sure.

But with things like photon generation or radioactive decay, it's probabilistic.

The gamma particle that hit the DNA that caused a tumour was not guaranteed to travel the path when it did. It just happened to be released at that time. Or, more clearly, we don't think there's an underlying determinism

Go back far enough, and a great deal of the macro was determined by probabilistic events, not determined ones.

Isn't it likely that the better fit of probability to quantum phenomena is not due to some actual reality of said phenomena fitting probability but due to lack of knowledge and ability to experiment in the same way with them? Cause probability exists by itself just fine; much like set theory. External phenomena don't need to adjust to math tools, although if your aim is to approximate them they you can do that (but imo it should be pretty telling that it doesn't take long at all to arrive at the observer/anthropic scaffold of infinite mirror-loops).

 

[El_Machinae]

The question as to whether there is some underlying deterministic meta laws regarding quantum phenomenon is beyond my paygrade.


My impression is that the answer is no, but I am not beholden to that. But no, there's no reason to assume that the laws underlying quantum effects are deterministic. That would be an assumption from the macro universe that we are imposing onto an area where intuitions break down.



It's the Copenhagen Viewpoint versus the many worlds hypothesis. Your objections are retreading old ground

 

[Lexicus]

@uppi my impression was that Kyriakos is basically rehashing Einstein's old claim that "god does not play with dice" and that experiments have since more-or-less proven that quantum events are inherently probabilistic, they do not merely appear so due to deficiencies in theory or instrument, can you confirm or deny?

 

[Kyriakos]

@uppi my impression was that Kyriakos is basically rehashing Einstein's old claim that "god does not play with dice" and that experiments have since more-or-less proven that quantum events are inherently probabilistic, they do not merely appear so due to deficiencies in theory or instrument, can you confirm or deny?

Einstein is "beyond my paygrade" And I always disliked physics.
My point was about math not being cosmic (ie having a tie to the actual universe) but a thoroughly human (anthropic) element, which is the human way for examining such matters.
In other words, my point was not about Copenhagen view vs many worlds. Even if "many worlds" exist, it still has nothing to do with math being non-cosmic.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I like to think of

life / existance / consciousness / being as different. they're not a hierarchie or a chain, just different concepts with none being superior or inferior. life is the biological dimension of movement, reproduction, energy, cellular activity and so forth. existance is more of a physical dimension to me, dealing with space, time and the universe. existance is basically material presence at any point in a temporal-spatial dimension. now on consciousness I take a stance relatively similiar to yours. since I love inventing buzzwords I would call it a quantum-enforced pantheistic interconnectedness. the idea being that consciousness is not necessarily tied to a brain or any cognitive apparatus, but is an arising phenomenon out of action and response, which exists basically down to the smallest level. now being is probably the most esoteric out of all these distinctions. certainly heidegger or buddhist philosophy could inform us well about this, but since I'm not versed at either I'l just try to explain my thoughts on being.

what is being? asking this questions means asking: what do we mean when we say: "I am", "Water is wet", "You are beautiful". for this we need to circle back to existance. "being", imo, means existing as a self-reflective embodied entity. I also think that being neccesitates all three: life, existance, consciousness. the statement "I am", if you really want to tear it apart, is itself already a reflection on our state in the world. to say that, one needs to not only exist, but be cognizant of his own existance, his own being alive, his own embodyment and consciousness. being is an abstract quality, and deals in abstract qualities. beauty does not exist (in the way I define existance), but we encounter things that feel beautiful to us, or maybe more accurate would be to say that we see beauty in things. I have no idea where this leads, but I feel that being is the quality that deals with embodyment, experiencing time and the human condition. Interestingly enough I think Heidegger makes another distinction, one more than I do, between "being" (everything that exists) and "beings" (things/entities that exist). In German he uses the word Dasein (being-there in the world).

Well said. Consciousness exists at every level and changes with complexity.

It leads to mysticism....