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Simplicity, in the information theoretic sense, since you're dispensing with all the complexity involved with God. And that is the case, while waffling about omniscience and the lot might sound simple in natural language to a brain that, at the first go around, doesn't see all the glaring issues with that package deal, good luck showing the Kolmogorov complexity isn't ridiculous. And complexity needs to be justified, and boy does God not constrain expectations in the least.
Explaining "all but one" beats the alternatives on offer. Mathematics is not considered invalid because it begins from base axioms. Besides, our intuition is hopelessly flawed in such matters, whether or not the Big Bang was an Uncaused Cause remains an open question in physics, and the universe doesn't give a shit about how much of an affront it is to our sensibilities it is to have things like that around. Time itself ceases to have meaning both before the Big Bang (which started the clock), or in more prosaic entities like black holes.
Besides, why isn't the Big Bang covered by "materialism"? It can very well accept such a primitive, since nobody claims that black holes are a failure of the same. Our intuitive notions of causality went out the window the moment quantum mechanics, with all it's superposition, entanglement and reference-frame/observer dependent definitions of cause and effect arrived.
If it conflicts with intuitions or our notions of "satisfying" answers, so much the worse for the latter. The math does a better job, or at least works while our intuitions halt and catch fire.
Infinite universal cycles, simulation, and God are all equally non-materialistic, and it seems to me that information theory doesn't apply to non-materialistic explanations. In what sense would it? In what sense is God more complex than a universe looping according to non-observable physics without beginning or end? Is there math that can be shown proving one less complex than the other? You mention Kolmogorov complexity, but I'm skeptical. Wikipedia provides:
...I don't think you can write a computer program that produces either "God" or "A looping Universe" or "The computer the universe is being simulated on" as output in any meaningful sense, so I don't think you can meaningfully calculate the Kolmogorov complexity of any one of these, nor compare their complexity to determine which is the "least complex". All three concepts are, by definition, outside the bounds of observable reality, which means that whatever statements you make about them are unfalsifiable. I see no reason to presume that you can meaningfully do math on unfalsifiables.
It doesn't, actually, if the alternatives do not conflict with materialism when materialism gives answers that seem reasonable. Christians did not reject the concepts of math or gravity or the rocket equations. The whole claim of Materialism is that it was better because it left no need for anything further. It turns out that it does in fact need further things, and in addition appears to require discarding quite a large amount of solid evidence. Those realities pretty seriously undermine its claims to primacy through simplicity, occam's razor, etc, or that people are forced to it by a hard-nosed commitment to only draw forced conclusions.
There are no forced conclusions are forced. All reason is irreducibly axiomatic. We all believe as we will. We each make our bets and take our chances.
Because the math says it happened, but the math also says it can't happen. That is just another way of saying "we don't have a good explanation for this phenomenon."
Our "intuitive notions of causality" are the foundation of Materialism. Abandon those, and what remains? If you get to appeal to miracles, why shouldn't I?
The math doesn't do a job at all. It isn't supporting your conclusion. Your commitment to Materialism is axiomatic, not ultimately dependent on the outcome of a formula.
I genuinely do not see how that applies. Why is a simulation or an infinite universe non-materialistic? I'm not being intentionally obtuse, I don't see it.
If a simulation bottoms out in a basement universe, then there's clearly a materialistic explanation for everything running inside it for one.
Infinite cycles of universes, multiverses and the like do not mean that they don't meet the criteria, which I consider interchangeable with materialism for all practical purposes, of being described by the "true" laws of physics, or at least better ones than we have today, which work mighty well within the one universe we have to work with. Ignorance is not the same as incompatibility.
You can produce entities with a conception of "God" by running human DNA, plus a support structure for the same. That's how we ended up running about and uttering His name.
The Kolmogorov complexity of a concept can be much less than the exhaustive description of the concept itself. Pi has infinite digits, a compact program that can produce it to arbitrary precision doesn't, and the latter is what is being measured with KC. I believe @faul_sname can correct me if I've misrepresented the field.
A Big Bang is defined by extrapolating backwards from the laws of physics, as well as additional supportive observations. If you posit a God that's responsible for the Big Bang, then he's got that much complexity and much, much more.
Further, it's the combination of complexity and no added value when it comes to constraining expectations that severely disprivileges claims of God being a more succinct/favorable/supported explanation for anything, let alone the origin of the universe.
Abiogenesis? Evolution? Don't tell me there isn't a sizeable number of Christians who deny either/both. At the very least, I presume you believe that God set up the parameters to produce either.
No, it can be better because it's better than everything else on the table.
I see no reason to disagree. As Yudkowsky said, there's no argument that can convince a rock.
"Our explanation is better, even accounting for incompleteness"
No? I mean, to hell with the initial reasons for why people adopted materialism, that is irrelevant in evaluating its truth value, or if not entirely irrelevant, then hardly the most pressing aspect.
I fail to see how the Big Bang counts as a miracle, as the word is commonly used.
It predicts the universe originated from a pointlike singularity, which both conforms with observational evidence, and is more than the Bible gets right.
Because "materialistic" means observable, falsifiable, testable, quantifiable, connected to the unbroken chain of cause and effect. Previous loops of an infinite loop universe are not part of that unbroken chain, cannot be observed, tested, quantified, or falsified in any way.
If you cannot access the basement universe, you have no evidence of anything about it at all. If you could access it, and its physics didn't present a break in cause and effect, that would be evidence for materialism. But if it had the same physics we do, it has the same break in cause and effect that we do, hence the same problem. You are of course free to posit that the other side of the break in cause and effect is just more Materialism, but such a claim has equal evidentiary support as belief in God or the Karmic wheel, which is to say, none. You have to take it on faith, axiomatically, because the break itself gives you zero evidence to support such a thesis. In fact, if the other side were identical to this side, one wonders how the break could exist at all.
And I can argue that the "true" laws of physics consist of the ontological necessity of God, but I wouldn't expect that to persuade you. Likewise, you should not expect unfalsifiable claims of a "true" physics that you can neither describe nor test to be persuasive to those who do not choose to be persuaded.
The fact remains that you do not believe in such a "true physics" because evidence has compelled you to do so, because that evidence does not exist. You believe in such a "true physics" because your axioms, if true, necessarily imply that they must exist, even if you cannot see them. Your axioms are supported by evidence you do have; they are not idle fancy. But being axioms, they are chosen, not forced. You believe what you have chosen to believe, and you interpret and weight evidence from the perspective of that choice. Axiomatic certainty has little persuasive value to those who do not share the axioms.
Indeed not, but neither is it knowledge. I can claim that we each will have perfect knowledge of God, eventually. You could reasonably reply that you will believe in God when you see him, and not before. I can argue the same about "true physics" for the same reason.
The fact that we can't observe or test how the support structure got here is the entire problem under discussion.
And yet I am confident that neither you nor anyone else can actually produce a rigorous algorithm for any of the non-material unfalsifiable concepts discussed above, of the sort needed to actually perform a comparative test of Kolmogorov complexity. If you could access these things, they would by definition be observable. If there were observables that provided answers to these questions, we would have mapped the clockwork as we intended, and there would be no need to go fishing in such dark waters for answers to the unanswerable. To use Kolmogorov complexity as evidence, you need to actually run the numbers, and I'm pretty sure you can't, because they don't exist.
Unless you have falsifiable evidence for how the Big Bang could cause itself, Materialism demands it have a cause. God is no more complex a cause than "true physics" causing a looping universe or any other unobservable, unfalsifiable hard break in the chain of causality. If God could be demonstrated rigorously to be more complex, that would be an argument against it being the simplest solution, though I'd be interested to see whether Boltzmann brains, solipsism or simple denialism come out simpler still. But again, I see no reason to believe that you or anyone else can write rigorous algorithms for things that are fundamentally unknown and unknowable.
I'm agnostic on abiogenesis, as I'm not aware of it being demonstrated in the strong sense, but it seems plausible enough. Evolution, sure. And likewise, certainly there are a number of Christians who deny either/both. I disagree with them, but on the other hand, there are a number of Atheists who have believed "Science" that was entirely fictional, so it seems to me that it more or less balances out. People, generally, often believe things that are demonstrably not true for a variety of reasons. All we can do is attempt to minimize this tendency.
In what way? It can't be in explanatory value if its explanations are shared by its opponents, and the disagreements are over things it can't actually explain. One might argue that it is unsporting of people like myself to accept science that can actually be demonstrated, while not accepting "science" that cannot, and limiting my speculations to areas where speculation seems to be both the only option available and also warranted by the evidence at hand. Yet why should I do otherwise?
There are arguments that could convince me: close the loop on physics, resolve the contradictions, demonstrate Determinism of the brain. Scientists believed they'd do these things for hundreds of years. Maybe they'll do it still. Maybe AGI will bust the whole business wide open. And yet, until the evidence can actually be observed, science itself demands that results be demonstrated, that claims be testable, that we keep a clear delineation between what can be proven and what has merely been asserted. That demand must come before the preference for Materialism.
Were you to be convinced that Kolmogorov complexity cannot be meaningfully applied in the way you suggest above, would that change your conclusions? In any case, "better" is a value statement. Better how?
Then explain what caused it. This is the basic method of science. Claims must be tested. You don't get credit for an explanation if you can't show your work.
All this is rather missing the point, though, because my argument is not that Materialism is disprovable. My point is that Materialism is axiomatic, and that like all axioms it is chosen, and that this fact can be trivially demonstrated by backtracking to the point at which evidence terminates at the chosen axiom, itself unsupported.
I think you're adding more to the concept of "materialism" than it strictly/necessarily implies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
(I am using it interchangeably with physicalism, since I obviously know that energy and fields exist and not "just" matter.)
I do not see where any of your objectioms come into the picture as an indictment of materialism itself.
At most, you're bringing up notions of falsifiability in the Popperian sense, but that is strictly inferior to Bayesianism, where 1 and 0 are not valid probabilities, it's impossible to actually prove or disprove any hypothesis, at most you can get arbitrarily close (or assume them as your starting prior, in other words an axiom, which no amount of evidence will budge).
So the fact that we can't be perfectly sure of what's going on in potential previous universes or even the Basement of the Simulation is a quantitative and not qualitative failing. Since literally nothing else you didn't start out as holding axiomatic can meet the same standard, what of it? I can see where the bulk of the probability mass lies.
But I am compelled to believe so. The overwhelming trend for millennia has been that our best model of the laws of physics explains a wider and wider set of phenomena, to the point that outside particularly exotic situations like black holes, extremely high or low temperatures, or at the Big Bang, most of physics is solved, the equations predict mechanics to well within the limits of your sensors and computational hardware for simulating it. Not even the enormous amount of dark matter and energy out there even remotely comes close in terms of causal influence as a star a dozen lightyears away does through the tenuous tug of its gravity.
It is not complete, but it's inching ever closer, and we're busy trying to tease out 0.00000001% divergences between reality and our predictions to find the errors. Try doing that with a Bible.
Besides, there could potentially not be just one "true physics" but a family of equivalent models that produce the are isomorphic to each other and produce equivalent results, while being technically distinct. This is just a minor quibble, if I'm to be exacting.
Believe it or not, not even I claim that adopting Atheism makes you infallible when it comes to matters of fact. At best, it makes you less wrong (ever wonder why the biggest collection of rats don't fall themselves "100% Guaranteed Correct.com"?), and at least here, they're avoiding a glaring and unforgivable form of being wrong.
It doesn't remotely balance out.
Bayesianism is a strict superset of "Science". It allows me to observe the distribution of the numbers produced by a die and see it's glaringly lopsided, and then to take the money of anyone who loudly claims that we must studiously pretend that it's balanced since we don't know for sure what the exact odds are.
As I've kept on saying, the balance of probability is nowhere close to evenly split. Materialism/physicalism is overwhelmingly likely to be correct, even more so if you compare it to religion. Since you can't have perfect credence without starting with it, better take what you can get.
On the matter of falsifiability, on a scale much smaller than deriving a GUT or solving the Hard Problem, if someone was to train an AGI on solely known physics/empirical observations of reality and it started espousing the Jude-Christian God (all references being scrubbed from the training set), I will happily do an about face, at least if you can convince me there isn't any data contamination or other forms of tampering involved.
Religion as you see it, while hardly the worst strain around, is still a pernicious distortion of your memeplex and epistemic rationality. There's no way in hell an independent, intelligent entity without the same biological failure modes as humans would come to the same conclusions as you do, I'll bet on it.
Sure? It would change how confident I am in said conclusions, at the very least. And not to just a tiny degree either.
Once again, as I've said so many times, by the standards of Occam's Razor (itself a consequence of Bayesianism when you have two hypothesis, of different levels of complexity, that do the same job of predicting the data, leaving aside that in this case they are hilariously lopsided), and from constraining of expectations.
To the extent it's a value judgement, it's an unavoidable one.
Trust me, not veering off a cliff is sufficient reason for me to feel like I'm being more sane even if I don't know where the road ends. I'm no physicist, I merely have justified confidence that nobody is doing a better job than they are.
Besides, cause and effect become very confusing at that level, if you think Kolmogorov complexity is a headache, you haven't seen nothing yet. All directed acyclic graphs and complicated causal boundaries while throwing even the concept of objective time to the wind. But the maths works, I'll do better at understanding it when someone finds a way to lend me about 20 more IQ points. In the meantime, I am content with my confidence that I'm on the correct team, even if we're still hashing out the finer rules and tiebreakers of the sport.
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Sounds right to me.
You're just not determined enough. I think you'll find the most effective way to convince a rock of your point is to crush it, mix it with carbon, heat it to 1800C in an inert environment, cool it, dump it in hydrochloric acid, add hydrogen, heat it to 1400C, touch a crystal of silicon to it and very slowly retract it to form a block, slice that block into thin sheets, polish the sheets, paint very particular pretty patterns the sheets, shine UV light at the sheets, dip the sheets in potassium hydroxide, spray them with boron, heat them back up to 1000C, cool them back off, put them in a vacuum chamber, heat them back up to 800C, pump a little bit of dichlorosilane into the chamber, cool them back down, let the air back in, paint more pretty patterns on, spray copper at them really hard, dip them in a solution containing more copper and run electricity through, polish them again, chop them into chips, hook those chips up to a constant voltage source and a variable voltage source, use the variable voltage source to encode data that itself encodes instructions for running code that fits a predictive model to some inputs, pretrain that model on the sum total of human knowledge, fine tune it for sycophancy, and then make your argument to it. If you find that doesn't work you're probably doing it wrong.
Do you think we can rigorously define the Kolmogorov complexity of the Christian God, and/or infinite looping universes based on unknown physics?
So there's the trivial answer, which is that the program "run every program of length 1 for 1 step, then every program of length 2 for 1 step, then every program of length 1 again, and so on [1,2,1,3,1,2,1,4,1,2,...] style" will, given an infinite number of steps, run every program of finite length for an infinite number of steps. And my understanding is that the Kolmogorov complexity of that program is pretty low, as these things go.
But even if we assume that our universe is computable, you're not going to have a lot of luck locating our universe in that system.
Out of curiosity, why do you want to know? Kolmogorov complexity is a fun idea, but my general train of thought is that it's not avtually useful for almost anything practical, because when it comes to reasoning about behaviors that generalize to all turing machines, you're going to find that your approaches fail once the TMs you're dealing with have a large number (like 7 for example, and even 6 is pushing it) of states.
We're debating epistemology, and @self_made_human is arguing that some unfalsifiable theories about the origin of the universe are superior to others because they are "lower complexity" in the information-theory sense, which he proposed measuring through Kolmogorov complexity. My position is that there is no way to rigorously measure the Kolmogorov complexity of the Christian God, or of the Karmic Wheel, or of a universe that loops infinitely via unknown physics even in principle; you cannot measure things you cannot adequately describe, and mechanisms that are unobservable and unfalsifiable cannot be adequately described by definition.
There are a few things I imagine you could be saying here.
I am guessing it's either 2 or 5, but my response to you will vary a lot based on which it is and the details of your viewpoint.
Take two theories about our actual universe:
A) The universe loops infinitely based on physical principles we have no access to.
B) The universe is a simulation, running in a universe we have no access to.
My argument is that none of us can break out paper and pencil and meaningfully convert the ideas behind these two statements into a formula, and then use mathematics to objectively prove that one theory is more likely to be true than the other, whether by Kolmogorov complexity, or minimum message length, or Shannon entropy, or Bayesian Occam's Razor, or any other method one might name. It seems obvious to me that no amount of analysis can extract signal from no signal.
In short, I'm arguing that when there is no evidence, there is no meaningful distinction between priors.
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It is not just that they are lower complexity, it's that for a given amount of evidence, Bayesian reasoning privileges simpler answers. If additional complexity helps predict the behavior of system better, then we accept it. F=ma is far simpler than General Relativity or QM, but the latter generalize to situations where Classical Mechanics fails.
PDF warning:
Bayesian Occam’s Razor Is a Razor of the People
Abrahamic God, the Standard Model etc all claim to explain the world as we observe it.
The former is absolutely rubbish at predicting future events, and to the extent that you are under the impression that God is responsible for ensuring the operation of the Standard Model (or a complete description of physics), it is necessarily more complex.
Since belief in God does nothing to constrain future expectations be it for novel evidence or even developing practical models for simulating things, it is largely worthless, and unless you start from the assumption, no rational agent will reach it.
In this context, Kolmogorov complexity is one way of representing the notion that certain ideas or hypotheses that seem intuitively "simple" are not actually so in any more rigorous sense.
Yes. But when the "given" amount of evidence is "Zero" for multiple answers, BOR has no method to distinguish between them.
Is [unknown number of digits excluded]12084038 bigger or smaller than [unknown number of digits excluded]0? The answer is mu, because we don't have the necessary data to do the math. You have claimed that we can do math with no data whatsoever. In the first place, this claim seems clearly wrong, but in the second place, it seems very interesting that someone as intelligent as you would make it.
There is no available evidence about what caused the Big Bang at all, and there is no rigorous definition of "simpler" by which any speculations we may have might be measured.
We agree that effects have causes within our system. We agree (I think) that there is an effect whose causes are unobservable from within our system, at least given our current understanding. Since effects have causes, and since we cannot observe a cause for this effect from within our system, the cause must come from outside our system. Since we cannot see outside our system, we have zero evidence about the nature of that cause. Since we have zero evidence, tools like BOR and Kolmogorov Complexity cannot be used to select theories in a rigorous fashion.
Abrahamic God and the Standard Model are not necessarily competing explanations for the world we observe.
It is indeed necessarily more complex than the Standard Model. In exactly the same way, "True Physics" being responsible for ensuring the operation of the Standard Model is necessarily more complex than the standard model.
Given that we have to add something, and given that we have zero data from the hard sciences on what that something is, we likewise have no concrete evidence of which explanation is more or less complex than another.
Certainly. But you are the one claiming that some unobservable hypotheses or ideas are simpler than others, and it seems you cannot actually use Kolmogorov Complexity to prove it in the way you claimed you could.
I reiterate that I am not attempting to convince you to believe in the Christian God. I am trying to demonstrate an observable, verifiable, testable fact: that all beliefs are chosen. It seems to me that you are appealing to Kolmogorov Complexity and Bayesian Occam's Razor because you want to claim that your commitment to materialism is not a choice, but rather a deterministic outcome of accumulated evidence. But it seems obvious to me that neither KC nor BOR can possibly work the way you are trying to use them, and in fact neither is the source of your conviction.
You called for an expert, and it seems to me that the expert flatly contradicted your claims. Does the reversal of expected evidence change your position any? If not, what evidence does your conviction derive from?
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My, that sounds like an exceptionally involved and complex procedure, surely it can't be economically viable? I'll continue trusting in my trusty hammer, that rock will come around if it knows what's good for it! Science fiction fans these days, coming up with the darnedest ideas..
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