Please. Tempt us further.

[elfs]

In Salon magazine this Sunday, Alan Lightman talks about where science cannot reach:

We cannot clearly show why the ending of a particular novel haunts us. We cannot prove under what conditions we would sacrifice our own life in order to save the life of our child. We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of "right" and "wrong." We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all.

To which I respond... "Please. Tempt us."

We may not be able to agree on a definition of right or wrong, but when it comes to why a certain novel "haunts" us, that's just (and I fully admit that's a huge, computationally and evidentially expensive and at present un-doable "just") figuring out how the coherent ideas in the novel impress themselves upon the structures of our brain in a way that causes the brain to re-emit them. When it comes to the conditions, let's just admit that fractally, the brain is pretty damned complex a little universe of its own, and discerning the starting points is a bit like the butterfly wings that cause hurricanes-- but nobody claims that the weatherman can't ever be right, or that both meteorolgy and climatology aren't sciences.

From this very second going forward, the number of things that might happen to you, and the number of ways you will react, are inherently large, and larger the further in time we project. They are not, however, infinite. They may be precisely intractable, but they're not probabilistically intractable. Any one of those timelines is valid. Some are more acceptable than others. Lightman looks back, like a puddle, and wonders at the marvelous coincidence that he fits his pothole, and somehow expects the coincidence to keep holding true.

A creationsists will sometimes (often) write, "Science cannot explain how humans evolved," and mean, "I cannot grasp just how deep our past is, or how complex our world, and so cannot imagine how we evolved." What Lightman writes "We cannot clearly show...", he is really writing, "I cannot imagine how we will explain..."

In both cases, transhumanists respond, "Imagine harder."

Comments

[omahas.livejournal.com]

A creationsists will sometimes (often) write, "Science cannot explain how humans evolved," and mean, "I cannot grasp just how deep our past is, or how complex our world, and so cannot imagine how we evolved." What Lightman writes "We cannot clearly show...", he is really writing, "I cannot imagine how we will explain..."

You are getting the words how and why confused. I can imagine that you can show how a brain would perceive an ending to a particular novel as haunting. But why is dependent on the individual. What you would consider haunting I might consider run-of-the-mill or boring. And I have seen people declare something as haunting or disturbing that you have stated is obvious.

"how" is usually a process or procedure that you can track.

"why" comes from a state of being that changes regularly and is influenced by the external and internal.

[tagryn]

While certainly "(t)here are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy," I'd also be careful of falling into the trap that there's nothing we can't comprehend, and no decision that can't be reduced to measurable metrics, as long as we just apply enough science to it.

His general point, that some things are not a valid tool to use science on, appears correct to me. I'd be terrified of a society that tried to replace what should be moral or philosophic decisions with quantifiable equations, and a lot of people who think that would be a neat idea often appear to me to be falling into the "I have a hammer, so everything must be a nail" fallacy.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Actually, on the second one, there's some good evidence from … aaaargh! I can't remember what it's called! Cognitive biology? Neuropsychology? &hellip for why & when we would sacrifice ourselves over someone else. I've heard more than a few episodes of "Radiolab" that touch on this area.

[Check out www.wnyc.org for more about "Radiolab".]