posted
Well, at least the Nephite thread might easily have been moderated out if the mod reached page six and didn't read page seven. On the other hand, I don't appear to have received a warning, unless Hotmail thought it was spam.
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posted
When this starts happening, I start refusing to post in any thread started by a thread deleter.
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posted
What irks me about the deletion of the Nephite thread was that there were a lot of thoughtful thoughts expressed.
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posted
So skillz, in continuation of that thread, how could someone have only part of absolute truth? What form would that take whereby it could still be considered absolutely true even when not taken in conjunction with all the other bits of universal truth.
The way I would see that situation would be akin to them having a model that was accurate on the things they knew about, but qualitatively incomplete because of the things that they didn't know about. To talk of knowing something absolutely would mean knowing it from all possible angles and interactions, which I think would pretty much mean having to know everything. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think you can have incomplete universal knowledge.
posted
The following LDS scripture in Abraham, chapter three got me thinking about what Beverly had said about God always having existed:
quote:19 And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.
If the universe contains any intelligent beings, and if one being is the most intelligent, then that being is our universe's most likely candidate for godhood.
If our universe contains an infinite number of intelligent beings, how intelligent would the most intelligent being be?
In order for that being to qualify as God on day one of the universe's existence, that being would have to have a perfect grasp of all that universe's laws and be in perfect compliance with those laws. Is our most-intelligent candidate for godhood intelligent enough?
If any universe contains an infinite number of variably intelligent beings, does it have a god by default?
posted
There's an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, but none of them are high on a scale from 0 to 100. Or maybe, there are an infinite amount of heights between 5' and 6', but ain't none of those people able to reach to the top of a 50' tree.
Also, is it actually a fair representation of the LDS view of God that God is quantitatively and not qualitatively different in intelligence than us? That seems like a very odd way to talk about a being who is supposedly omniscient. DO LDS see omniscience as being a matter of just accumulating enough facts and not of an incomprehensible different order and type of intelligence?
posted
Maybe God's intelligence is of a different type altogether from what we mortals think we are measuring in our IQ tests.
Supposedly, our intelligence quotient in this life doesn't change with age. But then isn't age factored into the calculation of IQ? And an older person is expected to be able to answer more difficult questions, even though his IQ remains the same. An infinitely old person would have to answer an infinitely difficult question to maintain the same IQ level.
And then there is the commonly-held notion among the LDS that they get all their memories back when they are resurrected, having a "bright recollection." Having access to everything you ever learned has got to contibute to your intelligence.
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quote:qualitatively incomplete because of the things that they didn't know about. To talk of knowing something absolutely would mean knowing it from all possible angles and interactions, which I think would pretty much mean having to know everything.
So you're saying that you don't really know anything until you know everything?
Then any particle of truth reinforces every other particle of truth?
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posted
There are different reasons why IQ tends towards stability, depending on whether we're talking about children or adults. Yes, IQ as it is generally used in children is an age relative measure. The Stanford-Binet scale calculates it by 100 * Mental Age / Chronological Age, so a 10 year old child who can do tasks judged to be average for a 13 year old would have an IQ of 130. However, The tests for adult IQ, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), are organized around testing for a general intelligence factor and, as such, focus on non-knowledge related material and response speed. If knowing more had a large affect on test score, this would mean that the test is invalid. The general factor for intelligence supposedly measured by the WAIS is a relatively fixed thing once we reach adulthood. Aptitude for specific tasks, on the other hand, should and generally does increase as one gets old and gains more knowledge and skills.
There are at least two neurological reasons why the getting your memories back (I'm assuming that we're keeping the same general body, but to be honest I'm not entirely sure about the LDS doctrine there.) wouldn't make you smarter. First, the bottleneck in human mental processing isn't generally storage (i.e. what memories you have), but rather retrieval -(i.e. accessing the correct information and keeping irrelevant information from interfering). Dumping a heap more information into a system like this without an accompanying increase in the capacity and sophistication of the retrieval system would actually tend to make you stupider, not more intelligent. Second, there is the phenomenom of long term potentiation. That is, many neurons have the property that each time they fire, it very slightly reduces the amount of stimulation that they need to fire again. Thus, frequently used pathways, over time, come to need less and less stimulation (up to a certain limit) to fire. A person can develop extremely difficult to break habits over the course of time.
quote:focus on non-knowledge related material and response speed
I don't think response speed is going to matter much to eternal beings. Take a couple of millenia to go out and experiment with each test answer; come back when you think you've got a perfect score; we'll still be here.
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quote:Then any particle of truth reinforces every other particle of truth?
That's definitely possible. I could see systems where that would ne the case.
However, I don't see it as the only option. It's possible (I'd say even likely) that absolute truth is a non-divisible entity, thus making the idea of "particles" of truth impossible. In this case, one couldn't achieve absolute truth by incremental learning, but instead only by a sort of total enlightenment where you go from not understanding to understanding everything in a simultaneous moment.
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On the IQ thing, I don't think you're gettign what I'm talking about. I think it's largely my fault as I've been imprecise when talking about intelligence. It seems to be getting used in two ways here. The one connected with IQ is general mental ability in regards to things like problem solving. Being superior in this type of intelligence would mean that someone had the capability of faster and more complex thinking than someone else. The other form is a somewhat more fuzzy description of I guess mental comprehension, which would include things like how much someone knows and how they can go about applying it. I was talking largely about the second type and you responded, I think, in kind with the IQ thing, but my reponse was intended to point out the IQ is actually a measure of the first type of intelligence.
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Oh, and I thought of another couple of related reasons why a human brain, or indeed any non-infinite storage device would be insufficient for absolute knowledge. They are both issues with capacity. First, even if the universal knowledge is not infinite (and that's pretty darn debateable), it's still so incredibly big as to be near-infinite. Certainly it is beyond the storage limits of the neuronal net constituted by the human brain. There would need to be a pathway representing each bit of information, meaning that you'd need either an infinite or near-infinite number of connections. Second, as absolute knowledge would involve meta-knowledge (i.e. not just knowing everything, but also knowing about knowing about everything), the sum of all knowledge must necessarily be infinite because the meta-ing of knowledge forms an infinite induction situation (i.e. knowledge leads to meta-knowledge which leads to meta-meta-knowledge which leads to meta-meta-meta-knowledge...and on to infinity).
Since corporality inplies non-infinite physical limits, this means that a physcial being cannot have absolute knowledge and it also means that, except in the case where they have reached the absolute limit to storage - which I imagine would mean the universe itself constitutes their "brain", no corporal being can be said to have the highest amount of possible knowledge, because for any state of knowledge k, there's always a higher achieveable state k+1.
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quote: Oh, and I thought of another couple of related reasons why a human brain, or indeed any non-infinite storage device would be insufficient for absolute knowledge.
Im not sure what you guys mean by absolute knowledge. By this do you mean all the physical properties of the universe?
If so, then wouldn't knowledge of the laws of the universe be sufficient? For example, one can calculate the gravitational force from any object on any other just by knowing the rule that dictates it. When I look at my physics professor, it seems to me that knowledge of every physical law is something quite capable of the human brain to know.
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posted
I think I lean more toward the fuzzy description of mental comprehension.
In the LDS faith we think of all truth being part of one great whole, as in the following BYU-Idaho lecture:
quote:The true disciple has a very expansive view of truth, seeing it as a great whole encompassing vast realms of knowledge. In academe we labor a great deal to divide knowledge into separate little compartments, instead of connecting truth into one great whole. Departmental and college boundaries too often serve to separate and divide truth rather than integrate and unify it. Unfortunately, we latter-day disciples too often fall prey to this divisive philosophy of man leaving us to argue over which academic discipline is most important or most true. We, of all people, should be looking beyond such taxonomical arguments and instead be unifying all truth into one great whole. Remember, "intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom receiveth wisdom; truth embraceth truth; virtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light (Doctrine and Covenants 88:40).
This would suggest that not only can we increase in knowledge and wisdom, but we can also increase in intelligence. Perhaps we're talking about the fuzzy definition of intelligence, but maybe we're also talking about improving the speed at which we can access information and derive solutions.
If the scripture quoted above is true, we may not need to know everything before we can know anything. All we need as a beginning is a particle of truth, wisdom, and intelligence, and then by process of accretion, we gain more. Perhaps this idea of truth and wisdom cleaving and embracing, is itself, a universal law. Given enough time, any intelligent being could eventually rise to godlike levels of knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence. The most intelligent being would just arrive at that level first.
Considering the idea of a huge, all-knowing brain encompassing the universe, and holding to the LDS belief that God has human form, that is, God's body has a location and bounds rather than filling the universe and being everywhere, we would have to consider either the possibility that God's knowledge bank resides outside his body, or God's knowledge bank consists of infinitely small particles inside his body. Maybe God embodies an infinite number of Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paired particles that allow him to instantaneously know the state of every other particle in the universe. Okay, that's silly.
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quote: Departmental and college boundaries too often serve to separate and divide truth rather than integrate and unify it.
You make this sound like a bad thing. How much progress do you think we would make if all college entailed was taking 4 years of gen ed courses? With every person specializing in their own field, the aggregate sum information is far more than it would be if we studied everything. And if you need insight into a subject you're not familiar with, you can just ask someone who has a degree in the matter.
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posted
Skillery, being able to move and comprehend in dimensions beyond three might add substantially to the "intelligence" of an otherwise 3 dimensional being. I have thought for some time that the "change" between mortal man and exalted man (God) may involve an opening of dimensional mobility/understanding.
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posted
kai, In the context of this discussion, I'm willing to take the Bible's description of "knowing everything" extrapolated from Matthew 10:29-30(among other places)
quote:Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
as acceptable.
That did gave me an interesting thought. Assuming a reasonably limited and thus knowable set of rules govern existence, one could have a sort of vector-based omniscience, whereby you wouldn't have to store any knowledge except for the seed for these rules because you could derive the true state of anything through applying these rules. The two big problems I see with this is that you'd need pretty much instantaneous processing ability (i.e. I don't think you could call it omniscience if it look the age of the universe to derive a piece of information about the universe) and by positing infallible, deterministic rules, you've contradicted free will.
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skill, But we're not talking about simply knowledge or wisdom or intelligence (whatever exactly we mean by that). We're talking about absolute knowledge. I've no problem with saying that these things call to each other, but I'm still not really sure it's accurate to treat absolute knowledge as merely something you acquire by picking it up bit by bit.
Certainly that is not true if it is infinite, as you can never reach infinity by counting. And again, can any piece of truth be considered universal outside of the context of knowing it from every perspective, or at the very least from one other universal truth? I really don't think so. So, even in the generous case, we've got (with a nod to bev) a chicken egg situation where the only way to achieve a piece of absolute truth is to already know a piece of absolute truth. Starting from a position of not knowing a particle of truth, we are prevented by this paradox from ever obtaining one.
quote:How much progress do you think we would make if all college entailed was taking 4 years of gen ed courses?
That's usually what the first four years of college is.
For my electronics degree I had to bring together general-level knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Throw in a foreign language, or biology or history or art background to set you apart from your peers. The specialization didn't come until I went to work. Now I'm a software engineer who programs Japanese robotic equipment. Some guys from my graduating class are in the pharmaceutical industry, some are in mining, some are in computer animation, some are into the electronic archiving of historical documents. If our lives were long enough we could all swap jobs and start over, given our general-level knowledge.
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posted
kai, In my opinion, the lack of cross-disciplinary studies and resources is one of the big problems facing American academia. Necessary perspectives are not being brought to bear on problem because there is a separation between the various specializations (and increasingly between subspecializations of the same area). The biggest problem in this is not there are things that people don't know (and could thus ask someone about) but that there is tons of illuminating stuff that people don't know are even out there.
A friend of mine once suggested that we should have people whose academic career was to be a generalist, a person who by concentrating on a bunch of different areas would become an invaluable resource between people working exclusively in these area. I still think that's a tremendous idea, although one unlikely to implemented given our current culture.
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quote: How much progress do you think we would make if all college entailed was taking 4 years of gen ed courses?
That's usually what the first four years of college is.
So if everyone is learning basically the same stuff, doesn't that discredit the validity of your previous quote?
quote: Departmental and college boundaries too often serve to separate and divide truth rather than integrate and unify it.
_
quote: The two big problems I see with this is that you'd need pretty much instantaneous processing ability (i.e. I don't think you could call it omniscience if it look the age of the universe to derive a piece of information about the universe) and by positing infallible, deterministic rules, you've contradicted free will.
Are you saying that there can't be a being that knows all of the rules that govern the universe? Because I wasn't trying to say that there was. I was just pointing out that at some time in the future we may know all of the rules, and then the scientists of that time will have my definition of absolute knowledge - they will be able to predict any physical phenomena.
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posted
I maintain that there are fortunes to be made, mining the Internet and bringing together seemingly unrelated information.
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posted
Perhaps the concept of a "veil of forgetfulness" gets around the paradox of not being able to know anything until we know everything.
Suppose that we each already have the connection to absolute truth but our mentor has masked the connection. Through our experiences in mortality we unmask certain views of absolute truth. Our mentor may leave other views blocked.
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posted
kai, My point was that there are two major problems with regarding knowing all the rules as beng equivilent to absolute knowledge. The first is that knowing the rules does not entail the ability to predict what will happen. There still remains the problem of applying these rules. The issue I brought up regarding this is that if it takes time to process the rules, then there isn't an absolute ability to predict things, because there will be things where the time before they are going to happen is less then the time it would take to calculate what is going to happen. You could get an answer, but the thing you were trying to predict would already have happened.
[theoretical math alert]And that's leaving aside the complexity issues with Non-deterministic polynomial (NP) problems. If it's true that P!=NP (which seems likely), then there are a class of problems that can't be solved in polynomial time by a deterministic (i.e. absolute predictive rules such as your proposing would make up the qualifications for absolute knowledge) machine. This would mean that you can't solve these problems through the application of rules and algorithms and thus knowing all the rules and such would be insufficient for absolute knowledge. (But that's still an if, and likely an unprovable assumption.)
Another thing I think you have missed in that knowing all the rules doesn't allow you to predict anything, except in a hypothetical sense. In order to predict things, you need to have base knowledge to work from. Knowing the laws of gravitation won't let me calculate a planet's orbit unless I know what it's orbiting around, how far away it is, how fast it is going, etc. This is not a negligable thing. In order to have absolute correct predictive ability, you need not only absolutely correct laws, but also an absolutely correct conception of the world. Right now, this is considered a theoretical impossibility as measurement changes the properties of the thing measured. By current thinking, the only way to have complete absolute knowledge is to have a non-interfering method of measuring, which is another theoretical impossibility.
My second objection was that if you assume that a set of deterministic laws would be sufficient for absolute predictability, you're asserting a completely deterministic universe (i.e. everything in it is completely determined). If this were true, then human beings would have to be completely deterministic and thus would have no free will. This could be true, but it obviously carries with it some pretty heavy philosophical implications. Do you actually believe that we have no free will?
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posted
skill, If we already had the same knowledge as our mentor, what would be the point of entering into this veil of ignorance? And what would even be the distinguishing marks between us? How would it be determined that this one is the mentor and the rest are to be set up for the great mind wipe?
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posted
Good question! According to LDS theology, there was something lacking between us and God. We may have had God-like knowledge before our mortal life, I don't know. But I imagine the difference was *wisdom* and *experience*. Also, LDS scripture teaches that at that time we were spirit only, with no physical body--but that God has a physical body. So we believe we came here 1) to receive a physical body, and 2) to be tested to see if we would choose good above evil in a mortal state. In my mind, I interpret that to mean: if we were worthy to be entrusted with God's power, that we would use it for good rather than evil. Perhaps reading between the lines, the possession of physical form is intrinsically linked with the power to act. We believe that it is better to have a mortal body than no body at all, but that it is better to have an exalted body than a mortal body.
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posted
bev, I'd include the "wisdom" and "experience" into the absolute knowledge thing. How do you see them as not being so?
I thought that, according to LDS theology, God's power came from his knowledge and is an intrinsic part of who he is. If this is so, what gives God either the position or the ability to do anything about this power in other people who would have the same knowledge? If it's wrong, how is this power gained? Is there some sort of supernatural investment procedure involved too? Can God decide to invest power into whomever he wants to?
What's the difference between a mortal body and an exalted one? I've heard the term used a couple of times, but I don't know how to fit it into our discussion here, especially with regards to the limits inherent in corporeal forms.
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quote:what would be the point of entering into this veil of ignorance
I guess at some point, between turning the free-will switch on and enveloping our souls with a physical matter body, that connection to absolute truth became potentially dangerous. We might have gone around walking on water, turning water to wine, raising the dead, and healing the sick. Before giving that kind of power (power over physical matter?), better make sure he can handle it.
posted
skill, That sounds to me like your putting limits on absolute knowledge. If our knowledge is absolute, we would know the consequences of these actions and could decide whether they would be advantegous. It seems to me like you are dividing off the scale we would use to determine whether an outcome would be advantegous from absolute knowledge. If so, aren't you making the difference between God and ourselves a matter of opinion? That is, the difference between us is that he thinks certain outcomes are good or bad and we disagree with this.
If this is the situation, how are we to decide things? It seems like the substantive difference between god and us is that he somehow has more power than us.
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As an aside, I'm treating this as a philosophical discussion although I realize that it's a religious one for other people. I'm not trying to attack your religion. I'm trying to follow out what I see as the consequences of the things we've been saying.
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quote:That is, the difference between us is that he thinks certain outcomes are good or bad and we disagree with this.
I think so. Only those who agree with God 100% are allowed to advance to his level. Look what happened to Lucifer and his followers when they disagreed with God's plans. And that disagreement took place before there was a veil of forgetfulness. So even with a supposedly full set of knowledge, and even with Lucifer being one of the most intelligent beings (Son of the Morning, etc.) there were still disagreements.
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posted
But then God's claim to legitimacy is based on his power, not on him being right or good or anything. At least as I can see it, you're saying that God is God because he won, not for any other reason.
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posted
Yep. And we'll never know any different as long as God has control over the "veil of forgetfulness." We have been told that at one point in our progression, before we forgot everything, that we either agreed with God's plan or we pretended to agree (Cain lied) (God knew he lied and let him have a body anyway) (Are there other such liars among us?). The idea of having a body of physical matter must have been pretty attractive for us to chose to forget everything and experience sickness and pain.
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posted
skillz, I keep waiting for you to disagree with me and you keep agreeing. That's terribly disconcerting, you know.
The main problem that I see with that argument is that the only source of information we have on this is God. It's a circular argument. How do we know that God isn't lying?
quote: I'd include the "wisdom" and "experience" into the absolute knowledge thing. How do you see them as not being so?
I think wisdom, experience, and knowledge are different things. I think that a person *can* possess wisdom without experience, but that it would be extremely rare. Knowledge != wisdom. Absolute knowledge (IMO !=wisdom.
There is the doctrine of Lucifer/Satan in LDS theology. We believe we all existed with God before we were born on this earth, and Lucifer was our brother, a child of God. We all had access to the same knowledge, but he chose to use that knowledge for evil. I believe that wisdom cannot lead to evil. Therefore, Lucifer had knowledge, but not wisdom.
We are here to gain wisdom from experience. We don't have to learn it, but God hopes we do. In fact, I think he would far rather we gain wisdom than knowledge, since (I believe) we will have Knowledge returned to us at or after our final judgement with God. He doesn't really care that much if we lack knowledge. But He cares greatly if we lack wisdom.
quote: I thought that, according to LDS theology, God's power came from his knowledge and is an intrinsic part of who he is.
God's glory comes from intelligence. According to the LDS lexicon, the word "intelligence" as it is used here is far more than just knowledge. It is knowledge + wisdom at the very least.
You are asking the question many have asked. Assuming God exists, how do we know we can trust Him? That is a leap of faith that is up to each individual person. Is it possible that God has deceived us all? I personally have made the leap of faith that He isn't lying. Part of that for me is how much everything in the gospel makes sense and the feelings that I have experienced in association with that.
It's like asking, how do you know your Mom loves you? Well, what can you do but look at the evidence and use your heart? You can't *really* know for sure that your Mom loves you.
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quote:23 If thou doest well, thou shalt be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and Satan desireth to have thee; and except thou shalt hearken unto my commandments, I will deliver thee up, and it shall be unto thee according to his desire. And thou shalt rule over him;
24 For from this time forth thou shalt be the father of his lies; thou shalt be called Perdition; for thou wast also before the world.
25 And it shall be said in time to come—That these abominations were had from Cain; for he rejected the greater counsel which was had from God; and this is a cursing which I will put upon thee, except thou repent.
I speculate that before we came to this Earth we had to make a covenant in order to get this body...
MrSquicky:
quote:I keep waiting for you to disagree with me and you keep agreeing.
You've obviously thought about this stuff at least as much as I have, and your posts so far show more intelligence than my own. I don't mind if I learn something.
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posted
...and Cain trumps Satan when it comes to being "the father of lies." At least Satan was honest about what he would do if given the chance: "let the glory be mine..."
I'm guessing that Cain had similar intentions.
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