So I’m watching a science fiction film called “The Lost Room.” I’m not for sure what it’s completely about because I’m in the process of watching it. Anyway. In the film there is a key that unlocks any door in the universe and transports you to any other door you want. If you had this key, what door would you want to come out of and why?

I guess since I’m asking the question I should also answer it. I think I would pop out of some stage door in the middle of a big Broadway performance. I’m not for sure why? I just think it’d be a funny situation, and of course an awkward one. …or perhaps some random bathroom stall…AWKWARD!

Here is an interview with Jim Carrey about the Number 23. He brings up an interesting Philosophy. Don't know if I agree, but I would like to know other people's comments.
http://movies.go.com/movie_trailers

time travel

we have been talking about ime travle aot and i not think that it possible at all, one reason that i belive this is that if people in the future made a time machine why have we never seen them come back yeah they would try to blend in but i do not htink that you can just blend in and if they come back they why has no one came back that we no of.

Another philosopher wondering if Minority Report makes sense...

Personal Identity

In the Gattaca presentation it was preposed that the two main characters initialy had seperate identities but through events formed a new identity that included both of them. I was thinking that the same kind of thing happens to people when they accept Christ and are filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has it own identity and the person has there own identity. When they are filled with the Spirit do they not form a new identity. Romans 5-9 leads me to think that this new identity is one identity but at the same time seperate minds. I say this because of the conflict within Paul in these chapters. The goal may be to make the two identities one.

What do you think? Is there a relation or am I of my rocker? Gattaca is a sweet movie!

Hell

There are many theories as to what hell is. There is the popular view of Hell as a fiery furnace in which flames lick the bodies of its inhabitants, demons constantly torture the ravaged bodies, and Satan sits on a throne like a king. There is also the viewpoint of the living Hell. In this view Hell is more of a state of mind or soul. One would be considered to be in Hell if they were living in a life of sin. The best example that helped me understand this point of view was addiction. The addicts sins are there one torment and cause them to feel distant from God. Then there is the view that Hell is nonexistance or complete nothingness.

What is Hell? What is its purpose?

Talking about time traveling brings up many questions and we touched only the tip of the ice burg of it. Such as, could it truly be possible to chang the past. I say no because what ever the reason you had in wanting to go to the past would not be able to be changed. Since that is the very reason why you build the time machine. Now lets say yougo back in to time, but not to try change anything instead you wished to experience a one of the eras, lets say Ancient Rome. You do this by finding a warp whole to that era as in the film Timeline (another fantastic film for those who haven't seen it). Would you change something by just being there or was that already suppose to happen? You accidently coming accross a warp whole and going back became the cause of events that occur later. Trick qustions come with Time traveling what are other people's views about traveling to the past? (Not even going to mention the problems of going to the future, that is another issue in another post)

This post is in relation to the movie, 12 Monkeys, which Amanda, Rachel, and I will explain tomorrow. The movie made me think about what causal determinism, predestination, and indeterminism meant in regards to time travel. Causal determinists would state that if I went back to say the day Hitler’s parents meant and prevented them from meeting, the world would be a much different place than it is today -- no Holocaust, possibly no WWII, no atomic bomb... However, the people that think predestination is correct would say that someone else probably would have taken Hitler's place, say Bob. The Holocaust, WWII, and the atomic bomb would still be written in our history books but in reference to the wretched man, Bob. Indeterminists would be more ambiguous with if's, and's, and but's, saying if Hitler's dad really wanted to meet his mom, then that's what would happen. Essentially, they'd say you couldn't predict what would happen.

We'll talk more about this tomorrow, but depending on your view, what does all this say about souls? For example, say you are a determinist and we stop Hitler and the Holocaust, then all those souls that were born because of WWII (soldiers meeting their wives abroad . . .) wouldn't have ever existed. Predestination still lets those souls still exist. Ah, time travel is a tricky thing, but it's interesting to think about all the questions if produces... Any thoughts?

In our class book Rowlands takes a cut at the people who claim that the business of quantum mechanics entering the discussion of causality as most likely getting something wrong with the theory and the transition into the determinism/causality issue. I'm not sure that is the case, being one who has studied exactly that stuff for about a year of my college career in Physical Chemistry and also Modern Physics. I'm no expert, but there are some ideas that seem to undermine determinism and the view that the universe is a big machine or clock (as some have speculated). Quantum Mechanics is the theory (theory is misleading here; it has been proven in experiments) that energy is quantized, that is, discrete. It cannot be separated into smaller parts to an infinitesimal size like a volume knob cuts a signal. It also operates under the fact that light behaves as particles sometimes and waves other times. If you've ever heard the word photon and had no idea, that is the small packets of quantized light that have momentum and have been isolated and tagged (as Randy said in class Monday).

I can't get into all the specifics, but this theory implies a bunch of things about the universe, one being that there is a definite limit to the knowledge that can be obtained about the universe. This is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states we can never know the position and momentum exactly about anything, we just have good approximations. I think this idea in itself cuts a considerable hole in a truly deterministic world where everything is reducible to cause and effect and the laws of physics, but as for making a case for free will, let me think a bit more on that one.

The following post is coming from the often mentioned Orson Scott Card novels, specifically the novel Xenocide. If you haven't read any of these novels, then you must forgo your homework and read them. For science fiction books they have a large amount of philosophy in them, so they would be acceptable as a replacement for homework... just kidding of course...hopefully the "Man" doesn't come and smite me now. Any way, so the section of the book I am going to...ah..."show" you, I guess, is a part in the book when Ender and Miro are having a discussion about how to save Jane from being shut down/killed, and that discussion leads into a discussion of free will. Ender talks about how the official philosophical answer is that that free will doesn't exist, only the illusion of it and explains some of the reasons why. Ender then describes what his sister, Valentine says about free will:

"Even if there is no free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, everytime somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him , because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time someone does something good, you can't honor him, because he was a puppet, too....we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us a volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they're being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists....its all a maade-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization."

This idea enfuriates Miro, and he argues with Ender about whether humans truly have free will. Then Ender gets into a theory of how we do have free will as a result of philotes, which would take to long to explain, especially if you have not read about philotes in the novels. So the question is, does Valentine's arguement sound reasonable to you?

When we were talking about immortality and had me thinking about a couple of different movies. One is Tuck Everlasting and the other is Highlander. The question is would we want to be immortal? If we had the choice to drink from a little pond and remain as we are till the end of time (as in Tuck Everlasting) would you take a drink? In Highlander it is all about not getting your head cut off but if you are still immortal how you would spend your time, what would you do? I see advantages and disadvantages to being immortal. First off the pressure of not having enough time to do everything and to see everything is gone. I would love to have that time to travel and learn anything I could ever want to know without worrying how much time I have. Initially we have 20 years to go to college do odds ends of things before we are almost required to settle down and with a family and what not. Since once you get to be like 45 and you are still not married or have kids (that is if you want kids) then there is great chance that you won’t. If you were immortal it would not matter. On the other hand everyone one else would be dying around you and you will still remain. Is that the only disadvantage? What would you guys do?

Sorry for the deluge of posts!

In my AI paper, I made the claim that Mr. Warwick's inevitable matrix (which he strongly supported freely allowing to happen) was not all that inevitable. He says that we should become part of a matrix because 1. If we do not, the machines will most likely take over, as in the film and 2. A matrix run by machines would be more morally respectful to the dying humans in its care.

His first point is alright, machines may in fact make some take-over move at some point in time, but I don't think his second point has much strength. Firstly, a moral society outside our matrix wouldn't have any bearing on our lives in the matrix, we would still keep people alive just to try to keep them alive the same that we do in the world today.. its just that they wouldn't actually be receiving that treatment. But if any sensory apparatus of theirs was still working, they would not feel as if they were just coasting to a stop in a womb-like structure, they'd feel like they were being kept alive by a machine, because they are in the matrix.

I just think that a more morally responsible society of machines doesn't have any significance unless some people were still out there to experience it.

Too many things going on to remember to blog...ugh. Blame building guitars for this one.

In thinking about the Prestige, the concept of the reality of magic really comes out.. seeing the little smashed bird really spells it out for us; I was intrigued by the small boy who understood exactly what happened each time the bird act was performed. This made me think of the inside/outside views of the magic show. To the magician, the trick is nothing more than growing small birds and figuring out how to reproduce one out of your sleeve, but to most of the people in the audience it is seemingly the same bird. Does the fact that these views are different make them conflicting, even though the audience has limited knowledge? The concept of truth comes in here as well.. can the truth be known from a limited knowledge standpoint, or is the truth that is taken to be truth from that standpoint just as valid as what actually happens? Confusing..

Returning to Data (yes, I am a treky). The line "...his strings have been cut" uttered by Commander Riker after he switches Data off has stuck with me for some reason. It's the idea of control dictating person-hood. Data cannot be a person because he was made by another person. In reality Data boils down to cleaver programming, he thinks because it was someone's will that he should. His creator put into him the capability of reason, will, and learning, yet we can end all that with a switch. But the question I think that needs to be asked here is whether the capability of turning that switch back on is the key. Our Creator has put into us the capabilities that Data has, and more. We can end it all by flipping a switch too, or pulling a trigger. Are we human because we cannot be turned back on? Or can we? People have died and have been resuscitated through modern medicine. So what was the point of Riker's switch flip?

A thought that I had while I was writing my paper on AI. We all like to think that Data is a person, I guess I can't speak for anyone else but for me, while Data was on trail, I was pulling for him. As I wrote my paper I thought of other AI. For those of you who have seen Voyager, what about the Doctor? And perhaps an even more important contrast, what about C-3PO? He acts similarly to Data, but at the end of the third movie he summarily has his memory wiped. So are the people of Star Wars biased about their droids? Robots are not people too in the Star Wars universe it seems.

I've noticed that a lot of comments and blogs believe that identity is defined by history. I believe similarly. Identity is created by our surroundings and how our surroundings perceive us. But what happens if our surroundings are changed along with the loss of memory? For example, in the movie "The Majestic" Jim Carrey's character develops amnesia and finds himself in an unknown town with unknown people who believe him to be another person. They begin to give him a history of another person, and Jim Carrey's character begins to take on this identity, until one minor object of his past appears in his future. I guess is what I'm asking is: if our surroundings are changed and our history and memories are lost, is it possible to lose your first identity and dawn a new one?

so I found this article while researching for my paper
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/hawkins.html
and besides flying in the face of my arguments against strong AI its a really interesting approach. Imagine the possibilities, you could in theory buy a baby AI and raise it much in the same way a human baby is raised. Perhaps if Schwarzenegger had a better home life he wouldn't have grown up to be a terminator.

I was reading about the Indian girls Kamala and Amala that were found living with a pack of wolves in 1920. Apparently there are quite a few cases of children who have been raised, for one reason or another, by wild animals. It seems as though most of these "feral children" are intelligence of are capable of acquiring it after being taken out of their wild lives. But while they are living in the wild, basically living as an animal, do they have any sense of identity? I would like to think that these children do have some idea of themseleves as an individual, but if they have had no contact with humans, or were do not remember it on account of infantile amnesia, would they know anything about personality? Basically my question is, is personal identity instilled in a person by nature, or is it something that humans acquire through interaction with other humans? I don't know.

Have you guys seen the movie Serenity? For those of you who haven't, there is a character in it who has been brainwashed, and now responds to certain cues with programmed behaviors. Does manipulation with memory, and mind control/programming/whatever you want to call it, affect personal identity? If the memory is tampered with, does the person change? Soap operas kind of like us to believe that. What do you guys think?

how do people look at God these days i think poeple that say they belive in God sometimes look at Him as if He is a si-fi character and that He is just out there doing nothing, there are many veiws oon God but i do not think a sci-fi veiw should be one of them what do you think

what would we do if we found out ther4e was aliens would we accept them like we should or out of fear attack them. i think that they way we ae we would start a war because human like to fight which brings up my next question why do humans like to fight so much we fight about everything

i have problem with the fact that people have so many things replaced with metal like knees and stuff but i have the question how far will go, will we all be syborgs some day will we even have any thing that is are own we we live forever which i do not think would be good and then other things might start to go like plesure what do you think