Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
If Japanese are a separate species, how can I exist?
(For the record, I am half Japanese, half Scottish-American.)
(For the record, I am half Japanese, half Scottish-American.)
Reincarnation as a trivial scientific fact
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calebprime
Penultimate Amazing
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I seem to have forgotten how to PM, so here I say:
Just post in the aptly named "The Fun and Inclusive Music Theory Thread", or,
start your own thread!
Unlike the number of souls, there's no limit to the number of threads!
just stay out of the Another Boring thread--that's where I have dark night of the soul conversations with me, myself, calebprime, us, and Blobru.
zeusbheld
Critical Thinker
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looks like you were born without a soul. tough luck that.
Ateius
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I glanced over the OT; saw a lot of "-ists" and "-isms" and "-istics" with precious little evidence to accompany them and have from that point been perusing the thread for comedic value only.
However ...
But they hide the truth, because the NRO (New Roman Order) left agents behind to suppress the evidence ...
*cough* Back on topic ... I too would like to know about the fates of those of mixed ancestry. I know that I'm part Irish and part Scottish at least. What sort of soul do I get?
However ...
Actually, now that you mention it ... the Roman Empire was never overrun by barbarians after all! They all escaped into an alternate universe via a magical portal opened by the High Imperial Wizard Tomatojus, drawing on the mystical energies stolen from all over the Empire by their network of so-called "roads"! You think it's a coincidence these alleged "roads" are all so straight? Everybody knows straight lines conduct mystical energies better. Coincidence? I think not!
But they hide the truth, because the NRO (New Roman Order) left agents behind to suppress the evidence ...
I miss Zeus. There was a deity that knew how to have fun.quarky said:
*cough* Back on topic ... I too would like to know about the fates of those of mixed ancestry. I know that I'm part Irish and part Scottish at least. What sort of soul do I get?
six7s
veretic
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The definition of 'species' is irrelevant.
Let us deal with something more concrete: the number of great-grandparents of the total population of a country. Every person has exactly eight great-grandparents. In Japan we have now a population of 127.8 million. To them correspond 8 * 127.8 = 1022 million great-grandparents. Probably 98% or 99% of these 1022 million great-grandparents were also born in Japan. Therefore Japan can be considered a rather homogeneous sub-population of the human species.
Now let us do the same with the United States: To around 300 million people correspond 2.4 billion great-grandparents. I do not know, but I suppose that more than 50% of these great-grandparents were born outside the US, and maybe more than 25% in Europe. Thus, the US have a much less homogeneous population than Japan (in the sense of evolutionary relatedness).
And if apart from the reality of human souls, we also consider continuity as a basic principle of nature, then logical (statistical) reasoning is enough to conclude that under normal circumstances it is rather improbable that a 'typical Japanese soul' is born outside Japan or that a soul never having lived in Japan is born in Japan.
A quote from Psychons and their Evolution:
For a person to be born, what is required is a human soul which has evolved by reincarnation. Human souls are reborn with increased probability in a similar environment. This ENVIRONMENT CONTINUITY can easily be verified empirically (e.g. by examining persons with pronounced rare characteristics). A manifestation of this principle is that persons are often in contact with persons they have also been in contact with in former lives. Environment continuity is also valid for animal souls. It is essential when a species splits into subspecies. It stands to reason that environment continuity is valid not only for human and animal souls but for all psychons.
An example of speciation in the case of mammoth can be found in this post.
The species of primates which has led to humans is directly or indirectly responsible for the extinction of all other species having evolved further than chimpanzees. (The Psychon Theory)
If you deal with history, (ancient) literature, music, art, customs or similar of both cultures, you should analyze your reactions and associations. Or maybe you can revive memories from your childhood which help you to find out whether you were in the past a Japanese or a Western soul. I'd be interested in what you think about this approach.
Cheers, Wolfgang
zeusbheld
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i'm still around. i've just been demoted. massively demoted. people still blame me for their illegitimate children, though.
MattusMaximus
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Can't point to a reference right now but when you get to OT VII you learn that you are not just surrounded by Thetans, you are actually composed of them.
PS. I am prepared to find the reference if you insist but it will cost you $10,000 which I assure is much less than what the "church" will collect from you to acquire this insightful "knowledge".
No thanks - I'll just google it
Ateius
Thinker
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So ... um. We get a soul chosen from one of the several ... I dunno, "soul pools" that make up our ancestry? How is it determined which ancestral "pool" (or whatever term you'd like to apply) my soul is chosen from?
If I want a soul from a different ancestry, can I apply for an exchange?
Also: How were Chinese, Indian, French, etc. souls determined before there was a China, India, or France - or anyone living in those areas?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
In the past? Why is that relevant? Hokulele lives in the present. Her soul, presuming for a moment she was issued one at all, arrived where and when she did. Are you now telling us that souls do change nationality or ethnicity? That it's even possible for a Japanese soul to end up in Hawaii? If they do, you'd better man the pumps. Your theory is developing a nasty list.
MattusMaximus
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six7s
veretic
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Wolfgang, it is becoming increasingly apparent - thanks to your imprecise (ab)use of language - that you wouldn't recognise 'concrete' if you were buried up to your nostrils in it
Uhuh... so there's NO intrafamilial reproduction in Japan?
Waddaya mean 'therefore'?
Maybe Japan can be considered a "rather homogeneous sub-population of the human species", but such a claim isn't substantiated by your preceding waffle
No, let's not
As to do so would be a complete and utter waste of bandwidth
Please stop drawing conclusions from wildly inaccurate and (quite possibly) wrong assumptions
Instead, go back and address the many unanswered questions that your posts have raised
Otherwise, I will simply assume you are nothing other than a deluded troll
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As the human population expands past the limit of 7.5 billions souls (give or take a couple hundred million, it's trivial) we will see an explosion in the population of gingers, completely refuting all research and theory into heredity of such traits as hair colour and skin colour, and completely proving beyond a shred of a doubt the existence and impact of psychons. Be afraid for your children, if they have souls.
You know, I thought I heard an ambulance coming, but it was just my woo-alarm going off. These guys seem to be very good at convincing themselves of bizarre ideas to fit limited data, and relying upon their declared intelligence to back it up. Wolgang's style of argument reminds me of terence witt.
And for the record, i see a lot of people telling wolfgang to lay off the bong, pipe, weed in general. that crackpipe picture was more accurate.
As a long standing member of the Stoner creed, I reject any implication that he is one of us, or that weed had anything to do with his ideas. Attributing these kind of ideas to weed is giving that little plant far more credit than it deserves. This theory seems more like the result of lsd mixed with drano shots.....
You know, I thought I heard an ambulance coming, but it was just my woo-alarm going off. These guys seem to be very good at convincing themselves of bizarre ideas to fit limited data, and relying upon their declared intelligence to back it up. Wolgang's style of argument reminds me of terence witt.
And for the record, i see a lot of people telling wolfgang to lay off the bong, pipe, weed in general. that crackpipe picture was more accurate.
As a long standing member of the Stoner creed, I reject any implication that he is one of us, or that weed had anything to do with his ideas. Attributing these kind of ideas to weed is giving that little plant far more credit than it deserves. This theory seems more like the result of lsd mixed with drano shots.....
MattusMaximus
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Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
I am not sure what you mean by "deal with" those topics. I do not work in any of those in a professional sense, but I am interested in most of the above. It probably doesn't help that I am most interested in Polynesian culture and history at the moment, mostly due to where I live. I do not have any Polynesian ancestry.
I can't think of anything from my childhood that would support the notion of a soul at all. I have never been one to feel like I had a past life, I do not remember anything from before age 3, and although I was prone to making things up (mostly stories to entertain my younger brother), I had no problems distinguishing fantasy from reality.
To be honest, I don't think very highly of it at all, as you are assuming there is such a thing as a soul that can survive independent from a person. I disagree, as there has been no evidence to support such a concept that I have seen, and most of your presentations have been cherry-picking and hand-waving. Sorry.
Likewise!
Gravy
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Please re-think those calculations.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
So is it true what they say about New Yorkers, or should I just go **** myself?
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Nothing says "Loser" quite like that, does it?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Umm, duuuude! In case you did not quite get Gravy's point above: it may come as a shock to you, but my sister and I had the SAME SET OF GREAT GRANDPARENTS! Imagine that!
You cannot conclude from "not remembering anything from before age 3" that you were not the same experiencing subject you are today. In an analogous way, you cannot conclude from not remembering past lives that you did not existed as the same experiencing subject all over biological evolution.
I'm actually astonished to see how difficult it seems to be to correctly interpret what I've written. Isn't it obvious that in our discussion
To around 300 million people correspond 2.4 billion great-grandparents.
must be interpreted as
To around 300 million people correspond 2.4 billion not-necessarily-different-from-each-other great-grandparents.
Theses 2.4 billion great-grandparents are probably around 100 or 200 million different persons. What is relevant here are percentages of prevenance from the different countries/regions of the world. And the simplest way to do the calculation is the following: for every person in the United States it is determined from which region of prevenance their eight great-grandparents (most likely) come from. For all regions we get a number of great-grandparents, and the sum theses numbers is again 2.4 billion. Is this so complicated?
I introduced this reasoning only in order to show in a concrete way that from the point of view of parentage, Japan is a much more homogenous country than U.S. or European countries. Therefore Japan is an ideal case to test the predictions of demographic saturation. I'm sorry, but I cannot help those who are not able or willing to understand such reasonings.
Cheers, Wolfgang
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calebprime
Penultimate Amazing
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No it isn't. You have completely ignored the whole point of my question.
Once again, you keep talking about human souls and how a shortage of them results in reduced fertility. However, all your actual "analysis" talks about specific sub-groubs of humans, either genetically or geographically. How do you reconcile this? If it is human souls in general that matter, your focus on specifically the Japanese is irrelevant, since this will not say anything about humans in general. If it is the subgroup that matters, your talk about the total number of human souls is irrelevant. Which is it?
You don't. Sorry to break it to you.
zeusbheld
Critical Thinker
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Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
So what relationship does the number of great grandparental relationships, which you are counting, have to the unknown number of actual great grandparents, and the putative supply of souls? Why is the number relevant to anything at all?
I'm glad someone noticed!
QUOTE]
I'm sure everyone just thought it was a weed pipe from the lighter....
Ooh, snap.....nuthin quite so subtly burns me like that, does it?
Thank you. If you're revealing you smoke the dope to a group of skeptical, intelligent (people could be faking, i guess, but I'll err to the side of caution) people, the least you can do is word it properly.
credit where credit's due. That he ignored me was well done, although I did not post for his benefit. It's just hard not to be acerbic when people ignore what is most special about human consciousness: that we are, as far as I know, a continuously maintained complex of electrical connections. I feel people should forget trying to build some special theory to fit the planet's complexity, it's kinda insulting. The reality of what human consciousness is is far more interesting.
Oh Snap, indeed!
I think that's gotta be the best smackdown on this thread now.....
MattusMaximus
Intellectual Gladiator
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For the sake of the United States and the rest of the world I hope that Barack Obama is Abraham Lincoln's reincarnation and that he will become the next president.
No, souls are opposed to mass/energy. As an ordering principle, 'soul' is opposed to 'mass' in a similar way as 'form' is opposed to 'matter' in the philosophy of Aristotle. Whereas mass/energy is a continuous quantity, psychons are discrete entities representing information and subjective experience.
After death and before incarnation, souls do not actually but only potentially exist and therefore cannot be located in space. From Psychons and their Evolution:
If you switch on a torch, photons appear, but there are no photons in the torch in the way there are bullets in a gun. While the necessary energy exists 'actually' in the torch, the units capable of organizing energy quanta in the form of photons exist only 'potentially', before the torch is switched on. Such non-material units shall be called PSYCHONS. There is a continuity from primitive psychons, which are responsible for the behaviour of elementary particles, to human psychons (souls), which have evolved from primitive psychons over billions of years.
You may have missed my post #81.
The human species as a whole has a saturation value, which nowadays should be around 90%. Nevertheless the human species is not homogeneous with respect to demography, but consists of delimitable sub-populuations having their own saturation values. An ideal case of such a clearly definable sub-population of the human species is Japan. Because Japan constitutes a clearly delimitable population (low migration at present and in the past) and has become 100%-saturated a few years ago, the number of births and fertility can be predicted from the number of deaths.
If you actually want to understand (also in order to better oppose my arguments), then you should read the four paragraphs of the chapter Classification in subpopulations and evolutionary relatedness. Here the first paragraph and an annotation:
A main problem of demography in general consists in classifying the world population into useful subpopulations, normally countries, geographic regions or socio-economic groups, for which reasonable projections can be made. Brazil, for instance, is considered as a unit in the 2006 revision, with a fertility slowly converging to the assumed endpoint of demographic transition, namely the 1.85-fertility. Nevertheless, in 2000, Brazil's fertility ranged from 1.02 in the highest income-group of the south to 6.3 in the lowest income-group of the north (CENBRA, ‘Tabela 15’).
The mathematics of how the saturation values of subpopulations contribute to the saturation of the whole population is very simple. Let us assume a country with two clearly distinguishable subpopulations, one with 27 million and a saturation value of 90% and another with 15 million and a saturation of 30%. The current population obviously is 27+15 = 42 million. The first subpopulation, having exploited already 90% of its potential maximum (by definition 100%), can only grow from 27 to 27 * (100%/90%) = 30 million. The potential maximum of the smaller subpopulation is 15 * (100%/30%) = 50 million. Thus the potential maximum population of the two subpopulations taken together is 30 + 50 = 80 million. A current population of 42 million in the case of a potential maximum of 80 million results in a saturation of 42/80 = 52.5%.
Cheers, Wolfgang
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PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
One very simple question:
How do you distinguish between a population that has a declining growth rate because it's running out of souls, and a population that has a declining growth rate for any other reason?
How do you distinguish between a population that has a declining growth rate because it's running out of souls, and a population that has a declining growth rate for any other reason?
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The cornerstone of demographic saturation is not "a declining growth rate" but a growth resp. decline rate of zero after a population is saturated (see my post #96). And because "there is no obvious reason why families should adjust their behaviour to achieve long-term population replacement", the fact that the populations (corrected for migration) of many developed countries and regions have remained rather constant over years or decades instead of exponentially increasing or decreasing is not only astonishing from the viewpoint of standard demography but also very improbable.
Population constancy is paralleled by a fertilities ranging from far below one child per woman (in some the most developed regions of East Asia) to almost two children (the United States, several European countries).
Neither the decrease to extremely low fertility in East Asia nor the increase in the 'demographically most developed' countries has been predicted by standard demography. After the fact it is always possible to find some ad-hoc explanations for completely unexpected developments. The next ten years will refute the predictions made by standard demography even more blatantly than the last ten years already did.
Johannes Kepler was the one who replaced the epicycle edifice as an explanation of planetary motions by modern physical laws. Kepler's approach seemed at first so absurd to his contemporaries that even Galileo Galilei fought and ridiculed Kepler.
Somebody could have asked Kepler: "How do you distinguish between a planet's path that is close to an ellipse because it is following your laws, and a planet's path that is close to an ellipse for any other reason?"
Think about what Kepler could have answered.
Cheers, Wolfgang
wollery
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Demography is not an exact science, and it's very hard to predict trends in things that involve personal preferences. Add to that the fact that societies change, and it isn't hard to see that the predictions made by demographers aren't likely to be very accurate.
Kepler's laws don't offer a reason why the planets move in ellipses, just that they do. For the reason why they move in ellipses you have to wait until Newton comes on the scene, and he was born in the year Galileo died (1642), 12 years after Kepler died (1630).
You're comparing apples and oranges here.
Besides, Kepler's laws, and those of Newton, are based on sound scientific principles, and were gleaned from clearly observable data. They are the simplest explanations (look up Occam's razor) and require no undetectable outside agencies.
Your explanation for the changes in population growth may appear to be simple from a naive point of view, but they are equally well explained by changes in society (different changes in different societies) and your explanation requires an undetectable outside agency (psychons) which are not required by the more mundane explanations (again, look up Occam's razor).
Lastly, comparing yourself to one of the great scientists of history hardly helps your case. If your argument doesn't stand without such a comparison then it doesn't stand at all. Such comparisons smack of hubris, and the fact that you get the comparison wrong (on many levels) just serves to make it laughable.
Evidence?
Let's see:
UK - Population in 2001 - 58.7 million. Population in 2006 - 60.6 million.
US - Population in 1990 - 240m. Population in 2000 - 270m.
Germany - Population in 1991 - 80m. Population in 2003 - 82.3m.
Spain - 1990 - 38m. 2007 - 45m.
Switzerland - 1990 - 6.7m. 2004 - 7.4m.
Italy - 1991 - 56.8m. 2003 - 57.4m.
Sweden - 1991 - 8.6m. 2003 - 8.9m.
Denmark - 1992 - 5m. 2004 - 5.5m.
Norway - 1990 - 4m. 2000 - 4.5m.
Portugal - 1991 - 9.8m. 2001 - 10.4m.
Now personally, I would consider an increase of two million people in five years to be quite big. 30 million in 10 years looks even bigger. Of course, these are only figures for the last decade or two. If you look back further, your claim that they have remaind constant for decades starts looking even sillier. For example, the 1901 UK census says there were 32 million people in the UK at the time. A few decades later and we have nearly doubled that. Constant population my arse.
You invoke the continuous population increase of rich immigration countries in order to refute demographic saturation. In an analogous way one could attempt to refute universal gravitation by invoking the fact that bodies (i.e. a stone and a grain of sand) do not fall at the same speed. What we observe is normally the superposition of several forces or causes.
Apart from Japan, my best counterexpample is Europe as a whole:
Year______ 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
------------------------------------------------------------
Population _604 _634 _656 _676 _692 _706 _721 _728 _728 _728
Change____ ____ __30 __22 __20 __16 __14 __15 ___7 ___0 ___0
Population of Europe in million and corresponding population change
The effect of migration on direct-replacement fertility (2007):
The most important long-ranging factor confounding the demographic saturation model is migration. Economic immigrants, especially if they come from high-fertility countries tend to have higher fertility than non-migrants. But they affect fertility rates far less than natural increase rates. Because most economic migrants are young, their impact on absolute death figures in both the countries of origin and those of destination is small for many years. The children and grandchildren of migrants, however, are counted in the countries of destination, whereas they are missing in the countries of origin.
Ten years ago I had written in The Demographic Saturation Theory:
The population decrease which was predicted for some Euopean countries as Germany did not take place. Instead the populations of the respective countries increased because of migration.
In 1995, in the European Union the number of births surpassed the number of deaths by just under 300'000 and the population grew by just under 0.1% (without immigration). Despite this slight population increase the fertility rate was only 1.4 births per woman.
The population of the USA increases because of immigration and an excess of births over deaths. It increases at the expense of Latin American and East European populations. As the Latin American population is not yet saturated, the out-migration of a part of the population is not noticeable. But as the East European population is saturated, the out-migration (of physical persons and human souls) can be noticed by declining population figures.
In 1995, in the European Union the number of births surpassed the number of deaths by just under 300'000 and the population grew by just under 0.1% (without immigration). Despite this slight population increase the fertility rate was only 1.4 births per woman.
The population of the USA increases because of immigration and an excess of births over deaths. It increases at the expense of Latin American and East European populations. As the Latin American population is not yet saturated, the out-migration of a part of the population is not noticeable. But as the East European population is saturated, the out-migration (of physical persons and human souls) can be noticed by declining population figures.
The only real anomaly of my demographic theory I see is Germany with a regular natural increase below zero (i.e. more deaths than births) since the early 1970'ies despite not negligible immigration from high-fertility Turkey. The reason of this anomaly is very probably related to the second world war.
Cheers, Wolfgang
"Demography is not an exact science, and it's very hard to predict trends in things that involve personal preferences."
If you start with the premise that the demographic evolution of the last decades is well explained by "personal preferences", then you obviously conclude that the hypothesis of limited soul numbers is superfluous. However, even demographers complain about the many mutually inconsistent ad-hoc-hypotheses introduced after-the-fact.
"Kepler's laws don't offer a reason why the planets move in ellipses, just that they do."
The demographic saturation theory can be formulated without reference to either panpsychism or reincarnation, only as a model explaining and predicting with reasonable accuracy the process of demographic transition. Analogously, Kepler's laws offer a model explaining and predicting with reasonable accuracy the orbits of planets.
"For the reason why they move in ellipses you have to wait until Newton comes on the scene, and he was born in the year Galileo died (1642), 12 years after Kepler died (1630)."
Demographic saturation corresponds to Kepler's laws, whereas panpsychistic evolution explaining why demographic saturation occurs corresponds to classical gravitation theory.
By the way, Johannes Kepler (see also) had assumed that
- celestial matter is not fundamentally different from terrestrial matter;
- the physics of celestial motion is no different from that of terrestrial motion;
- momentum is conserved;
- weight arises from the mutual attraction between two bodies;
- the planetary orbits result from forces between the celestial bodies.
Whereas Galileo (1564-1642) only hesitantly adopted the epicycle-heliocentrism of Copernicus (1473-1543), Kepler (1571-1630) already at school was an enthusiastic apologist of heliocentrism. Why? The reason is simple: Kepler was Copernicus' reincarnation. (Galilei presumably was the reincarnation of Michelangelo who died three days after Galilei's birth at the age of 89. The next life of Galilei obviously was Newton).
"Besides, Kepler's laws, and those of Newton, are based on sound scientific principles, and were gleaned from clearly observable data."
You ignore the crucial point: not even Galilei was able or willing to admit that Kepler's laws are based on sound scientific principles and that they correspond to observable data. Galilei continued to advocate Copernicus' theory still based on the epicycles.
"They are the simplest explanations (look up Occam's razor) and require no undetectable outside agencies."
When Kepler tried to explain the tides by gravitation, he was ridiculed by Galilei and others, because they could not imagine that such undetectable outside agencies as attractive forces from the moon could move the waters of the oceans.
The effects of psychons are easily detectable, in the same way as the effects of universal gravitation are easily detectable. However, the validity of the psychon hypothesis can only be deduced from such detectable effects by logical reasoning, in the same way as the validity of universal gravitation can only be deduced from the empirical effects now attributed to gravitation.
"Lastly, comparing yourself to one of the great scientists of history hardly helps your case."
I think that your invokation of Occam's razor (the fewer hypotheses the better) as a pure lip service does not help your case. I only made the comparison in order to show the following: In the same way one needed Occam's razor in order to give preference to Kepler's model over the epicycle model, one needs Occam's razor in order to give preference to the demographic saturation model over the wild conglomerate of ad-hoc-hypotheses presented by standard demography in order to explain demographic transition.
"If your argument doesn't stand without such a comparison then it doesn't stand at all. Such comparisons smack of hubris, and the fact that you get the comparison wrong (on many levels) just serves to make it laughable."
If you still think that I've gotten the comparison wrong, you should be able to detail.
Cheers, Wolfgang
wollery
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In order to have a more productive discussion, avoid playing semantic games, and to attempt to learn how your theory came about, I decided to read your website in more detail. I have to be honest, given your lucid writing, and obvious knowledge of how to conduct research, I was was truly staggered by the complete misunderstanding you display of basic scientific principles and and your childish argument against abiogenesis (which you mistakenly conflate with evolution) by probability.
Your misunderstanding of entropy is so complete that you actually have it entirely backwards, as demonstrated by the example you give of a newly hatched chick and a raw egg. In this example you state "It also follows that a just hatched chick is less ordered than a raw egg, as at a constant surrounding temperature only processes can happen in the egg where entropy (disorder) increases." This is entirely wrong. A newly hatched chick is more ordered than a raw egg, since the egg requires an input of energy to form the chick, thus decreasing the entropy of the system. Entropy is actually best thought of not in terms of order or disorder, but in terms of energy states. An increase in entropy is one where the system tends towards the lowest energy state, which in the case of your ten litres of water and ten 10 litre containers is the one in which the water is evenly distributed amongst the containers (think about the gravitational potential of the whole ten litres of water, assuming the containers are all next to each other on level ground).
Your argument against abiogenesis relies on the comparison of the likelihood of rolling 100 dice and getting all 100 come up six to the chance of life getting started on Earth. Ignoring the fact that the start of life is Abiogenesis, not evolution, your argument is childish in its simplicity and its naivety. You say that to be certain of rolling 100 6s would take far more rolls than the number of attempts that would be made if one roll were made on every square metre of Earth since its surface cooled, and even larger than that for a billion planets each in a billion galaxies. This is true, but misses the point - it doesn't require enough throws for certainty, it just has to happen once, and why square metres not square mm, and why once per second not once per nanosecond, and why 100 dice not 50? The answer is, because if it were 50 dice then the number of rolls required would be less than the number of rolls in your example, and changing the units in your example would increase the number of possible throws. This is just a case of fiddling the maths to fit your conclusion.
You invent an a posteriori theory of "Final Laws of Nature" which bears no relation to anything even remotely scientific, citing an example of a gambler having more than his share of luck as evidence. There is no such thing as someone having more than his share of luck. Every person has just as much luck as they have, with there being no measurable average value. This example is a clear case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Your comparison of mechanical and living systems is thoroughly naive, ignoring huge swathes of research into biology, biomechanics, psychology & computer science.
The section on Spacial Extension of Elementary Particles also reveals a lack of understanding of particle physics. There are specific sizes for the fields of influence for any given particle which can be known a priori by the application of quantum mechanics and electromagnetism, and for larger bodies, by Newtonian or relativistic mechanics. Furthermore, QM places limits on the space into which particular particles can be squashed and still maintain their physical attributes. If the density is increased beyond this point the particles' natures change (I suggest you look up degenerate matter), and thus there is indeed a limit to the number of particles that may be pressed into a given volume, unless you aren't concerned with changing their nature. The wave/particle description of particles is widely accepted as merely a mathematical method of describing their properties. You then make a sudden and unwarranted leap to pair production/annihilation as due to Psychons, for which you present no evidence, but merely assert as a fact. In reality, pair production/annihilation can be explained by QM purely in terms of energy exchanges with no guiding necessary.
The equating of human consciousness with viral and bacterial action is, frankly, laughable, since the reactions of such forms of life are extremely predictable, and based on reaction to stimuli. The section on the nature of life is an exercise in wishful thinking and anthropomorphism of chemicals and particles, the actions of which are well understood in terms of purely mechanistic physics.
You then proceed to leap straight into the evolution of Psychons, offering no evidence for their existence, other than an analogy with photons, and a discussion of the human soul, again with no evidence of the existence of such a thing. You offer former lives as evidence for what you call environment continuity, taking it as read that such a phenomenon exists, again offering no evidence. You then state, "For genes or living beings, if they were not more than highly structured dead matter, it would make no sense to aspire to reproduction and at the same time to lose their identity because of evolutionary adaption and further development.". This sentence is simply wishful thinking, since the drive to reproduce can be explained in purely materialistic terms as a function of life. Any organism which lacks such a drive (or in which the drive is weak) will die out (as is the case for the Giant Panda, the low natural birthrate of which cannot be explained by your psychon theory), so only organisms with that drive will flourish, and in doing so will pass that drive on to the next generation. The rest of that section is just an exercise in wild speculation.
The next section, "The Human Soul" is yet another case of wishful thinking and speculation with no supportive evidence.
In the following section you attribute the formation of fullerenes to psychons, ignoring the rather obvious fact that if such entities did exist they would surely be able to form fullerenes under any conditions, but in reality they only form under specific, well understood conditions, with the physics of their formation being well understood. You also state that there is a limit on the space and resources available to psychons, despite having earlier asserted (erroneously) that there is no limit on the number of particles that may be squeezed into a given volume. Your assessment of the role of psychoanalysis is also severely flawed, apparently based on a misconception of the dynamics of the treatment. As for the rest, telepathy relies heavily on confirmation bias and is completely without evidence, and in fact stage magicians doing cold readings consistently get better results, hypnosis is a well understood psychological phenomenon, psychokinesis like telepathy is utterly without evidence, and spoon bending is a parlour trick.
Your "final devastating argument against reductionism" is about as devastating as a moist haddock. If the condensing of information into smaller encoded packets didn't work you would be unable to post your ramblings on the internet, since it is precisely this principle which allows information to be transmitted at acceptable rates.
In short, your entire argument is an argument from incredulity, full of wishful thinking, anthropomorphism and flights of fancy, and supported by misunderstandings, misconceptions and utterly erroneous science.
I am certain that none of what I have written will alter your conviction that you are right, but until you address the points I've made nobody with any scientific knowledge will do anything more than laugh at your ideas.
Your misunderstanding of entropy is so complete that you actually have it entirely backwards, as demonstrated by the example you give of a newly hatched chick and a raw egg. In this example you state "It also follows that a just hatched chick is less ordered than a raw egg, as at a constant surrounding temperature only processes can happen in the egg where entropy (disorder) increases." This is entirely wrong. A newly hatched chick is more ordered than a raw egg, since the egg requires an input of energy to form the chick, thus decreasing the entropy of the system. Entropy is actually best thought of not in terms of order or disorder, but in terms of energy states. An increase in entropy is one where the system tends towards the lowest energy state, which in the case of your ten litres of water and ten 10 litre containers is the one in which the water is evenly distributed amongst the containers (think about the gravitational potential of the whole ten litres of water, assuming the containers are all next to each other on level ground).
Your argument against abiogenesis relies on the comparison of the likelihood of rolling 100 dice and getting all 100 come up six to the chance of life getting started on Earth. Ignoring the fact that the start of life is Abiogenesis, not evolution, your argument is childish in its simplicity and its naivety. You say that to be certain of rolling 100 6s would take far more rolls than the number of attempts that would be made if one roll were made on every square metre of Earth since its surface cooled, and even larger than that for a billion planets each in a billion galaxies. This is true, but misses the point - it doesn't require enough throws for certainty, it just has to happen once, and why square metres not square mm, and why once per second not once per nanosecond, and why 100 dice not 50? The answer is, because if it were 50 dice then the number of rolls required would be less than the number of rolls in your example, and changing the units in your example would increase the number of possible throws. This is just a case of fiddling the maths to fit your conclusion.
You invent an a posteriori theory of "Final Laws of Nature" which bears no relation to anything even remotely scientific, citing an example of a gambler having more than his share of luck as evidence. There is no such thing as someone having more than his share of luck. Every person has just as much luck as they have, with there being no measurable average value. This example is a clear case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Your comparison of mechanical and living systems is thoroughly naive, ignoring huge swathes of research into biology, biomechanics, psychology & computer science.
The section on Spacial Extension of Elementary Particles also reveals a lack of understanding of particle physics. There are specific sizes for the fields of influence for any given particle which can be known a priori by the application of quantum mechanics and electromagnetism, and for larger bodies, by Newtonian or relativistic mechanics. Furthermore, QM places limits on the space into which particular particles can be squashed and still maintain their physical attributes. If the density is increased beyond this point the particles' natures change (I suggest you look up degenerate matter), and thus there is indeed a limit to the number of particles that may be pressed into a given volume, unless you aren't concerned with changing their nature. The wave/particle description of particles is widely accepted as merely a mathematical method of describing their properties. You then make a sudden and unwarranted leap to pair production/annihilation as due to Psychons, for which you present no evidence, but merely assert as a fact. In reality, pair production/annihilation can be explained by QM purely in terms of energy exchanges with no guiding necessary.
The equating of human consciousness with viral and bacterial action is, frankly, laughable, since the reactions of such forms of life are extremely predictable, and based on reaction to stimuli. The section on the nature of life is an exercise in wishful thinking and anthropomorphism of chemicals and particles, the actions of which are well understood in terms of purely mechanistic physics.
You then proceed to leap straight into the evolution of Psychons, offering no evidence for their existence, other than an analogy with photons, and a discussion of the human soul, again with no evidence of the existence of such a thing. You offer former lives as evidence for what you call environment continuity, taking it as read that such a phenomenon exists, again offering no evidence. You then state, "For genes or living beings, if they were not more than highly structured dead matter, it would make no sense to aspire to reproduction and at the same time to lose their identity because of evolutionary adaption and further development.". This sentence is simply wishful thinking, since the drive to reproduce can be explained in purely materialistic terms as a function of life. Any organism which lacks such a drive (or in which the drive is weak) will die out (as is the case for the Giant Panda, the low natural birthrate of which cannot be explained by your psychon theory), so only organisms with that drive will flourish, and in doing so will pass that drive on to the next generation. The rest of that section is just an exercise in wild speculation.
The next section, "The Human Soul" is yet another case of wishful thinking and speculation with no supportive evidence.
In the following section you attribute the formation of fullerenes to psychons, ignoring the rather obvious fact that if such entities did exist they would surely be able to form fullerenes under any conditions, but in reality they only form under specific, well understood conditions, with the physics of their formation being well understood. You also state that there is a limit on the space and resources available to psychons, despite having earlier asserted (erroneously) that there is no limit on the number of particles that may be squeezed into a given volume. Your assessment of the role of psychoanalysis is also severely flawed, apparently based on a misconception of the dynamics of the treatment. As for the rest, telepathy relies heavily on confirmation bias and is completely without evidence, and in fact stage magicians doing cold readings consistently get better results, hypnosis is a well understood psychological phenomenon, psychokinesis like telepathy is utterly without evidence, and spoon bending is a parlour trick.
Your "final devastating argument against reductionism" is about as devastating as a moist haddock. If the condensing of information into smaller encoded packets didn't work you would be unable to post your ramblings on the internet, since it is precisely this principle which allows information to be transmitted at acceptable rates.
In short, your entire argument is an argument from incredulity, full of wishful thinking, anthropomorphism and flights of fancy, and supported by misunderstandings, misconceptions and utterly erroneous science.
I am certain that none of what I have written will alter your conviction that you are right, but until you address the points I've made nobody with any scientific knowledge will do anything more than laugh at your ideas.
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You haven't found any logical inconsistency in my text, you only enumerated what must be wrong if your world view is essentially right. And it should be obvious that what you consider a "complete misunderstanding" of "basic scientific principles", I consider only a disagreement between panpsychism (acknowledging the reality of souls) and the prejudices of your materialist world view.
By the way, I'm a consequent, consistent evolutionist, not admitting such discontinuites as between abiogenesis and Darwinian evolution or between an evolution without any form of consciousness and a sudden appearence of consciousness (see also http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ebd48940eb2a79a6).
In cases where I do not believe in orthodox science (e.g. particle physics), you simply conclude that I lack understanding. And that you consider the short chapter Mechanical and Living Systems as "thoroughly naive" is quite revealing.
You write: "A newly hatched chick is more ordered than a raw egg, since the egg requires an input of energy to form the chick, thus decreasing the entropy of the system."
What kind of energy input? In a previous post I presented a more detailed variant of the paradox:
We can put the just fertilized egg together with enough atmosphere of the right temperature in a big enough box and consider the whole box as a closed system. The composition of the air in the box will change during the development of the chick, but to consider this change as a decrease in order seems quite absurd to me. Because the box with the just hatched chick is considered a state resulting only from blind downhill processes affecting previous higher-order states, we must conclude:
The box with the just hatched chick is less ordered than the box with the just fertilized egg.
The box with the just hatched chick is less ordered than the box with the just fertilized egg.
Why do you think that the low fertility of the Giant Panda cannot be explained by the psychon theory? The more these pandas are protected, the lower is their mortality and subsequently also their fertility. And that an increasing number of Giant Pandas in captivity leads to a decreasing number in the wild, is also an elegant consequence of the psychon theory. Because of the small population size of the Giant Panda one could perform a crucial experiment: killing all individuals being old or not 100% healthy in order to create a baby-boom.
In any case, if animals were essentially machines without souls, as you assume, then it should be possible to relevantly increase the population size of the Giant Panda, at least by artificial insemination or by cloning. According to reductionist materialism, apart from food and habitat, nothing hinders a species from exponential growth. In reality however, the population size of a species is limited by the number of corresponding souls.
Cheers, Wolfgang