The deterministic universe is a theory as much as the big bang. We can’t prove it, but all of the evidence is there. Thinking in binary is me making a point about how our minds interact with the world. If you break down any interaction to its smallest parts, it becomes a simple yes/no, or on/off, we just process it much faster than we think about it in that sense.
From a truly scientific standpoint, we are machines built with organic matter. Our ones and zeros are the same as the machines we create, we just can’t deal with the fact that we aren’t as special as we like to think. We derive meaning from our individuality, and to lose that would mean that we aren’t individual. However, we are deterministic.
Would you have some scientific sources about the claim that we think in binary and that we are deterministic?
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
oce@jlai.lu 1 week ago
There are various independent reproducible measurements that give weight to the hot big bang theory as opposed to other cosmological theories. Are they any for the deterministic nature of humans?
Quantum physic is not deterministic, for example. While quantum decoherence explains why macro physical systems are deterministic, can we really say it couldn’t play a role in our neurons?
On a slightly different point, quantum bits are not binary, they can represent a continuous superposition of multiple states. Why would our mind be closer to binary computing rather than quantum computing?chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
We can argue these points all night if you like, but neither of us will get anywhere because we both hold different theories as true.
oce@jlai.lu 6 days ago
Even quantum computing, which operates on superposition, ultimately collapses to definite states when observed—the underlying physics differs, but the principle remains: given identical initial conditions, identical outcomes follow.
I think this is incorrect, it does collapse to definitive state when observed, but the value of the state is probabilistic. We make it deterministic by producing s large number of measurements and deciding on a test on the statistical distribution of all the measurement to get a final value. Maybe our brain also does a test on a statistic of probabilistic measurements, or maybe it doesn’t and depends directly on probabilistic measurements, or a combination of both.
we just lack perfect information about initial conditions.
We also lack fully proven equations or complete resolution of equations in fluid dynamics.
I think parsimony is very much based on personal opinion at this point of knowledge.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 week ago
All Turing-complete modes of computation are isomorphic so binary or not is irrelevant. Both silicon computers and human brains are Turing-complete, both can compute all computable functions (given enough time and scratch paper).
If non-determinism even exists in the real world (it clashes with cause and effect in a rather fundamental manner) then the architecture of brains, nay the life we know in general, actively works towards minimising its impact. Like, copying the genome has a quite high error rate at first, then error correction is applied which bring the error rate to practically zero, then randomness is introduced in strategic places, influenced by environmental factors. When the finch genome sees that an individual does not get enough food it throws dice at the beak shape, not mitochondrial DNA.
It’s actually quite obvious in AI models: The reason we can quantise them, essentially rounding every weight of the model to be able to run them with lower-precision maths so they run faster and with less memory, is because the architecture is ludicrously resistant to noise, and rounding every number is equivalent to adding noise from the perspective of the weights. It’s just very conveniently chosen noise.