I think the Buddha's Kalama Sutta, called his "charter of free inquiry" , is relevant here. The current Dalai Lama has said "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."
Problem is scientific laws couldn't even predict dark energy or dark matter which together make up 96% of the universe, so it might as well be that someone created it. Quantum predictions are just probabilistic, and could also be explained by particles making conscious choices. Back to the macro scale: events keep occurring that require far more energy than current models can supply. So scientific predictions, well maybe for a fraction of the 4% of the universe we can see. But huge gaping holes exist in scientific explanations and it is only an act of the purest faith to assume that there are scientific explanations for them.
Probability doesn't help when you predict a particular from your sampling of the universal, but the particular doesn't follow your prediction. Yet you still have faith in the law, despite it's failure to predict in a specific case. And you have faith in the law of noncontradiction, despite problems with inconsistency as Penrose, quoted in my post above, points out. Godel also points out that the axioms of math sacrifice completeness for consistency, so science (because it relies on math to express laws) loses expressivity. Science takes the consistency of nature on faith, assuming that all the problems that are observed empirically can be resolved eventually someday.
I don't know, it's taken on faith that conservation laws are obeyed because we can't measure everything, so we assume because some authority told us to. I'd say slashdot discussions are a great example of how conservation laws are celebrated based on the great authorities Noether and Kelvin and steps are taken (in peer review and grant funding and such) to preserve these faith-based laws as much as possible.
It took science a few decades to admit Mendel was right, too. Science has lots of authority problems. See Feynman in Cargo Cult Science, where he describes how researchers subsequent to Millikan found ways to fudge their more correct observations about the charge on an electron, because they wanted to agree with the great authority whose experiment they were replicating. Or Feynman's account of how an important finding about rats is ignored by science.
Atheism is a lack of a certain type of faith. To lack that type of faith, you have to have faith that there's a difference between your beliefs and that type of faith.
A drawing, by John Holbo, from his Reason and Persuasion Coursera MOOC, depicts what I'm trying to get at. It's gossip all the way down!
Yeah, accounting is faith in conservation of money, which is disproved by the empirical observation that the money supply increases.
As for the universe behaving predictably, science laws are probabilistic at best. So in the specific case of a photon being measured, you cannot predict which state it will collapse to: you can only say there's a probability. There is an inherent self-contradiction in quantum mechanics between Shroedinger's equation and the final measured state.
"quantum theory itself, quite apart from its need to be unified with general relativity theory, is basically self-inconsistent"
He goes on, at length (please see the pdf to read the strange characters in the quotation below, I started correcting them then realized it would take more time than I want to spend on this):
This inconsistency is a very fundamental one, and is in a clear sense completely obvious (the "elephant in the room"!) as we shall see. As remarked upon earlier, we take the evolution of a quantum system in isolation to be governed by the SchrÂodinger equationâ"or, in more general terms, unitary evolutionâ"and for which I use the symbol âoeUâ. But, as was remarked upon earlier, the reality of the world that we actually observe taking place about us tends not to be described directly by the solution Î of this equation that we get by this U-evolution, but when an observation or âoemeasurementâ is deemed to have taken place, Î is considered to âoejumpâ to just one member Î of a family of superposed alternative solutions
Î = α1Î1 + α2Î2 + . . . + αnÎn (1)
where the respective squared moduli of the complex-number weightings α1, α2, . . . , αn, supply the respective probabilities of each Îr being the result (the quantities Îr being assumed to be all normalized and mutually orthogonal). The âoeevolution processâ whereby Î is replaced by the particular Î that happens to come about is the reduction of the state (collapse of the wavefunction) and I denote this process by the letter âoeRâ.
Of course, there will be many such decompositions, for a given Î, depending on the choice of basis that is supposed to be determined by the choice of âoemeasuring deviceâ. Indeed, we must allow that this measuring device is also part of the entire system under consideration, and so should have a quantum state that becomes entangled with the quantum system under examination. Nevertheless there is still taken to be a âoejumpâ in the system as a whole as soon as the measurement is considered to have been made, where the different âoepointer statesâ of the device are entangled with the different possible Îrs that can result. It is obvious that this âoejumpingâ from the state of the system (consisting of both the measuring device and system under examination, together with the entire relevant surrounding environment), from before measurement to after measurement, is normally not even continuous, let alone a solution of the SchrÂodinger equation: so R blatantly violates U (in almost all circumstances).
The point is that the law we use to predict a particle's state is inconsistent with the observation of that state, when it occurs. The law is continuous, the observation is discrete.
"Their entire MO is based on faith in unproven/unprovable things and do not readily accept questioning of that faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence."
Science has faith in the scientific method, in the reproducibility of experiments. By definition, that faith cannot be challenged by science, because you would have to reproduce the evidence that is not reproducible. Thus science is based in faith. It's the problem of infinite regress. All logic and therefore science is circular.
The problem lies in the inexpressivity of math, not in the student. Division by zero happens naturally and it is math's problem if it can't deal with it. Natural language can deal with it, nature deals with it. Math fails to express nature adequately.
Example: water flows over an area of land and divides itself evenly: so 1 cubic meter of water / 1 square meter of flat land. Now the land erodes and becomes 0 square meters. The water doesn't have to resort to error-handling code, it knows what to do, it flows on. But math gets hung up at the point when the land disappears, your code throws an error, and you have to handle that. But nature doesn't throw any error, it handles division by zero naturally and seamlessly. Again, math fails to describe nature very well.
The question is fine. The answer should be, # of black pixels to no white pixels. That makes sense in natural language. Only math can't handle it, thus exemplifying math's inability to express real life situations that natural language handles without problem.
Math can't handle the question, so censor the question. But natural language permits the question. Thus, natural language is more expressive than math. (See Chomsky's Hierarchy of Languages.)
Math is not expressive enough to handle the real world, since division by zero can occur without causing a problem. Example: you want to divide apples among people. You have one apple and two people, each person gets half an apple. You have one apple and no people, no one gets the apple. In the real world there is no problem with this reasoning, it's only that math fails to handle it so you have to include extra code to make it come out. In a real life situation, you need no extra error-handling because there is no error. In conclusion, math fails to express the natural world.
A better way: let each user customize their own viewing experience. Don't make choices for others. Give each user the ability to use shadow bans, but only for their own client so you do not affect my ability to read posts you don't happen to like.
It sucks that slashdot lies to me, telling me it is displayng all posts, but I only see the subject line of posts modded to -1 and have to click on them (as I didthe parent post), which loads a new page containing only that thread. So then I have to click the back arrow to return to the rest of the posts.
Why can't slashdot let me see all the posts regardless of moderation, as it promises me in the settings?
There are technological solutions to this social problem. Filter speech at the client. Program smart filters that recognize those you consider undesirable; but let them express themselves. Banning, like antiobiotics, leads to super versions of that which you are trying to get rid of.
Fund a Basic income at zero cost, through the Fed. Indexation eliminates any potential inflation tax.
Businesses can decrease wages as much as they like, automate, outsource, etc. without worrying about harming the General Welfare. Why would unexpected, runaway inflation occur?
But as a hedge against potential price-gouging, index everything (incomes, savings, everything) to inflation so that purchasing power does not decrease.
Hold lots of challenges to stimulate individuals (on a basic income, or not) to innovate. Business can further reduce costs by crowdsourcing innovation. Again, why would inflation occur? Simply create the $6 trillion or so per year for a basic income.
Deficit spending is how the private sector thrives. Government can and should create money to provide for the General Welfare in the form of a Basic Income. You are still free not to opt in, and to conduct your finances as you see fit; but there is no reason to force everyone else to conform to your feudal economics.
Debt is a distraction. The country's had a debt since the very first administration, and conservatives have been predicting imminent doom and gloom every year. Except it hasn't happened, each generation's standard of living increases, grandkids are better off than their grandparents. Reagan proved deficits don't matter, after campaigning against Carter's $68 billion deficit then raising that by a factor of four.
The private sector thrives on debt and money creation. Government should too. If government spends money financed at zero cost through the Fed to improve the General Welfare, why would unexpected, runaway inflation occur? But as a hedge, index all incomes to inflation to eliminate any inflation tax. Indexation guarantees purchasing power does not decrease.
In conclusion, Rand Paul's economics are feudal, archaic. We can and should spend more on social services, such as a Basic Income.
Where did you get that "probably"? I suspect from a lower orifice. The private sector has advanced the art of money creation such that they create at least an order of magnitude more money than governments.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the Buddha's Kalama Sutta, called his "charter of free inquiry" , is relevant here. The current Dalai Lama has said "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."
Problem is scientific laws couldn't even predict dark energy or dark matter which together make up 96% of the universe, so it might as well be that someone created it. Quantum predictions are just probabilistic, and could also be explained by particles making conscious choices. Back to the macro scale: events keep occurring that require far more energy than current models can supply. So scientific predictions, well maybe for a fraction of the 4% of the universe we can see. But huge gaping holes exist in scientific explanations and it is only an act of the purest faith to assume that there are scientific explanations for them.
Probability doesn't help when you predict a particular from your sampling of the universal, but the particular doesn't follow your prediction. Yet you still have faith in the law, despite it's failure to predict in a specific case. And you have faith in the law of noncontradiction, despite problems with inconsistency as Penrose, quoted in my post above, points out. Godel also points out that the axioms of math sacrifice completeness for consistency, so science (because it relies on math to express laws) loses expressivity. Science takes the consistency of nature on faith, assuming that all the problems that are observed empirically can be resolved eventually someday.
I don't know, it's taken on faith that conservation laws are obeyed because we can't measure everything, so we assume because some authority told us to. I'd say slashdot discussions are a great example of how conservation laws are celebrated based on the great authorities Noether and Kelvin and steps are taken (in peer review and grant funding and such) to preserve these faith-based laws as much as possible.
It took science a few decades to admit Mendel was right, too. Science has lots of authority problems. See Feynman in Cargo Cult Science, where he describes how researchers subsequent to Millikan found ways to fudge their more correct observations about the charge on an electron, because they wanted to agree with the great authority whose experiment they were replicating. Or Feynman's account of how an important finding about rats is ignored by science.
Atheism is a lack of a certain type of faith. To lack that type of faith, you have to have faith that there's a difference between your beliefs and that type of faith.
A drawing, by John Holbo, from his Reason and Persuasion Coursera MOOC, depicts what I'm trying to get at. It's gossip all the way down!
Yeah, accounting is faith in conservation of money, which is disproved by the empirical observation that the money supply increases.
As for the universe behaving predictably, science laws are probabilistic at best. So in the specific case of a photon being measured, you cannot predict which state it will collapse to: you can only say there's a probability. There is an inherent self-contradiction in quantum mechanics between Shroedinger's equation and the final measured state.
See Penrose:
"quantum theory itself, quite apart from its need to be unified with general relativity theory, is basically self-inconsistent"
He goes on, at length (please see the pdf to read the strange characters in the quotation below, I started correcting them then realized it would take more time than I want to spend on this):
The point is that the law we use to predict a particle's state is inconsistent with the observation of that state, when it occurs. The law is continuous, the observation is discrete.
American Indians kept their population in balance with nature for thousands of years without any need for economic development.
"Their entire MO is based on faith in unproven/unprovable things and do not readily accept questioning of that faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence."
Science has faith in the scientific method, in the reproducibility of experiments. By definition, that faith cannot be challenged by science, because you would have to reproduce the evidence that is not reproducible. Thus science is based in faith. It's the problem of infinite regress. All logic and therefore science is circular.
The problem lies in the inexpressivity of math, not in the student. Division by zero happens naturally and it is math's problem if it can't deal with it. Natural language can deal with it, nature deals with it. Math fails to express nature adequately.
Example: water flows over an area of land and divides itself evenly: so 1 cubic meter of water / 1 square meter of flat land. Now the land erodes and becomes 0 square meters. The water doesn't have to resort to error-handling code, it knows what to do, it flows on. But math gets hung up at the point when the land disappears, your code throws an error, and you have to handle that. But nature doesn't throw any error, it handles division by zero naturally and seamlessly. Again, math fails to describe nature very well.
500 comments about how silly this question is? Maybe you've been trolled? Or maybe there's more to the question than you would like to admit?
The question is fine. The answer should be, # of black pixels to no white pixels. That makes sense in natural language. Only math can't handle it, thus exemplifying math's inability to express real life situations that natural language handles without problem.
Math can't handle the question, so censor the question. But natural language permits the question. Thus, natural language is more expressive than math. (See Chomsky's Hierarchy of Languages.)
Math is not expressive enough to handle the real world, since division by zero can occur without causing a problem. Example: you want to divide apples among people. You have one apple and two people, each person gets half an apple. You have one apple and no people, no one gets the apple. In the real world there is no problem with this reasoning, it's only that math fails to handle it so you have to include extra code to make it come out. In a real life situation, you need no extra error-handling because there is no error. In conclusion, math fails to express the natural world.
I agree with this comment.
Titles are now partially obscured by the comment count and the classification icons. Screenshot: http://snag.gy/ciB02.jpg
A better way: let each user customize their own viewing experience. Don't make choices for others. Give each user the ability to use shadow bans, but only for their own client so you do not affect my ability to read posts you don't happen to like.
It sucks that slashdot lies to me, telling me it is displayng all posts, but I only see the subject line of posts modded to -1 and have to click on them (as I didthe parent post), which loads a new page containing only that thread. So then I have to click the back arrow to return to the rest of the posts.
Why can't slashdot let me see all the posts regardless of moderation, as it promises me in the settings?
There are technological solutions to this social problem. Filter speech at the client. Program smart filters that recognize those you consider undesirable; but let them express themselves. Banning, like antiobiotics, leads to super versions of that which you are trying to get rid of.
Fund a Basic income at zero cost, through the Fed. Indexation eliminates any potential inflation tax.
Businesses can decrease wages as much as they like, automate, outsource, etc. without worrying about harming the General Welfare. Why would unexpected, runaway inflation occur?
But as a hedge against potential price-gouging, index everything (incomes, savings, everything) to inflation so that purchasing power does not decrease.
Hold lots of challenges to stimulate individuals (on a basic income, or not) to innovate. Business can further reduce costs by crowdsourcing innovation. Again, why would inflation occur? Simply create the $6 trillion or so per year for a basic income.
Deficit spending is how the private sector thrives. Government can and should create money to provide for the General Welfare in the form of a Basic Income. You are still free not to opt in, and to conduct your finances as you see fit; but there is no reason to force everyone else to conform to your feudal economics.
Debt is a distraction. The country's had a debt since the very first administration, and conservatives have been predicting imminent doom and gloom every year. Except it hasn't happened, each generation's standard of living increases, grandkids are better off than their grandparents. Reagan proved deficits don't matter, after campaigning against Carter's $68 billion deficit then raising that by a factor of four.
The private sector thrives on debt and money creation. Government should too. If government spends money financed at zero cost through the Fed to improve the General Welfare, why would unexpected, runaway inflation occur? But as a hedge, index all incomes to inflation to eliminate any inflation tax. Indexation guarantees purchasing power does not decrease.
In conclusion, Rand Paul's economics are feudal, archaic. We can and should spend more on social services, such as a Basic Income.
We need Sanders to use the same tactics to block any Republican cuts to Social Security.
Indeed. We have been trolled by attention-seeking astronomers.
Where did you get that "probably"? I suspect from a lower orifice. The private sector has advanced the art of money creation such that they create at least an order of magnitude more money than governments.