When I first read the headline I thought the physicist was offering a computational model alternative to the Turing Machine. It sounds like he's offering a new type of computer, not computing.
To claim there is no god or supreme power in the universe requires just as much faith as claiming there is one God who gave you a book of rules.
Both beliefs require faith. Hell, all beliefs that are not the result of strict logic (given set of assumptions X, the set of conclusions Y must also be true) require an element of faith. The former belief can only be considered in the realm of "religion" and "myth" by seriously perverting the common definitions of those words.
To even entertain the notion of a god, "supreme power", or whatever you want to call it takes way more faith than not bothering with it in the first place.
Yeah no. Not sure if this applies to software testing (although some cases can be so unpredictable that you might as well refer to them as random), but the results of some quantum events are indeed random. Even with perfect knowledge of all variables from some moment in the past, some future events are impossible to predict. There are no hidden variables.
To defend Mathematics a bit, it does tend to advance much more quickly than Physics since it isn't hampered by the restrictions of the real world.
Just think of General Relativity and non-Euclidean Geometry. Often times when a new scientific concept is created/discovered and a model is required to flesh it out, all you need to do is look around existing mathematics and, oh look, there's an app for that.
Mathematics cannot be the language of the universe as the vast majority of the universe does not communicate any ideas. The parts of it that do is an insignificant, tiny portion that includes us and whatever other self-aware/reasoning beings that may be out there.
What mathematics is are a set of insanely great tools that we use to create models helping us to describe the universe. One thing we've learned from math is that self-referential systems tend to have issues that can crop up in spots. And it's hard to get more self-referential than a subset of the universe trying to understand the whole thing.
Saying that mathematics is sufficient to describe the real world, no matter how successful it has been at it so far, is awfully presumptuous.
Quantum Theory sure did appear to be wacky at the time by many, but since it was always based on testable predictions for which to understand nature it was at no point considered metaphysical or supernatural.
Maybe the closest things in science right now to metaphysics are the multiple interpretations if quantum mechanics. These are more frameworks to try and visualize how it works behind the scenes for lack of anything better. But I think most physicists take the "shut up and calculate" perspective instead of considering such things too much.
I never said, nor do I believe, that we know everything. Most of the claims I hear that the phenomenon can't be empirically measured comes more from believers in the para-sciences when one of their beliefs is put into doubt from a scientific investigation.
When you're saying something is "supernatural" you're saying it's beyond nature and beyond our understanding. But if that's the case then there's nothing really we can test, is there? And when you can find some claim you can test empirically then you're saying that it is both physical and can be understood as a natural phenomenon. And if it doesn't pan out the way you want, you have to learn to respect the results.
This para-scientific crap has been tested and re-tested for a long long time, and we still see nothing more than can be explained by wishful thinking and the usual statistical blips you'd always see from a set of data.
The real world is way too cool to abandon what is for we hope to be. Time to stop wasting our time with this pointless shit.
Heck, you could do parapsychology research today and, as long as it's properly conducted, it would be science.
No, it really wouldn't. Science only concerns itself with non-supernatural/non-metaphysical claims, and there's a reason for that. If you're willing to entertain anything more than that then you're dealing with quasi-claims for which no amount of evidence can be used to substantiate or disprove them.
I think so. Just to pick nits, though, I think much of the argument made by the strong agnostic is arrived at a priori, so evidence isn't really the point. They might be right or they might be wrong, bit it's a little unfair to say that it's entirely faith-based.
I guess the point I'm trying to make (and apologies if you touched on this already) is that with the exception of things established by strict logic (ie, given the following set of assumptions, the following conclusion must hold) all beliefs contain within them an element of faith. Some just require more than others.
Atheists would say "There is no God" and as this is a definitive claim, there must be a proof for it to be considered a true fact.
Wrong. For someone to be an atheist they only have to say "I do not believe God exists", just as the theist states "I believe God exists."
It's a bit much to demand that people prove the veracity of their beliefs. Justify them maybe, but not a full proof. Even the commonly held definition of the agnostic who chooses neither to believe or disbelieve because of insufficient evidence has to justify their stance. For all the infinite claims that are possible, must one really withold believe or disbelieve when there isn't a full proof? And if not, why is there a special dispensation made toward God?
The Merriam-Webster definition you're using (like many dictionary definitions of involved philosophical topics) is cursory and misleading. Anything that covers the subject in any depth will tell you that agnosticism involves what a person can know, and atheism what they believe (or not believe, as the case may be).
Agnosticism just says that the existence or non-existence of any god or gods is unknowable. An atheist simply doesn't believe that any gods exist. So, in fact, both an atheist and a theist can also be an agnostic. An agnostic atheist just takes the attitude that no amount of evidence can be used to support the existence of any gods, so it is pointless to believe that they do. An agnostic theist says that although there is no evidence for the existence of any gods, they choose to believe by faith.
The question to ask is which of the following two have more "faith": the atheist who sees no evidence in god and so does not believe in it, or the theist who also sees no evidence and does. I'd argue that one takes much more than the other.
You've allowed yourself to get hung up on the difference between whether they "lack belief" or "believe in the lack", but you'll note that I never addressed that in my previous comment, because regardless of which it is, there is still the fact that, as both you and I pointed out, atheists believe that the evidence is sufficient...which is founded on nothing but faith.
I don't think that's what is being claimed at all. The distinction between "lack belief" and "belief in the lack" is important.
It seems you are assuming that in order for someone to be an atheist they believe they have enough evidence to disprove the existence of gods. But the GP is saying that it is not necessary to be an atheist and believe that he has proof that no gods exist, only to believe that there is insufficient proof that any gods exist. There's a difference.
Why are you assuming that the burden of proof is on the person without theistic beliefs?
That's just it though. Does every elected official have to be dedicated to one or the other extreme? Can't anyone be more invested in finding what makes sense rather than blindly following some ideology?
Making sure someone is constantly busy in any intellectual field is a sure-fire way to kill any hope of creativity. The best ideas often come from moments when you can just clear your head completely or just play around with ideas on your own without worrying about your productivity. Modern society seems to have forgotten this.
Well sure, but then you'd also do away with any existing protections from disproportionate power of the wealthy and corporations. So you'd be trading something out of a George Orwell novel to the modern equivalent of a work by Charles Dickens.
Just two years earlier, Moore had retired from his wood-furniture-finishing business. A lifelong surfer, his hair still ungrayed, he'd built himself a boat and settled into what he planned to be a stimulating young retirement. Raised by a sailing father and certified as a captain by the U.S. Coast Guard, he started a volunteer marine environmental monitoring group. After his hellish mid-Pacific encounter with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, his group ballooned into what is now the Algita Marine Research Foundation, devoted to confronting the flotsam of a half century, since 90 percent of the junk he was seeing was plastic.
What stunned Charles Moore most was learning where it came from. In 1975, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences had estimated that all oceangoing vessels together dumped 8 million pounds of plastic annually. More recent research showed the world's merchant fleet alone shamelessly tossing around 639,000 plastic containers every day. But littering by all the commercial ships and navies, Moore discovered, amounted to mere polymer crumbs in the ocean compared to what was pouring from the shore.
The real reason that the world's landfills weren't overflowing with plastic, he found, was because most of it ends up in an ocean-fill. After a few years of sampling the North Pacific gyre, Moore concluded that 80 percent of mid-ocean flotsam had originally been discarded on land. It had blown off garbage trucks or out of landfills, spilled from railroad shipping containers and washed down storm drains, sailed down rivers or wafted on the wind, and found its way to this widening gyre.
I remember this was covered in the book The World Without Us. If I recall correctly it's not wishful thinking that organisms will evolve that can digest plastics but likely. The lignin that lifeforms were eventually able to digest are actually more complex than our plastics.
One would hope that when that happens the byproducts that are released aren't too toxic to whatever other living things are still around.
Slightly off topic, but I really don't see why convection is classified as being in the same category as conduction and radiation. The latter two are fundamental methods in which heat can be transferred while convection is essentially a specialized form of conduction.
Regardless of whether it is sensible or not, you are behaving in a manner contrary to the rules of the road as well as the expectations of everyone else you share the road with.
If the "pause" or going through a red light is done the right way, and nobody is close enough so that me not coming to a complete stop requires anyone to change what they're doing then it's irrelevant. The only people who get angry at such things are busy-bodies who should find more important things to worry about. (Breaking traffic laws is much more dangerous for everyone when cars do it, so it doesn't apply to them).
As a cyclist I'm almost certain you don't come to a full stop at a stop sign you're going to turn right at, un-clip, wait, re-clip and start pedaling again. The countless tail-gaters I see when I'm driving my car are far more deserving of your sanctimonious ire and anyone else who likes to bitch about sensible cycling that doesn't follow the law to a T . For cyclists the ones who tick people off are the ones doing flagrantly dangerous things like zipping right through red lights or ignoring stop signs outright.
Well when I'm out cycling I make a point of pausing at those things. (Unless I'm turning right and am on a nice wide shoulder).
And "pause" is most fitting for the situation, imo. Dead stops at stop signs are only necessary when you're going through a potentially busy intersection or you need to wait for other cars at an all-way stop.
I'll stop at red lights (again except when turning right). But when I know the coast is clear I'm not waiting for it to turn green to start going again. You could potentially wait a long time if sensors are looking for other cars.
Not sure if this is the legal way to do things, but it makes sense so fuck 'em.
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When I first read the headline I thought the physicist was offering a computational model alternative to the Turing Machine. It sounds like he's offering a new type of computer, not computing.
So what would be the budget for creating a medium-sized star?
Both beliefs require faith. Hell, all beliefs that are not the result of strict logic (given set of assumptions X, the set of conclusions Y must also be true) require an element of faith. The former belief can only be considered in the realm of "religion" and "myth" by seriously perverting the common definitions of those words.
To even entertain the notion of a god, "supreme power", or whatever you want to call it takes way more faith than not bothering with it in the first place.
How Windows 3.1 can be considered "good" in any sense of the word is beyond me.
True. I've heard of this position referred to as "Apatheism".
Yeah no. Not sure if this applies to software testing (although some cases can be so unpredictable that you might as well refer to them as random), but the results of some quantum events are indeed random. Even with perfect knowledge of all variables from some moment in the past, some future events are impossible to predict. There are no hidden variables.
To defend Mathematics a bit, it does tend to advance much more quickly than Physics since it isn't hampered by the restrictions of the real world.
Just think of General Relativity and non-Euclidean Geometry. Often times when a new scientific concept is created/discovered and a model is required to flesh it out, all you need to do is look around existing mathematics and, oh look, there's an app for that.
Not so fast. Those Nazis took much of their innovations from an American.
Mathematics cannot be the language of the universe as the vast majority of the universe does not communicate any ideas. The parts of it that do is an insignificant, tiny portion that includes us and whatever other self-aware/reasoning beings that may be out there.
What mathematics is are a set of insanely great tools that we use to create models helping us to describe the universe. One thing we've learned from math is that self-referential systems tend to have issues that can crop up in spots. And it's hard to get more self-referential than a subset of the universe trying to understand the whole thing.
Saying that mathematics is sufficient to describe the real world, no matter how successful it has been at it so far, is awfully presumptuous.
That sentence is so self-referential it nearly made my head explode.
Quantum Theory sure did appear to be wacky at the time by many, but since it was always based on testable predictions for which to understand nature it was at no point considered metaphysical or supernatural.
Maybe the closest things in science right now to metaphysics are the multiple interpretations if quantum mechanics. These are more frameworks to try and visualize how it works behind the scenes for lack of anything better. But I think most physicists take the "shut up and calculate" perspective instead of considering such things too much.
I never said, nor do I believe, that we know everything. Most of the claims I hear that the phenomenon can't be empirically measured comes more from believers in the para-sciences when one of their beliefs is put into doubt from a scientific investigation.
When you're saying something is "supernatural" you're saying it's beyond nature and beyond our understanding. But if that's the case then there's nothing really we can test, is there? And when you can find some claim you can test empirically then you're saying that it is both physical and can be understood as a natural phenomenon. And if it doesn't pan out the way you want, you have to learn to respect the results.
This para-scientific crap has been tested and re-tested for a long long time, and we still see nothing more than can be explained by wishful thinking and the usual statistical blips you'd always see from a set of data.
The real world is way too cool to abandon what is for we hope to be. Time to stop wasting our time with this pointless shit.
No, it really wouldn't. Science only concerns itself with non-supernatural/non-metaphysical claims, and there's a reason for that. If you're willing to entertain anything more than that then you're dealing with quasi-claims for which no amount of evidence can be used to substantiate or disprove them.
I think so. Just to pick nits, though, I think much of the argument made by the strong agnostic is arrived at a priori, so evidence isn't really the point. They might be right or they might be wrong, bit it's a little unfair to say that it's entirely faith-based.
I guess the point I'm trying to make (and apologies if you touched on this already) is that with the exception of things established by strict logic (ie, given the following set of assumptions, the following conclusion must hold) all beliefs contain within them an element of faith. Some just require more than others.
Wrong. For someone to be an atheist they only have to say "I do not believe God exists", just as the theist states "I believe God exists."
It's a bit much to demand that people prove the veracity of their beliefs. Justify them maybe, but not a full proof. Even the commonly held definition of the agnostic who chooses neither to believe or disbelieve because of insufficient evidence has to justify their stance. For all the infinite claims that are possible, must one really withold believe or disbelieve when there isn't a full proof? And if not, why is there a special dispensation made toward God?
The Merriam-Webster definition you're using (like many dictionary definitions of involved philosophical topics) is cursory and misleading. Anything that covers the subject in any depth will tell you that agnosticism involves what a person can know, and atheism what they believe (or not believe, as the case may be).
Agnosticism just says that the existence or non-existence of any god or gods is unknowable. An atheist simply doesn't believe that any gods exist. So, in fact, both an atheist and a theist can also be an agnostic. An agnostic atheist just takes the attitude that no amount of evidence can be used to support the existence of any gods, so it is pointless to believe that they do. An agnostic theist says that although there is no evidence for the existence of any gods, they choose to believe by faith.
The question to ask is which of the following two have more "faith": the atheist who sees no evidence in god and so does not believe in it, or the theist who also sees no evidence and does. I'd argue that one takes much more than the other.
I don't think that's what is being claimed at all. The distinction between "lack belief" and "belief in the lack" is important.
It seems you are assuming that in order for someone to be an atheist they believe they have enough evidence to disprove the existence of gods. But the GP is saying that it is not necessary to be an atheist and believe that he has proof that no gods exist, only to believe that there is insufficient proof that any gods exist. There's a difference.
Why are you assuming that the burden of proof is on the person without theistic beliefs?
That's just it though. Does every elected official have to be dedicated to one or the other extreme? Can't anyone be more invested in finding what makes sense rather than blindly following some ideology?
Making sure someone is constantly busy in any intellectual field is a sure-fire way to kill any hope of creativity. The best ideas often come from moments when you can just clear your head completely or just play around with ideas on your own without worrying about your productivity. Modern society seems to have forgotten this.
Well sure, but then you'd also do away with any existing protections from disproportionate power of the wealthy and corporations. So you'd be trading something out of a George Orwell novel to the modern equivalent of a work by Charles Dickens.
There has to be a middle ground
I remember this was covered in the book The World Without Us. If I recall correctly it's not wishful thinking that organisms will evolve that can digest plastics but likely. The lignin that lifeforms were eventually able to digest are actually more complex than our plastics.
One would hope that when that happens the byproducts that are released aren't too toxic to whatever other living things are still around.
Slightly off topic, but I really don't see why convection is classified as being in the same category as conduction and radiation. The latter two are fundamental methods in which heat can be transferred while convection is essentially a specialized form of conduction.
If the "pause" or going through a red light is done the right way, and nobody is close enough so that me not coming to a complete stop requires anyone to change what they're doing then it's irrelevant. The only people who get angry at such things are busy-bodies who should find more important things to worry about. (Breaking traffic laws is much more dangerous for everyone when cars do it, so it doesn't apply to them).
As a cyclist I'm almost certain you don't come to a full stop at a stop sign you're going to turn right at, un-clip, wait, re-clip and start pedaling again. The countless tail-gaters I see when I'm driving my car are far more deserving of your sanctimonious ire and anyone else who likes to bitch about sensible cycling that doesn't follow the law to a T . For cyclists the ones who tick people off are the ones doing flagrantly dangerous things like zipping right through red lights or ignoring stop signs outright.
Go pound sand.
Well when I'm out cycling I make a point of pausing at those things. (Unless I'm turning right and am on a nice wide shoulder).
And "pause" is most fitting for the situation, imo. Dead stops at stop signs are only necessary when you're going through a potentially busy intersection or you need to wait for other cars at an all-way stop.
I'll stop at red lights (again except when turning right). But when I know the coast is clear I'm not waiting for it to turn green to start going again. You could potentially wait a long time if sensors are looking for other cars.
Not sure if this is the legal way to do things, but it makes sense so fuck 'em.