I actually thought critically about it. Tell me, what do you call an eternal, non-negotiable and absolute truth that cannot be explained in any way ?
Let's call it "bwerwasdwlh", so it doesn't sound like "dogma". Soviets called it "ideology" I believe. Mao called it the "green book". What's your fancy ?
Think of it what you will, if you believe in "rationality above all" then you are necessarily wrong.
If you "just accept it", you might be right. You can argue about the chances till the cows come home, and they're probably not good at all, but at least they're not 0. We're also very unlikely to find out what these chances are.
You forget that the same goes for religions. They survived 2000 years (well, islam was resurected after wwI from nothingness, after having been defeated by a gay turk, but most religions actually survived by themselves for a huge time).
That means that a lot of them didn't survive. A lot of those ideologies died (including the democracies of Rome and Athens btw). A lot of branches of them didn't survive, a lot of experiments in ideology failed. What remains is hardly random.
Therefore these survivors are, to say the least, special cases. That means that their structure is nowhere near random.
And therefore for those religions the same is true. Every Christian, buddhist, hindu,... dogma a) has very good reasons (for clearly it had a hand in preventing extermination of the ideology) b) you don't bother to understand those reasons (we both know that's true for you)
The dogma's of religion are as much a product of natural selection as anything walking the earth, and are far from random.
Take Newton's model for example. It was dogmatic if you didn't bother to understand it. Then came Einstein. And now relativity is the dogmatic law. Until a better theory comes along.
You forget that einstein's gravity equations are a refinement of Newton's. I mean, just put the 2 equations next to eachother. Are you seriously going to claim they're really different ? There is ONE factor added, which is a VERY small departure from newton indeed.
Ah so you're a construcivist ? Any mathematical concept that you can't construct doesn't exist. And therefore any negative proof must provide an example where the theory to be disproven falls down.
There is one problem with the constructivist approach : you can't construct real numbers. Oops... So you'd never get anywhere near a physical theory with a constructivist approach, never mind a theory with singularities.
If you're not a constructivist then one can simply point out wikipedia's ZFC page, which clearly spells out the problems : any theory that includes numbers is either wrong, or unproveable.
Therefore for the theory of relativity (and all physical theories, and all chemistry theories, and all...) one of the following is true : -> the theory is inconsistent (and therefore wrong) -> the theory is unproveable
So belief in science, necessarily is "on faith", nothing more.
You are misusing the term "dogma", dogma applies to a belief in the purest sense (without proof). Unfortunately, in English we do not have a separate word for "belief with proof" so instead we normally say that we "know this to be true with a high degree of certainty." If we were German we would use the word "kennen [wiktionary.org]", which has the appropriate meaning but is normally translated to English simply as "to know."
Tell me, which proof do you have for gravity ? And I don't mean proof that "stuff falls down". I want YOUR proof for relativistic gravity holding true.
Furthermore, knowing full well that relativity is also an approximation (it is VERY wrong at "quantum scales" for example, but it also breaks down at the big bang, and it introduces singularities into 4d space. And, despite what star-trek scripts say, there aren't any singularities in our 4d space. They violate every last law of nature, including relativity), it is also "wrong" by your absurd standard. Everything we know is wrong. After all, as logicians realized now more than a century ago, we don't have proof of anything.
Go take some philosophy classes, especially those that concentrate on ethics. Ethical systems derived from scientific principles are VERY different from ethical systems derived from dogmatic beliefs.
Indeed, absolutely. Ethics system that do not adhere to dogmatic beliefs are inconsistent. They allow anything whatsoever. You'd think that much would be obvious to a person that has seen the 21st century, but then looking around at the world is not something philosophers are particularly known for.
Every last one non-dogmatic ethic belief system is the same : it simply allows anything, due to inconsistencies.
So you're right : "non-dogmatic" ethics are very different from dogmatic ethical theories. Very different indeed. Only... not in a good way. At least a dogmatic system CAN be reasonable.
Btw, you don't know me. I've taken quite a few philosophy classes (several years) thank you very much. Always got into arguments with the teachers.
Exactly. And yet there are people who are counting on lawyers (a specific black lawyer) to "change things".
One might wonder, what a lawyer, any lawyer, would "change" if someone distributed say an "unauthorized" iphone app. Probably the "change" would be to sleeping location of said individual, changing it to a state-sponsored site close to "bubba" to be exact.
The axiom schemata of replacement and separation each contain infinitely many instances. Montague (1961) included a result first proved in his 1957 Ph.D. thesis: if ZFC is consistent, it is impossible to axiomatize ZFC using only finitely many axioms. On the other hand, Von Neumannâ"Bernaysâ"GÃdel set theory (NBG) can be finitely axiomatized. The ontology of NBG includes proper classes as well as sets; a set is any class that can be a member of another class. NBG and ZFC are equivalent set theories in the sense that any theorem not mentioning classes and provable in one theory can be proved in the other.
GÃdel's second incompleteness theorem says that no recursively axiomatizable system that can interpret Robinson arithmetic can prove its own consistency. Moreover, Robinson arithmetic can be interpreted in general set theory, a small fragment of ZFC. Hence the consistency of ZFC cannot be proved within ZFC itself (unless it is actually inconsistent).
To put it in somewhat more human terms :
1) the model of numbers in ZFC does in fact, have infinitely many axioms. 2) unless ZFC is wrong (inconsistent) it is not rational (it cannot be proven to be right) 3) the same goes for ANY theory that includes ZFC. That theory's is either inconsistent (trivially wrong), or cannot be proven correct.
Since it is beyond obvious that any physics theory is going to include ZFC, any theory about the universe that we have today will have the same problems : 1) infinitely many "natural laws" (of any complexity, ie. though unlikely in the extreme, a natural law could actually prevent a human act nice against a horse that's painted blue. This is a random example to illustrate what "of any complexity" means. To give an example of a real and complex "natural law" : if you have x persons, each of those chooses a "mortal enemy" and only one of those 2 survives the night, then only about 30% of the group will die) 2) it cannot be proven to fulfill even the most basic demands of correctness : consistency. Which would be another thing a rational person would require of any theory he'd want to apply.
They would, of course, also be NDA'd from telling you your app was rejected. Apple could argue that that means they've gotta pay for breaking the NDA by disclosing to a non-signatory party.
Therefore any such intermediaries would quickly die out.
You might want to check the accuracy of that statement. It has most certainly not been proved to be wrong. It has been proven to be extremely slightly inaccurate in a few cases.
Besides, the law that replaced it is VERY similar to newton's law of gravity. It just contains extra terms that correct for a very, VERY insignificant inaccuracy. Note that this factor is always simplified to "1" for any calculation that applies to anything relating to humans.
So what has really happened to newton's law of gravity ? It's been proven that for certain required accuracy, in certain extreme conditions, there's a better - but equally dogmatic (in fact more dogmatic) and non-negotiable - alternative. Which still contains newton's law in it's entirety, but corrects it by a tiny, tiny factor. (you might say that the old dogma is a 99,99999999999999% correct simplification of the new dogma)
You might compare it with Pi. For millenia everybody used the 22/7 approximation (because it's much more useful if you're working with paper instruments and without calculator, not because they necessarily didn't know there were better ones. In fact, several did know there were better approximations, and chose not to use them. The 22/7 approx. was still used in my math classes barely 10 years ago everytime we drew something involving pi in gemoetry). That was a dogma.
That dogma has been "changed" the value of pi to 4 * atan(1), in radians, an infinite series yielding a "real" number. In other words the change of dogma, has "changed" the value of pi from 3.142857... to 3.141587...
To say that the dogma has been changed is perhaps literally true, but the "nature of the beast" hasn't changed. Pi was constant, was about 3.142 and still is about 3.142. In other words, I'd say the dogma is unchanged, we just know the dogma itself better.
The problem is, the same goes for moral laws. "help thy neighbor" is a statement everybody knows, including where it comes from. John Nash proved that if "too many" (the value of "too many" is being thorougly searched for, it certainly doesn't exceed 12%) people don't do that, our society will collapse.
So the "law" "everybody must try to help his/her neighbor, only mistrusting when there is reason to" is changed to "at least 88% of the population must help his neighbor"). Change in dogma. Obviously you'd want to keep well away from that line, esp. since it's a lower bound.
To do what many people here would like to do, to actually change those dogma's, those laws and consequences (e.g. the value of pi) to something else, that will never happen. You can however, destroy many, many, many lives trying to change them. (comminists destroyed at least some 100 million, muslims a billion, attempting to bend reality, and its dogma's, to their will)
That is not the problem I am talking about. You're correct that purely logical reasoning will always run stuck because "it could be a coincidence" (which is the way muslims see the world for example).
To sit and do nothing because your axioms *might* be false is certainly NOT the optimal course of action.
No, a logical course of action would not sit still because they might be false, but because he cannot explain (further reduce) their true-ness.
A rational theory would need the ability to "reduce to nothing" : it would need no external support whatsoever from any source. Therefore a rational theory cannot tolerate axioms.
Not because they might be wrong, but because they're irrational.
Really ? Anyone who looks at physics immediately sees the immutable dogma : that the laws of physics exist and are utterly dogmatic, final and eternal. You will find this on page 1 of any decent physics book.
Now this is an abstract and untouchable dogma, so let's get a little bit of dogma that's been in science for over 2000 years already : that the current models for the natural laws are approximations that are, at most, a 10^-30 factor (just some number) removed from the "perfect" models. And that number has been going down, and down and down. But to be honest, there is much more variation in biblical interpretation than there is in variations in physics about the laws of physics, so you could easily call phyics more dogmatic than the bible.
And that's just physics, these laws are more or less "morally neutral" (even if some muslims seem to disagree). If you go looking in economics, those laws that they study, are equally dogmatic, even if much less precisely known, are often very much moral laws. (e.g. the result by John Nash that a capitalistic society without the "thou shalt treat your neighbour as you want to be treated" will catastrophically collapse, could easily be coopted as a "Jesus was right" type argument. Same goes for the "tragedy of the commons" and "capitalism is the best system"-retoric)
Unfortunately it's been proven that it does not exist. It cannot exist in mathematics, therefore if mathematical logic applies in "the universe" it cannot have a rational basis.
What I mean here by a rational basis is a non-dogmatic basis. A basis that is not dependant on axioms, which are unexaplainable, eternal, non-negotiable truths.
Such a theory does not exist. It's not just that we don't have such a theory yet, we have a mathematical proof that there is no such theory.
Whatever theory "explains" the universe, it will be dogmatic. Worse than that, it is known that there are infinitely many laws of nature in that dogmatic theory. So not only are there eternal, unviolable laws, there are a hell of a lot of them.
We only know a few of them, a few simple ones. OTOH this is also good news : science will only "be over" after an infinite amount of time has passed, after any finite amount of time has passed there are necessarily laws of nature that haven't been discovered or described yet. The universe truly is a beauty.
Unfortunately it's been proven that dogmatism is the ONLY non-self-delusional behavior.
You see there is no rational basis for the universe. That means that there will always be axioms, which are non-negotiable, final and eternal truths that we have no explanation for at all. ("we cannot pull ourselves out of the mud")
The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom <x> hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
That's what logic has discovered in the past century : any "rational" theory without an infinite number of eternal, unexplained truths is either incomplete (does not explain a (generally very very large) part of the universe) or it's wrong (logically inconsistent).
One would hope that science is in the former category, and will remain there to be merely incomplete. But one visit to any library will tell you that it's really partially inconsistent, and described to be seriously more "complete" than it really is. (AGW for example, we make models and then "oops" the sun's corona, out of the blue, cools 20%. Trust me, it's going to be a f*cking cold winter).
Any "true" theory therefore will be dogmatic. The problem is that it's entirely unclear WHICH dogmatism is "the one" (probably an entirely new one). One would hope people would read history and use that to decide which ideologies held out longest and most stably. That sort of thing is very thorougly frowned upon on slashdot however, probably because the answer would certainly not be "democracy", but probably a kingdom with a state religion.
The problem is that this doesn't work. It's unfortunate, but it doesn't. The real world demands an answer and demands it now. The formation of ideology begins with learning to physically control the body a mind finds itself in. That means that at every point in time any human mind (including that of the most tolerant, most perfect human ever alive) any conclusion is reached in 0.05 seconds or less. That means yours too.
What anyone's mind really is, in essence is a control loop. Based on what it's seen in the past <x>, it will construct an output <y>, for the present, to send to the muscles.
It does NOT matter : -> whether <y> is correct. For starters it is nearly always not clear what correct means. Do you open the door with your left hand or right hand ? Who cares ? Ideology only needs to be correct "enough" to prevent catastrophic mistakes. Therefore for example religions that are trivially wrong can be useful, and very correct scientificically based ideologies can be very bad (because they for example lead to indecision in the face of a threat) -> whether <y> is based on some theory. A child is not capable of reasoning it's way out of a problem using theoretical knowledge for the simple reason that it doesn't have any theoretical knowledge. At first it learns to imitate, then it imitates. -> <y> is some combination of imitation behavior (this does NOT mean that your behavior is in any serious way limited by what you've seen, but it obviously does mean that violent video games do indeed cause violent responses in players) -> how complex the model forming <y> is. However one thing's for sure : it has to be able to be calculated in the real world in (VERY) finite time. Therefore it barely contains any loops. It's also necessarily simpler than the truth. That means the model used is TOO simple, and will always remain so. -> we always use wrong shortcuts. The real world that affects us consists of 6 billion humans, a large planet. A huge nuclear reactor. Trillions upon trillions of animals, bugs, microbes and plants. Obviously whatever it is our mind does, it does NOT simulate all other minds and plants to find the optimal solution. For obvious reasons this is 100% true whether or not the individual in question knows how (or thinks he knows how). If we take into account 1 or 2 "entities" (outside of ourselves) planning our next move, that's atypically high.
So if you're looking for the response "why don't people think before they do ?". The response is simple : our world is not very forgiving of that behavior in many, many cases. Because it's stupid, in that even a little too much of it will get you killed for utter stupidity (e.g. you'd have problems controlling your steps and would fall down any stair you'd ever try to climb, fall over every rock) Therefore we've evolved not to do that. Some greeks (or whoever before them) stumbled on a few bits of logic, and since then people have been imitating them (it does not matter who was earlier it if they haven't got a continuous link to us). But the current practice of logic, is, in our minds, imitation behavior. Note that this is not an argument deciding whether logic is correct or false, merely that "I think it's right" is not sufficient, and perhaps not even a good sign.
Certainly stuff like the concepts of "good" and "evil" are based upon imitation.
And for Judaism you have a point (read the mitzvot). For Christianity, not so much. Look at your reply. How do they compare to the direct order for capture and rape that the quran gives muslims ?
Also your site, which is quite thorough, finds 10 times mention of rape (even though points 3-10 really don't mention rape, merely wars and killings) in historical stories, they're accounts of history, not orders. The quran orders genocide at least 10 times directly to current muslims (read the first chapter (that would be chapter number 2), and you'll see), the hadith contain 140 direct orders for genocide + rape, and that's not even half of the sources muslims use.
The quran is a book filled to the brim with death and violence. Not violence in the past, or stories about violent people, but direct orders to commit violence.
You don't get it. The purpose of Christianity is that people imitate Jesus (note that it doesn't matter whether or not there is a physical historical person called Jesus, nor does it matter whether he's the son of God or not. What matters is that people act like the new testament describes).
The purpose of islam is that people act like the paedophile prophet did. This is perhaps not so well known, but every muslim will agree. (note, once again, that it doesn't matter whether or not there is a physical historical person in this prophet or that he was made up by the "caliphs" (which seems infinitely more likely), nor does it matter whether he's a messenger of "allah" or not. What matters is that people act like the quran and hadith describe he acted).
Are we agreed on this ? It is so very trivial that it baffles me to even have to mention it.
Now combine this with the fact that Jesus preferred giving his own life to causing a fight. There probably was a real Jesus Christ, and he probably was at the very least capable of causing a serious civil war. And he did indeed choose not to.
The paedophile islamic prophet caused at least 13 wars (and really 14, except that in that ONE case he did not initiate hostilities), raped a 9 year old girl "within an arranged marriage", kidnapped people into slavery and had his soldiers rape kidnapped women and exterminate men, children and old people. He even left some to die in the sun, killing anyone who tried to feed them.
Can you at the very least admit that either you "see the problem" or tell me what exactly is wrong here ?
I'm not suicidal, I don't want wars. I WANT you to point out the problem here. But I'm not a fool. Unless these premices are changed, war is inevitable. I do not claim that every muslim is a homocidal killer like their prophet was. However what they ARE doing is teaching their children to imitate a genocidal thieving rapist. And to be blunt : that's gotta stop.
Thank you for the support, however there is a problem (other than the graphics not being very correct).
Practicing islam actually does include raping minors (which is legal in all islamic countries), religious genocide and murdering criticism away. They are obviously not allowed to actually do this, not even by God himself, who will turn any country where this is practiced in a living hell in perhaps a few years.
You correctly point out that these "tolerant" guys both aren't tolerant at all, *and* think totalitarian. You leave out that they like the muslims because they commit violence on their part. They want to make threats and 9/11 was, to them, a beautiful demonstration of what happens "if you don't listen to them". They are no better than the muslims. They co-opt 9/11 and say their political attention-getters, whether poverty or global warming, are the "root cause".
Everybody knows the reality however, including them : a few guys in saudi arabia were fed the hate of islam for years and years and years. They got money and were given the opportunity to throw themselves into their hate, and they comitted 9/11. There are tens of thousands more who'd love nothing more than to do the same.
So what is your opinion on the matter of religious freedom ? You can believe what you want, but you're not allowed to practice any of it ? Do you think any religion would accept those conditions when it doesn't have to ? I mean that position is pushing it, even for Christianity, for islam it's beyond merely unacceptable. They will commit massacres on school children to end that situation. And actions like that will end religious freedom in the blink of an eye.
And to be honest:
You both know, deep in your puny little brains, that you will never, ever live to see that freedom that you so violently hate (and therefore fear) taken away, and that makes you both shriek like spoiled children. And you are both lying when you claim otherwise.
I am quite sure that freedom will disappear. That freedom is dependant on a massive overwhelming Christian presence in the population, a situation the US and every other country is destroying as fast as they possibly can. The result will be a new dark age, and will return us to the situation where the Church is the only real power in the world in less than 50 years.
I do hope you realise that this is so. Unfortunately the same goes for human rights. Only Christian countries even attempt to respect them, if imperfectly. All others, including all islamic countries, refuse to respect them (declaration of cairo). Don't you think that this *maybe* has something to do with their ideology ?
While you're certainly more tolerant than the poster you're attacking, and congratulations for that, you're overconfident. You think your ideology is "the smart one", even if you will not force it on others. The reality of the matter is that you do not realise that your position is the result of your Christian upbringing.
Your position depends on faith in : -> that all will end well -> the goodness of the large majority people in general -> that even if people fail, they will somehow get bailed out
Don't you see that these assumptions that your ideology requires, are the very "good news" that the local catholic priest is talking about every sunday ?
You requested one word be changed, with no impact whatsoever on the meaning, so I'll just do that.
You claim all religions are the same. Muslims approve raping female prisoners, because they got direct permission for this from their paedophile prophet. In fact, God actually changed his mind explicitly to allow raping captive women, who are kidnapped into slavery by that capture, according to islam [usc.edu] (link points to the primary source). more complete secondary source [islam-watch.org].
You claim "they're all the same". So let's see you pointing out in the new testament (or wherever in the bible) that Christians approve of making sex-slaves out of war captives, and rape those women against their will (hint you want to search exodus, if you're looking looking for a war story involving women, however you're not going to find anything nearly as bad as the above islamic stuff).
So let's have it... put up or shut up. You claim immoral equivalence, I bring up an immorality issue, now you provide the equivalent. Of course if you fail to point to a biblical story where Jesus directly orders Christians to kidnap women into slavery and rape them, like the paedophile islamic prophet did, you're wrong.
Is this short enough for you ? Guess we'll know soon enough.
You claim "they're all the same". So let's see you pointing out in the new testament (or wherever in the bible) that Christians approve of making sex-slaves out of war captives, and rape those women against their will (hint you want to search exodus, if you're looking looking for a war story involving women, however you're not going to find anything nearly as bad as the above islamic stuff).
So let's have it... put up or shut up. You claim moral equivalence, I bring up a moral issue, now you provide the equivalent.
Is this short enough for you ? Guess we'll know soon enough.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually thought critically about it. Tell me, what do you call an eternal, non-negotiable and absolute truth that cannot be explained in any way ?
Let's call it "bwerwasdwlh", so it doesn't sound like "dogma". Soviets called it "ideology" I believe. Mao called it the "green book". What's your fancy ?
Think of it what you will, if you believe in "rationality above all" then you are necessarily wrong.
If you "just accept it", you might be right. You can argue about the chances till the cows come home, and they're probably not good at all, but at least they're not 0. We're also very unlikely to find out what these chances are.
You forget that the same goes for religions. They survived 2000 years (well, islam was resurected after wwI from nothingness, after having been defeated by a gay turk, but most religions actually survived by themselves for a huge time).
That means that a lot of them didn't survive. A lot of those ideologies died (including the democracies of Rome and Athens btw). A lot of branches of them didn't survive, a lot of experiments in ideology failed. What remains is hardly random.
Therefore these survivors are, to say the least, special cases. That means that their structure is nowhere near random.
And therefore for those religions the same is true. Every Christian, buddhist, hindu, ... dogma
a) has very good reasons (for clearly it had a hand in preventing extermination of the ideology)
b) you don't bother to understand those reasons (we both know that's true for you)
The dogma's of religion are as much a product of natural selection as anything walking the earth, and are far from random.
Take Newton's model for example. It was dogmatic if you didn't bother to understand it. Then came Einstein. And now relativity is the dogmatic law. Until a better theory comes along.
You forget that einstein's gravity equations are a refinement of Newton's. I mean, just put the 2 equations next to eachother. Are you seriously going to claim they're really different ? There is ONE factor added, which is a VERY small departure from newton indeed.
Ah so you're a construcivist ? Any mathematical concept that you can't construct doesn't exist. And therefore any negative proof must provide an example where the theory to be disproven falls down.
There is one problem with the constructivist approach : you can't construct real numbers. Oops ... So you'd never get anywhere near a physical theory with a constructivist approach, never mind a theory with singularities.
If you're not a constructivist then one can simply point out wikipedia's ZFC page, which clearly spells out the problems : any theory that includes numbers is either wrong, or unproveable.
Therefore for the theory of relativity (and all physical theories, and all chemistry theories, and all ...) one of the following is true :
-> the theory is inconsistent (and therefore wrong)
-> the theory is unproveable
So belief in science, necessarily is "on faith", nothing more.
so what do you call an eternal, unexplained and uncomprehensible and unchangeable truth ?
Just a question.
You are misusing the term "dogma", dogma applies to a belief in the purest sense (without proof). Unfortunately, in English we do not have a separate word for "belief with proof" so instead we normally say that we "know this to be true with a high degree of certainty." If we were German we would use the word "kennen [wiktionary.org]", which has the appropriate meaning but is normally translated to English simply as "to know."
Tell me, which proof do you have for gravity ? And I don't mean proof that "stuff falls down". I want YOUR proof for relativistic gravity holding true.
Furthermore, knowing full well that relativity is also an approximation (it is VERY wrong at "quantum scales" for example, but it also breaks down at the big bang, and it introduces singularities into 4d space. And, despite what star-trek scripts say, there aren't any singularities in our 4d space. They violate every last law of nature, including relativity), it is also "wrong" by your absurd standard. Everything we know is wrong. After all, as logicians realized now more than a century ago, we don't have proof of anything.
Go take some philosophy classes, especially those that concentrate on ethics. Ethical systems derived from scientific principles are VERY different from ethical systems derived from dogmatic beliefs.
Indeed, absolutely. Ethics system that do not adhere to dogmatic beliefs are inconsistent. They allow anything whatsoever. You'd think that much would be obvious to a person that has seen the 21st century, but then looking around at the world is not something philosophers are particularly known for.
Every last one non-dogmatic ethic belief system is the same : it simply allows anything, due to inconsistencies.
So you're right : "non-dogmatic" ethics are very different from dogmatic ethical theories. Very different indeed. Only ... not in a good way. At least a dogmatic system CAN be reasonable.
Btw, you don't know me. I've taken quite a few philosophy classes (several years) thank you very much. Always got into arguments with the teachers.
Exactly. And yet there are people who are counting on lawyers (a specific black lawyer) to "change things".
One might wonder, what a lawyer, any lawyer, would "change" if someone distributed say an "unauthorized" iphone app. Probably the "change" would be to sleeping location of said individual, changing it to a state-sponsored site close to "bubba" to be exact.
*sigh* read your own references :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFC#Metamathematics
The axiom schemata of replacement and separation each contain infinitely many instances. Montague (1961) included a result first proved in his 1957 Ph.D. thesis: if ZFC is consistent, it is impossible to axiomatize ZFC using only finitely many axioms. On the other hand, Von Neumannâ"Bernaysâ"GÃdel set theory (NBG) can be finitely axiomatized. The ontology of NBG includes proper classes as well as sets; a set is any class that can be a member of another class. NBG and ZFC are equivalent set theories in the sense that any theorem not mentioning classes and provable in one theory can be proved in the other.
GÃdel's second incompleteness theorem says that no recursively axiomatizable system that can interpret Robinson arithmetic can prove its own consistency. Moreover, Robinson arithmetic can be interpreted in general set theory, a small fragment of ZFC. Hence the consistency of ZFC cannot be proved within ZFC itself (unless it is actually inconsistent).
To put it in somewhat more human terms :
1) the model of numbers in ZFC does in fact, have infinitely many axioms.
2) unless ZFC is wrong (inconsistent) it is not rational (it cannot be proven to be right)
3) the same goes for ANY theory that includes ZFC. That theory's is either inconsistent (trivially wrong), or cannot be proven correct.
Since it is beyond obvious that any physics theory is going to include ZFC, any theory about the universe that we have today will have the same problems :
1) infinitely many "natural laws" (of any complexity, ie. though unlikely in the extreme, a natural law could actually prevent a human act nice against a horse that's painted blue. This is a random example to illustrate what "of any complexity" means. To give an example of a real and complex "natural law" : if you have x persons, each of those chooses a "mortal enemy" and only one of those 2 survives the night, then only about 30% of the group will die)
2) it cannot be proven to fulfill even the most basic demands of correctness : consistency. Which would be another thing a rational person would require of any theory he'd want to apply.
... and apple could be awarded damages ...
This is certainly not good PR.
They would, of course, also be NDA'd from telling you your app was rejected. Apple could argue that that means they've gotta pay for breaking the NDA by disclosing to a non-signatory party.
Therefore any such intermediaries would quickly die out.
Or you simply could use the "normal" theories and say the axioms are "not certain". To be proven.
You could still use the notation.
Sure there are. Many in fact. Set theory for example. However if you try to apply set theory to numbers, you're going to hit inconsistencies.
You might want to check the accuracy of that statement. It has most certainly not been proved to be wrong. It has been proven to be extremely slightly inaccurate in a few cases.
Besides, the law that replaced it is VERY similar to newton's law of gravity. It just contains extra terms that correct for a very, VERY insignificant inaccuracy. Note that this factor is always simplified to "1" for any calculation that applies to anything relating to humans.
So what has really happened to newton's law of gravity ? It's been proven that for certain required accuracy, in certain extreme conditions, there's a better - but equally dogmatic (in fact more dogmatic) and non-negotiable - alternative. Which still contains newton's law in it's entirety, but corrects it by a tiny, tiny factor. (you might say that the old dogma is a 99,99999999999999% correct simplification of the new dogma)
You might compare it with Pi. For millenia everybody used the 22/7 approximation (because it's much more useful if you're working with paper instruments and without calculator, not because they necessarily didn't know there were better ones. In fact, several did know there were better approximations, and chose not to use them. The 22/7 approx. was still used in my math classes barely 10 years ago everytime we drew something involving pi in gemoetry). That was a dogma.
That dogma has been "changed" the value of pi to 4 * atan(1), in radians, an infinite series yielding a "real" number. In other words the change of dogma, has "changed" the value of pi from 3.142857... to 3.141587...
To say that the dogma has been changed is perhaps literally true, but the "nature of the beast" hasn't changed. Pi was constant, was about 3.142 and still is about 3.142. In other words, I'd say the dogma is unchanged, we just know the dogma itself better.
The problem is, the same goes for moral laws. "help thy neighbor" is a statement everybody knows, including where it comes from. John Nash proved that if "too many" (the value of "too many" is being thorougly searched for, it certainly doesn't exceed 12%) people don't do that, our society will collapse.
So the "law" "everybody must try to help his/her neighbor, only mistrusting when there is reason to" is changed to "at least 88% of the population must help his neighbor"). Change in dogma. Obviously you'd want to keep well away from that line, esp. since it's a lower bound.
To do what many people here would like to do, to actually change those dogma's, those laws and consequences (e.g. the value of pi) to something else, that will never happen. You can however, destroy many, many, many lives trying to change them. (comminists destroyed at least some 100 million, muslims a billion, attempting to bend reality, and its dogma's, to their will)
A rational theory is one that does not have dogmas, ie. axioms.
A non-dogmatic theory.
That is not the problem I am talking about. You're correct that purely logical reasoning will always run stuck because "it could be a coincidence" (which is the way muslims see the world for example).
To sit and do nothing because your axioms *might* be false is certainly NOT the optimal course of action.
No, a logical course of action would not sit still because they might be false, but because he cannot explain (further reduce) their true-ness.
A rational theory would need the ability to "reduce to nothing" : it would need no external support whatsoever from any source. Therefore a rational theory cannot tolerate axioms.
Not because they might be wrong, but because they're irrational.
Really ? Anyone who looks at physics immediately sees the immutable dogma : that the laws of physics exist and are utterly dogmatic, final and eternal. You will find this on page 1 of any decent physics book.
Now this is an abstract and untouchable dogma, so let's get a little bit of dogma that's been in science for over 2000 years already : that the current models for the natural laws are approximations that are, at most, a 10^-30 factor (just some number) removed from the "perfect" models. And that number has been going down, and down and down. But to be honest, there is much more variation in biblical interpretation than there is in variations in physics about the laws of physics, so you could easily call phyics more dogmatic than the bible.
And that's just physics, these laws are more or less "morally neutral" (even if some muslims seem to disagree). If you go looking in economics, those laws that they study, are equally dogmatic, even if much less precisely known, are often very much moral laws. (e.g. the result by John Nash that a capitalistic society without the "thou shalt treat your neighbour as you want to be treated" will catastrophically collapse, could easily be coopted as a "Jesus was right" type argument. Same goes for the "tragedy of the commons" and "capitalism is the best system"-retoric)
Unfortunately it's been proven that it does not exist. It cannot exist in mathematics, therefore if mathematical logic applies in "the universe" it cannot have a rational basis.
What I mean here by a rational basis is a non-dogmatic basis. A basis that is not dependant on axioms, which are unexaplainable, eternal, non-negotiable truths.
Such a theory does not exist. It's not just that we don't have such a theory yet, we have a mathematical proof that there is no such theory.
Whatever theory "explains" the universe, it will be dogmatic. Worse than that, it is known that there are infinitely many laws of nature in that dogmatic theory. So not only are there eternal, unviolable laws, there are a hell of a lot of them.
We only know a few of them, a few simple ones. OTOH this is also good news : science will only "be over" after an infinite amount of time has passed, after any finite amount of time has passed there are necessarily laws of nature that haven't been discovered or described yet. The universe truly is a beauty.
Unfortunately it's been proven that dogmatism is the ONLY non-self-delusional behavior.
You see there is no rational basis for the universe. That means that there will always be axioms, which are non-negotiable, final and eternal truths that we have no explanation for at all. ("we cannot pull ourselves out of the mud")
The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom <x> hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
That's what logic has discovered in the past century : any "rational" theory without an infinite number of eternal, unexplained truths is either incomplete (does not explain a (generally very very large) part of the universe) or it's wrong (logically inconsistent).
One would hope that science is in the former category, and will remain there to be merely incomplete. But one visit to any library will tell you that it's really partially inconsistent, and described to be seriously more "complete" than it really is. (AGW for example, we make models and then "oops" the sun's corona, out of the blue, cools 20%. Trust me, it's going to be a f*cking cold winter).
Any "true" theory therefore will be dogmatic. The problem is that it's entirely unclear WHICH dogmatism is "the one" (probably an entirely new one). One would hope people would read history and use that to decide which ideologies held out longest and most stably. That sort of thing is very thorougly frowned upon on slashdot however, probably because the answer would certainly not be "democracy", but probably a kingdom with a state religion.
The problem is that this doesn't work. It's unfortunate, but it doesn't. The real world demands an answer and demands it now. The formation of ideology begins with learning to physically control the body a mind finds itself in. That means that at every point in time any human mind (including that of the most tolerant, most perfect human ever alive) any conclusion is reached in 0.05 seconds or less. That means yours too.
What anyone's mind really is, in essence is a control loop. Based on what it's seen in the past <x>, it will construct an output <y>, for the present, to send to the muscles.
It does NOT matter :
-> whether <y> is correct. For starters it is nearly always not clear what correct means. Do you open the door with your left hand or right hand ? Who cares ? Ideology only needs to be correct "enough" to prevent catastrophic mistakes. Therefore for example religions that are trivially wrong can be useful, and very correct scientificically based ideologies can be very bad (because they for example lead to indecision in the face of a threat)
-> whether <y> is based on some theory. A child is not capable of reasoning it's way out of a problem using theoretical knowledge for the simple reason that it doesn't have any theoretical knowledge. At first it learns to imitate, then it imitates.
-> <y> is some combination of imitation behavior (this does NOT mean that your behavior is in any serious way limited by what you've seen, but it obviously does mean that violent video games do indeed cause violent responses in players)
-> how complex the model forming <y> is. However one thing's for sure : it has to be able to be calculated in the real world in (VERY) finite time. Therefore it barely contains any loops. It's also necessarily simpler than the truth. That means the model used is TOO simple, and will always remain so.
-> we always use wrong shortcuts. The real world that affects us consists of 6 billion humans, a large planet. A huge nuclear reactor. Trillions upon trillions of animals, bugs, microbes and plants. Obviously whatever it is our mind does, it does NOT simulate all other minds and plants to find the optimal solution. For obvious reasons this is 100% true whether or not the individual in question knows how (or thinks he knows how). If we take into account 1 or 2 "entities" (outside of ourselves) planning our next move, that's atypically high.
So if you're looking for the response "why don't people think before they do ?". The response is simple : our world is not very forgiving of that behavior in many, many cases. Because it's stupid, in that even a little too much of it will get you killed for utter stupidity (e.g. you'd have problems controlling your steps and would fall down any stair you'd ever try to climb, fall over every rock) Therefore we've evolved not to do that. Some greeks (or whoever before them) stumbled on a few bits of logic, and since then people have been imitating them (it does not matter who was earlier it if they haven't got a continuous link to us). But the current practice of logic, is, in our minds, imitation behavior. Note that this is not an argument deciding whether logic is correct or false, merely that "I think it's right" is not sufficient, and perhaps not even a good sign.
Certainly stuff like the concepts of "good" and "evil" are based upon imitation.
And for Judaism you have a point (read the mitzvot). For Christianity, not so much. Look at your reply. How do they compare to the direct order for capture and rape that the quran gives muslims ?
Also your site, which is quite thorough, finds 10 times mention of rape (even though points 3-10 really don't mention rape, merely wars and killings) in historical stories, they're accounts of history, not orders. The quran orders genocide at least 10 times directly to current muslims (read the first chapter (that would be chapter number 2), and you'll see), the hadith contain 140 direct orders for genocide + rape, and that's not even half of the sources muslims use.
The quran is a book filled to the brim with death and violence. Not violence in the past, or stories about violent people, but direct orders to commit violence.
You don't get it. The purpose of Christianity is that people imitate Jesus (note that it doesn't matter whether or not there is a physical historical person called Jesus, nor does it matter whether he's the son of God or not. What matters is that people act like the new testament describes).
The purpose of islam is that people act like the paedophile prophet did. This is perhaps not so well known, but every muslim will agree. (note, once again, that it doesn't matter whether or not there is a physical historical person in this prophet or that he was made up by the "caliphs" (which seems infinitely more likely), nor does it matter whether he's a messenger of "allah" or not. What matters is that people act like the quran and hadith describe he acted).
Are we agreed on this ? It is so very trivial that it baffles me to even have to mention it.
Now combine this with the fact that Jesus preferred giving his own life to causing a fight. There probably was a real Jesus Christ, and he probably was at the very least capable of causing a serious civil war. And he did indeed choose not to.
The paedophile islamic prophet caused at least 13 wars (and really 14, except that in that ONE case he did not initiate hostilities), raped a 9 year old girl "within an arranged marriage", kidnapped people into slavery and had his soldiers rape kidnapped women and exterminate men, children and old people. He even left some to die in the sun, killing anyone who tried to feed them.
Can you at the very least admit that either you "see the problem" or tell me what exactly is wrong here ?
I'm not suicidal, I don't want wars. I WANT you to point out the problem here. But I'm not a fool. Unless these premices are changed, war is inevitable. I do not claim that every muslim is a homocidal killer like their prophet was. However what they ARE doing is teaching their children to imitate a genocidal thieving rapist. And to be blunt : that's gotta stop.
Thank you for the support, however there is a problem (other than the graphics not being very correct).
Practicing islam actually does include raping minors (which is legal in all islamic countries), religious genocide and murdering criticism away. They are obviously not allowed to actually do this, not even by God himself, who will turn any country where this is practiced in a living hell in perhaps a few years.
You correctly point out that these "tolerant" guys both aren't tolerant at all, *and* think totalitarian. You leave out that they like the muslims because they commit violence on their part. They want to make threats and 9/11 was, to them, a beautiful demonstration of what happens "if you don't listen to them". They are no better than the muslims. They co-opt 9/11 and say their political attention-getters, whether poverty or global warming, are the "root cause".
Everybody knows the reality however, including them : a few guys in saudi arabia were fed the hate of islam for years and years and years. They got money and were given the opportunity to throw themselves into their hate, and they comitted 9/11. There are tens of thousands more who'd love nothing more than to do the same.
So what is your opinion on the matter of religious freedom ? You can believe what you want, but you're not allowed to practice any of it ? Do you think any religion would accept those conditions when it doesn't have to ? I mean that position is pushing it, even for Christianity, for islam it's beyond merely unacceptable. They will commit massacres on school children to end that situation. And actions like that will end religious freedom in the blink of an eye.
And to be honest :
You both know, deep in your puny little brains, that you will never, ever live to see that freedom that you so violently hate (and therefore fear) taken away, and that makes you both shriek like spoiled children. And you are both lying when you claim otherwise.
I am quite sure that freedom will disappear. That freedom is dependant on a massive overwhelming Christian presence in the population, a situation the US and every other country is destroying as fast as they possibly can. The result will be a new dark age, and will return us to the situation where the Church is the only real power in the world in less than 50 years.
I do hope you realise that this is so. Unfortunately the same goes for human rights. Only Christian countries even attempt to respect them, if imperfectly. All others, including all islamic countries, refuse to respect them (declaration of cairo). Don't you think that this *maybe* has something to do with their ideology ?
While you're certainly more tolerant than the poster you're attacking, and congratulations for that, you're overconfident. You think your ideology is "the smart one", even if you will not force it on others. The reality of the matter is that you do not realise that your position is the result of your Christian upbringing.
Your position depends on faith in :
-> that all will end well
-> the goodness of the large majority people in general
-> that even if people fail, they will somehow get bailed out
Don't you see that these assumptions that your ideology requires, are the very "good news" that the local catholic priest is talking about every sunday ?
You requested one word be changed, with no impact whatsoever on the meaning, so I'll just do that.
You claim all religions are the same. Muslims approve raping female prisoners, because they got direct permission for this from their paedophile prophet. In fact, God actually changed his mind explicitly to allow raping captive women, who are kidnapped into slavery by that capture, according to islam [usc.edu] (link points to the primary source). more complete secondary source [islam-watch.org].
You claim "they're all the same". So let's see you pointing out in the new testament (or wherever in the bible) that Christians approve of making sex-slaves out of war captives, and rape those women against their will (hint you want to search exodus, if you're looking looking for a war story involving women, however you're not going to find anything nearly as bad as the above islamic stuff).
So let's have it ... put up or shut up. You claim immoral equivalence, I bring up an immorality issue, now you provide the equivalent. Of course if you fail to point to a biblical story where Jesus directly orders Christians to kidnap women into slavery and rape them, like the paedophile islamic prophet did, you're wrong.
Is this short enough for you ? Guess we'll know soon enough.
Okay let me put it into pieces your mind can actually comprehend.
You claim all religions are the same. Muslims approve raping female prisoners, because they got direct permission for this from their paedophile prophet. In fact, God actually changed his mind explicitly to allow raping captive women, who are kidnapped into slavery by that capture, according to islam (link points to the primary source). more complete secondary source.
You claim "they're all the same". So let's see you pointing out in the new testament (or wherever in the bible) that Christians approve of making sex-slaves out of war captives, and rape those women against their will (hint you want to search exodus, if you're looking looking for a war story involving women, however you're not going to find anything nearly as bad as the above islamic stuff).
So let's have it ... put up or shut up. You claim moral equivalence, I bring up a moral issue, now you provide the equivalent.
Is this short enough for you ? Guess we'll know soon enough.
They don't provide one for free. Just about every last one allow you to buy one ...