It also just occured to me that we're really talking about two different things here. E-bay is largely about luxury, not neccessity. Food is largely about neccessity, not luxury. The best part of distributism is that even if the whole grid goes down, you've got your neccessities in walking distance, supplied by people you know and trust. You can't know or trust people online- which is fine for luxuries, but God help you if you're trusting people you don't know for neccessities, because only he can.
This is where I disagree -- when you allow international trade, you open yourself to finding people who are more efficient at a given task than people local to you. This frees up the local people to find what they're most efficient at doing.
That's what they tell us- but in practice it's not that easy to retrain for a different job- and in human happiness, this ends up a big negative for both cultures. A good example is what's happening between India and the United States right now- a small number (2%) of US citizenry is really good at farming, especially with subsidies from the US Government. A small minority of Indians are very good at high tech engineering. So following your idea, we put people out of work here to turn engineers into farmers, and we put farmers out of work there to turn them into engineers? But since it's only a small minority in both with these talents, what we're really doing is throwing huge numbers of people onto the welfare rolls of both countries- and those welfare rolls are collapsing and people are literally suffering from malnutrition when they can't afford food at US prices and can't afford to grow their own.
What ruins international trade is all the treaties, agreements and tariffs: they screw up the market and screw up the ability for people to find their best marketable talents. For decades we supported steel workers in the US even though other countries could get us steel cheaper (even after considering shipping costs). This made our cars more expensive -- taking money out of the households that could have been better spent elsewhere.
But some people have NO other marketable talents- and thus you end up taking US Steel Workers, who have been in that industry for generations and ARE more productive than other people at what they do, and throw them out of work to do what? Retrain in selling french fries and speaking Spanish? Sometimes efficiency is the *worst* thing to make economic descisions on.
I would say that 30% of my Internet income comes from overseas. Your arguments would have convinced me up until 1990 or so -- once the Internet took hold, we saw the power of anarchy. Look at eBay. eBay could exist without the law, as the moderation system allows you to trust your seller. If a seller decides to defraud people, they COULD start all over with 0 moderation points -- but people are less likely to trust someone with 0 feedback.
They could also form a group to "sell" token items to each other giving them good feedback, and then use that to defraud people on larger items. And in the mean time, the anarchy comes home when you force your next door neighbor who used to make that item for you to break into your house in search of food. That's a hugely bad idea in the long run.
For me, I want completely open trade and complete access to use my property as I see fit.
Does that include the right of somebody else to steal your market?
If someone wants to take the time to copy my old books or songs or videos, go ahead and sell it. I'm working on NEW items, and those who support my work will support me financially. It has worked in my life and it has worked in the lives of millions without them knowing it. Patents are no different -- inventions are only as good as your ability to not only sell them but to convince your customers that your item is better than your competitors. If a patent is your only advantage, you're not providing the market with what it needs: quality, cost and efficiency.
And you're also impovershing your neighbors. Who will eventually revolt at that impoverishment- because it removes their freedom.
That's how distributism works- except for the assumption is the reverse. If a single household agrees with a set of laws and morals, that's the traditions of that household. Next up is the neighborhood, then the village, then the township, then the county, then the state, then the country. Of course- we accept only a 51% vote as well. But allowing people from outside to own land or invade the market- that's the bad part. Multinational corporations would not be allowed unless they provide something that can't be made locally- the whole idea is to make manufacturers and consumers LOCAL to each other, so that business decisions such as pricing and wages can be made with full knowledge of the individual human beings involved and their situations, instead of canibalistically profiting off of strangers. The rest, would happen organically.
It confuses me -- as a freedom lover, I'm known to promote my views heavily one very blog and forum I'm on. For years I was beaten down for my odd views, but now it seems like I'm just one amongst many, even in the mass media. What the hell is going on here?
ON topic more like- because this very article is "What the hell is going on here?". I'm one who rejects libertarianism as unworkable in the long run- though even my personal economic and political system (distributist democracy) certainly does contain some libertartian principles, since the real power lies in the household and then works it's way up in an upsidedown pyramid from there. But even I see that freedom gets the most press in times of slavery- and between patents, trade agreements, layoffs, the war, energy prices, and health care, Americans aren't feeling very free right now. WAY too much external to the household affects the happiness of our lives- corporations and governments, nonhuman entities, have been allowed to take over instead. Nothing sparks interest in liberty than a lack of it.
They're consistent. When I say "accurate" I don't mean absolutely accurate, just pretty/very accurate. Like when I say "good" I don't mean perfect.
In other words, you admit that science is full of error- you just would rather lie than admit that in science class.
Fair enough, but within the sects most of the assumptions have remained the same for a long time
So have the basic assumptions in science- the scientific method is a theology. Objective evidence is a theology. The existance of these go unquestioned for huge amounts of time.
Ok, fair enough, but I'm sure there's a similar unquestionable core belief.
Not for all of religion. Religions are merely systems of beliefs- there is no *single* core belief for all religions. Individual religious sects have core beliefs, yes, but no one core belief covers every religion mankind has ever believed in. That's why I call science a religion- it has core beliefs, and those core beliefs are markedly different enough to create sects and meta-sects.
Not my experience of it.
Roman Catholicism is one of those meta-sects; katholicos in Greek means universal. There is more to Roman Catholicism than any one person could ever experience personally; in theological terms the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls it a meta-culture, under which several local cultures with varying belief systems survive and thrive. A good example is the official church position taken on the ID debate- you have Jesuits claiming theistic evolution where God is but a witness to random indeterministic nature; to Dominicans claiming that Genesis is true, but just an allegory and the six days took "mille mille eons", to traditionalists in the United States who are splitting off over Young Earth Creationism.
If you're insinuating that to believe in science requires one to be fundamentally immoral, you're gravely mistaken.
No, I'm not- which is why I said the belief of objectivism rather than science. Objectivism can be philosophically derived from the scientific method; but doing so starts one down the slipery slope to solipsism and nilhism, systems under which morality has no meaning whatsoever (and neither does anything else because it's ALL false).
I think of religions in terms of the ones I'm personally familiar with. If I don't take a certain religion into account it's not because I can't criticise it as easily, just that I don't know about it.
Which is your same problem with philosophy- you discount it because you just don't know about it.
Science is different from religion, and superior in terms of results if nothing else.
Above you admited that those results are not absolutely accurate ever- I think the only reason you think it's supperior to other philosophies is because you are unfamiliar with other philosophies. Here's a hint- the test of time affects ALL philosophy equally. If there's anything objective in philosophy it's this- philosophies that do not produce accurate results die. Ones that do produce accurate results survive. It's evolution applied to human societies and ideas; survival of the fittest.
From that point of view, science is simply too new to have it's results compared to religion as a whole; it's likely more accurate than very young sects (like say the Jevhovah's Witnesses, the Young Earth Creationists, or the Dispensationalists), but it's likely less accurate than say, Hinduism. Regardless of the technological marvels, what really counts in human truth is the applicability to human life, and the creation of happiness in that life. Science's most obvious advance towards that is materialism- and materialism is too young to have proof of increasing human happiness, it has yet to withstand the test of time.
Absolute accuracy is impossible, and to the best of our knowledge not just for us but for anything.
But it's incredibly arrogant to assume that the best of OUR knowledge is eq
Socialist medicine is ruinous to a nation's healthcare system and it's medical research and the economy.
See my latest Journal Entry- by any real measure Europe has longer lifespans and a more robust economy than the United States. If anything our private healthcare system is a millstone that is dragging American corporations down and making us uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
You already lost that debate and I won - way back in 1993.
Too bad by 2001 your "win" was already turning into a major loss- and today, in 2006, more than 62 million Americans have no health care system at all.
Actually, the first one didn't cost me anything and the second thing cost me $70 for 1500 fliers.
For the people that universal health care would have helped, $70 is a week's groceries- or a week's heating bill. When you're too poor to invest, you're too poor to lobby.
Technically, we weren't lobbying against 'a plan' but we were lobbying against provisions in the plan that would kill unborn children and euthanize (a pretty European word for kill) elderly people at taxpayer expense.
Yep, I'm sure that's what you thought. Isn't it interesting how we are able to rationalize our inhumanity to our fellow man as saving other fellow men?
Further, my family was so poor at the time that I think the socio-economic class I was in at the time was paying almost no taxes - and the Church's who distributed them (including several all-black congregations) were in the same boat as us - but we didn't think those in higher socio-economic classes should have their earned wealth looted from them, especially to pay to kill off other people.
If you were able to spend $70 on fliers, then yes, your family was earning enough to pay taxes.
So was Cartman right? Are you a 'college educated hippie?' - the worse kind? Don't you have a drum circle to attend? You really know nothing, and you don't know that you know nothing about nothing, which would make you dangerous, but you don't do anything but rant on/., which makes you impotent (thankfully).
Those in power wish to remain in power, in democracy it means they must campaign to become re-elected.
Either that, or they're just puppets and the corporations that own the puppets simply pay campaign contributions to all possible sides to make sure that anybody elected will do their bidding no matter what.
1) I don't think it is wrong, unfair, or even bad that corporations attempt to influence legislation. Often, corporations are closest to an issue to provide legislators real information. Any information provider to a legislator will have a bias. In fact, knowledge and bias go hand-in-hand. It also seems unrealistic to say that only unemployed individuals can lobby. It is ultimately up to the elected representative to know when they are receiving good or bad information.
In a democracy, any bias towards money-as-power and against the common citizenry is *bad information*. I don't want only unemployed individuals lobbying either- but I do want every lobbyist to only be lobbying for *themselves* with *their own money*. One great way to do this would be to limit all political campaign contributions to $1.
2) There is nothing wrong with corporations benefiting from new laws. What is wrong, and I think we can agree on, is when this benefit causes wider costs to uninvolved parties. This is complicated though -- there are very few uninvolved parties. When a car manufacturer benefits from a less restrictive pollution law, people benefit from, say, less expensive cars. But they also see an increase in respiratory illness -- for example.
Corporations should neither need nor benefit from new laws unless the law was passed for a purpose unrelated to the corporation. Corporations should also be limited to the business listed in their charters.
3) Shareholder value is all that I want corporations to think about (except being legal). Corporations will do more good by pursuing shareholder value and more evil by pursuing something else, say, full employment. Some things are not managed well by corporations -- these include national defence for example. These things should be agressively trimmed to a minimum list and handed over to a government buearucracy.
Concentration on shareholder value vs the public good will always result in evil to the citizenry. As far as I'm concerned, public corporations should be banned from selling stock for exactly that reason.
I think he also seriously underestimates the usefulness of post office trucks. Around here the little jeeps with jeep hood ornaments, repainted grey, are used in Eastern Oregon as farm vehicles- you can get them legally, used and surplussed, for about $500 on the used market.
In fact we have proven that there is no possible set of consistant hidden variable values that could produced the observed results.
Even a set larger than any previously tested? How can you possibly say that there is *no possible set* until you've tried the infinity of *all possible sets*? There simply hasn't been enough time.
For any professional physicists or mathemticians out there, or anyone who wants to bend their brain on some hardcore physics and math, I am referring to the Kochen-Specker theorem. It is more powerful than the Bell inequalities at refuting any possible Hidden Value theory.
And fails from the same lack of imagination, unfortuneately. After all, it doesn't cover that perhaps the complexity comes from variables that don't follow mathematical axioms and assumptions. All this proves is that there is no set of variables that are consistent with mathematical axioms and assumptions.
Gahh! Leave God out of it. God is neither proven nor disproven by anything. So lets try that again...
It's the same thing, unfortuneately- the reason you can't prove or disprove God is because He/she/it is outside of the scope of the investigation. Same with the pattern that you're interpreting as random.
Proving the impossibility of any and all hidden variable theories does NOT prove there's no underlying pattern.
Then why bring it into a discussion on the existance of randomness?
So unless you believe the experimenter's choice of axes to measure was determined, the spins that we will measure are fundamentally impossible to predict.
Of course the experimenter's choice of axes to measure was determined- by the experimenter. This isn't random either- it's a conceious choice by a mind to reduce the resolution of the experiment.
Quantum mechanics wasn't invented to have a cool theory. It was invented because it was necessary. The randomness is there, it is real, the evidence is as strong as any truth you care to name.
Which isn't very strong, since all evidence is subjective- we choose to limit the input.
It's consistent, sensible, and makes useful predictions. Not something any other religion I know of does.
Every religion that survives more than 70 years or so does this. You must not know very much of religion. But even your science is not consistent, for instance:
Absolute accuracy is impossible. Accuracy is made better by publishing results as soon as they are available so that others can collaborate. If we approached things your way we'd still be sitting there discussing whether large objects fall at the same rate as small objects, and unwilling to make predictions about anything.
Wheras science has accurate predictive ability.
Both of these quotes came from the discussion of science as religion- and they are NOT consistent with one another. That isn't to say that partial accuracy isn't useful- it is- but the very intertia you decry elsewhere in the discussion on peer review journals comes from not seeing the inconsistency.
Arbitrary. It all comes down to believing the statements of one authority over another - not something consistent.
That's true of any belief system- even science. It all comes down to which authorities you accept and which you deny. For instance:
Most major religions have kept their basic assumptions the same. Christians still believe that God is a trinity, Jesus is the son of God, the Bible is the inspired word of God, etc.
Actually, not all Christians believe all of those. One sect believes in trinities, another does not. Some say that Jesus was just a prophet. The Bible as the inspired word of God is accepted- but means very little for some meanings of the word "inspired". In fact, I can't think of a basic assumption that is accepted by all Christians.
Religion still requires a lack of questioning of the most basic assumption - the existence of god.
Nope- not all religions have a God. Zen Buddhists have only the universe. Catholicism considers God to be such a nebulous concept that "everything and nothing" fits. The religion of objectivism is a relatively recent set of beliefs that would deny the existance of everything outside of self- and has a morality based on that. Religion is far larger than you can possibly imagine- because all a religion is is a set of beliefs. You attempt to reduce religion down to the ones you are personally opposed to- and put science on a pedestal upon which it does not belong. Accuracy is not possible for human beings- but that doesn't mean that accuracy is impossible. And that statement is directly in conflict with the idea that science builds accurate models.
Not really. Even before I was old enough to vote I organized a group of fellow students, also not old enough to vote, and petitioned our city council to pass an ordinance banning public display of obscenity on clothing. Also, before I could vote, I circulated pamplets on defeating the Clinton healthcare plan throughout my town and got hundreds of letters (which actually do count) into federal representatives urging them to oppose the plan. That battle was won, too.
Both of which probably required more money than the average citizen can lay his hands on. But what a selfish prick you are- destroying the health of millions so that your socio-economic class can be taxed less.
Voting is just for show in the 21st century. Lobbying is where the political power is at; lobbying takes money. Big money. Money that only corporations can amass, not individual shareholders or citizens. Voting is NOTHING in comparison to the legalized bribery of lobbying in our system.
I want corporate power to be limited to non-governmental roles; no lobbying, no ability to subvert democracy. I want corporations, as artificial beings under the law, to be limited to a 40 year lifespan. I want corporations to *prove* in their charters that they are doing something for the public good, and if found to not be following their charter, their incorporation should be revoked. I want all stockholders of a corporation to be citizens of this nation, and swear loyalty oaths to this country. And finally, I want corporations to be incorporated for a single nation or country only- with no ability to have subsidiaries in other nations.
In other words, I want corporate law roled back to 1830. Is that too much to ask?
The best bet is not to reject philosophy out of hand as not being useful. All philosophies are at least partially useful, otherwise they would not have survived to present day. The test of time is the *original* scientific method, and it still holds true, even if it takes centuries to work.
But there's no way to predict which will come out. I'd say that I could make such a box using radioctivity, but that doesn't matter - just suppose such a box existed. Would you deny that such a box is random?
I think I just realized why quantum mechanics doesn't work in the macro world. The randomness only exists in the micro world, because it's not really randomness. Radioactivity is not random- you could theoretically track the positrons and know exactly which atom would decay next, then track it's positrons and know what would decay after that. The ones who say it's just a discontinuity between the micro and macro realms are right; it's a problem with the scope of the observer, not any real randomness.
If you call such a thing random, then there is none of your kind of randomness in the universe. However, there is randomness of my black box kind, and that's sufficient to explain everything we've observed.
Ok- I'll agree PSEUDORANDOMNESS DUE TO THE LAZINESS OF THE OBSERVER does exist.
Maybe that's why you're looking at this wrong. In pure software there is no randomness - but that's not true in the universe.
Actually, it is true in the universe as well- the problem is in us, the observers of the universe, not in the universe itself. The universe itself stays deterministic- we're just not looking at it with the correct resolution. It's kind of like google earth- look at an area where there is a lot of human habitation, where the sattelites have been very interested in what's going on, and you get sharp, clear pictures. Rural areas, not so much; you get pictures so blurry that they only make sense from 10 miles above ground level. Heisenberg, being just as anthromorphic as any other theologian, claims that the information he can't see didn't exist- and because you believe that, you fail to look.
It's very easily distinguishable - stand on an iron asteroid and a watery comet of the same size, you'll notice you feel heavier on the former.
More atoms expanding quicker would explain that just as well.
A law just tells us the effects of certain causes. The outcome can be unpredictable if, for example, it is impossible to precisely measure the inputs.
It's never impossible to precisely measure the inputs- it's only highly improbable that we as human beings will measure the inputs correctly.
That definition covers every religion by covering practically any thought. You can't seriously be claiming that all beliefs are religious beliefs.
No, just all humanoid beliefs- I don't know enough to claim so for other species groups. It's possible though. But yes- Philosophy and religion are how we have modeled the world since the begining of our species, and science is no exception to that rule. Now had I said ORGANIZED religion, you'd be more correct at least (though the argument can definately be made that science is organized) but mere religion doesn't even need two people. In fact, it's more likely that we have 7 billion religions on this planet right now; one for every individual that only tangentially intersect.
Even if you were right, and I certainly don't agree with you on that, how does an intelligent God make the universe any less supernatural? Saying "x happens because God wants it to" is no more of an explanation, and has no more predictive power, than "x happens".
It turns the universe into an experiment of the natural- God defines the natural to see what will happen when the constants and laws are as they are. Note that such a god is omniscient and not omniscient at the same time- just like us and randomness on a quantum level, it depends on the resolution you're looking at the universe through.
In this case, yes, the function was written by someone intelligent, but that doesn't mean it always has to be. We have equations and functions arising all over the universe with no intelligent input - something like GmM/r^2 is just there, without
The problem is, even with entanglement as a method, you're stuck with point-to-point matched cards for this- CISCO would probably make a mint off of selling routers with matched quantum network cards. About the only people I see losing out on this are the ones installing fiber and copper and localized towers- because each network card would *only* be able to communicate with it's matched router, and all traffic would have to go through that router. The only neat thing is that it's non-localized; a single central office could service several million mobile phones, because the cells would no longer be neccessary. Broadcast though would still be in business- who wants a radio that can only get a single station, or a TV that can only get a single channel?
The real prank is that anybody at OIT at the time in question has heard this rumor- despite it's obvious problems, I'm not the one who made up the rumor.
Of course, it helped that at the time, Laser Engineering was considered the hardest major at the school and Software Engineering the second hardest; we did enough "magic" on a daily basis that few others on campus understood that it made the story believeable.
neither of these make sense on any level (not even to religious scholars) and can only be accepted by the same type of thought that also leads to creationism.
Or for that matter to quantum mechanics. Every system of belief has it's assumptions. Even atheism.
There is no hole there, it's in the misinterpretation of Occam's razor which is common. If the two theories offer identical predictions (as is the case with many of these hidden variable theories, by design) there is no way to perform a test which will distinguish between them. Therefore there is no possible test which enables us to distinguish between them. Thus we either have to say 'maybe' or pick one to use, and it is simply sensible to pick the one with fewest levels of complexity. Of course there may be future results which enable us to distinguish between them, but as it stands they have simply been fitted to match everything we have, so we have nothing to go on at the moment.
Complexity is a completely arbitrary and subjective line in the sand, is what I'm saying. And yet we pretend otherwise for no apparent reason. Saying maybe is more accurate than picking one to use in this case.
Unfortuantely, I do not think this is exclusively a result of the teaching of science. The fact is, most people just don't care enough about it. Society doesn't respect critical thought and research. The syllabi are designed to try and teach the material without being offputting to the potential students. Making scientific education more extensive and detailled may help with how people look at science, but the problem is probably more a function of people not really wanting to learn as of them not having the opportunity. And if you consider most schoolkids, forcing it onto them is simply not going to ignite any sort of a passion for it, and may off kids who otherwise would be. The change would probably have to come in how society views science before any changes in education are really going to make any traction.
Possibly true- but you're not going to change how society views science by destroying science with censorship laws. It's only by encouraging a more open discussion, a more open foundation for science to begin with, that we can eventually change this three or four generations from now.
Unchangable, definite knowldege is only possible for non-finite beings: being finite, we cannot in any way state anything definite because our experience is finite, and, likely, insufficient on any matter. So, basically, you want to reserve the word "know" for beings other than humans. You are free to do that.
Actually, I'm not. The whole argument between ID and Evolution means that what is science- what is acceptable knowledge- is now being set in law. Thanks to two sets of bigots who don't want to admit that they are wrong, a student asking the question in science class will likely receive a bad grade just for being curious- or worse, will get removed from the classroom for violating the law. The obvious way out is to admit that science is just another religion, and treat all religions equally; but that won't happen because a judge in PA has decided to treat science as being above the constitution- and bad science at that.
I am becoming repetitive, but here we go again: the fact that you use that definition of "knowing" (which is not at all the "common sense" definition, not the one used by science) makes your statement about the impossibility of knowing true. But it is a rather uninteresting truth, as it the impossibility of that kind of knowledge is contained in its very definition.
It may be uninteresting to you- but that's exactly why you're missing the point of the debate, and the damage it does to people outside of the debate.
Dude: the fact that we are even able to ignore irrelevant evidence, in matters like "who set up the constants" as much as in more prosaic things like ambient noise, are what allows us to form concepts, ideas, reason, develop a consciousness, and not go crazy in the first 15 minutes of our existance.
Yes, but the flip side of that is that there is forbidden knowledge- and that is a bad thing.
Science incorporates in its very essence the fact that we are neither fallible nor omniscient. What do you want humanity to do: develop a procedure for infallible and omniscient beings to acquire knowledge? What would that do for anyone? We have developed ways to deal with our own limitations. Yet you find those ways to be at fault for the very fact that we are limited.
Incorrect. What I find at fault is the insistance that other rejected theories do not exist- without mentioning either the rejected theory or why it was rejected. Now we're haveing law set the definition of what is science. Where will it end? Do scientists really have to start with their own version of the witch hunts of the 1600s for you to see that censorship is a bad thing?
The difference comes from your demanding that the search for knowledge on the part of humans attain perfect, inmutable, complete knowledge, and my acknowledging that that is an unmeetable demand.
Actually, this is the first time you've admitted that it is an unmeetable demand. So far, you've put far more emphasis on the claim that ID is not science, instead of admiting that ID is as much science as Evolution is, because perfect, inmutable, complete knowledge is an unmeetable demand.
I, as a principle, do not find a problem when I and others are not able to meet demands that are by their very essence unreachable.
Then maybe you shouldn't censor others for it.
When what you want is to be able to predict where Mars will be tomorrow night at midnight, you do not care who set up the universal gravity constant at the value it has now. It is a completely irrelevant piece of data.
Unless of course, randomization comes along and changes that constant- in which case it becomes a highly relevant piece of data.
Now, that irrelevance has been stablished by experience, and of course, as anything else which has been stablished by experience, is subject to being rejected did new information come which requires it. But the position of Mars has been quite precisely been predicted since at least the S
Well, there do exist QM hidden variable theories which sacrifice locality and suggest that all particles can interact with all other particles instantaneously, which would be comprable to a system with coupling variables between every pair of particles for every interaction they can have. That's pretty much the upper limit of non-redundant information the universe could possibly hold. The problem is many of these theories are set up so that they reduce exactly to 'normal' QM predictions for any observable system. Meaning they don't really offer us much new predictive power.
Neither is my theory that places the mistakes on the observer's side of things, at first glance. But that's the philosophical hole in Occam's razor- it can cause us to reject theories and models without testing them merely because they seem to be more complex on the surface.
I do agree here, to a point. I have argued in favour of getting some more rigorous background teaching put into physics modules at my uni (both mathematical and philisophical). The problem is that at this point, courses are heavily dominated by people who are not there for the love of physics, but to get a degree because that's the done thing. Only about one in ten of us has gone on to do masters/phd work, and probably even fewer of them will actually pursue it as a career. These people are going to be somewhat put off by extremely heavy mathematics which is not particularly necessary to understand the basic concepts, or by philisophical musings which they are not likely to pursue on their own time. And the department can't risk that, since they're having enough trouble keeping some courses open as it stands.
That's precisely why you need to do it at a lower level. Right now, for most of the public, science may as well be done by witch doctors- it's got just about the same philosophical connection to real life (only results count) as the shaman in a primative tribe. It's taught strictly out of textbooks, any thought or dissent from that standard is swiftly punished, sometimes even in court. This yeilds the sorry state of science in the United States today- despite the fact that we've recently created a new method of peer review that is much more efficient than the old journal system, for many scientists if it wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal it didn't happen, and for most of the public what is real depends upon what somebody with an arbitrary and subjective set of letters behind their name chooses to tell the general media, or worse yet, testify to in advertising for money.
This problem is even more pronounced at lower levels in schools - a small minority of people really enjoy their subjects and would welcome detailed background, but most will simply be put off by it. And if they can get easier courses without these unappealing aspects, they're going to take them. As an example, in the UK the A-level physics syllabus has been changed to no longer include any calculus, since this was taken as offputting to people who wanted to do physics without maths. Of course, the idea of physics without maths is pretty laughable to begin with, but since numbers are low to start, no course director is going to want to risk losing that number of people. So the syllabus gets thinned out, and quite often the unviersity courses have to be modified to take that into account.
So go even lower- and don't give them a choice whether to take it or not. Philosophy and history should be the begining of any level of science- even primary school kids and kindergarteners.
In my sophomore year (1991) at Oregon Institute of Technology, we had a problem with Navy jets from nearby Kinsley Field buzzing campus (their "floor" was set a mile above sea level- campus was only 680 feet below this). A group of laser students and Software Engineering students conspired to find an old 1980s frequency for Soviet Air-to-Air missile radar- and built a laser pointer on that frequency. For a couple of weeks in there if you looked up at just the right time, you'd see a pair of Navy jets buzzing campus- and then suddenly one of them would go evasive for a split second and recover. Took them about two weeks to take the OIT campus out of their flight pattern. Don't know if anybody was ever caught- or if the Navy ever figured out what was causing the error in their friend-or-foe systems.
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It also just occured to me that we're really talking about two different things here. E-bay is largely about luxury, not neccessity. Food is largely about neccessity, not luxury. The best part of distributism is that even if the whole grid goes down, you've got your neccessities in walking distance, supplied by people you know and trust. You can't know or trust people online- which is fine for luxuries, but God help you if you're trusting people you don't know for neccessities, because only he can.
This is where I disagree -- when you allow international trade, you open yourself to finding people who are more efficient at a given task than people local to you. This frees up the local people to find what they're most efficient at doing.
That's what they tell us- but in practice it's not that easy to retrain for a different job- and in human happiness, this ends up a big negative for both cultures. A good example is what's happening between India and the United States right now- a small number (2%) of US citizenry is really good at farming, especially with subsidies from the US Government. A small minority of Indians are very good at high tech engineering. So following your idea, we put people out of work here to turn engineers into farmers, and we put farmers out of work there to turn them into engineers? But since it's only a small minority in both with these talents, what we're really doing is throwing huge numbers of people onto the welfare rolls of both countries- and those welfare rolls are collapsing and people are literally suffering from malnutrition when they can't afford food at US prices and can't afford to grow their own.
What ruins international trade is all the treaties, agreements and tariffs: they screw up the market and screw up the ability for people to find their best marketable talents. For decades we supported steel workers in the US even though other countries could get us steel cheaper (even after considering shipping costs). This made our cars more expensive -- taking money out of the households that could have been better spent elsewhere.
But some people have NO other marketable talents- and thus you end up taking US Steel Workers, who have been in that industry for generations and ARE more productive than other people at what they do, and throw them out of work to do what? Retrain in selling french fries and speaking Spanish? Sometimes efficiency is the *worst* thing to make economic descisions on.
I would say that 30% of my Internet income comes from overseas. Your arguments would have convinced me up until 1990 or so -- once the Internet took hold, we saw the power of anarchy. Look at eBay. eBay could exist without the law, as the moderation system allows you to trust your seller. If a seller decides to defraud people, they COULD start all over with 0 moderation points -- but people are less likely to trust someone with 0 feedback.
They could also form a group to "sell" token items to each other giving them good feedback, and then use that to defraud people on larger items. And in the mean time, the anarchy comes home when you force your next door neighbor who used to make that item for you to break into your house in search of food. That's a hugely bad idea in the long run.
For me, I want completely open trade and complete access to use my property as I see fit.
Does that include the right of somebody else to steal your market?
If someone wants to take the time to copy my old books or songs or videos, go ahead and sell it. I'm working on NEW items, and those who support my work will support me financially. It has worked in my life and it has worked in the lives of millions without them knowing it. Patents are no different -- inventions are only as good as your ability to not only sell them but to convince your customers that your item is better than your competitors. If a patent is your only advantage, you're not providing the market with what it needs: quality, cost and efficiency.
And you're also impovershing your neighbors. Who will eventually revolt at that impoverishment- because it removes their freedom.
That's how distributism works- except for the assumption is the reverse. If a single household agrees with a set of laws and morals, that's the traditions of that household. Next up is the neighborhood, then the village, then the township, then the county, then the state, then the country. Of course- we accept only a 51% vote as well. But allowing people from outside to own land or invade the market- that's the bad part. Multinational corporations would not be allowed unless they provide something that can't be made locally- the whole idea is to make manufacturers and consumers LOCAL to each other, so that business decisions such as pricing and wages can be made with full knowledge of the individual human beings involved and their situations, instead of canibalistically profiting off of strangers. The rest, would happen organically.
It confuses me -- as a freedom lover, I'm known to promote my views heavily one very blog and forum I'm on. For years I was beaten down for my odd views, but now it seems like I'm just one amongst many, even in the mass media. What the hell is going on here?
ON topic more like- because this very article is "What the hell is going on here?". I'm one who rejects libertarianism as unworkable in the long run- though even my personal economic and political system (distributist democracy) certainly does contain some libertartian principles, since the real power lies in the household and then works it's way up in an upsidedown pyramid from there. But even I see that freedom gets the most press in times of slavery- and between patents, trade agreements, layoffs, the war, energy prices, and health care, Americans aren't feeling very free right now. WAY too much external to the household affects the happiness of our lives- corporations and governments, nonhuman entities, have been allowed to take over instead. Nothing sparks interest in liberty than a lack of it.
They're consistent. When I say "accurate" I don't mean absolutely accurate, just pretty/very accurate. Like when I say "good" I don't mean perfect.
In other words, you admit that science is full of error- you just would rather lie than admit that in science class.
Fair enough, but within the sects most of the assumptions have remained the same for a long time
So have the basic assumptions in science- the scientific method is a theology. Objective evidence is a theology. The existance of these go unquestioned for huge amounts of time.
Ok, fair enough, but I'm sure there's a similar unquestionable core belief.
Not for all of religion. Religions are merely systems of beliefs- there is no *single* core belief for all religions. Individual religious sects have core beliefs, yes, but no one core belief covers every religion mankind has ever believed in. That's why I call science a religion- it has core beliefs, and those core beliefs are markedly different enough to create sects and meta-sects.
Not my experience of it.
Roman Catholicism is one of those meta-sects; katholicos in Greek means universal. There is more to Roman Catholicism than any one person could ever experience personally; in theological terms the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls it a meta-culture, under which several local cultures with varying belief systems survive and thrive. A good example is the official church position taken on the ID debate- you have Jesuits claiming theistic evolution where God is but a witness to random indeterministic nature; to Dominicans claiming that Genesis is true, but just an allegory and the six days took "mille mille eons", to traditionalists in the United States who are splitting off over Young Earth Creationism.
If you're insinuating that to believe in science requires one to be fundamentally immoral, you're gravely mistaken.
No, I'm not- which is why I said the belief of objectivism rather than science. Objectivism can be philosophically derived from the scientific method; but doing so starts one down the slipery slope to solipsism and nilhism, systems under which morality has no meaning whatsoever (and neither does anything else because it's ALL false).
I think of religions in terms of the ones I'm personally familiar with. If I don't take a certain religion into account it's not because I can't criticise it as easily, just that I don't know about it.
Which is your same problem with philosophy- you discount it because you just don't know about it.
Science is different from religion, and superior in terms of results if nothing else.
Above you admited that those results are not absolutely accurate ever- I think the only reason you think it's supperior to other philosophies is because you are unfamiliar with other philosophies. Here's a hint- the test of time affects ALL philosophy equally. If there's anything objective in philosophy it's this- philosophies that do not produce accurate results die. Ones that do produce accurate results survive. It's evolution applied to human societies and ideas; survival of the fittest.
From that point of view, science is simply too new to have it's results compared to religion as a whole; it's likely more accurate than very young sects (like say the Jevhovah's Witnesses, the Young Earth Creationists, or the Dispensationalists), but it's likely less accurate than say, Hinduism. Regardless of the technological marvels, what really counts in human truth is the applicability to human life, and the creation of happiness in that life. Science's most obvious advance towards that is materialism- and materialism is too young to have proof of increasing human happiness, it has yet to withstand the test of time.
Absolute accuracy is impossible, and to the best of our knowledge not just for us but for anything.
But it's incredibly arrogant to assume that the best of OUR knowledge is eq
Socialist medicine is ruinous to a nation's healthcare system and it's medical research and the economy.
See my latest Journal Entry- by any real measure Europe has longer lifespans and a more robust economy than the United States. If anything our private healthcare system is a millstone that is dragging American corporations down and making us uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
You already lost that debate and I won - way back in 1993.
Too bad by 2001 your "win" was already turning into a major loss- and today, in 2006, more than 62 million Americans have no health care system at all.
Actually, the first one didn't cost me anything and the second thing cost me $70 for 1500 fliers.
/., which makes you impotent (thankfully).
For the people that universal health care would have helped, $70 is a week's groceries- or a week's heating bill. When you're too poor to invest, you're too poor to lobby.
Technically, we weren't lobbying against 'a plan' but we were lobbying against provisions in the plan that would kill unborn children and euthanize (a pretty European word for kill) elderly people at taxpayer expense.
Yep, I'm sure that's what you thought. Isn't it interesting how we are able to rationalize our inhumanity to our fellow man as saving other fellow men?
Further, my family was so poor at the time that I think the socio-economic class I was in at the time was paying almost no taxes - and the Church's who distributed them (including several all-black congregations) were in the same boat as us - but we didn't think those in higher socio-economic classes should have their earned wealth looted from them, especially to pay to kill off other people.
If you were able to spend $70 on fliers, then yes, your family was earning enough to pay taxes.
So was Cartman right? Are you a 'college educated hippie?' - the worse kind? Don't you have a drum circle to attend? You really know nothing, and you don't know that you know nothing about nothing, which would make you dangerous, but you don't do anything but rant on
You know nothing about me- I work for a living.
Those in power wish to remain in power, in democracy it means they must campaign to become re-elected.
Either that, or they're just puppets and the corporations that own the puppets simply pay campaign contributions to all possible sides to make sure that anybody elected will do their bidding no matter what.
1) I don't think it is wrong, unfair, or even bad that corporations attempt to influence legislation. Often, corporations are closest to an issue to provide legislators real information. Any information provider to a legislator will have a bias. In fact, knowledge and bias go hand-in-hand. It also seems unrealistic to say that only unemployed individuals can lobby. It is ultimately up to the elected representative to know when they are receiving good or bad information.
In a democracy, any bias towards money-as-power and against the common citizenry is *bad information*. I don't want only unemployed individuals lobbying either- but I do want every lobbyist to only be lobbying for *themselves* with *their own money*. One great way to do this would be to limit all political campaign contributions to $1.
2) There is nothing wrong with corporations benefiting from new laws. What is wrong, and I think we can agree on, is when this benefit causes wider costs to uninvolved parties. This is complicated though -- there are very few uninvolved parties. When a car manufacturer benefits from a less restrictive pollution law, people benefit from, say, less expensive cars. But they also see an increase in respiratory illness -- for example.
Corporations should neither need nor benefit from new laws unless the law was passed for a purpose unrelated to the corporation. Corporations should also be limited to the business listed in their charters.
3) Shareholder value is all that I want corporations to think about (except being legal). Corporations will do more good by pursuing shareholder value and more evil by pursuing something else, say, full employment. Some things are not managed well by corporations -- these include national defence for example. These things should be agressively trimmed to a minimum list and handed over to a government buearucracy.
Concentration on shareholder value vs the public good will always result in evil to the citizenry. As far as I'm concerned, public corporations should be banned from selling stock for exactly that reason.
I think he also seriously underestimates the usefulness of post office trucks. Around here the little jeeps with jeep hood ornaments, repainted grey, are used in Eastern Oregon as farm vehicles- you can get them legally, used and surplussed, for about $500 on the used market.
In fact we have proven that there is no possible set of consistant hidden variable values that could produced the observed results.
Even a set larger than any previously tested? How can you possibly say that there is *no possible set* until you've tried the infinity of *all possible sets*? There simply hasn't been enough time.
For any professional physicists or mathemticians out there, or anyone who wants to bend their brain on some hardcore physics and math, I am referring to the Kochen-Specker theorem. It is more powerful than the Bell inequalities at refuting any possible Hidden Value theory.
And fails from the same lack of imagination, unfortuneately. After all, it doesn't cover that perhaps the complexity comes from variables that don't follow mathematical axioms and assumptions. All this proves is that there is no set of variables that are consistent with mathematical axioms and assumptions.
Gahh! Leave God out of it. God is neither proven nor disproven by anything. So lets try that again...
It's the same thing, unfortuneately- the reason you can't prove or disprove God is because He/she/it is outside of the scope of the investigation. Same with the pattern that you're interpreting as random.
Proving the impossibility of any and all hidden variable theories does NOT prove there's no underlying pattern.
Then why bring it into a discussion on the existance of randomness?
Snipping down, this is getting too long.
So unless you believe the experimenter's choice of axes to measure was determined, the spins that we will measure are fundamentally impossible to predict.
Of course the experimenter's choice of axes to measure was determined- by the experimenter. This isn't random either- it's a conceious choice by a mind to reduce the resolution of the experiment.
Quantum mechanics wasn't invented to have a cool theory. It was invented because it was necessary. The randomness is there, it is real, the evidence is as strong as any truth you care to name.
Which isn't very strong, since all evidence is subjective- we choose to limit the input.
It's consistent, sensible, and makes useful predictions. Not something any other religion I know of does.
Every religion that survives more than 70 years or so does this. You must not know very much of religion. But even your science is not consistent, for instance:
Absolute accuracy is impossible. Accuracy is made better by publishing results as soon as they are available so that others can collaborate. If we approached things your way we'd still be sitting there discussing whether large objects fall at the same rate as small objects, and unwilling to make predictions about anything.
Wheras science has accurate predictive ability.
Both of these quotes came from the discussion of science as religion- and they are NOT consistent with one another. That isn't to say that partial accuracy isn't useful- it is- but the very intertia you decry elsewhere in the discussion on peer review journals comes from not seeing the inconsistency.
Arbitrary. It all comes down to believing the statements of one authority over another - not something consistent.
That's true of any belief system- even science. It all comes down to which authorities you accept and which you deny. For instance:
Most major religions have kept their basic assumptions the same. Christians still believe that God is a trinity, Jesus is the son of God, the Bible is the inspired word of God, etc.
Actually, not all Christians believe all of those. One sect believes in trinities, another does not. Some say that Jesus was just a prophet. The Bible as the inspired word of God is accepted- but means very little for some meanings of the word "inspired". In fact, I can't think of a basic assumption that is accepted by all Christians.
Religion still requires a lack of questioning of the most basic assumption - the existence of god.
Nope- not all religions have a God. Zen Buddhists have only the universe. Catholicism considers God to be such a nebulous concept that "everything and nothing" fits. The religion of objectivism is a relatively recent set of beliefs that would deny the existance of everything outside of self- and has a morality based on that. Religion is far larger than you can possibly imagine- because all a religion is is a set of beliefs. You attempt to reduce religion down to the ones you are personally opposed to- and put science on a pedestal upon which it does not belong. Accuracy is not possible for human beings- but that doesn't mean that accuracy is impossible. And that statement is directly in conflict with the idea that science builds accurate models.
Not really. Even before I was old enough to vote I organized a group of fellow students, also not old enough to vote, and petitioned our city council to pass an ordinance banning public display of obscenity on clothing. Also, before I could vote, I circulated pamplets on defeating the Clinton healthcare plan throughout my town and got hundreds of letters (which actually do count) into federal representatives urging them to oppose the plan. That battle was won, too.
Both of which probably required more money than the average citizen can lay his hands on. But what a selfish prick you are- destroying the health of millions so that your socio-economic class can be taxed less.
Voting is just for show in the 21st century. Lobbying is where the political power is at; lobbying takes money. Big money. Money that only corporations can amass, not individual shareholders or citizens. Voting is NOTHING in comparison to the legalized bribery of lobbying in our system.
What more control do you want?
I want corporate power to be limited to non-governmental roles; no lobbying, no ability to subvert democracy. I want corporations, as artificial beings under the law, to be limited to a 40 year lifespan. I want corporations to *prove* in their charters that they are doing something for the public good, and if found to not be following their charter, their incorporation should be revoked. I want all stockholders of a corporation to be citizens of this nation, and swear loyalty oaths to this country. And finally, I want corporations to be incorporated for a single nation or country only- with no ability to have subsidiaries in other nations.
In other words, I want corporate law roled back to 1830. Is that too much to ask?
The best bet is not to reject philosophy out of hand as not being useful. All philosophies are at least partially useful, otherwise they would not have survived to present day. The test of time is the *original* scientific method, and it still holds true, even if it takes centuries to work.
But there's no way to predict which will come out. I'd say that I could make such a box using radioctivity, but that doesn't matter - just suppose such a box existed. Would you deny that such a box is random?
I think I just realized why quantum mechanics doesn't work in the macro world. The randomness only exists in the micro world, because it's not really randomness. Radioactivity is not random- you could theoretically track the positrons and know exactly which atom would decay next, then track it's positrons and know what would decay after that. The ones who say it's just a discontinuity between the micro and macro realms are right; it's a problem with the scope of the observer, not any real randomness.
If you call such a thing random, then there is none of your kind of randomness in the universe. However, there is randomness of my black box kind, and that's sufficient to explain everything we've observed.
Ok- I'll agree PSEUDORANDOMNESS DUE TO THE LAZINESS OF THE OBSERVER does exist.
Maybe that's why you're looking at this wrong. In pure software there is no randomness - but that's not true in the universe.
Actually, it is true in the universe as well- the problem is in us, the observers of the universe, not in the universe itself. The universe itself stays deterministic- we're just not looking at it with the correct resolution. It's kind of like google earth- look at an area where there is a lot of human habitation, where the sattelites have been very interested in what's going on, and you get sharp, clear pictures. Rural areas, not so much; you get pictures so blurry that they only make sense from 10 miles above ground level. Heisenberg, being just as anthromorphic as any other theologian, claims that the information he can't see didn't exist- and because you believe that, you fail to look.
It's very easily distinguishable - stand on an iron asteroid and a watery comet of the same size, you'll notice you feel heavier on the former.
More atoms expanding quicker would explain that just as well.
A law just tells us the effects of certain causes. The outcome can be unpredictable if, for example, it is impossible to precisely measure the inputs.
It's never impossible to precisely measure the inputs- it's only highly improbable that we as human beings will measure the inputs correctly.
That definition covers every religion by covering practically any thought. You can't seriously be claiming that all beliefs are religious beliefs.
No, just all humanoid beliefs- I don't know enough to claim so for other species groups. It's possible though. But yes- Philosophy and religion are how we have modeled the world since the begining of our species, and science is no exception to that rule. Now had I said ORGANIZED religion, you'd be more correct at least (though the argument can definately be made that science is organized) but mere religion doesn't even need two people. In fact, it's more likely that we have 7 billion religions on this planet right now; one for every individual that only tangentially intersect.
Even if you were right, and I certainly don't agree with you on that, how does an intelligent God make the universe any less supernatural? Saying "x happens because God wants it to" is no more of an explanation, and has no more predictive power, than "x happens".
It turns the universe into an experiment of the natural- God defines the natural to see what will happen when the constants and laws are as they are. Note that such a god is omniscient and not omniscient at the same time- just like us and randomness on a quantum level, it depends on the resolution you're looking at the universe through.
In this case, yes, the function was written by someone intelligent, but that doesn't mean it always has to be. We have equations and functions arising all over the universe with no intelligent input - something like GmM/r^2 is just there, without
The problem is, even with entanglement as a method, you're stuck with point-to-point matched cards for this- CISCO would probably make a mint off of selling routers with matched quantum network cards. About the only people I see losing out on this are the ones installing fiber and copper and localized towers- because each network card would *only* be able to communicate with it's matched router, and all traffic would have to go through that router. The only neat thing is that it's non-localized; a single central office could service several million mobile phones, because the cells would no longer be neccessary. Broadcast though would still be in business- who wants a radio that can only get a single station, or a TV that can only get a single channel?
The real prank is that anybody at OIT at the time in question has heard this rumor- despite it's obvious problems, I'm not the one who made up the rumor.
Of course, it helped that at the time, Laser Engineering was considered the hardest major at the school and Software Engineering the second hardest; we did enough "magic" on a daily basis that few others on campus understood that it made the story believeable.
neither of these make sense on any level (not even to religious scholars) and can only be accepted by the same type of thought that also leads to creationism.
Or for that matter to quantum mechanics. Every system of belief has it's assumptions. Even atheism.
And you really should read up on the history of both science and cults- there is much that is comparable between the two at this point in time.
There is no hole there, it's in the misinterpretation of Occam's razor which is common. If the two theories offer identical predictions (as is the case with many of these hidden variable theories, by design) there is no way to perform a test which will distinguish between them. Therefore there is no possible test which enables us to distinguish between them. Thus we either have to say 'maybe' or pick one to use, and it is simply sensible to pick the one with fewest levels of complexity. Of course there may be future results which enable us to distinguish between them, but as it stands they have simply been fitted to match everything we have, so we have nothing to go on at the moment.
Complexity is a completely arbitrary and subjective line in the sand, is what I'm saying. And yet we pretend otherwise for no apparent reason. Saying maybe is more accurate than picking one to use in this case.
Unfortuantely, I do not think this is exclusively a result of the teaching of science. The fact is, most people just don't care enough about it. Society doesn't respect critical thought and research. The syllabi are designed to try and teach the material without being offputting to the potential students. Making scientific education more extensive and detailled may help with how people look at science, but the problem is probably more a function of people not really wanting to learn as of them not having the opportunity. And if you consider most schoolkids, forcing it onto them is simply not going to ignite any sort of a passion for it, and may off kids who otherwise would be. The change would probably have to come in how society views science before any changes in education are really going to make any traction.
Possibly true- but you're not going to change how society views science by destroying science with censorship laws. It's only by encouraging a more open discussion, a more open foundation for science to begin with, that we can eventually change this three or four generations from now.
Unchangable, definite knowldege is only possible for non-finite beings: being finite, we cannot in any way state anything definite because our experience is finite, and, likely, insufficient on any matter. So, basically, you want to reserve the word "know" for beings other than humans. You are free to do that.
Actually, I'm not. The whole argument between ID and Evolution means that what is science- what is acceptable knowledge- is now being set in law. Thanks to two sets of bigots who don't want to admit that they are wrong, a student asking the question in science class will likely receive a bad grade just for being curious- or worse, will get removed from the classroom for violating the law. The obvious way out is to admit that science is just another religion, and treat all religions equally; but that won't happen because a judge in PA has decided to treat science as being above the constitution- and bad science at that.
I am becoming repetitive, but here we go again: the fact that you use that definition of "knowing" (which is not at all the "common sense" definition, not the one used by science) makes your statement about the impossibility of knowing true. But it is a rather uninteresting truth, as it the impossibility of that kind of knowledge is contained in its very definition.
It may be uninteresting to you- but that's exactly why you're missing the point of the debate, and the damage it does to people outside of the debate.
Dude: the fact that we are even able to ignore irrelevant evidence, in matters like "who set up the constants" as much as in more prosaic things like ambient noise, are what allows us to form concepts, ideas, reason, develop a consciousness, and not go crazy in the first 15 minutes of our existance.
Yes, but the flip side of that is that there is forbidden knowledge- and that is a bad thing.
Science incorporates in its very essence the fact that we are neither fallible nor omniscient. What do you want humanity to do: develop a procedure for infallible and omniscient beings to acquire knowledge? What would that do for anyone? We have developed ways to deal with our own limitations. Yet you find those ways to be at fault for the very fact that we are limited.
Incorrect. What I find at fault is the insistance that other rejected theories do not exist- without mentioning either the rejected theory or why it was rejected. Now we're haveing law set the definition of what is science. Where will it end? Do scientists really have to start with their own version of the witch hunts of the 1600s for you to see that censorship is a bad thing?
The difference comes from your demanding that the search for knowledge on the part of humans attain perfect, inmutable, complete knowledge, and my acknowledging that that is an unmeetable demand.
Actually, this is the first time you've admitted that it is an unmeetable demand. So far, you've put far more emphasis on the claim that ID is not science, instead of admiting that ID is as much science as Evolution is, because perfect, inmutable, complete knowledge is an unmeetable demand.
I, as a principle, do not find a problem when I and others are not able to meet demands that are by their very essence unreachable.
Then maybe you shouldn't censor others for it.
When what you want is to be able to predict where Mars will be tomorrow night at midnight, you do not care who set up the universal gravity constant at the value it has now. It is a completely irrelevant piece of data.
Unless of course, randomization comes along and changes that constant- in which case it becomes a highly relevant piece of data.
Now, that irrelevance has been stablished by experience, and of course, as anything else which has been stablished by experience, is subject to being rejected did new information come which requires it. But the position of Mars has been quite precisely been predicted since at least the S
Well, there do exist QM hidden variable theories which sacrifice locality and suggest that all particles can interact with all other particles instantaneously, which would be comprable to a system with coupling variables between every pair of particles for every interaction they can have. That's pretty much the upper limit of non-redundant information the universe could possibly hold. The problem is many of these theories are set up so that they reduce exactly to 'normal' QM predictions for any observable system. Meaning they don't really offer us much new predictive power.
Neither is my theory that places the mistakes on the observer's side of things, at first glance. But that's the philosophical hole in Occam's razor- it can cause us to reject theories and models without testing them merely because they seem to be more complex on the surface.
I do agree here, to a point. I have argued in favour of getting some more rigorous background teaching put into physics modules at my uni (both mathematical and philisophical). The problem is that at this point, courses are heavily dominated by people who are not there for the love of physics, but to get a degree because that's the done thing. Only about one in ten of us has gone on to do masters/phd work, and probably even fewer of them will actually pursue it as a career. These people are going to be somewhat put off by extremely heavy mathematics which is not particularly necessary to understand the basic concepts, or by philisophical musings which they are not likely to pursue on their own time. And the department can't risk that, since they're having enough trouble keeping some courses open as it stands.
That's precisely why you need to do it at a lower level. Right now, for most of the public, science may as well be done by witch doctors- it's got just about the same philosophical connection to real life (only results count) as the shaman in a primative tribe. It's taught strictly out of textbooks, any thought or dissent from that standard is swiftly punished, sometimes even in court. This yeilds the sorry state of science in the United States today- despite the fact that we've recently created a new method of peer review that is much more efficient than the old journal system, for many scientists if it wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal it didn't happen, and for most of the public what is real depends upon what somebody with an arbitrary and subjective set of letters behind their name chooses to tell the general media, or worse yet, testify to in advertising for money.
This problem is even more pronounced at lower levels in schools - a small minority of people really enjoy their subjects and would welcome detailed background, but most will simply be put off by it. And if they can get easier courses without these unappealing aspects, they're going to take them. As an example, in the UK the A-level physics syllabus has been changed to no longer include any calculus, since this was taken as offputting to people who wanted to do physics without maths. Of course, the idea of physics without maths is pretty laughable to begin with, but since numbers are low to start, no course director is going to want to risk losing that number of people. So the syllabus gets thinned out, and quite often the unviersity courses have to be modified to take that into account.
So go even lower- and don't give them a choice whether to take it or not. Philosophy and history should be the begining of any level of science- even primary school kids and kindergarteners.
In my sophomore year (1991) at Oregon Institute of Technology, we had a problem with Navy jets from nearby Kinsley Field buzzing campus (their "floor" was set a mile above sea level- campus was only 680 feet below this). A group of laser students and Software Engineering students conspired to find an old 1980s frequency for Soviet Air-to-Air missile radar- and built a laser pointer on that frequency. For a couple of weeks in there if you looked up at just the right time, you'd see a pair of Navy jets buzzing campus- and then suddenly one of them would go evasive for a split second and recover. Took them about two weeks to take the OIT campus out of their flight pattern. Don't know if anybody was ever caught- or if the Navy ever figured out what was causing the error in their friend-or-foe systems.