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.
Weather appears random but climate clearly isn't. Any gambler can tell you that even though the individual games behave as if they were random, the macroscopic effect is entirely predictable.
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.
Positrons aren't involved AFAIK. Anyway, if you want a definite example, measuring the spin of a spin-half particle. It has to be random, because it's possible to arrange 33 axes such that there is no consistent arrangement of spins at all of them. (We measure 3 in orthogonal directions and we always get two 0s and a 1. Always. When we make the measurement we affect the spin of the particle and it won't be the same the next time we measure in the same 3 directions, the arrangement of the 0s and 1 may be different but there will always be 2 0s and 1 1. But there is no way to assign spin along these 33 axes so that there's always 2 0s and a 1 in any 3 perpendicular directions. 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.
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.
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.
Anyway, you didn't answer my question.
Ok- I'll agree PSEUDORANDOMNESS DUE TO THE LAZINESS OF THE OBSERVER does exist.
It's not a question of laziness. There are measurements which are impossible to make.
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.
You're just asserting this. What grounds do you have for believing the universe must behave like software?
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 not about whether he could see it, the point is he proved that it's impossible to see it. And further experiments like the one I described above show it's not actually there.
More atoms expanding quicker would explain that just as well.
So atoms expand faster when they're clumped together? You're already getting more complicated than standard gravity. And compare a comet of normal with a comet of heavy water-ice.
It's never impossible to precisely measure the inputs- it's only highly improbable that we as human beings will measure the inputs correctly.
The whole point of QM is that it is actually impossible to measure some things.
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
Sorry- in my line of work that's considered pseudorandom. At best, it can only create a 1 or a 0 in accordance with the way the black box was designed;
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?
the very fact that it cannot explode or do anything unexpected makes it non-random.
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.
Did I mention I'm a software engineer by trade- working entirely in software, the realm of thought?
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.
And yet gravity is entirely indescernable from a perpetually expanding universe.
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.
The whole idea of a LAW of physics instead of a THEORY is that it DOES precisely predict the outcome, in every case.
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.
English is a highly imprecise language- and conventional meanings of words bring with them the bias of the speaker. Philosophicaly a religion has been any given system of belief for a very long time- it's the only definition that actually covers ALL religions as opposed to only organized monothesitic and polytheistic religions, which are subsets of the whole.
That definition covers every religion by covering practically any thought. You can't seriously be claiming that all beliefs are religious beliefs.
Because, as I have shown above, and you agreed to above, an unintelligent God yeilds Laws that aren't Laws and facts that aren't fact- an unpredictable, supernatural universe.
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".
No, I'm seriously claiming that for finite meanings of the word intelligent, YOU have an intelligent mind- and thus the pseudorandom function you just wrote down has an intelligent mind *behind* it. This is true for every pseudorandom software function or set of hardware we can think of- something has to limit the randomness for it to be pseudorandom.
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 needing a mind behind it. Why couldn't a pseudorandom function be the same?
The problem there is the observation itself is only as accurate as the instruments observing it; and just as finite, local, and non-universal as the teachings of an authority. In fact, most teachings of authorities of any type are based on observation; which is what makes them inaccurate and inadequate to begin with.
No. It may start at exactly the same level of accuracy, but it is improved upon, tested repeatedly. We're never 100% certain of something we've learnt from observation, but we can get arbitrarily close.
No, in fact, they are exactly the same as all of the alternatives- mere opinion that is sometimes true and sometimes false. Arrogance will get you nowhere with me.
Try comparing the accuracy of scientific predictions with that of those made by any of the alternatives.
The reason you're getting irritated is because you don't actually understand the concept of randomn
True randomness would mean it's entirely outside of natural phenomena; beyond the ken of even an omniscient being. At which point, no possible laws could be discovered. No probability estimates would hold. Nothing could be predicted at all. Truly random means no rules.
Say I have a black box with a screen on it. Every second it displays either a 1 or a 0. There is no way to ever predict which of a 1 or 0 it will be ahead of time, but it is 1 50% of the time and 0 50% of the time (in the same way a dice is 1 1/6th of the time). But there is no possibility of the box exploding, or anything other than a 1 or 0 appearing. Such a thing is random by any definition I've seen, but does not make physics stop working, and that's the level of randomness we need. Science doesn't rely on the existence of random in the way you're defining it.
And yet above, you arrogantly insist that randomness exists- not seeing the potential error in that.
I insist that it exists in the same way I'd insist gravity exists. No, we don't know it's there for certain, but the evidence is overwhelming.
I agree they've been useful- but useful and accurate are two different things, as are fact and theory. No model actually approaches fact, so why claim to be teaching fact?
Our scientific model of the universe appears to approach the fact. We don't know this for certain, but with enough confidence to base decisions on what to teach on it.
Nope, same one. A random event is unpredictable in all frames of reference. That means that laws of physics do not hold for random events.
Laws of physics can still hold, provided they cannot precisely predict the outcome.
I'm not, and have never been, conventional. A religion is just a system of belief, a model to explain the universe.
If you're not going to accept the conventional meanings of the words in the English language, it's going to make it very hard to have a discussion.
Yep, exactly right. And Newton defined that as a part of the Mind of God- one of the rules God used to create the universe as it is.
You can call it that if you will, but why must such a God be intelligent?
Which just proves that there's an intelligent mind behind it.
Are you seriously claiming the function I just wrote down has an intelligent mind?
Both concepts require *belief* and *faith*. You can no more prove that there is a pattern underneath the randomness than you can prove there is no God. The concepts are equal and based in faith and belief, not in reality.
A belief in the simplest explanation for an observed phenomenon is in a different category from a belief based solely on the teachings of authority.
You've claimed infalibility for science and Occam's razor several times in this discussion already.
Perhaps so, in which case my apologies. They're not infallible, merely vastly superior to any alternative.
Then why are you responding as if they're not? Why do you ban questions that can falsify the system from the classroom?
Because I'm getting irritated. You seem to be wilfully misunderstanding the concept of randomness.
And yet, the peer review system is all about censorship- it's based on censorship.
If you consider a science journal insisting on only publishing science censorship, then yes. So?
Or at least so you claim, not understanding that random numbers don't exist.
On what basis do you claim they don't exist?
And since that doesn't actually exist in nature- there's always a pattern even if you can't see it- you've really only got pseudorandom strings to deal with.
But such strings would suffice to explain our observations of the universe, and are a far simpler idea than an intelligent god.
It's exactly the same level of simplicity- completely based on faith and a misunderstanding of the word random.
I can write the code for a psuedorandom number gene
Why would God be as arbitrary as a human being? Just because we're arbitrary and biased doesn't mean God is; in fact it's likely that's a big difference between man and God.
As far as we can tell the decisions are completely random. There's no rhyme or reason that we can make out. Of course that could mean we're simply unable to comprehend it, but it would have to be a very complex pattern, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for a very complex pattern to exist. Anyway, the numbers look random to us - so how would it ruin our theories if they truly were random?
But you don't know that C will never happen just because of statistics; all you know is that C has not happened *so far*. Statistics can tell us that the roulette wheel will reward the person betting on red or black 49% of the time; but it can't predict the earthquake that turns the table over and sends the ball rolling across the floor. Essentially useless- and rather stupid to depend on unless you've got *all* the information taken into account.
Any scientific conclusion is only our current working model of the universe. You could have done thousands of careful experiments about how forces and acceleration work and then try and apply them to a speeding electron and get an answer that's entirely off-base. Science cannot and doesn't try to predict things with 100% accuracy. However, I don't think you can deny that scientific predictions have been and are useful.
No, actually, it wouldn't. If lightning strikes were TRULY random, that is disconnected from the physical laws of the universe,
You appear to be using a different definition of "random" to everyone else.
Religion and randomness are one and the same- the word Random is just a cop-out that says you don't want to investigate beyond a certain point, that you're willing to take this part on faith.
Not religion as it's conventionally defined. You can class me as believing in some mysterious generator that spits out numbers if you like, but that's in the same field as believing in some mysterious force that attracts massive objects towards each other.
It's worse than that. If it was JUST that, I'd personally have no problem (some others might, but I'm more tolerant of other religions than that). No- science teachers have to claim that they can explain everything, but since they're so AFRAID of the concept of a God, and so afraid of being WRONG; they invent one called "random", so that they can continue to claim to be infallible before their students, inventing a new religion and not seeing the damage that causes.
Belief in randomness isn't religion. It doesn't require anything approaching a god. I could write a mathematical function in a few lines that would give you something very like what we are seeing.
They tell us the peer review system is so infallible that it cannot be questioned. That their method is infallible. Claiming so is what started this whole fight between arrogant human beings who think that they can be right and infallible.
Infallibility is never claimed. Questions to the system are welcome. However, the peer review system is the best we have, and the accuracy of science is superior to virtually anything else.
What I'm saying is that the statistical tests are invalid in and of themselves, and are thus no test for validity.
Our theories work for random numbers. All that is required, fundamentally, is a string of 50% 1s and 50% 0s with no obvious pattern. The idea that such a phenomenon exists is just obviously simpler than the idea of an intelligent being choosing which numbers are 1s and which are 0s.
Ah, but it's not unnecessary, as I've shown. You think you're avoiding religion by not making that assumption- but in reality you're just creating a new religion.
It's not religion. There is no god, just a phenomenon that we don't know a source for and assume for the moment that there is no source for. It's no more religion than a belief in, say, the existence of quarks.
Occam was a very smart philosopher- but any philosophy invented by man cannot be taken as infallible.
Not infallible, no, but look at the results. Any razorless approach I've seen leads to nonsense.
Firefox extensions are not effectively sandbox, and are in my view an obviously bad idea (IIRC they've been responsible for more security issues than anything else). Just use Opera where you have bittorrent in the browser with no need to download an extension.
Its like watching cartoons or reading comic books. If any other nation in the world makes it, its a cartoon or a comic book. As soon as it comes from Japan though, it magically becomes high art and is called anime or manga.
Come now. It's not the country of origin, it's the drawing style. You can and do get manga made in the US and comics and cartoons made in Japan.
Because of the existance of the physical laws that determine what appears to us to be random. Without those physical laws, with an unintelligent God, we're left with a truly random universe- supernatural events happening entirely at random with no purpose or pattern. At which point it becomes utterly useless to do any science at all- any laws we think we discover would actually be just local manifestations of order in what is by and large a random universe- and they wouldn't neccessarily hold true a minute from now, let alone be testible.
That's just not true. Aspects of the universe being random do not mean the whole universe is random. We can discover laws in a universe which has randomness. Besides, invoking an intelligent God has no effect on your argument. It becomes utterly useless to do any science at all- any laws we think we discover would actually be just local manifestations of God's will in what is by and large an arbitrary universe- and they wouldn't neccessarily hold true a minute from now, let alone be testible.
But it doesn't tell you that event C won't happen a minute from now, or that events D-Z won't happen further down the line. It's FAKE information, appearing to be useful when it really tells you exactly nothing.
No, if you know C never happens then that is something useful. You seem unable to comprehend that the universe can have random aspects without making it impossible to predict anything. The whole field of statistics is about making predictions about random processes. I can't predict what the roulette wheel will come up with next time - as far as I'm concerned, it's completely random. But it's still useful to know that it will land on any given number 1/37 of the time.
Yes but not random at all- and in fact is the reverse- the copper rod provides a short circuit that conducts it safely to the clouds.
Indeed. But *this would still be true if lightning strikes were truly random*.
Yes, but for that matter so does a metal hammer planted in the ground as in the Norwegian temples to Thor.
True. So religion can work in the presence of randomness too.
Randomness explains NOTHING- it's just a theological concept.
Randomness explains events occurring at what looks to be random, and more simply than any alternative.
Actually, the science requires lightning strikes to be non-random to work-
The conductor and the science behind it works whether or not the strikes are random.
but all you've actually proved is that people can use science as a replacement for religion, which is my original point.
All you're showing is that science doesn't completely explain everything. You've got a god of the gaps thing going - science doesn't know what causes this yet so it must be god.
If that's what you're going to teach as science, you might as well be teaching ID- it's EXACTLY THE SAME THEORY AS EVOLUTION if that's what passes for YOUR science.
Claiming intelligence for randomness makes no difference to everything you've said. If our science is valid for what looks to every statistical test invented like random input, then it's also valid for truly random input. Whether your god is intelligent or not changes nothing at all. It's just an unnecessary additional assumption, so as scientists we don't make it.
Sorry, randomness may be indistinguishable from God to us- but that is merely because science in it's headstrong attempt to separate itself from theology merely renamed God "randomness".
If you want to call randomness God then go ahead, but tell me why it must be intelligent.
There are no random events in the universe. If there were, science itself would be useless, because by definition there would be no physical laws at all to discover. Anything could be nullified by a "random event".
Not at all. Knowing that event A happens 50% of the time and event B the other 50% and event C doesn't happen at all is still useful information. We don't know whether lightning strikes are random, you no doubt claim they're not, but knowing that a copper rod can conduct it safely to ground is still useful, and doesn't require us to know whether the strikes are random or not. The science of lightning conductors is valid whether or not lightning strikes occur at random.
I had precisely the same experience with Python in place of Ruby. But having looked at a number of languages I'm pretty sure it would be the same with most of them.
The PCI card has you fooled to- that's not real randomness, just pesudorandomness.
No, it's a true hardware RNG, I would presume it uses radioactivity. (If it's not, I can quite easily construct an instrument that will do this). Which is entirely indistinguishable from randomness - which is all we require of your God. Heck, your God could just be a PRNG - by definition pseudo-random numbers look like random numbers, would we notice if the universe's random events were being generated by such a thing?
Many scientific discoveries have been made in the search to understand more about God's creation; without the belief that God created a wonderful and interesting universe for us to explore, they might not have bothered.
I don't think so. Wherever we find humans we find evidence they were exploring, as much as they could. The universe is interesting no matter what you believe about where it came from. And it's obvious from just a few attempts at finding the cause for phenomena that the universe is largely understandable.
I disagree that holding a religious belief precludes rational thought. In the absence of scientific proof to the contrary, I don't see the belief that God exists (but currently chooses not to reveal Himself in a scientifically observable way) to be irrational at all - certainly no more irrational than the belief that, in the absence of scientific proof to the contrary, there is no God.
Do you believe in bigfoot, the loch ness monster, alien abductions, the fairies at the bottom of my garden? Believing in the existence of something in the absence of evidence one way or another is irrational, in the absence of evidence you have to assume the simplest explanation. Taking the other approach (of believing anything exists unless there is evidence against it) and applying it consistently leads to an insane worldview.
The universe reflects the glory of the Creator; I find it curious that you would expect religious people not to see it.
It's from experience. I don't know which way the Bible points on this (IME quotes can be found to support any viewpoint) but in practice it's rare.
How about, mine's better than yours because
Now we're talking. That's a better way to approach this. However, once you start giving reasons I can start shooting them down.
mine is based on the writings of dozens of people who communicated directly with God and wrote exactly what He wanted them to, thousands of years ago.
You're claiming your scriptures are the precise word of God? In that case, why do they contain so many contradictions? And in any case, is your claim any better substantiated than any other religion's?
What the Bible says about the sinful nature of mankind is consistent with observation;
I observe a society where IIRC 80% of the adult population admits they pay no attention to religious teachings functioning pretty well. I observe plenty of people who have never been "saved" through anything religious behaving as if they are fundamentally good. I certainly don't observe any difference in sinfulness between the religious and non-religious, which seems entirely contrary to those teachings.
the Bible's guidelines for how to live your life promote good health and the improvement of society.
Up to a point, but many of them are clearly outdated and even harmful to modern societies. The dietary restrictions are the most obvious example - once they prevented disease, but now they merely waste perfectly good food. But the same is true of the approaches to, say, women, homosexuality, war, and so on. You can find 20 better guides to living a healthy life that improves society in any bookshop.
Not to mention the promise of eternal life in the presence of the Creator, offered as a free gift.
Hey, I'll give you the promise of this big bridge in Manhattan. Free gift. And I'm pretty sure there are better promised eternal lives offered by other religions.
And getting direction from God when I'm not sure what to do is always helpful too, although I don't ask for it as often as I should and sometimes fail to pay attention when I'm given answers (hey, nobody's perfect).
OK, advice is always good, but pretty much any religion will offer you that.
You completely misunderstand the connection between faith and science. Christian scientists often view science as a method of exploring God's creation to a greater degree. Science used in this way does not contradict faith, nor can it be compared to banging heads against a building.
That's far less frequent than either of us would like it to be. Sure, there are plenty of Christians, including the examples you list, who are scientific in their approach to the world and view it as revealing God. But there are an awful lot more who see the one as contradicting the other.
Irrelevant when arguing against a Christian. Hebrews 11:1 states, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
Faith is its own evidence? Cute, I suppose, but not sensible in any way.
Christians believe a lot of things with evidence, and their worldview makes sense.
I assume here you meant "without evidence". In which case true, but that's because rather than believing random things without evidence they believe a specific set of things without evidence - those an authority says they should. But the support of an authority is no real support for one reason or another. Christians are being irrational here, and applying their methods consistently would lead to a worldview that did not make sense.
Assuming that God exists, who said that he has to move within your human understanding of logic?
He doesn't. But you're suggesting giving up trying to understand the world. I prefer to assume the world does make sense, based on the results this approach has given so far.
Aren't you doing the same thing?
No. My religion, if you want to see it as such, is better than yours because it makes mostly accurate predictions which have helped people enormously, made lives far better. The abolition of slavery almost certainly couldn't happened without its efforts. What has any other religion done for anyone? Many good things have been done in the name of religion, but they're all the things any good person would have done - morality doesn't depend on religion. And much evil has been perpetrated under the banner of religion, although in the same way it's quite likely another excuse like nationalism would have been found if it hadn't been there.
I'm not necessarily criticizing your viewpoint, but to assume that Christianity, or religion in general, is some sort of intellect-retardant is either ignorant or hateful.
Hateful? I hate them, for my own reasons, and that may be clouding my judgement. But I can't see an intelligent approach leading to religion. It's comforting and I sometimes wish I had it, but it doesn't make sense.
I guess you're assuming some sort of benevolence from file-sharers that I simply do not see. That's not to say that file-sharers are in any way inherently the enemies of the artists whose content they are distributing. But that's a whole other argument, and it's one that is played out here on slashdot often enough without our involvement.
I don't think I'm making any such assumption. Casual filesharers will have no reason to strip out such DRM - they know they downloaded the file. There won't be the millions of bored students effect - the original crack for iTMS DRM put a signature in the files it produced. Such people wouldn't care about this type of DRM. Commercial pirates would have to crack it themselves, or pay others to, at considerable expense and questionable benefit.
You really think you've figured it out and that my friend is always the start of stupidity (and you've gone far down that path already).
I'm young, I'm entitled to a little arrogance.
You seem to think that you're completely rational or that you should be: you really need to escape the basement and simply LIVE!
Not all the time. But it seems the best way to approach serious matters. Last time I discussed the origin of life IRL I was off my head on absinthe, being very friendly to everyone. It doesn't seem a better approach. For one thing I can't remember what the hell I said.
You can still be as atheist as you wish but oh boy you really need a dash of irrational hedonism!
It's not like I don't enjoy whatever I can get in that line, but life has a serious side too, and I think these kinds of questions are part of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Weather appears random but climate clearly isn't. Any gambler can tell you that even though the individual games behave as if they were random, the macroscopic effect is entirely predictable.
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.
Positrons aren't involved AFAIK. Anyway, if you want a definite example, measuring the spin of a spin-half particle. It has to be random, because it's possible to arrange 33 axes such that there is no consistent arrangement of spins at all of them. (We measure 3 in orthogonal directions and we always get two 0s and a 1. Always. When we make the measurement we affect the spin of the particle and it won't be the same the next time we measure in the same 3 directions, the arrangement of the 0s and 1 may be different but there will always be 2 0s and 1 1. But there is no way to assign spin along these 33 axes so that there's always 2 0s and a 1 in any 3 perpendicular directions. 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.
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.
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.
Anyway, you didn't answer my question.
Ok- I'll agree PSEUDORANDOMNESS DUE TO THE LAZINESS OF THE OBSERVER does exist.
It's not a question of laziness. There are measurements which are impossible to make.
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.
You're just asserting this. What grounds do you have for believing the universe must behave like software?
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 not about whether he could see it, the point is he proved that it's impossible to see it. And further experiments like the one I described above show it's not actually there.
More atoms expanding quicker would explain that just as well.
So atoms expand faster when they're clumped together? You're already getting more complicated than standard gravity. And compare a comet of normal with a comet of heavy water-ice.
It's never impossible to precisely measure the inputs- it's only highly improbable that we as human beings will measure the inputs correctly.
The whole point of QM is that it is actually impossible to measure some things.
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
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?
the very fact that it cannot explode or do anything unexpected makes it non-random.
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.
Did I mention I'm a software engineer by trade- working entirely in software, the realm of thought?
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.
And yet gravity is entirely indescernable from a perpetually expanding universe.
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.
The whole idea of a LAW of physics instead of a THEORY is that it DOES precisely predict the outcome, in every case.
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.
English is a highly imprecise language- and conventional meanings of words bring with them the bias of the speaker. Philosophicaly a religion has been any given system of belief for a very long time- it's the only definition that actually covers ALL religions as opposed to only organized monothesitic and polytheistic religions, which are subsets of the whole.
That definition covers every religion by covering practically any thought. You can't seriously be claiming that all beliefs are religious beliefs.
Because, as I have shown above, and you agreed to above, an unintelligent God yeilds Laws that aren't Laws and facts that aren't fact- an unpredictable, supernatural universe.
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".
No, I'm seriously claiming that for finite meanings of the word intelligent, YOU have an intelligent mind- and thus the pseudorandom function you just wrote down has an intelligent mind *behind* it. This is true for every pseudorandom software function or set of hardware we can think of- something has to limit the randomness for it to be pseudorandom.
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 needing a mind behind it. Why couldn't a pseudorandom function be the same?
The problem there is the observation itself is only as accurate as the instruments observing it; and just as finite, local, and non-universal as the teachings of an authority. In fact, most teachings of authorities of any type are based on observation; which is what makes them inaccurate and inadequate to begin with.
No. It may start at exactly the same level of accuracy, but it is improved upon, tested repeatedly. We're never 100% certain of something we've learnt from observation, but we can get arbitrarily close.
No, in fact, they are exactly the same as all of the alternatives- mere opinion that is sometimes true and sometimes false. Arrogance will get you nowhere with me.
Try comparing the accuracy of scientific predictions with that of those made by any of the alternatives.
The reason you're getting irritated is because you don't actually understand the concept of randomn
All it means is I cringe whenever I walk by an intel product. I'm not sure that's a good thing for them.
Libwmf is there if you want to use them on other platforms, and is optionally used by imagemagick and just about anything that handles images.
Say I have a black box with a screen on it. Every second it displays either a 1 or a 0. There is no way to ever predict which of a 1 or 0 it will be ahead of time, but it is 1 50% of the time and 0 50% of the time (in the same way a dice is 1 1/6th of the time). But there is no possibility of the box exploding, or anything other than a 1 or 0 appearing. Such a thing is random by any definition I've seen, but does not make physics stop working, and that's the level of randomness we need. Science doesn't rely on the existence of random in the way you're defining it.
And yet above, you arrogantly insist that randomness exists- not seeing the potential error in that.
I insist that it exists in the same way I'd insist gravity exists. No, we don't know it's there for certain, but the evidence is overwhelming.
I agree they've been useful- but useful and accurate are two different things, as are fact and theory. No model actually approaches fact, so why claim to be teaching fact?
Our scientific model of the universe appears to approach the fact. We don't know this for certain, but with enough confidence to base decisions on what to teach on it.
Nope, same one. A random event is unpredictable in all frames of reference. That means that laws of physics do not hold for random events.
Laws of physics can still hold, provided they cannot precisely predict the outcome.
I'm not, and have never been, conventional. A religion is just a system of belief, a model to explain the universe.
If you're not going to accept the conventional meanings of the words in the English language, it's going to make it very hard to have a discussion.
Yep, exactly right. And Newton defined that as a part of the Mind of God- one of the rules God used to create the universe as it is.
You can call it that if you will, but why must such a God be intelligent?
Which just proves that there's an intelligent mind behind it.
Are you seriously claiming the function I just wrote down has an intelligent mind?
Both concepts require *belief* and *faith*. You can no more prove that there is a pattern underneath the randomness than you can prove there is no God. The concepts are equal and based in faith and belief, not in reality.
A belief in the simplest explanation for an observed phenomenon is in a different category from a belief based solely on the teachings of authority.
You've claimed infalibility for science and Occam's razor several times in this discussion already.
Perhaps so, in which case my apologies. They're not infallible, merely vastly superior to any alternative.
Then why are you responding as if they're not? Why do you ban questions that can falsify the system from the classroom?
Because I'm getting irritated. You seem to be wilfully misunderstanding the concept of randomness.
And yet, the peer review system is all about censorship- it's based on censorship.
If you consider a science journal insisting on only publishing science censorship, then yes. So?
Or at least so you claim, not understanding that random numbers don't exist.
On what basis do you claim they don't exist?
And since that doesn't actually exist in nature- there's always a pattern even if you can't see it- you've really only got pseudorandom strings to deal with.
But such strings would suffice to explain our observations of the universe, and are a far simpler idea than an intelligent god.
It's exactly the same level of simplicity- completely based on faith and a misunderstanding of the word random.
I can write the code for a psuedorandom number gene
The path to enlightenment
As far as we can tell the decisions are completely random. There's no rhyme or reason that we can make out. Of course that could mean we're simply unable to comprehend it, but it would have to be a very complex pattern, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for a very complex pattern to exist. Anyway, the numbers look random to us - so how would it ruin our theories if they truly were random?
But you don't know that C will never happen just because of statistics; all you know is that C has not happened *so far*. Statistics can tell us that the roulette wheel will reward the person betting on red or black 49% of the time; but it can't predict the earthquake that turns the table over and sends the ball rolling across the floor. Essentially useless- and rather stupid to depend on unless you've got *all* the information taken into account.
Any scientific conclusion is only our current working model of the universe. You could have done thousands of careful experiments about how forces and acceleration work and then try and apply them to a speeding electron and get an answer that's entirely off-base. Science cannot and doesn't try to predict things with 100% accuracy. However, I don't think you can deny that scientific predictions have been and are useful.
No, actually, it wouldn't. If lightning strikes were TRULY random, that is disconnected from the physical laws of the universe,
You appear to be using a different definition of "random" to everyone else.
Religion and randomness are one and the same- the word Random is just a cop-out that says you don't want to investigate beyond a certain point, that you're willing to take this part on faith.
Not religion as it's conventionally defined. You can class me as believing in some mysterious generator that spits out numbers if you like, but that's in the same field as believing in some mysterious force that attracts massive objects towards each other.
It's worse than that. If it was JUST that, I'd personally have no problem (some others might, but I'm more tolerant of other religions than that). No- science teachers have to claim that they can explain everything, but since they're so AFRAID of the concept of a God, and so afraid of being WRONG; they invent one called "random", so that they can continue to claim to be infallible before their students, inventing a new religion and not seeing the damage that causes.
Belief in randomness isn't religion. It doesn't require anything approaching a god. I could write a mathematical function in a few lines that would give you something very like what we are seeing.
They tell us the peer review system is so infallible that it cannot be questioned. That their method is infallible. Claiming so is what started this whole fight between arrogant human beings who think that they can be right and infallible.
Infallibility is never claimed. Questions to the system are welcome. However, the peer review system is the best we have, and the accuracy of science is superior to virtually anything else.
What I'm saying is that the statistical tests are invalid in and of themselves, and are thus no test for validity.
Our theories work for random numbers. All that is required, fundamentally, is a string of 50% 1s and 50% 0s with no obvious pattern. The idea that such a phenomenon exists is just obviously simpler than the idea of an intelligent being choosing which numbers are 1s and which are 0s.
Ah, but it's not unnecessary, as I've shown. You think you're avoiding religion by not making that assumption- but in reality you're just creating a new religion.
It's not religion. There is no god, just a phenomenon that we don't know a source for and assume for the moment that there is no source for. It's no more religion than a belief in, say, the existence of quarks.
Occam was a very smart philosopher- but any philosophy invented by man cannot be taken as infallible.
Not infallible, no, but look at the results. Any razorless approach I've seen leads to nonsense.
Firefox extensions are not effectively sandbox, and are in my view an obviously bad idea (IIRC they've been responsible for more security issues than anything else). Just use Opera where you have bittorrent in the browser with no need to download an extension.
Come now. It's not the country of origin, it's the drawing style. You can and do get manga made in the US and comics and cartoons made in Japan.
Then avoid bars near race courses.
That's just not true. Aspects of the universe being random do not mean the whole universe is random. We can discover laws in a universe which has randomness. Besides, invoking an intelligent God has no effect on your argument. It becomes utterly useless to do any science at all- any laws we think we discover would actually be just local manifestations of God's will in what is by and large an arbitrary universe- and they wouldn't neccessarily hold true a minute from now, let alone be testible.
But it doesn't tell you that event C won't happen a minute from now, or that events D-Z won't happen further down the line. It's FAKE information, appearing to be useful when it really tells you exactly nothing.
No, if you know C never happens then that is something useful. You seem unable to comprehend that the universe can have random aspects without making it impossible to predict anything. The whole field of statistics is about making predictions about random processes. I can't predict what the roulette wheel will come up with next time - as far as I'm concerned, it's completely random. But it's still useful to know that it will land on any given number 1/37 of the time.
Yes but not random at all- and in fact is the reverse- the copper rod provides a short circuit that conducts it safely to the clouds.
Indeed. But *this would still be true if lightning strikes were truly random*.
Yes, but for that matter so does a metal hammer planted in the ground as in the Norwegian temples to Thor.
True. So religion can work in the presence of randomness too.
Randomness explains NOTHING- it's just a theological concept.
Randomness explains events occurring at what looks to be random, and more simply than any alternative.
Actually, the science requires lightning strikes to be non-random to work-
The conductor and the science behind it works whether or not the strikes are random.
but all you've actually proved is that people can use science as a replacement for religion, which is my original point.
All you're showing is that science doesn't completely explain everything. You've got a god of the gaps thing going - science doesn't know what causes this yet so it must be god.
If that's what you're going to teach as science, you might as well be teaching ID- it's EXACTLY THE SAME THEORY AS EVOLUTION if that's what passes for YOUR science.
Claiming intelligence for randomness makes no difference to everything you've said. If our science is valid for what looks to every statistical test invented like random input, then it's also valid for truly random input. Whether your god is intelligent or not changes nothing at all. It's just an unnecessary additional assumption, so as scientists we don't make it.
If you want to call randomness God then go ahead, but tell me why it must be intelligent.
There are no random events in the universe. If there were, science itself would be useless, because by definition there would be no physical laws at all to discover. Anything could be nullified by a "random event".
Not at all. Knowing that event A happens 50% of the time and event B the other 50% and event C doesn't happen at all is still useful information. We don't know whether lightning strikes are random, you no doubt claim they're not, but knowing that a copper rod can conduct it safely to ground is still useful, and doesn't require us to know whether the strikes are random or not. The science of lightning conductors is valid whether or not lightning strikes occur at random.
And the license was renamed to indicate that it isn't particularly for libraries.
It's also free software, though this was a new thing for version 4.
Also, you are allowed to use GTK+ for proprietary projects (LGPL). The free QT is GPL.
And when comparing OOo to gnome office gnome people cite being GPL rather than LGPL as an advantage.
I had precisely the same experience with Python in place of Ruby. But having looked at a number of languages I'm pretty sure it would be the same with most of them.
No, I'm implying the Java language is not sane and the Ruby language is.
No, it's a true hardware RNG, I would presume it uses radioactivity. (If it's not, I can quite easily construct an instrument that will do this). Which is entirely indistinguishable from randomness - which is all we require of your God. Heck, your God could just be a PRNG - by definition pseudo-random numbers look like random numbers, would we notice if the universe's random events were being generated by such a thing?
I don't think so. Wherever we find humans we find evidence they were exploring, as much as they could. The universe is interesting no matter what you believe about where it came from. And it's obvious from just a few attempts at finding the cause for phenomena that the universe is largely understandable.
I disagree that holding a religious belief precludes rational thought. In the absence of scientific proof to the contrary, I don't see the belief that God exists (but currently chooses not to reveal Himself in a scientifically observable way) to be irrational at all - certainly no more irrational than the belief that, in the absence of scientific proof to the contrary, there is no God.
Do you believe in bigfoot, the loch ness monster, alien abductions, the fairies at the bottom of my garden? Believing in the existence of something in the absence of evidence one way or another is irrational, in the absence of evidence you have to assume the simplest explanation. Taking the other approach (of believing anything exists unless there is evidence against it) and applying it consistently leads to an insane worldview.
The universe reflects the glory of the Creator; I find it curious that you would expect religious people not to see it.
It's from experience. I don't know which way the Bible points on this (IME quotes can be found to support any viewpoint) but in practice it's rare.
How about, mine's better than yours because
Now we're talking. That's a better way to approach this. However, once you start giving reasons I can start shooting them down.
mine is based on the writings of dozens of people who communicated directly with God and wrote exactly what He wanted them to, thousands of years ago.
You're claiming your scriptures are the precise word of God? In that case, why do they contain so many contradictions? And in any case, is your claim any better substantiated than any other religion's?
What the Bible says about the sinful nature of mankind is consistent with observation;
I observe a society where IIRC 80% of the adult population admits they pay no attention to religious teachings functioning pretty well. I observe plenty of people who have never been "saved" through anything religious behaving as if they are fundamentally good. I certainly don't observe any difference in sinfulness between the religious and non-religious, which seems entirely contrary to those teachings.
the Bible's guidelines for how to live your life promote good health and the improvement of society.
Up to a point, but many of them are clearly outdated and even harmful to modern societies. The dietary restrictions are the most obvious example - once they prevented disease, but now they merely waste perfectly good food. But the same is true of the approaches to, say, women, homosexuality, war, and so on. You can find 20 better guides to living a healthy life that improves society in any bookshop.
Not to mention the promise of eternal life in the presence of the Creator, offered as a free gift.
Hey, I'll give you the promise of this big bridge in Manhattan. Free gift. And I'm pretty sure there are better promised eternal lives offered by other religions.
And getting direction from God when I'm not sure what to do is always helpful too, although I don't ask for it as often as I should and sometimes fail to pay attention when I'm given answers (hey, nobody's perfect).
OK, advice is always good, but pretty much any religion will offer you that.
That's far less frequent than either of us would like it to be. Sure, there are plenty of Christians, including the examples you list, who are scientific in their approach to the world and view it as revealing God. But there are an awful lot more who see the one as contradicting the other.
Irrelevant when arguing against a Christian. Hebrews 11:1 states, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
Faith is its own evidence? Cute, I suppose, but not sensible in any way.
Christians believe a lot of things with evidence, and their worldview makes sense.
I assume here you meant "without evidence". In which case true, but that's because rather than believing random things without evidence they believe a specific set of things without evidence - those an authority says they should. But the support of an authority is no real support for one reason or another. Christians are being irrational here, and applying their methods consistently would lead to a worldview that did not make sense.
Assuming that God exists, who said that he has to move within your human understanding of logic?
He doesn't. But you're suggesting giving up trying to understand the world. I prefer to assume the world does make sense, based on the results this approach has given so far.
Aren't you doing the same thing?
No. My religion, if you want to see it as such, is better than yours because it makes mostly accurate predictions which have helped people enormously, made lives far better. The abolition of slavery almost certainly couldn't happened without its efforts. What has any other religion done for anyone? Many good things have been done in the name of religion, but they're all the things any good person would have done - morality doesn't depend on religion. And much evil has been perpetrated under the banner of religion, although in the same way it's quite likely another excuse like nationalism would have been found if it hadn't been there.
I'm not necessarily criticizing your viewpoint, but to assume that Christianity, or religion in general, is some sort of intellect-retardant is either ignorant or hateful.
Hateful? I hate them, for my own reasons, and that may be clouding my judgement. But I can't see an intelligent approach leading to religion. It's comforting and I sometimes wish I had it, but it doesn't make sense.
That goes for any sane modern language.
I don't think I'm making any such assumption. Casual filesharers will have no reason to strip out such DRM - they know they downloaded the file. There won't be the millions of bored students effect - the original crack for iTMS DRM put a signature in the files it produced. Such people wouldn't care about this type of DRM. Commercial pirates would have to crack it themselves, or pay others to, at considerable expense and questionable benefit.
Sure, if you're an enthusiast then go for it. But you can't claim that's the best way for a typical user.
I'm young, I'm entitled to a little arrogance.
You seem to think that you're completely rational or that you should be: you really need to escape the basement and simply LIVE!
Not all the time. But it seems the best way to approach serious matters. Last time I discussed the origin of life IRL I was off my head on absinthe, being very friendly to everyone. It doesn't seem a better approach. For one thing I can't remember what the hell I said.
You can still be as atheist as you wish but oh boy you really need a dash of irrational hedonism!
It's not like I don't enjoy whatever I can get in that line, but life has a serious side too, and I think these kinds of questions are part of it.
Sounds like Hardy to me, certainly he had such sentiments. I could of course be wrong.
I'm compiling it on my toaster right now!