But now you've decided there should be a line where do you put it? Since there are always going to be those who insist that the "minimum functional set" needs to be just that little bit larger in order to fix all of society's problems.
You might but that's the point - it's the majority vote that counts not just what you feel on the matter and it seems to me that on the whole most people are happy to be under some degree of control - i.e. to be led.
The problem of course is that although "freedom" is lorded as a sacred cow having real and true freedom is a scary proposition.
Much better to sacrifice freedom for emotional comfort. The control relationship is two-way - those in control and those being controlled like it that way.
It is only the people who are stuck in the middle who really suffer in this arrangement.
Well... we, in the UK, have faith-based schools - sorry "Academies" - that are basic paid out of the public coffers that gives - with a relatively nominal contribution - private individuals unprecedented control over the running of the school - sorry "Academy".
I was pointing out that science shares the same attribute which he attacked. He was saying he wouldn't listen to anybody until they defined exactly what god is. I said it was hypocritical because its also impossible to define a huge amount of things in science to a 't' as well.
Fair enough - but it is not quite analogous. In the god situation the same name is always being used to describe different things - in such a way that "god exists" is always true even if what "god" means today is different to what it meant yesterday. This is different to saying, "god is this, now I know Y is responsible for the phenomena I thought god was responsible for." It is a subtle difference - the god case is made weaker by change because it is a game of "chase the definition". In the case of scientific definition you stick to what you defined and then if what you proposed just doesn't stand up to the evidence you have to drop it. You don't just say, "well of course when I said caloric was this I really meant to say it was that." That is what the poster is complaining about: first decide what god is then we can decide whether it exists or not.
Things that were believed to be true in the past or no longer thought of as such. Quantum physics is constantly changing. Core beliefs are being swapped in and out all over science.
If you think this is a weakness of science you just don't get what science is. Period.
It's still an anthropomorphic view of reality - an alternative view that achieves an equivalence could be: "universes pop into existence at random, some of which will contain reflective entities that are sure that their universe popped into existence for a meaningful reason." You still can't say anything about which view is right because you ultimately can't do anything to access that information.
It is good for sci-fi ad fantasy stories and for thinking about the odd possibilities that may occur but it doesn't have any explicative value as to what actually is.
Science is very easy to understand - it's a very simple and effective methodology for attaining knowledge. You might mean, "nobody contains all of the vast body of scientific knowledge in their head," but that's a different proposition.
It's not like the assumption that somehow we can make decisions that are somehow free of external reality or even free of our physical construct that seems to be prevalent in western culture is universally accepted.
It's meme protection 101: construct the logic of the meme such that attack is verification. No attack is implict verification. Falsifcation is impossible and traction in the cognition of the conduit of the meme is fortified.
I must have missed the chapter where he kills and rapes?
Please do try to remember that even in the days where people can actually access and read their Holy books one cannot simply point to the book and say, "that is what defines my religion!" Beyond the issues of interpretation is the simple fact that what defines a religion far more is the "living" beliefs - i.e. what people in a religious group actually believe and do. Those are far more important - especially given that even in the days where people can actually access and read their Holy books many choose not to...
And what's so weird is that I'm not even a skeptic. I like to believe I'm pretty open-minded. If any of my knowledge comes into question, I'm ready at the drop of a hat to re-examine things and see where I stand.
That is skepticism.
It is a common meme that skeptics are "closed-minded," when the reality, as you have explored, is that it is the closed-minded who will proclaim, "BE OPEN MINDED!" to those who will not accept their chosen beliefs because they are unable to actually support them with little things like, "facts congruent with reality."
The dreams are NOT supposed to be little "real-life" simulations such that they would represent some arbitrary scenario that could happen in the real-world. Instead the dream scenarios are merely meant to stimulate the appropriate areas of the brain so that they are trained to respond to the abstract threats - not concrete scenarios.
Therefore it doesn't matter if the dream is consistent with reality or not - that's not relevant. It doesn't matter if your aunt doesn't act like your aunt in your dream. It doesn't matter if the streets don't work the same, the train stations look odd, TVs don't have realistic shows etc...
You can't; there may be multiple "best possible ToEs". But you may be able to prove that no ToE can be any better, and you may have to choose among the ToEs to best suit your practical purpose.
So in what possible sense could you say these are "theories of everything"?
In any case, if all ToEs are incomplete, you'd need to do better than falsifiability as a criterion for science to avoid overbroad exclusion
I didn't say the theory is undecidable; I said it may make undecidable predictions. Pay attention. This is why I wrote, "the best possible ToE".
How exactly do you decide that a given theory is "best" if one of at least two other theories which decide the prediction must be "better" scientifically?
If neither option is scientifically better then neither is better and the idea is unscientific.
Hint: the suggestion that a theory that predicts everything we observe is not "scientific" solely because it makes some predictions that are undecidable and hence unfalsifiable is absurd.
Yes, it is absurd. Yet that is the absurdity you create when you assert that a mechanism that cannot [i]give[/i] an ultimate truth [i]has[/i] an ultimate truth.
You want to trivially define science in such a way that ID (which I am not defending) is "unscientific", but in your blundering you throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Friendly tip: pretending you don't understand someone is not an effective way to make yourself seem clever, even on slashdot.
Friendly tip: actually not understanding someone doesn't mean what you say in reply is clever, even on slashdot.
You seem to have missed the point completely--it may turn out that the best possible ToE is inherently unfalsifiable.
And this was the man who presented Godel to me as if he understood it!
If the theory is one that cannot be decided as true or false then you cannot decide that it is true. Science only considers theories that can be decided to be false.
A scientific ToE must be inherently unfalsifiable - it is true!
The possibility that no complete ToE exists doesn't render attempts to come up with one unscientific, even if the ultimate result might be unfalsifiable.
You seem to have missed the point completely - applying the process of science is what science is all about. An "idea" does not become scientific until it is subjected to that process. As such no idea, regardless of its "truth" is a scientific one until it has been exposed to that process.
Ideas that cannot be exposed to the process simply cannot be scientific - ever.
Perhaps you should read up on a fellow named René Descartes.
I fail to see the relevance.
No, we're using conventional language here, so try interpreting the statements in kind. If you require formal definitions for all symbols on the page, we have a lot of bootstrapping to do.
You said maths was "part of reality". Is 2+2=4 "part of reality," or merely a description of it?
You cannot demonstrate that anything does not exist. All you can do is invent theories that predict the things you see.
Yes. You invent a theory then show that it does not predict the things you see. Otherwise you assume it's true.
And since theories talk about the existence of things...
The phenomena these theories predict may or may not conform to the reality we think we observe, depending on both the completeness of the formal system and our ability to measure phenomena.
If you had been following your own argument you should have realised before you even spat out that sentence that the completeness of the formal system is indeterminable by logic alone. That is the whole damn point of Incompleteness.
Yes it does - that is the epistemology of science: if you cannot demonstrate that something is false (it is 'unfalsifiable') then you cannot talk about it.
That is might be "true" is quite irrelevant. Anything might be "true". You see that's the problem with logic - at the end of the day "true" and "false" as abstract concepts are just jots on a page - easily switched to invert the universe of discourse.
Can you tell without appeal to authority whether your logic is "true" or "false"? Logic can't - that's Incompleteness.
Science appeals to the authority of existence. If you cannot demonstrate that something is false (i.e. demonstrate that it does not exist) then you cannot talk about it scientifically.
Slashdot Mirror
But now you've decided there should be a line where do you put it? Since there are always going to be those who insist that the "minimum functional set" needs to be just that little bit larger in order to fix all of society's problems.
You might but that's the point - it's the majority vote that counts not just what you feel on the matter and it seems to me that on the whole most people are happy to be under some degree of control - i.e. to be led.
The problem of course is that although "freedom" is lorded as a sacred cow having real and true freedom is a scary proposition.
Much better to sacrifice freedom for emotional comfort. The control relationship is two-way - those in control and those being controlled like it that way.
It is only the people who are stuck in the middle who really suffer in this arrangement.
Well... we, in the UK, have faith-based schools - sorry "Academies" - that are basic paid out of the public coffers that gives - with a relatively nominal contribution - private individuals unprecedented control over the running of the school - sorry "Academy".
Take a look at http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/faithschools.html section 6.1.
Don't worry my Trans-Atlantic friend! As usual where America leads we shall follow!
The trick of course is teach one to mimic the noise of criticism without attaching the meaning of it to those noises.
It's effective because the parroting will fool people unable to differentiate the qualitative differences.
It's still an anthropomorphic view of reality - an alternative view that achieves an equivalence could be: "universes pop into existence at random, some of which will contain reflective entities that are sure that their universe popped into existence for a meaningful reason." You still can't say anything about which view is right because you ultimately can't do anything to access that information.
It is good for sci-fi ad fantasy stories and for thinking about the odd possibilities that may occur but it doesn't have any explicative value as to what actually is.
Science is very easy to understand - it's a very simple and effective methodology for attaining knowledge. You might mean, "nobody contains all of the vast body of scientific knowledge in their head," but that's a different proposition.
And if he doesn't believe in free-will?
It's not like the assumption that somehow we can make decisions that are somehow free of external reality or even free of our physical construct that seems to be prevalent in western culture is universally accepted.
Seems to me that showing that certain questions don't get useful answers is quite useful in and of itself.
Go for it.
It's meme protection 101: construct the logic of the meme such that attack is verification. No attack is implict verification. Falsifcation is impossible and traction in the cognition of the conduit of the meme is fortified.
Which means, in other words, that you can lead a human to facts but you can't make him think.
Well the obvious problem with the analogy is that you're not finding needles in a haystack - you're looking for hay in a haystack.
It is a common meme that skeptics are "closed-minded," when the reality, as you have explored, is that it is the closed-minded who will proclaim, "BE OPEN MINDED!" to those who will not accept their chosen beliefs because they are unable to actually support them with little things like, "facts congruent with reality."
The dreams are NOT supposed to be little "real-life" simulations such that they would represent some arbitrary scenario that could happen in the real-world. Instead the dream scenarios are merely meant to stimulate the appropriate areas of the brain so that they are trained to respond to the abstract threats - not concrete scenarios.
Therefore it doesn't matter if the dream is consistent with reality or not - that's not relevant. It doesn't matter if your aunt doesn't act like your aunt in your dream. It doesn't matter if the streets don't work the same, the train stations look odd, TVs don't have realistic shows etc...
If neither option is scientifically better then neither is better and the idea is unscientific. Yes, it is absurd. Yet that is the absurdity you create when you assert that a mechanism that cannot [i]give[/i] an ultimate truth [i]has[/i] an ultimate truth. There are always other babies.
If the theory is one that cannot be decided as true or false then you cannot decide that it is true. Science only considers theories that can be decided to be false.
A scientific ToE must be inherently unfalsifiable - it is true!
Ideas that cannot be exposed to the process simply cannot be scientific - ever.
And since theories talk about the existence of things... If you had been following your own argument you should have realised before you even spat out that sentence that the completeness of the formal system is indeterminable by logic alone. That is the whole damn point of Incompleteness. 2+2 = 0 2+2 = ? 2+2 = 22 Wrong?
Yes it does - that is the epistemology of science: if you cannot demonstrate that something is false (it is 'unfalsifiable') then you cannot talk about it.
That is might be "true" is quite irrelevant. Anything might be "true". You see that's the problem with logic - at the end of the day "true" and "false" as abstract concepts are just jots on a page - easily switched to invert the universe of discourse.
Can you tell without appeal to authority whether your logic is "true" or "false"? Logic can't - that's Incompleteness.
Science appeals to the authority of existence. If you cannot demonstrate that something is false (i.e. demonstrate that it does not exist) then you cannot talk about it scientifically.
This is science: take it or leave it.