OT: An Existential Dilemma

[PvK]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:

quote:

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Originally posted by Zapmeister:
[qb] ...
It is meaningless, for example, to conclude that there is a 60% chance that there is a god. Either there is a god or there isn't - there's no 60% about it.

I am not an expert there myself but I believe that what you said about invalidness of probabalistic approach to an existential question such as wether the god exist or no, is correct.
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It's only valid if you insist on mistakenly taking it literally, as if I were asserting that it is true that there is an actual chance involved in whether something is true or not.

But that's just misunderstanding my expression. I may say "chance", but I mean in terms of a perspective with imperfect knowledge, and I am talking about uncertainty rather than asserting that reality is constantly reinventing itself around the observer's viewpoint like a dream or an annoyingly programmed game like GTA3 (where you can catch it doing it simply by turning around ).

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
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Besides, let's assume for the sake of argument that you are right about historical facts. But than the same logic could be aplied to almost every other none-historical field as well. For example take jurisprudence. One could argue that the jury, (or professional judjes in some cases/countries) when they are declaring "guilty" or "not guilty" verdicts, based upon "beyond reasonable doubts" clause as requred by law, are also operating outside the field of probabilities. But if this is true, that they might as well deciding wether they like the guy or not, without listening to any evidence. Or even throw the coin and see if it is heads or tails. If these all are purely existantial matters and have nothing to do with probabilities than I think one could successefully argue for such aproaches over the ones that is currently employed world-wide. Do you agree?

That's just misunderstanding a scenario based on the semantic misunderstanding.

Whether events are philosophically deterministic or not is irrelevant, because knowledge is never perfect, and is frequently a very uncertain approximation. You can't predict a jury unless they are all robots running a computer program which you understand and control. And even then, there's a "chance" (i.e. unknowable uncertainty without super-human knowledge) they'll crash, especially if they're running Windohs.

PvK

[guybrush threepwood]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Well often the scientific invistigation rested with "matter and energy cannot be created, only converted" so it looked for the source or result. Their new "creation of the universe" theory bloew that out. And Quantum now puts as 4 in 11 dimensions. As we are to the 3d creatures, much less the 2d and 1d.. could reflect on our ability to understand 5,6,7,8,9,10 (11 is a special case). The whole thing makes your head hurt but it will be interesting to see where it goes and what things will shift from "bunk" into scientific.

Ah, OK, as someone who actually works professionally with these things (I am working with particle physics), I am always pleasantly surprised to find people who are actually informed about these issues. :-)

But allow me to try to briefly clarify a few issues (this thread IS supposed to be OT, right ). Quantum mechanics does not as such allow for creation of matter/energy, does not say anything about the dimensions of our universe, and does not say anything about big bang.

Quantum mechanics is the almost 100 year old non-relativistic theory which is concerned with particles/wave duality, wave-function developement+collapses (giving non-deterministic results), and things like that. (OK, maybe that was a lousy explanation, but its hard to make it short+precise).

Anyway, I dont know that the big bang theory has necessarily done anything to our matter/energy conservation. But it does certainly bring up many puzzles that need to be answered by the cosmological and particle physics theories of tomorrow.

The need for more than our 3+1=4 dimensions is put forward by string theories. These are a collection of theories that we suspect might in the very long run replace the particle physics theories of today (among other things they might finally give us a particle physics description of gravity).

Anyway, anyone with an hour to spare who wants an extremely pedagogical introduction to all this (with cartoons and stuff), should check out particleadventure.org.

Sorry if this is too OT for the OT thread.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
IPs can be spoofed but only for a 1-way traffic thing which excludes most internet activitys including this one.

Unless I'm mistaken, it is possible to spoof IPs even for 2-way traffic, but it takes a lot of work and resources (bandwidth, server capacity, software). In effect you hijack the other computer's IP address, which is really only worthwhile if you're going for ... a bank or other really significant IP address. And of course, it's generally easier to hijack a domain, for lots of reasons.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by guybrush threepwood:
Quantum mechanics does not as such allow for creation of matter/energy, does not say anything about the dimensions of our universe, and does not say anything about big bang.

As I understand it the Quantum theory (after strings) went into membranes. The touching of two branes is considered a strong possibility for the creationof the universe. It does not allow for the creation of matter/energy but it does allow for its entry into our universe from another. The allowance of matter/energy to enter and depart our realm of measurement forces all past answers using the "matter/energy cannot be created/destroyed" to need re-examination.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

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Originally posted by guybrush threepwood:
Quantum mechanics does not as such allow for creation of matter/energy, does not say anything about the dimensions of our universe, and does not say anything about big bang.

As I understand it the Quantum theory (after strings) went into membranes. The touching of two branes is considered a strong possibility for the creationof the universe. It does not allow for the creation of matter/energy but it does allow for its entry into our universe from another. The allowance of matter/energy to enter and depart our realm of measurement forces all past answers using the "matter/energy cannot be created/destroyed" to need re-examination.

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I may be wrong here, but I think based upon what I've read, that at this moment the "string theory", as scintists understand it, is not really a single all-incorporating and explaining neat theory which is more or less universally accepted, but rather a collection of related theories based upon variations of "hyper string" concept, some of them being more admited by the scintific world than others.

[Tris]

If you Subscribe to the hidden variable theory then even the supposedly probabalistic decay of an unstable nucleus is in fact determined by outside factors. In which case the scientist looking at the box only gives a probability because he can not observe the hidden factors.

Matter can be spontaneously created. This is why Black holes seem to emit matter. Large scale particle-antiparticle assymmetry is a problem when talking about the big bang though.

*bad pun alert*

If anyone has the GUTs to explain this all properly, there's probably a Nobel prize in if for them somewhere.

*end bad pun alert*