OT: An Existential Dilemma

[guybrush threepwood]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

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Originally posted by guybrush threepwood:
Actually, taken to the limit this deterministic picture of the rolling dice is not really true either due to the ways of quantum mechanics. Of course, quantum mechanics and existentialistic discussions is a whole other can of worms...

Totally. It undid the big bang, AND all the arguments used to "debunk" just about anything religious or supernatural. FUN fun fun.

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Not sure exactly what you mean. But I think the main arguments (to me at least) against religious/supernatural stuff is that there is not really any convincing reason FOR them, in the sense that less far-fetched explanations usually presents them self (to be brief).

(also, there is nothing inherent in the principles of science about determinism...)

[Varadail]

I feel pretty wierd after writing a three pages long monologue ...

[ May 25, 2004, 17:08: Message edited by: Varadail ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by guybrush threepwood:
Not sure exactly what you mean. But I think the main arguments (to me at least) against religious/supernatural stuff is that there is not really any convincing reason FOR them, in the sense that less far-fetched explanations usually presents them self (to be brief).

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.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Zen:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stormbinder:

The nuclear physicist, given all appropriate data, can calculate the exact probabilities to this existantial question.

Only on a certain level.

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That is correct. Quantum phisic is not nearly as neat as phisicists would like it to be. Can drive person crazy.

Still it illustrates that the question of existance or not existance of physical objects can be scientifically approached, with certain degree of success, in pure probability field, which was the point of my example.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:

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Originally posted by PvK:
While it is true that we could all be Norfleet, it is perhaps more likely that... It's possible. Just not very likely.

Hmmm. Someone with more education in this area may care to correct me, but I believe that the above statement is untrue for a rather esoteric reason.

That reason is that the words "likely" and "possible" imply a probabalistic treatment of an existential question, which is invalid.

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.

The same applies to questions of historical fact. You can't say that its likely that the Great Flood occurred, because it has already either happened or not. What you can describe is your uncertainty in the matter, which is different (being a statement about your knowledge rather than about the alleged event).
...

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Yes, the first was a statement of uncertainty, and the second a statement of odds. It's still useful to think of hypotheses as having a "chance" of being correct, based on what knowledge you have and how sure you are about each element of a hypothesis.

You can also apply the same logic and language to uncertainty about past events about which you have imperfect evidence.

Conversely, you can take probability and express it as uncertainty that something will happen. So, if you insist I say that we all not being Norfleet is something our victim can be very certain is not true, then I can compare that degree of certainty to the extreme certainty that I will lose the Dom II challenge I described.

PvK

[ May 25, 2004, 19:21: Message edited by: PvK ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
While it is true that we could all be Norfleet

Fortunetly for humanity, it is not physically possible. Unless you are playing with possibility that Norfleet have some god-like powers. In this case you would have one seriously sick in the head god, assuming 1/4 what he have been telling us about himself on this forum is true.

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Hence my Cthulu reference.

PvK

[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.

[Maltrease]

I called that number they didn't know any Tris or anything about your book.

I think you made that up.

However I did win a free vacation, all I had to do was send them $400 cash as a deposit. Cool deal!