is all knowledge tautology?

[dontbesojumpy]

A really mind-bending topic came up dealing with the core nature of reality…the debate is can we “know” anything? Or is everything simply a matter of probability that is, in reality, unknowable?

The example is stepping off a cliff—I say we “know” you’ll fall. It’s predictable--some might even say it's CERTAIN. The counterpoint to this is that yes, you might fall the first GAZILLION times but on the GAZILLIONTH and ONE time, you might fly off, blip into a warpzone, grow wings, etc etc etc.

But to me, that just bastardizes words into meaning nonsense, abstract things. It
seems to me, the latter argument claims noting is causal, but are instead random.
I'd say our universe is deterministic--

Conceptually embracing there is no attainable truth in existence, wouldn’t it mean there’s no such thing as probability? Because you’d have to concede that the first gazillion falls off the cliff were all singular random results, all percieved reasons for falling were simply coincidental--that falling is contingent on no predictable pattern.

Doesn’t this shut down the scientific method?
Doesn’t the no truth/no real knowledge concept of reality render it dysfunctional?

[dontbesojumpy]

And yes, I have considered quantum indeterminacy--how in quantum physics things behave randomly--

But at the Newtonian level, things are calculable. Quantum indeterminacy seems to have utterly no bearing on the common-level of the physical world.
An article I read grants that yes, things down there in the quantum realm sure seem to be random and chaotic, but when enough particles get together to actually make matter, everything starts becoming more and more predictable, which means all that randomness is in fact causal.
I’m a moron—I admit it. But it seems to me that this indicates what we call “random” or “chaos” on the quantum level is simply a lack of understanding. Something like not knowing why trees started growing in a field—you could say “WOW. Trees just RANDOMLY started manifesting!” But really, it’s not random—you are just ignorant to seed migration.
Maybe it’s not random, maybe it’s just outside our current understanding of methodological pattern.
A very smart friend and I discussed this. My example is that humans get pregnant and have baby humans. EVERY. TIME. They don’t birth out dragons, cats, dragon cats, small ships, aliens or puppies. It’s always a human baby. His rebuttal was quantum mechanics state that given enough chances, at some point a zebra-monster or anything else WILL come out instead.
I understand he’s semantically debating probability vs possibility. However, until things happen for literally no reason in the physical world at least a few times (like a few dragon cat babies or other absurd phenomena), don’t we have to accept we “know” what’ll happen?

[dontbesojumpy]

WAIT:
I think i mean "axiom" rather than "tautology."

Hell, I might even mean "dogma." I'm not sure what the term is...I think AXIOM because my point is if we ultimately cannot know, anything we call "truth" is simply a belief as there cannot exist PROOF.

As my mind caves in, I wonder why it's not acceptable to say "yes, we know, 100% for certain"...I mean, if "anything" can happen, "certainty" surely falls under that "anything" umbrella...no?
If ANYTHING is possible, CERTAINTY is as well. ??

[Bryan Ekers]

No, because it just isn't.

[Blake]

Conceptually embracing there is no attainable truth in existence, wouldn’t it mean there’s no such thing as probability?

No, because probability is a post-facto calculation based on certain assumptions. If a statistician drops a body off a cliff a million times and it always falls, he declares the odds of a dropped body not falling under those circumstances to be less than one in a million.

Because you’d have to concede that the first gazillion falls off the cliff were all singular random results, all percieved reasons for falling were simply coincidental--that falling is contingent on no predictable pattern.

No. Why would you have to do this? If the body falls a million times, then that is a highly predictable pattern. The fact that once it didn't fall doesn't make the pattern unpredictable. it just makes it marginally less predictable.


Doesn’t this shut down the scientific method?

No, in fact it is the basis of it.

The scientific method has an underlying, explicit assumption that nothing is known with absolute certainty. All scientific theories must have a mechanism for falsification. As soon as something is known with certainty then, by definition, it ceases to be science.

Doesn’t the no truth/no real knowledge concept of reality render it dysfunctional?

No, because even if the universe were 100% predictable and consistent, our senses are not. As a result there will always be a margin of error in human knowledge. This was established 3, 000 years ago and still holds true today.

That is why Socrates didn't speak of truth, he spoke of "the truth, insofar as it is possible for man to know it". Socrates knew damn well that there was no absolute standard of truth and pretty much every philosopher and all scientists since since has agreed with that.

So the scientific method relies instead upon a preponderance of evidence. Science never strives for perfect knowledge, because that is impossible for humans to find. Science instead strives for increased knowledge. It does that by removing all the knowledge that we can prove is incorrect at the time of observation. It doesn't do it by adding knowledge to an some edifice of perfect knowledge

[Blake]

My example is that humans get pregnant and have baby humans. EVERY. TIME.

Well that obviously isn't true.

You can work it out yourself by asking "Where did the first human come from?". Obviously the first human came from a non-human ancestor. So a non-human woman gave birth to a human baby. By extension, if our species lasts long enough, then a human must one day give birth to a non-human baby. This isn't just something possible. This is something inevitable.

I understand he’s semantically debating probability vs possibility. However, until things happen for literally no reason in the physical world at least a few times (like a few dragon cat babies or other absurd phenomena), don’t we have to accept we “know” what’ll happen?

No. For several reasons.

Even if we discount quantum probability, there is plain old vanilla probability to contend with. If someone flips a coin 5 times and they all come up heads, can she declare that she knows the coin always comes up heads? How about if she flips it 50 times? 500? At what point can she accept that she “knows” what’ll happen with the next toss? The answer of course is that she never "knows". With repeated trials her certainty increases, but it never becomes unity. This isn't the result of any QM fudge. This is just plain, old, vanilla probability at work. Even in a perfectly deterministic universe this would still hold true, and still mean that she could never accept that she knows the result of the next toss.

Secondly, you ask for absurd things to happen "a few times". But that isn't a reasonable request. We have a very short period of human existence, and the events you describe are wildly improbable. We wouldn't expect them to happen multiple times even if the quantum level probabilities were orders of magnitude more effective than they actually are.

Thirdly, absurd things do happen for "literally no reason in the physical world" all the time. People have fallen out of airplanes and lived. People have been kicked to death by ducks. One man has been struck by lightning 7 times; an absolutely absurd event. Monkeys drifted all the way from Africa to south America on logs swept out to sea in a flood. People get cancer, for no reason at all. A random atom decayed and released a random particle that by random chance struck a random proton in a random molecule in a random cell. And the person dies of cancer in 6 months time. There is no predictability to this, it is truly chaotic and happens without any reaosn at all. And it happens several times every year. Your problem is that you want an absurd event to occur after you predict it. That isn't valid, nor is it going to happen.

[DrCube]

Just because nothing is certain doesn't mean everything is equally uncertain. Our decisions, our predictions, and our world views are all based on things that are very likely true. But nobody bases anything on the possibility of women giving birth to dragon cats.

Figuring out the probabilities is what science is all about. We used to think it was pretty likely that the sun was a guy riding a flaming chariot through the sky each day. But we dug deeper and found out it is fits the evidence better and is in fact much more likely that the sun is a ball of hydrogen and helium the size of a million earths undergoing nuclear fusion.

That's not tautology or axiomatic. It took a lot of work to get this far and figure this much out. It doesn't mean we can't be wrong. It does mean that, over all, we're "righter" than we've ever been before.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

A really mind-bending topic came up dealing with the core nature of reality…the debate is can we “know” anything? Or is everything simply a matter of probability that is, in reality, unknowable?
This is partly a question of definitions. If we define knowledge as a belief that is objectively true, then we can certainly know a lot about logic and mathematics, since logic and maths have built-in methods for proving propositions. If we also assume that there is an objective reality, we can also know things about reality. The problem with reality then becomes how to prove that our beliefs about reality are correct.

Which is why natural sciences don't work with the concepts of proof or even knowledge per se (at least as far as the "mechanics" of the universe go), but on the basis of evidence and theories, and why falsifiability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) is such an important concept in science; it's strictly speaking impossible to prove anything about reality, but it's relatively easy to disprove false theories (by setting up experiments or doing measurements).

There's a metaphysical question in there too; to be able to do scientific experiments, you have to assume the universe works by in some way following a (probably unknown) set of rules, which again is impossible to prove. If you're disposed to, you can insert a deity or platonic idealism or some combination thereof here.

The example is stepping off a cliff—I say we “know” you’ll fall. It’s predictable--some might even say it's CERTAIN. The counterpoint to this is that yes, you might fall the first GAZILLION times but on the GAZILLIONTH and ONE time, you might fly off, blip into a warpzone, grow wings, etc etc etc.

But to me, that just bastardizes words into meaning nonsense, abstract things. It
seems to me, the latter argument claims noting is causal, but are instead random.
It's certainly good enough in normal speech to say you know you'll fall if you jump off a cliff. But you'll have to remember that this is not the same kind of certainty you'd have if you said you knew that 2 + 2 = 4.
I'd say our universe is deterministic--
And you'd appear to be incorrect.

Conceptually embracing there is no attainable truth in existence, wouldn’t it mean there’s no such thing as probability? Because you’d have to concede that the first gazillion falls off the cliff were all singular random results, all percieved reasons for falling were simply coincidental--that falling is contingent on no predictable pattern.
The problem isn't about truth - that may or may not exist. It's about proof. And you can't have any. :) You can have strong inductive theories that appear to be so predictive that for the usual practical applications they can be taken as objective truth, but whether or not the theories are in fact correct is another matter (Newtonian gravity is a good example of a theory that pretty much only becomes noticeably false when you're talking about objects off earth).


Doesn’t this shut down the scientific method?
Doesn’t the no truth/no real knowledge concept of reality render it dysfunctional?
No, because science strictly speaking doesn't deal in knowledge. In fact, "modern" science works the way it does precisely because proven, objective truth is unattainable in practice.

[The Hamster King]

Knowledge is a model that makes accurate predictions.

Forget all this talk about "truth". It just confuses things.

[dontbesojumpy]

Hm. This is all fairly exactly what I expected to hear, but I’m just trying to get my head around it all.
So—
About humans having non-human babies: you turned it into a thing about evolution. That was never part of the conversation. I’m taking about RANDOMNESS, and the counterpoint made my “non-chaos theory” of human birth is that so far it’s NEVER been absolutely random what comes out. It’s always some causal, calculable creature. Even if at some point a human/next-level-hybrid is birthed out, it’s still somewhat of a predictable creature. But the point was according to quantum mechanics ANYTHING can come out…however in a practical (functional) sense, indeed, no, it’s never been random.

Which brings me to probabilities and stat/core concepts of truth: how is creating a godlike form of unattainable knowledge any different than believing in God? It’s an unknowable, impossible concept—just like God, and at the end of the day, the question to “WHY ANYTHING?” is either scientifically “we can never know/because of the unknowable truth” or if you’re theological—the answer is “God.” Both seem equally as unfathomable and to me both seem pointless because they have no practical bearing on anything at all whatsoever. We ostensibly “know” that so far, everything has had a cause/effect relationship—I mean, has there been anything in the history of EVER that science has said “yup, that happened for literally no reason—so we’re not even going to study it or look into it or even think about it because there’ simply NO REASON IT HAPPENED.” This is why I said the universe is deterministic—is it not a giant mechanism of causes and effects?

That being said, if for all practical purposes something is true 100% of the time you do it, what is the harm in accepting it’s truth? I guess I’m coming at it like this: if I take the stance that a rock will fall when I drop it off a ladder 100% of the time as we are on earth, but you bet something else will happen and the rock will not fall, I would win that bet. “Do you know what happens when you drop a rock off a ladder?” ‘YES. It Falls.” But this statement is simply not true? Because truth is extrapolated to a patent impossibility which has no bearing/practical use whatsoever?

I’ve already granted possibility vs plausibility, but in the functional world, it’s rather moot…until actual random things start to happen, we have a fairly firm grasp on the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of our perceived world. And I also grant that we are flawed in our perception since we are human, but it’s all we have, so saying it’s simply “how things are” doesn’t seem untrue since it simply cannot be any other way…

So, ok. So the concept of knowing ANYTHING is simply an axiom by strict definition…or another way of saying it is something can be impossible to physically disprove yet we cannot accept it as 100% infallible. Because there’s so such thing.

So the answer to the question is YES, knowledge is merely an axiom. Truth is an axiom.

[dontbesojumpy]

A question about statistics: I’m not a math guy, so bear with me—

In order to apply a statistic to something, doesn’t it have to happen? Someone said the chance of falling off a cliff and flying up instead of falling has a less than 1 in a million chance—how do you come up with that stat? Doesn’t something have to happen at least ONCE before you can create a mathematical equation for it? Or can we assign a statistical probability to any conceivable notion?

Is there a statistical probability of God?

Isn’t the stat for something that’s never happened “N/A?” If we can assign stats to events/outcomes that have never been observed, do the stats become altered because of each new conceptual outcome we can dream up? “it’s a 1 a trillion chance—NO WAIT I just thought up 'if you jump off a cliff you might turn into Voltron.' Now the stat is a 1 in a trillion-and-one chance.”

[Superfluous Parentheses]

Hm. This is all fairly exactly what I expected to hear, but I’m just trying to get my head around it all.
So—
About humans having non-human babies: you turned it into a thing about evolution. That was never part of the conversation. I’m taking about RANDOMNESS, and the counterpoint made my “non-chaos theory” of human birth is that so far it’s NEVER been absolutely random what comes out. It’s always some causal, calculable creature. Even if at some point a human/next-level-hybrid is birthed out, it’s still somewhat of a predictable creature. But the point was according to quantum mechanics ANYTHING can come out…however in a practical (functional) sense, indeed, no, it’s never been random.
The thing about quantum randomness is that it works on the (sub)atomic level, and that fact alone already pretty much guarantees that quantum effects will have no significant effect on even a single cell (I found a cite claiming about 200 trillion atoms in a single human cell, but that might be off by several orders of magnitude - nevertheless). Added to that, the intricacies of the human reproductive system prevent a lot of the more damaging/incompatible mutations from ever reaching birth.

Which brings me to probabilities and stat/core concepts of truth: how is creating a godlike form of unattainable knowledge any different than believing in God? It’s an unknowable, impossible concept—just like God, and at the end of the day, the question to “WHY ANYTHING?” is either scientifically “we can never know/because of the unknowable truth” or if you’re theological—the answer is “God.” Both seem equally as unfathomable and to me both seem pointless because they have no practical bearing on anything at all whatsoever.
We assume a "truth" because that seems to be a consequence of the assumption that the universe is working according to rules (and vice versa). If it isn't, then all bets are off, but so far, the assumption seems to have worked quite well.

We ostensibly “know” that so far, everything has had a cause/effect relationship—I mean, has there been anything in the history of EVER that science has said “yup, that happened for literally no reason—so we’re not even going to study it or look into it or even think about it because there’ simply NO REASON IT HAPPENED.” This is why I said the universe is deterministic—is it not a giant mechanism of causes and effects?
I think causality get quite weird at the quantum level, but I don't know nearly enough to say that for a fact. But causality seems to be something that is pretty hard-wired in our mind. We are superstriciously susceptible to infer causal links for events that happen shortly after one another, and it takes real work to prevent us from making judgment errors in that regard.

None of that is to say that causality is false - it certainly doesn't seem to be on the super-atomic scale.

That being said, if for all practical purposes something is true 100% of the time you do it, what is the harm in accepting it’s truth?
You're using multiple definitions of "truth" here, which may explain why you're getting confused. What you're describing is data - i.e. "I dropped a stone 100 times, and every time it fell". That's history, or measurements, and the person making the measurements can make sure their statement is true. But you're also talking about something else entirely, namely the inductive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning) argument that stones, when dropped, fall towards the earth. Which is provably false, but quite valid (not 100% absolutely guaranteed, but so probable as to be certain to anyone's standard) under specific conditions.

I’ve already granted possibility vs plausibility, but in the functional world, it’s rather moot…until actual random things start to happen, we have a fairly firm grasp on the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of our perceived world. And I also grant that we are flawed in our perception since we are human, but it’s all we have, so saying it’s simply “how things are” doesn’t seem untrue since it simply cannot be any other way…
Yes.
So, ok. So the concept of knowing ANYTHING is simply an axiom by strict definition…or another way of saying it is something can be impossible to physically disprove yet we cannot accept it as 100% infallible. Because there’s so such thing.
Yes - at least, when you're not talking about abstractions like logic and maths.
So the answer to the question is YES, knowledge is merely an axiom. Truth is an axiom.
Not at all. It's just that we aren't capable of determining the underlying "truth" (if there is any) about the real world, so we're just using the word "knowledge" to mean something like "in our limited experiences, for as long as we can conceive of, this statement is not going to be disproved". And there's nothing wrong with doing that, except that it can lead to confusion such as yours.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

A question about statistics: I’m not a math guy, so bear with me—

In order to apply a statistic to something, doesn’t it have to happen? Someone said the chance of falling off a cliff and flying up instead of falling has a less than 1 in a million chance—how do you come up with that stat? Doesn’t something have to happen at least ONCE before you can create a mathematical equation for it? Or can we assign a statistical probability to any conceivable notion?
I'll assume we've all dropped stuff often enough that if the chance really was more than 1 in a million, we'd have heard about it.


Is there a statistical probability of God?

Depends on the god. But that's another question that's almost 100% a question of definitions. Define me a god, and I might hazard a guess. There certainly are definitions of gods that have a statistical probability of 0 and some that have a probability of 1.

Isn’t the stat for something that’s never happened “N/A?” If we can assign stats to events/outcomes that have never been observed, do the stats become altered because of each new conceptual outcome we can dream up? “it’s a 1 a trillion chance—NO WAIT I just thought up 'if you jump off a cliff you might turn into Voltron.' Now the stat is a 1 in a trillion-and-one chance.”
No. The chances of something happening are not determined by it happening. We might get a more accurate estimate of that number, though.

[dontbesojumpy]

Thank you, superfluous...awesome name, too. Your posts quite help.

So, for clarity, let me explain the debate that brought this about. My stance is that reality (that is the perceptible world as observed and measured as best humans can via science and all else) is “perfect.” This is a misappropriation of Spinoza’s statement that “reality is perfect.”

My point is reality/existence is predictable, which allows us to function in it. The converse of that is a world of pure chaos—you get prego, you might have a who-knows-what’ll-come-out. You step off a cliff, you’ll “who-knows-what’ll-happen.” That would be a world of absolute randomness and chaos—i.e. “imperfect reality.” I grant there’s whatever infinitesimally small percentage chance that ANYTHING can happen, but as it remains wholly unobservable and simply theoretical, the function of reality remains “perfect.”

Don’t start hammer-smashing me because of the implications of the term “perfect.” NOTHING IS ACTUALLY PERFECT.
I mean “PERFECT” as in structured and as far as we can tell, causal. Calculable. Not random, not chaotic, not unpredictable. Everything works together in a symbiotic, absurdly intricate system where everything is contingent on everything else—deterministic. I would abandon this stance and concede IF, at least ONCE, purely causeless random events occurred. So far, even extremely unpredictable outcomes are the result of unforeseen but still observable circumstances—not randomness. Science has yet to find a causeless event that it simply had to give up on because it’s unknowable. All the things we do not understand are being researched because the belief is we can, at some point, “get it” or “reveal the cause.”
For me, this is evidence that there is a “reason.” I have no idea what that reason for a tractable reality is—a god particle, some master energy, “God,” a mathematical super-truth, or whatever else. I can’t claim to know--it does push me towards deism or pantheism…but also things like The Theory of Everything sure seem plausible to me.

The debate against my stance is that nothing is knowable, therefore even tho we get constantly repeatable data, WHO KNOWS. Ok, sure—but isn’t that moot when it comes to the actual realization of reality? As in the practical application of, you know—existing?

Now: stats again.
“a 1 in a million chance of a rock not falling.” Sorry to harp on this—still trying to grasp it. So it’s easy for me to imagine a guy standing at a ledge and dropping something a million times in a row. Or a billion. Or a trillion. Or he stands there and literally drops stuff over and over for a life time. It always falls, 100% of the time. Yet there’s still an allowable percentage for the rock to NOT fall? And it’s assigned a numerical value—hypothetically .01gazillionth of a percent the rock won’t fall? How do you arrive at the numerical value if you have not even one single instance of it ever happening EVER?

So the 1-in-a-million chance of a rock NOT falling is simply an estimation? Not a calculation or measurement?

[Nametag]

The chance is not "one in a million," it's "less than one in a million" -- we cannot, ever, assign a probability of zero, we can only assume that the probability is less than one in however-many-trials-we-conducted (well, we can adjust for the significance of the fact that it hasn't happened at all, compared to what level of confidence we want, but that's a bit much for this discussion).

[The Hamster King]

My point is reality/existence is predictable, which allows us to function in it.Yes. Clearly that's so.

For me, this is evidence that there is a “reason.”Why? Perhaps coherence is simply a necessary condition for existence.

[dontbesojumpy]

perhaps. or perhaps not.

[The Hamster King]

perhaps. or perhaps not.Well, that's a convincing argument!

[dontbesojumpy]

I never attempted to or sought to convince anyone of anything. I concede that perhaps things are the way they are just because this his how things are. But it's equally plausible and just as impossible to argue that perhaps there's an underlying system to it all.

Perhaps or Perhaps not--it sort of just comes down to whatever helps one understand it all--you have no evidence this is simply how things are anymore than a christian has evidence of God. So stop trying to make it an argument, nothing here ever was.

[Blake]

About humans having non-human babies: you turned it into a thing about evolution. That was never part of the conversation.

Well of course we are not privy to your conversation outside this board. I can only base my responses on what you have said here. And what you said here is provably erroneous..

I’m taking about RANDOMNESS, and the counterpoint made my “non-chaos theory” of human birth is that so far it’s NEVER been absolutely random what comes out.

Why on God's Green Earth would you expect it to be random? The process of producing a neonatal mammal has about a gazillion checks in place to ensure that the product is a faithful copy of the parent. It is the single most non-random process that I can think of.

Why would you expect the outcome to be random?


But the point was according to quantum mechanics ANYTHING can come out…

Uh, no.

You need to realise that QM indeterminacy breaks down as soon as it interacts with the macroscopic. That interaction causes he waveform to collapse and at the point of collapse it ceases to be random and the probability becomes unity.

The production of a neonatal mammal entails about a bazillion macroscopic interactions every minute. There is simply no way that QM says that the process could ever produce something random. Or rather, I guess it could, but the odds of it doing so, even within the lifespan of a million universes, are still so small that we can't calculate them.

Some QM events are merely improbable, such as all the particles in a rock teleporting themselves upwards in a series of Planck distance jumps (ie falling upwards). For the mammalian gestation process to produce something truly random, an event far more improbable than that would have to occur several million times every second for 9 months. If the improbable failed to happen that often then the embryo / foetus would be terminated instantly.

Tha tis why the result can't be random.


how is creating a godlike form of unattainable knowledge any different than believing in God?

It isn;t.

But who, aside from you, considers the absence of certain knowledge to be in any way similar to God? Can you explain to us how it is similar to God, and which Gods it is similar to?

... at the end of the day, the question to “WHY ANYTHING?” is either scientifically “we can never know/because of the unknowable truth” or if you’re theological—the answer is “God.” Both seem equally as unfathomable and to me both seem pointless because they have no practical bearing on anything at all whatsoever.

Ahh, I'm guessing you are young. There is a quotation I can't recall properly from somebody who can't remember, but it runs something like "The surest sign of maturity is the willingness to abandon absolute certainty and admit ignorance". And it's very true.

There's nothing pointless about admitting uncertainty. That is in fact what gives everything its point. Nor is it unfathomable. We have fathomed quite a lot of the processes of the universe.

We ostensibly “know” that so far, everything has had a cause/effect relationship—I mean, has there been anything in the history of EVER that science has said “yup, that happened for literally no reason—so we’re not even going to study it or look into it or even think about it because there’ simply NO REASON IT HAPPENED.”


Nope, lots of things at the quantum level happen for literally no reason.
Similarly lots of the fundamental processes of the universe happen for absolutely no reason. Light, for example, just "is". Same with gravity. It doesn't happen for a reason, it is just something that occurs because of the fundemental structure of the universe. Oh, we can explain what light or gravity is, but we can;t explain why they are, indeed the question of why light is doesn't even make any sense.

This is why I said the universe is deterministic—is it not a giant mechanism of causes and effects?

No, it isn't. At the most fundamental levels it is a collection of states and probabilities. Light is caused a shift in state of particles, but that shift in state itself is perfectly random and indeterminate. Gravity is caused by distortion of spacetime, by the distortion itself is simply a state of the universe.

That being said, if for all practical purposes something is true 100% of the time you do it, what is the harm in accepting it’s truth?

Well that's very easy to answer.

You take a coin and flip it 5 times, and it comes up heads 100% of the time. I now offer you a bet that the next 10 times time it will come up tails. If it comes up heads every time, I pay you $1 million. If it comes up tails even once, you pay me %1 million. Are you really going to take that bet? After all, coming up heads was true 100% of the time you did it, right? What is the harm in accepting it’s truth?

The fact that you won't take the bet is proof positive that you don't believe what you are saying. You know that just because something is true 100% of the time you do it, that is no indication at all that it will continue to be true for the future.


I guess I’m coming at it like this: if I take the stance that a rock will fall when I drop it off a ladder 100% of the time as we are on earth, but you bet something else will happen and the rock will not fall, I would win that bet.

Most of the time, yes. But that is only a safe bet because so many people have seen so many objects fall that the number of trials is huge. As a result the probability is known to be huge.


“Do you know what happens when you drop a rock off a ladder?” ‘YES. It Falls.” But this statement is simply not true? Because truth is extrapolated to a patent impossibility which has no bearing/practical use whatsoever?

No. It does have bearing.

Again, I ask you the question that you refused to answer earlier:

If someone flips a coin 5 times and they all come up heads, can she declare that she knows the coin always comes up heads? How about if she flips it 50 times? 500? At what point can she accept that she “knows” what’ll happen with the next toss? At what point can she declare it "a patent impossibility" for the coin to come up tails? And why did you choose that number (N) and not (N-1)?

I really would like your answer to this question, because I think this is where you are going wrong. You don't understand that certainty increases with number of trials, approaching unity. But it never actually reaches unity.


I’ve already granted possibility vs plausibility, but in the functional world, it’s rather moot…until actual random things start to happen, we have a fairly firm grasp on the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of our perceived world.

No we don't.

Take a very simple system like double pendulum (http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~wheat/dpend_html/). Despite its simplicity, it is totally unpredictable and random. We have absolutely no idea grasp on the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of even this one simple aspect of our perceived world.

And I also grant that we are flawed in our perception since we are human, but it’s all we have, so saying it’s simply “how things are” doesn’t seem untrue since it simply cannot be any other way…

So since people perceived the world as flat, it was true that the world was flat? And it simply could not be any other way, because that was all they had?

That's an interesting position, but I don't think you'll find many who agree with you.

Our perceptions are flawed. That isn't open to debate. That is why we seek to falsify the results of our perceptions, not confirm them. It is that process of falsification that enables us to overcome the limitations of our perceptions. Our perceptions are not all we have. We also have the perceptions of others and the ability to deduce.

So the answer to the question is YES, knowledge is merely an axiom. Truth is an axiom.

Knowledge isn't an axiom. Truth is.

[Blake]

I never attempted to or sought to convince anyone of anything. I concede that perhaps things are the way they are just because this his how things are. But it's equally plausible and just as impossible to argue that perhaps there's an underlying system to it all.

Well yes, of course. Nobody denies that. The salient point is that we have no evidence that such a system exists.

Perhaps or Perhaps not--it sort of just comes down to whatever helps one understand it all--you have no evidence this is simply how things are anymore than a christian has evidence of God.

No, that isn't even close to being true.

People have gone looking for evidence of an underlying system in all the likely places that such evidence should be. And they have failed to find it. That is pretty string evidence that it doesn't exist. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence when something should leave evidence and none can be found.

In contrast there people have gone looking for evidence of God in all the likely places that such evidence should be. And they have failed to find it.

What does that suggest to you?

So stop trying to make it an argument, nothing here ever was.

Uh yeah. It was.

An argument is a connected series of propositions intended to establish a fact. What you posted in the OP was an argument.

[dontbesojumpy]

Blake,
People REALLY respond well to rhetorical devices and debate tactics that have been used to death. It's REALLY helpful to talk down to people when they are just asking questions...

"The question (I) refuse to answer?" You mean the one from the SAME POST just now? WOW. I'm talking about something we have Newtonian Laws--a thing so "certain" we went ahead and called it a LAW, and you rhetorically bring up some other concept involving "chance" then say that's what I believe.

why?

I'm honestly here because I'm seeking to better understand several debates that admittedly didn't happen in cyberspace so no, you can't be privvy to them.

I'm just trying to weed out the misconceptions on both sides as best I can because I care enough to better understand it all.

I'm not looking to verify some dogma or prove some point. I simply am looking to understand some core concepts that I feel (and have been shown to honestly have been) mistakenly presented to me. So let me break down the host of problems thus far:

My statement was dropping a rock will yield the result of falling literally 100% of the time. I asked if you would bet against it? This is based on the Newtonian Laws of Physics and seems to be a fairly acceptable outcome in perpetuity.

Now you want to equate that to something reliant on chance, a coin flip contest? What's the point you're trying to make? Are you saying that a rock falling or flying has the same probability of a coin landing on heads or tails?
Because we both know that's not the case.

I sense a strong attitude of "setting the new guy straight"--

Oh, and since you asked--I am young. I'm only 30.
I wasn't stating any absolutes or debating in favor of them--I in fact am the one saying I feel like we can understand things better and better in time because of progress. The rebuttal against me was "no, NOTHING IS KNOWABLE."

Moving on--
After spending the afternoon discussing this with the initial debator (from real life) I understand things a lot clearer than I did before.

For example, he is the one who initially debated that a human can get pregnant and anything can happen because of QM.
Either he doesn't understand the implications of QM or you guys don't or something--but that's the disconnect. His stance is QM indicates anything and everything can happen...

His debate was literally the first exposure to the concepts of QM I'd ever heard---and it was in rebuttal to my statement that "things simply make sense in this reality, in this world. Humans get pregnant and have baby humans, not donkeys or dragons or robots or kittens. ONLY HUMANS."

I made that point clear here, but instead of reading the words "puppies" or "small ships" or "dragon cats" and conceding that, in fact humans never will have those things, you had to find ANY POINT TO ARGUE and took it to evolution? Just for the sake of being contrary?

My point is valid: humans have human babies--not something random or absurd. Things simply make sense.

That was my point. The friend who brought QM into is the one who states that QM proves anything can happen for no reason.

I DON'T EVEN HAVE THE CAPACITY TO DEBATE OR UNDERSTAND QUANTUM MECHANICS.

I don't know how to be clearer than that--so don't try to shout me down about how QM doesn't affect things on the post-atomic level.

I'm simply stating that the rebuttal to my 'things make sense" remark was "no, they don't: because QM."

His rebuttal--to me, to you, Blake, and to Superfluous' contention that QM only affects thing sub-atomically is "cancer."

He said that cancer can only be understood down to radiation, at which point we simply don't know anymore about why or how beyond that. It simply is just because--which is his example of TRULY random occurances (which i was arguing don't exist on our observable level of existence).

That is probably a debate you two should have or at least a new thread--but I need to be clear that I accept what is being said here about QM to be more likely simply because it makes more sense to me.

Fair enough?

The next big problem in the real-world debate (that I was seeking to clarify here) has been resolved, which is that "knowledge" was simply being misused by my debator.

He was considering "knowledge" and "instrinsic truth" as the same thing: "if we know it, it is truth, but nothing can be truly known, so truth is unattainable." That is the argument presented against me.

I get that intrisict truth is beyond our grasp due to perceptions, but just as i debated with him, just as you cleared up here, we can KNOW things. We can accept the data sets and because of this we can function in reality.

So the largest portion of this whole thread's point is cleared up right there: semantically, he shouldn't be saying "knowledge is the same as intrinsic truth."

I can see in retrospect there was a shifting definition which locked us in a semantic loop.

As for the rest of this--I'm not smart. I'm just trying to get a better grip on this whole "nothing is knowable" debate--which is not true. Right? we simply can know a lot of things due to scientfic method/repeatable outcomes/etc?
I understand the complication of me presenting both sides to a debate, but I can't make the come and argue, i can only try to explain it all.

SO, for clarity, Let me start this thread all over:

I believe that we can know things in this world. Because of scientific method, because of obtainable data, because of repeating constants. As such, everything seems to be causal (thus far) and things simply "make sense."
Perhaps what we know isn't considered intrinsic truth, but it is for sure ostensibly true.

Is that flawed? Or am i simply using the wrong terms?

Is QM fully out of the loop? Because, again--I was told "yes, things make sense, UNTIL QM. Which means THINGS DON'T MAKE SENSE

[dontbesojumpy]

This board is one of the smartest groups of people and is my default place when i have really "smart people" questions--
but it's full of the smuggest, most pompous people of any board I've been on.

Hamster I know, and Superfluous is genuinely answering questions, but Blake--it just seems like this is an ego thing for you.

Can you just help me to understand better? That's all i want. If i felt like I DID understand all this, I wouldn't have come here to ask.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

Thank you, superfluous...awesome name, too. Your posts quite help.
Thank you. I try to be clear to help myself and other people too. :)
My point is reality/existence is predictable, which allows us to function in it. The converse of that is a world of pure chaos—you get prego, you might have a who-knows-what’ll-come-out. You step off a cliff, you’ll “who-knows-what’ll-happen.” That would be a world of absolute randomness and chaos—i.e. “imperfect reality.” I grant there’s whatever infinitesimally small percentage chance that ANYTHING can happen, but as it remains wholly unobservable and simply theoretical, the function of reality remains “perfect.”
I think that what you're having a problem with is that any number of ridiculously improbable scenarios might happen, but you don't really have a grasp of just how improbable those scenarios are. I don't blame you, because I think grasping these probabilities is beyond all of us (since they are so tiny), but that does not mean that we can't rely on "common sense" or something like it to make "real world" decisions.

[dontbesojumpy]

You're right, that's just so hard to wrap my head around.

Also, I think a major disconnect is there's sort of a practical way of looking at things then a scientific way...I think the initial debate was a mixture of the two that didn't obey either.

but that does mean that we can't rely on "common sense" or something like it to make "real world" decisions.


it DOES mean we can't rely or DOESN'T mean we can't rely?

edit: by "initial debate" i mean the real-world debate that brought me here.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

it DOES mean we can't rely or DOESN'T mean we can't rely?
To be frank, I changed the wording because I'm not sure. What I'm fairly confident in stating is that our intuitions about reality and morals are the way they are because they are generally effective in relation to the universe. If they weren't, we as the beings we are would be extinct by now.

This a completely amoral (not immoral) statement, just to be clear.

[Bryan Ekers]

I'm talking about something we have Newtonian Laws--a thing so "certain" we went ahead and called it a LAW

It's worth noting that Newton wasn't 100% correct, though he would have been if the speed of light was infinite. Since the speed of light is not infinite, but just very very very fast, some minor refinements to Newton's were called for. This didn't mean Newton's laws were discarded, just enhanced because our instruments and observations had become sufficiently advanced to take note of the minor limitations when observing objects of immense size (i.e. stars) or objects of immense speed (i.e. photons). I'm sure some theory will come along that refines Newton and Einstein and will prove useful when we start measuring even more esoteric objects like black holes and tachyons and such.

Anyway, our knowledge is anything but arbitrary and tautological. In fact, we're steadily building on it and refining it as our tools improve.

[dontbesojumpy]

Bryan, your concept of knowledge seem strongly in line with my own, which is the clarity I seek.
You articulate it much more clearly than i can.

And I understand Newton's Laws are not intrinsic truths either--I'm not claiming that.
However Newtonian Law in regards to a rock always falling when dropped is not equal to the same exact princple stating a coin will always land on heads simply because it did the first 5 times.
That is the rhetorical trap laid by Blake--"if you believe a rock falling 100% simply because it's never NOT fallen in the history of time, then you also have to believe if a coin comes up heads five times it will forever."

That doesn't even seem applicable since a coin has observably come up not heads in history.
However a rock has never "come up tails" so to speak...
But hey--an apple and an orange are both fruit so I guess we can compare them, huh?

Moving on...

Bryan--
You touch on a point i keep making (in my ongoing real life debate)--but it is shut down by my friend. I said we've had to overturn Laws and previous held theories that seem patently "known" because of the progress of science and technology.

Heliocentrism, for example.

My statement was that in QM, we might at some point learn more to the extent randomness is no longer is random, much the same way the tajectory of a bounced superball is not random yet would appear so to someone who doesn't account for microscopic phenomena that affect the tajectory.

What I mean is tiny factors affect the ball's bounce. But the more we learn, the smaller the level we can observe and test. The better the technology, the better we can understand what's really happening and for what reason.

I get shut down by him because he says there's math indicating we know some stuff as much as we can ever know it and it simply is "just because--random."

So on any level--be it QM or higher--does true, actual intrinsic randomness exist?
Or could it be that nothing is honestly random, but only appears random because we lack further understanding (which could come as we advance with time)?

[dontbesojumpy]

I wish i could most clearly articulate this.

Let me kick this dead horse just a little while longer:

I wonder what will happen if I drop a rock.

Let's say i don't guess or dream up what might happen, I simply want to observe what will happen. Let's say I simply record my observations. 100% of the time, the rock falls. Infinity times, over and over.

Why is it necessary to dream other potential outcomes? Why can i not just rely on what i measure?
To me, the concept seems to mean "ok, anything I can dream up that MIGHT happen deserves a numerical value simply because i dreamt it up."

As I understand it, this immediatly drops my measurements from 100% to slightly less, because the less-than-a-millionth chance of this pointless idea i dreamt of what 'could' happen.

But why bother dreaming up impossible outcomes at all? Why not just rely on the measurements themselves?

[DrCube]

I wish i could most clearly articulate this.

Let me kick this dead horse just a little while longer:

I wonder what will happen if I drop a rock.

Let's say i don't guess or dream up what might happen, I simply want to observe what will happen. Let's say I simply record my observations. 100% of the time, the rock falls. Infinity times, over and over.

Why is it necessary to dream other potential outcomes? Why can i not just rely on what i measure?
To me, the concept seems to mean "ok, anything I can dream up that MIGHT happen deserves a numerical value simply because i dreamt it up."

As I understand it, this immediatly drops my measurements from 100% to slightly less, because the less-than-a-millionth chance of this pointless idea i dreamt of what 'could' happen.

But why bother dreaming up impossible outcomes at all? Why not just rely on the measurements themselves?
If you just want to record what already happened, there is no problem. But if you want to predict what will happen in the future, you need to assign some probabilities to potential events. Probabilities are all about the future, not the past. The past can help you assign probabilities in a more informed way, but the certainty of the past doesn't necessarily transfer to the future.

For example, we know that on this particular earth-like planet, life exists. Can we conclude that there is a 100% chance that life exists on every earth-like planet we find, given a suitable definition of "earth-like"? No, we cannot. (Unless your definition of "earth-like" is "contains life". :P In which case, yes, it's a tautology.)

Basically, the gist is that the past is certain, the future is not. Measurements measure the past, probabilities measure the future.

[Bryan Ekers]

Well, I actually got most of my argument from an excellent essay by Isaac Asimov called The Relativity of Wrong. There's also an excellent chapter on heliocentrism in Martin Garnder's Mathematical Circus (http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Circus-Paradoxes-Entertainments-Scientific/dp/0394502078). Geocentrism is not a bad model, if we assume the only moving objects in the sky are the sun, moon and visible planets, while the background stars are fixed points on a slowly spinning celestial sphere, but the telescope and the beginnings of serious astronomy gave us additional information, such as Jupiter having moons of its own, and that the stars were not a uniform distance from Earth. Adding this knowledge to the geocentrism model meant adding vast complexities, while the heliocentrism did not, which is why it ultimately won out. And strictly speaking, the name "heliocentrism" (implying as it does that the sun is the fixed center of the universe, as geocentrism did for the Earth) is not accurate either, once we realize that the distant stars are themselves suns and we occupy merely one corner of one galaxy which itself is not the center of anything, assuming a "center" of the universe even exists.

Anyway, I suppose arguably we don't "know" anything, we just create models based on our observations and refine those models as our observations improve, but that kind of argument tends to lead toward us all being brains in jars (or there being just one brain in one jar, with each of us assuming we're that brain and all other "people" are just simulations) and what good is that?

[dontbesojumpy]

Basically, the gist is that the past is certain, the future is not. Measurements measure the past, probabilities measure the future.

i love this quote...it simplifies things so much for me. See? Termonology is SO important.

[iamnotbatman]

I wish i could most clearly articulate this.

Let me kick this dead horse just a little while longer:

I wonder what will happen if I drop a rock.

Let's say i don't guess or dream up what might happen, I simply want to observe what will happen. Let's say I simply record my observations. 100% of the time, the rock falls. Infinity times, over and over.

Why is it necessary to dream other potential outcomes? Why can i not just rely on what i measure?
To me, the concept seems to mean "ok, anything I can dream up that MIGHT happen deserves a numerical value simply because i dreamt it up."

As I understand it, this immediatly drops my measurements from 100% to slightly less, because the less-than-a-millionth chance of this pointless idea i dreamt of what 'could' happen.

But why bother dreaming up impossible outcomes at all? Why not just rely on the measurements themselves?

(note to experts: look away)

Here is another answer to your questions: because of experience. Dropping a rock might always seem the same to you 100% percent of the time, but experience tells us otherwise. Why? Small rocks. If you take a small enough rock, experience tells us that some percent of the time we will see it go the wrong way. Small enough, and the rock might go the wrong way 49% of the time, if you look close enough, for a short enough period of time. Make a slightly bigger rock, or look for a longer period of time, and that probability might go down to 10%. Make the rock bigger... 1%... and so on. So from experience we have strong reason to believe that a very large rock has some very small but non-zero probability of not falling (for some brief period of time).

[Bryan Ekers]

Are we talking rocks the size of dust mites, here?

[iamnotbatman]

Are we talking rocks the size of dust mites, here?

look. away.

ETA: More like rocks the size of electrons.

[Bryan Ekers]

look. away.

ETA: More like rocks the size of electrons.

Well, its the insistence on lumping such objects into the "rock" category that invites confusion, contradiction and oversimplification.

For that matter, going the other way while clinging to a fixed idea of what "rocks" should do is problematic, also. A watermelon-sized rock is a fairly unchanging object that conforms rather passively to various expected physical laws, but the same material scaled to the size of a large asteroid begins to exhibit new behaviours, like a noticeable gravity well. The same gravitational effect emanates from the watermelon-rock, but it is trivial enough to be ignored so we pretend it doesn't exist and if the rock appears to be attracting other objects to it, we assume other causes (like the rock is magnetized).

That minor effect becomes impossible to ignore when the rock is asteroid-sized, though, and the rock tends to conform to a spherical shape (something the watermelon rock could never do) and attract smaller objects to itself. If the rock gets even bigger, additional effects (always present but usually trivial and overwhelmed by other effects) kick in and the rock might become massive enough that its gravity causes its center to heat up. Go further and the rock might experience some spontaneous fusion. Further still and light starts to noticeably bend around it.

Newton's laws are just fine for everyday objects, including rocks. There are, however, additional forces at play, such forces only becoming apparent when the rock is very small (to the point where quantum mechanics starts running the show) or very large (where relativity does).

[iamnotbatman]

Well, its the insistence on lumping such objects into the "rock" category that invites confusion, contradiction and oversimplification.

For that matter, going the other way while clinging to a fixed idea of what "rocks" should do is problematic, also. A watermelon-sized rock is a fairly unchanging object that conforms rather passively to various expected physical laws, but the same material scaled to the size of a large asteroid begins to exhibit new behaviours, like a noticeable gravity well. The same gravitational effect emanates from the watermelon-rock, but it is trivial enough to be ignored so we pretend it doesn't exist and if the rock appears to be attracting other objects to it, we assume other causes (like the rock is magnetized).

That minor effect becomes impossible to ignore when the rock is asteroid-sized, though, and the rock tends to conform to a spherical shape (something the watermelon rock could never do) and attract smaller objects to itself. If the rock gets even bigger, additional effects (always present but usually trivial and overwhelmed by other effects) kick in and the rock might become massive enough that its gravity causes its center to heat up. Go further and the rock might experience some spontaneous fusion. Further still and light starts to noticeably bend around it.

Newton's laws are just fine for everyday objects, including rocks. There are, however, additional forces at play, such forces only becoming apparent when the rock is very small (to the point where quantum mechanics starts running the show) or very large (where relativity does).

Nah, I think you are inviting confusion. I warned you to look away ;)

The point is that we have very strong experimental evidence to suggest that even macroscopic objects obey quantum mechanics (they are, after all, composed of smaller objects) and therefore we expect on experimental grounds that a rock will not necessarily always fall. You don't have to rely solely on inductive reasoning.

[dontbesojumpy]

I think I'm failing to grasp a very core concept of scientic reason.

Why do we need to predict some imaginative outcome of what will happen?

Sticking with the falling rock experiment--in order to determine what happens when one drops a golf ball sized rock, why do I need to dream up potential outcomes?
Also, at what point have you dreamt up enough possible outcomes to freakin stop and just SEE what happens?
Also, speaking on just a basic level, a level of creativity is required for this process as well, no? As in you have to be able to conceptualize the rock flying up to even wrangle it as a posibility. This is a big snag for me...so much stuff has thus been even theoretically impossible to imagine until we witness it, so I can pretend in my mind that someone might not even be able to conceive of a rock flying up, especially having never witnessed it.

The last few posts have indeed affected me. I guess I would now say that we can, in fact predict nothing--only assign a measure of probability to it. I hope in this sense i "finally get it."

However, how one arrives at said probability is (probably) something I'll never fully grasp--because it seems if "falling up has a probability of less than 1 in a million," then that probabilty changes in an absurdly small number once i think up a second, third, and infinity other potential outcomes.
Is that right? Or is there just a unified pocket of probability that encompasses "every last single potential outcome?"

Can literally NOTHING have the probability of 100%?

[iamnotbatman]

dontbesojumpy -- yes, according to quantum mechanics (which is a very well-tested theory for almost a century now, and the cornerstone of particle physics), you cannot predict with absolute certainty any specific outcome of an experiment. You must lower your expectations: you can only predict the probability of any specific outcome of an experiment. As usual, the great physicist Feynman said it best:

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

So don't worry that it sounds odd. It is odd.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

I think I'm failing to grasp a very core concept of scientic reason.

Why do we need to predict some imaginative outcome of what will happen?
Well, we don't need to, but it's one of the best usages of science :) We as humans like to have some idea of what's going to happen when we perform some act.

Sticking with the falling rock experiment--in order to determine what happens when one drops a golf ball sized rock, why do I need to dream up potential outcomes?
You don't have to, because in anything but particle physics bordering on pure philosophy, the overwhelming probability (much, much, much more, unimaginably more, than 999,999 times in a million) the rock (if it's of a size and weight that any English speaking human would reasonably call a rock), will behave according to Newton's laws.

However, how one arrives at said probability is (probably) something I'll never fully grasp--because it seems if "falling up has a probability of less than 1 in a million," then that probabilty changes in an absurdly small number once i think up a second, third, and infinity other potential outcomes.
This is your fundamental error. The probability does not change at all because you think up a new scenario [paraphrased, but I think that's what you mean]. Reality is what it is, and what we think is true is what we are trying to improve, in science. In other words, if we can think of new scenarios that don't contradict other observed facts and can be tested, then it may be that the probability always was higher or lower. But what science in general tries to do is build a model that approximates the real world. If our theories are demonstrably contrary to reality, then it's the theories that are wrong, not the other way around.

Can literally NOTHING have the probability of 100%?
Logic and maths (which are pretty much the same thing) are 100% true and provable. And they are that way by definition. There are no theories in logic and math, only hypotheses and proved, accurate facts. Well, and sloppy definitions.

[Czarcasm]

The point is that we have very strong experimental evidence to suggest that even macroscopic objects obey quantum mechanics (they are, after all, composed of smaller objects) and therefore we expect on experimental grounds that a rock will not necessarily always fall.
Cite, please?

[iamnotbatman]

Cite, please?

Since I have not deviated from textbook quantum mechanics, I am not sure what kind of cite you are looking for. If you want positive evidence of actual quantum behavior in macroscopic systems, perhaps you will find this (http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2969) or this (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6754/abs/401680a0.html) or this (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6953/full/425028a.html) interesting. For a more general understanding of how experts view the quantum mechanics of macroscopic objects, read about schrodinger's cat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat) or quantum decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoherence).

[DrCube]

Cite, please?

A cite for the fact that macroscopic objects are made up of atoms which are in turn composed of subatomic particles and behave according to quantum mechanics?

If it is possible for a single electron or nucleon to "tunnel" through barriers (and other quantum weirdness), it is possible, if much more improbable, for things composed of those subatomic particles to display the same behavior. The same way it is possible to roll five equal dice in Yahtzee; it's just a lot more improbable than rolling one die and getting a particular number.

[dontbesojumpy]

thank you all for the time and effort put in (esp. superfluous, bryan, etc, cube, etc)...

I think i have a little bit better understanding.

So. Let's move to part two>
would any of you agree that reality is perfect, as Spinoza stated?

from wikipedia:
In the universe anything that happens comes from the essential nature of objects. According to Spinoza, reality is perfection. If circumstances are seen as unfortunate it is only because of our inadequate conception of reality. While components of the chain of cause and effect are not beyond the understanding of human reason, human grasp of the infinitely complex whole is limited because of the limits of science to empirically take account of the whole sequence.

The universe does seem to be an interdependent cosmic machine...but each time I try to discuss this idea with my brainier friends, I'm shouted down into the carpet. "Perfection cannot exist!" etc etc.

It just seems to me we could imagine a severely less perfect machine, one where things just happened for no reason...with no predictability, where all was chaos.

[DrCube]

That's more a question of the definition of "perfect" than the nature of reality.

So, hey, call it whatever you want, I still think birth defects and cancer, among other things, leaves reality with something to be desired.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

would any of you agree that reality is perfect, as Spinoza stated?

from wikipedia:
In the universe anything that happens comes from the essential nature of objects. According to Spinoza, reality is perfection. If circumstances are seen as unfortunate it is only because of our inadequate conception of reality. While components of the chain of cause and effect are not beyond the understanding of human reason, human grasp of the infinitely complex whole is limited because of the limits of science to empirically take account of the whole sequence.
Keeping in mind that this argument is part of Spinoza's pan-theistic system of ethics, I find it a pretty lame attempt at explaining away the problem of evil.

Basically, it argues that:

A) the universe is completely deterministic
B) therefore the universe is perfect
C) therefore everything we find objectionable in reality (explicitly including pain and suffering) is purely due to lack of knowledge.

If I concede A for the purpose of the argument, then all "perfection" seems to mean is "whatever happens"; purely because it's defined that way. Again, I think, an example of extremely sloppy definitions or worse, calculated and suggestive use of loaded terminology.

As for C - even if the universe is perfect, it seems to me that any possible deterministic universe is perfect in this argument. Just because we find ourselves in a universe where, say, people can and do die in agony does not mean there isn't a possible alternative - also deterministic, and therefore "perfect" - universe where the amount of suffering would be significantly lower.

In conclusion, the word "perfect" as used by Spinoza is so far off the common use of the word, that I can't even answer the question.