Continuing my policy of putting my published non-technical articles on this site, this article titled Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate was published by Physics Today in June 2002 (p. 48-51).
The background to this article is that back in 2002, the advocates of Intelligent Design creationism seemed to be everywhere, seeking to have their ideas included in K-12 school science curricula at least as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. These battles were fought at the state and local levels and involved state and local school boards. Ohio and Kansas were particular hot spots because they were revising their respective science standards and ID advocates saw an opportunity to influence the new standards, especially since school boards consist of elected people who may not have deep understandings of science and could be swayed by dubious arguments about what science was.
I was deeply involved in this controversy, debating ID advocates in many forums, and publishing articles on the topic. I was also on the state of Ohio’s advisory board that was charged with overseeing the new science curriculum standards and lesson plans that, for the first time, was actually using the controversial word ‘evolution’. (The old standards used the anodyne term ‘change over time’.) There were ID advocates present on the advisory board who were seeking to have ID ideas included.
Physics Today published two back-to-back articles on this issue, one by physicist Adrian Melott from Kansas and the other by me, both of which can be read at the above link. The journal caught some flak for the articles. One set came from ID supporters, angered by the fact that although the magazine had given the heading Two Views of Intelligent Design, both articles were anti-ID though, as you will see, we took different approaches. They argued that the journal should have had articles that advocated for the two sides. I do not know the journal’s reasons but it should be noted that the journal had not commissioned my article. I had just submitted it. It may that they did not get any pro-ID submissions. In any event, journals are under no obligation to publish a point of view that they think is flat-out wrong simply because of feeling a need for balance.
The other criticism was aimed at my article particularly. There are physicists who are openly dismissive of philosophy and feel that it is in no way essential to understanding science and that I was giving it too much importance. They were even more annoyed by my stating that questions of ‘truth’ were irrelevant in adjudicating the merits of rival theories and that ‘falsifiability’ was not the way that scientific theories progressed. Both ideas have become articles of faith for many scientists and they were clearly irked that I was dismissing them. My recent book THE GREAT PARADOX OF SCIENCE: Why its conclusions can be relied upon even though they cannot be proven expanded and reinforced these arguments.
ID seems to have disappeared from view. One no longer hears from its most prominent advocates. There is not doubt that the 2005 Dover trial where the judge ruled that ID was essentially a religious belief structure and thus had no place in public school science curricula was a serious blow, exposing their entire stealth strategy of pretending that there was no underlying religious basis for their beliefs. In my 2009 book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom that was a historical review of the fights against evolution from the Scopes trial in 1925 up to the Dover trial, I said that it looked like ID had run out of steam and had nothing more to offer, something that one of their leading theories, the late Philip Johnson, agreed with.
During the period when I was engaged with ID, I was invited by them to many debates and panel discussions so I met many of the key players (Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, J. P Moreland) and we had friendly exchanges. I never encountered William Dembski or David Klinghoffer though. After the Dover trial, Dembski washed his hands of the whole ID movement, especially expressing bitterness towards two religious groups whom he accused of undermining ID. One was the ‘theistic evolutionists’ (people who believe that evolution and belief in a god can be reconciled) who he said attacked ID because they felt that it was bad science and bad religion. The other was Young-Earth Creationists whom he accused of turning against ID when they realized that ID was not going to serve as a stalking horse for their literal interpretation of the biblical Genesis story of creation.
The tension between the intellectual approach taken by the ID movement and the YEC group was always apparent to those following the issue. When I spoke at ID-sponsored debates, it was quite something to see the people on the panel talk in sophisticated terms about science and religion and then later mingle with the audience and discover that they were biblical literalists to the core, right down to Adam and Eve, the serpent, heaven and hell. With one or two exceptions, they were nice to me even though they knew that I was not at all sympathetic to their ideas. They seemed to feel sorry for me that I would eventually be stewing in hell.
It was clear that the relatively small number of ID intellectuals needed the large numbers of YEC evangelicals to serve as their foot soldiers, while the YEC people saw the ID movement as serving to establish a beachhead against evolution. This uneasy coalition was maintained as long as it looked like ID might succeed in its goal of getting god back into the science curriculum. When the Dover trial wrecked the ID movement’s strategy, the YEC people turned against their failed leaders.
One of the critical arguments that one needs to have is the falsifiability of supernatural claims, and clear definitions of terms like “natural” and “supernatural”. We shouldn’t let creationists get away with playing the “supernatural” card to escape critical thought and science when making claims about observable claims such as all forms of creationism.
GerrardOfTitanServer@#1:
One of the critical arguments that one needs to have is the falsifiability of supernatural claims, and clear definitions of terms like “natural” and “supernatural”.
I agree, except…
/nitpick -- I advise steering away from falsifiability and maintaining a focus on the sense as a source of knowledge. Falsifiability is a relatively recent extension to epistemology and it’s not on as stable ground as simply tunnelling in with questions in the form of “how do you know that?” and “how does that work?” Oh, really, if you’re saying that you have a “sensus divinatus” how does that work and -- more importantly -- how do you gain knowledge thereby? How can you believe it’s accurate? I’ve found that asking believers “how can you distinguish that from dream/imagination/hallucination?” can be entertaining. If, by being told over and over again “I just know it” is your idea of fun.
Philip Johnson was (if you stretch the term considerably) a theorist, not a theory.
Intelligent Design was an unintelligently designed theory concocted by a lawyer -- Philip Johnson -- playing scientist.
@4 PRButler: too much credit. ID never was a theory. It is YEC with Bible quotes omitted and accepting an old Earth. Active YECers like Ken Ham and also Dutch YEC site Logos.nl therefor never had any problem taking ID arguments over.
mnb0 @ # 4: ID never was a theory.
If you really stretch, you can sort-of fit ID into the definition of theory as “a model which makes testable predictions”. Except that the only prediction Johnson made was that his model would eventually make testable predictions (which he at least had the integrity to retract when it didn’t).
…YECers like Ken Ham … never had any problem taking ID arguments over.
Hey, they could embrace Donald J. Trump, for crysake. They could swallow six impossible camels before breakfast. A verified prediction: with Jesus, all things are possible!
#2
“I’ve found that asking believers “how can you distinguish that from dream/imagination/hallucination?” can be entertaining.”
Yeah, well…
It’s fun to show children how magnets work, because they are open to new information. Conservative religious goobers just make me cry.
“There are physicists who are openly dismissive of philosophy and feel that it is in no way essential to understanding science”
Philosophy is the qua non of science. Unfortunately, ISTM, most professional philosophers are much like Terry Pratchett’s wizards of Unseen University: more interested in where their next meal will be served than in advancing their field.
moarscienceplz @7:
Is that based on a survey of the literature, or just reading a few high-profile articles? Going by the latter methodology, one might think that ‘most’ physicists are more interested in book sales or TV appearances than in advancing their field. Some certainly are. Most certainly aren’t. Indeed, one might even get the impression from high-profile sources that ‘most’ atheists are douchebags.
@OP, @3
Phillip E. Johnson had two ‘L’s in his name and should not be confused with people named Philip Johnson or with other people named Phillip Johnson.
Phillip E. Johnson was a law professor, and one of a category of “anti-evolutionists who think lawyer logic is better than science logic.”
Inside the dust jacket of his book Darwin on Trial, it says
Smirk. Are there any people who are not lawyers who think that lawyers operate that way?
@#8
“Is that based on a survey of the literature, or just reading a few high-profile articles?”
Well, do philosophers just want to be in a big circle-jerk, or do they actually want to be intellectual leaders?
Further, @#8
Physisists on TV have done a pretty good job of revealing their arcane arts to the public, IMHO. Stephen Hawking did a whole series on PBS explaining many of the confusing aspects of physics to the hoi polloi only a few years ago. Where is a philosopher’s equivalent contribution?
Marcus
That sounds plausible / reasonable. I just wanted to make the narrow point that one should not let them play the “supernatural” card to get around the standard burden of evidence that we apply to any other claim about our shared observable reality, which can be probed via the questions that you gave.
And I will go one further, Rob Grigjanis:
Any scientist, historian, lexicographer, whatever, who does not spend a major fraction of their professional time trying to find a way to communicate their discoveries to the pathetic, ignorant yokels who ultimately funded them, IS A THIEF!!!
(from linked article)
I take it then that you don’t consider the so-called “formal sciences” (logic, mathematics, theoretical computer science) to be sciences per se. I actually agree with that: I think of mathematics as parallel to the scientific method. Both are tools, and neither depends on the other. But I can see why people who do think of mathematics as science might protest.
Having said that, I disagree with the quoted statement. I think science does have to be true within imposed constraints. We use Newtonian physics because it’s true within precise bounds of error in the areas in which it’s known to work. Relativity is also true in a similar sense, considered more true because it can do everything that Newtonian physics does only more accurately and even in circumstances where Newtonian physics breaks down, although it isn’t completely true either because there are areas in which it breaks down as well. But maybe that’s what you mean by “valid”, rather than “true” as used in the vernacular.
(apologies if you go into that in greater depth in your book, I still haven’t read it)
moarscienceplz, in your opinion.
Me, I’d rather those who engage in research spend as much of their productive time as possible doing actual research, instead of wasting it communicating with pathetic, ignorant yokels.
(Anyway, once their discoveries are in the literature, they have been communicated where it matters. Others can then disseminate that to the masses)
file thirteen, have you considered that an argument can be valid without it being true?
JM, IMO it makes no sense to discuss the truth of otherwise of a process, and an argument is part of the reasoning process. I had presumed that by “science” Mano was writing about scientific lore (equations and so forth), not about the process by which that lore was developed. If that was really what he meant then I was wrong, but then I don’t see the need to say that science doesn’t have to be true. If that’s the meaning, to me it’s akin to saying that science doesn’t have to be fruit.
filethirteen,
What I mean is that there is no reason to think that any of the theories of science are true or approaching truth, even within prescribed limits like you suggest for Newtonian physics and relativity. I make the case in great detail in my book
Mano, I think to say that there is no reason to think that any of the theories of science are true or approaching truth, even within prescribed limits is an overstatement. The theories of science are pretty much founded on reason. If I had no reason to think F=ma would hold true in the circumstances in which I was about to use it, I wouldn’t use that equation.
@ file thirteen
Mano lays out his whole argument here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=88rvarqL3As
It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. X- D
If people want creationism taught, they have to justify why *their* creationism deserves it when other forms don’t.
One thing I’ve encountered with sophisticated theologians (TM) is that they try to prove a deist god, and then pull a bait-and-switch to get their particular theist god.
> What I mean is that there is no reason to think that any of the theories of science are true or approaching truth, even within prescribed limits like you suggest for Newtonian physics and relativity. I make the case in great detail in my book
That’s pretty extreme. That goes way beyond what Kuhn endorsed and goes into Feyerbend territory. Or I’m misunderstanding you plus you’re expressing yourself in a very bad way.
I forget the silly philosopher’s name, but there’s a guy, probably a presuppositionalist, who makes this thought-experiment argument. He makes the same argument that you do, that science doesn’t get us any closer to truth, and uses the following very silly example which he thinks is not silly at all. He says (paraphrase):
To start, our brains are evolved, and there’s no reason to believe that brains will evolve systems that get us closer to truth. Instead, our brains evolved according to their utility. Consider a person who meets a (hungry) lion. On the traditional science-gets-closer-to-truth-model, the person sees the lions, quickly determines that the lion might be hungry, and that his best course of action for survival is to run away. On my model of science and truth, I think that it’s comparably likely that an animal brain would evolve to produce the same outcome -- running away when it sees a lion -- but it would radically different internal reasoning which we would not dare call the truth.
Suppose evolution favored humans who wanted to kill themselves by being eaten, that it’s their greatest goal in life. This isn’t a false belief pe se, but it’s clearly contrary to the standard evolutionary model. The key is to combine it with (another) extremely false belief. In this case, every time the human sees the lion, they wrongly conclude that this lion doesn’t want to eat them, and it reminds them that they want to get eaten by a lion, and so they run away as fast as they can to find another lion which does want to eat them.
I think this is patently ridiculous, and I would make an argument in terms of algorithmic complexity and irreducible complexity. The human brain in the standard evolutionary story is a much simpler computation device than the Rube Goldberg machine that is necessary in this proposed alternative. More brain complexity takes more calories, more space, etc., and thus it’s strongly disfavored by evolution. I would make the second argument that, on the standard model, we can understand how evolution produces heuristics that approximate the truth in normal circumstances (but not for abnormal circumstances like trying to understand quantum theory), but for the Rube Goldberg machine, evolution must do far more than just produce a simple learning machine. Evolution must choose brains with many very specific false beliefs, because it’s only with all of these very specific false beliefs working in tandem that produces the good-survival outcome.
Sorry for length.
Mano, is this the kind of argument that you would make? That it’s possible for a person to avoid being eaten by a lion with a wildly inaccurate understanding of the world?
Missed the key part
“in tandem that produces the good-survival outcome… ” and that means it’s irreducibly complex. There’s no plausible path to a brain composed of millions of false beliefs that, together, produce good survival outcomes, that can work when you remove one of the beliefs. Consider removing one of the false beliefs. The house of cards will come crumbling down. Or consider exposing it to a new novel scenario. It’s unbelievable that it could successfully navigate any new unknown scenario when it is a Rube Goldberg mix of just the right kinds of false beliefs that work strictly only for past scenarios, which would be required for evolution to work on it.
Alternatively, I fail to see how it’s computational plausible that a brain could produce a Rube Goldberg collection of false beliefs that produce good outcomes in an adaptive, “learning” way. It’s completely implausible. It’s ridiculous.
And yes, I recognize the irony that I’m making a traditional creationist argument to refute this silliness.
SIlentbob, I viewed that youtube, and I’m not arguing against what Mano said in it. But his statement in #18 is more sweeping than what he said there, and despite anybody’s credentials, I still have to take issue with statements that I believe are misleading or incorrect.
When Mano says that evolution cannot be verified as true or untrue, I see his point. But when talking about the equation F=ma, part of a theory about physical laws, I can absolutely say that it is true “within prescribed limits”. To argue otherwise is to render the word “true” meaningless, at least in the vernacular.
file thirteen
My bigger complaint is where he goes full relativist / epistemological nihilist by saying that science isn’t even approaching truth (over long periods of time).
Part of the problem here is that the word “true” is in itself a judgement call. I think of evolution as true because I am aware of the preponderance of evidence supporting it, as well as being aware of some very convincing argument for it. On the other hand, I also think it true that alpha centauri is over 4 light years away from us even though I am unaware of how people know that -- I merely read it from a source I deem reliable. I am, rightly or wrongly, sure that there is evidence for this somewhere, but I have as yet no evidence for believing so. I wouldn’t say I have no reason to believe so though, which is what Mano asserted in #18.
Yea. I hope this isn’t a useless argument that depends on subtle and obtuse differing definitions of “truth”.
@Mano. I believe that there is an external reality out there that exists independent of whatever humans think about it, and there are a great many material facts about it which are true whether or not humans think they are true. (Or any other conscious creatures.) I also believe that with the values and methods of science, humanity as a whole is getting an understanding of that external reality which is approximately correct (or “approximately true”), and further, over the long term, the values and methods of science can and will cause humanity’s understanding to get better and better, aka more and more correct, aka closer and closer to “truth”. Do you have a problem with what I’m claiming here? PS: Note again that I am simply endorsing what Kuhn has already endorsed in his famous postscript to his famous work because too many people misunderstood what he was trying to say about falsifiability and paradigm shifts.
Whoops, blockquote fail
On that, I’ll have to disagree. Let me take it to the extreme. I believe it was recently that someone claimed to have a formal proof for the sphere packing problem. International referees were brought in to judge the correctness of the formal proof, and even after a year, they came away unsure. I believe one said almost exactly this: “I am 99% confident that the proof is correct”. Look at that language. It’s the language of doubt, of empiricism, of epistemological confidences (and Bayesian probabilities and Bayesian confidence). I agree that it’s a simple factual matter of whether the formal proof is correct or not, but we can never have perfect knowledge of that. Our knowledge of whether the math proof is correct or not is probabilistic, in the usual Bayesian sense.
Consider a simpler example. We have all done many, many math proofs. We all have also made many, many mistakes in these math proofs. Sometimes, our teachers and graders would have missed these mistakes. sometimes, our teachers would have presented proofs with an error that they would discover later. Mathematics is an inherently empirical, Bayesian exercise, no more and no less than any other branch of science.
Pithy version: Is it (epistemically) possible that there is a mistake in the well known proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra? Yes. The chance is astronomically small, but it is not zero.
End my rant of a rather unorthodox position.
Where is a philosopher’s equivalent contribution?
Plato and David Hume pretty much nailed it. All that’s left is arguing about what’s for lunch.
Gerrard, I said that “absolute truth” was a statement that should be restricted to the formal sciences. Just because all proofs might not be able to be judged absolutely true doesn’t mean that no absolutely true proofs can exist. One plus one equals two. Proof by definition, but still absolutely true.
Concerning the sphere packing problem, you’re saying that is that it’s not known whether the proof you mention is absolutely true or not. That doesn’t mean that when mathematicians discuss the truth of it that they’re not talking about absolute truth.
good-survival outcome…
Survival is irrelevant, it’s reproduction that is synonymous with “good”
file thirteen
How is the underlying partially-hidden truth of sphere packing any less “special” or “absolute” than the fact that the big bang happened more than, say, 1 year ago? The fact that the big bang happened more than 1 year ago is also an absolute truth (supposedly), on which our knowledge is only approximate, probabilistic, in the usual Bayesian epistemological sense.
Even for the trivial “1 + 1 = 2”, that relies on the accuracy of your memory, and you know that your memory is not entirely accurate. I’m not asking you to abandon rationality and empiricism, but I am asking you to recognize its limits. You should recognize that you could be wrong about the claim that “1 + 1 = 2 by definition”. Perhaps it’s really “1 + 1 = 3”, and you remember incorrectly. Again, the odds of any of this is astronomically small, but it’s not zero.
Marcus
>Survival is irrelevant, it’s reproduction that is synonymous with “good”
I was being brief. Correction taken.
file thirteen
Let me put it like this. Are you saying that whether the big bang happened more or less than 1 year ago is simply a matter of opinion? To me, there is an absolute truth to the matter of this question out there. We will never know this absolute truth with absolute confidence, but the truth (or falsity) of this matter is not merely a matter of opinion. I see no relevant difference between this and any mathematical claim. Sure, one involves the physical and one involves logical constructions, but our knowledge of both is probabilistic and inherently prone to doubt and error, and will be forever so.
Gerrard, you’re really stretching things for the sake of argument.
Those limits aren’t within mathematics, they come in the mapping from real world situations to mathematical constructs and vice versa. Within mathematics, a proof by definition is watertight. Maybe you believe if I only added the clause “without interpreting any word or term in the following mendaciously” to one comment that it gave you a free ride when discussing anything else.
I grow weary…
file thirteen
Yes. A correct mathematical proof is watertight. It’s absolute. I completely agree. No sarcasm. In fact, this is a bit tautological.
Have you ever written a math proof that you thought was correct, absolute, and then later it turned out that you were mistaken?
A mathematical proof is valid within its axiomatic and inferential system.
That’s called an analytic truth.
But science requires synthetic proof. There’s a distinction right there.
(A philosophical one, to be sure)
Gerrard, I’m saying that the term “absolute truth” is valid to use within mathematics. When you say that calling a correct proof watertight is tautological, you’re right. Many correct proofs within mathematics are effectively tautological if they can be shown to derive directly from other tautological statements, and my point is that therein lies absolute truth.
The Sun rose yesterday. The earth and the Sun orbit each other. etc. How are these not also “absolute truths”? That’s what I don’t get. What makes your mathematical claims so special compared to these physical claims?
In other words, to me, the fact that the Earth and Sun orbit each other is a simple brute fact which is not a mere opinion. There’s an absolute truth to the matter. It is no less absolute because it is physical instead of purely conceptual. It is no more “a mere matter of opinion”.
Gerrard, perhaps Google “the analytic/synthetic distinction” if you want to try to get it.
I know what you’re talking about, and that distinction is wrong insofaras epistemology is concerned. It’s all synthetic. You can’t do math at all without engaging in empirical, Bayesian probabilistic epistemic, thinking. Every time you do a math proof, you are never absolutely sure that it’s correct, which means that it’s an empirical, dare I say “physical”, matter.
Yes, I understand the difference between synthetic and analytic claims. My point is that our knowledge of such things is inherently empirical, Bayesian, probabilistic, and “physical” in a certain sense (e.g. looking at chalk on a chalkboard).
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry
(Different axioms, different results. Each true within its own axiomatic system)
Here, let me break it down for you like this.
Synthetic claims are claims about the physical.
Analytic claims are claims about pure conceptual objects, like math and pure logic.
My point is that our knowledge of the truth of such things is inherently probabilistic and empirical in the normal Bayesian sense. I’m talking about epistemology, not metaphysics.
Hmm, why do I get the feeling we’ve now almost switched sides in the argument? I was striving to say that within mathematics there could be statements that are unequivocally, absolutely true, while in real life that precision is denied to us. Apropos, your comment about unreliable memory, etc.
Consider that your entire life is a simulation…
Now, if you think you know the very basis of reality (its applicable axioms) then sure, it’s analytic. But that’s kinda hubristic.
If you don’t think such axioms as we have are inferred from observation and experiment rather than known a priori, you’re like a flatlander disputing the existence of a third dimension. cf. Newton’s entirely scientific calculation about the age of the Sun..
[related: back in the day, I was a mainframe computer operator. During one of the courses I attended, it was asserted that, scientifically, the phone network could not exceed 9600 baud for reasons. Science!
Half a dozen years later, I was using a 28.8 modem on an ordinary copper phone line. Huh]
file thirteen
Let me say it again. My position has always been that there is an external physical reality out there, and there are facts about that external reality which are (absolutely) true regardless whether any human knows them, just like there are mathematical facts which are (absolutely) true regardless of whether any human knows them.
Our knowledge of them is inherently subject to doubt and fallibility because that is the nature of our access to external physical reality, but also due to the nature of our minds including our ability to make mistakes of logical deduction and due to our fallible memory.
Mathematical truths are not a matter of opinion. Nor are physical facts.
The pursuit of math is an inherently empirical probabilistic enterprise, just like any physical science, because of the limitations that I mentioned above.
And finally, w.r.t. to Mano, I reject Mano’s seeming position of epistemic nihilism, aka Mano’s explicitly expressed position that science is not evidently a method that gets us closer to the truth -- when considered over long periods of time. I embrace the position that the values and methods of science can and will get us closer to the real absolute objective truth of physical matters (and mathematical matters).
Alas, they are indeed.
Cf. my reference to non-Euclidean geometry.
Such ignorance!
Fuck off John, you pompous arrogant asshole. Until you admit your error in that specific scenario where I made a claim, and you tried to rebut my claim by citing an article, and the article that you cited clearly supported my position (link available to conversation available upon request), and until you apologize for it, and until you promise to try to avoid doing it ever again to me or anyone else, then I have nothing to say to you except “die in a fire”, you fucking dishonest pompous self-righteous troll.
My position is that absolutely true facts in mathematics can be recognised and discussed and, yes, proved, albeit through the hazy window of our mapping from the limitations of our physical reality, whereas we can recognise no absolutely true physical facts whatsoever and thus we should never talk about absolute truth when discussing physical systems. But then we don’t have the luxury of being able to derive the real world from first principles.
And although I feel your anger Gerrard, on reflection, and paraphrasing John, my whole argument might indeed be summarised as asserting that the term “truth” is absolute when referring to analytic propositions and not absolute when referring to synthetic propositions, so in that sense John made at least one good contribution. He may be insufferable, but as much as I don’t want to admit it, he still sometimes educates me on stuff I don’t know.
I just don’t know what you could possibly mean by this except repeating a well-known but false meme.
Is it just a tautological claim? Or does it have meaning, e.g. is it falsifiable?
Well-known perhaps, but not to me. Care to explain why it’s false? You can just throw me a link if its easier…
Or, to put it another way, what would the world look like if it was false? And how would that be different from if it was true? I just don’t know what you could possibly mean by such a claim except as a definitional claim that “analytic statements can be absolutely true and synthetic statements cannot because that’s my definition of the word ‘true’ “.
> Well-known perhaps, but not to me. Care to explain why it’s false? You can just throw me a link if its easier…
Again, I don’t know what you mean. I’ve tried to explain my position, and it seems like you’re rebutting my position, and so I don’t know what you mean.
My position is simply that there are truths about physical reality and truths about mathematics, and both are objective and absolute in the sense that there really is a truth out there, and it’s fixed, and that truth is independent of what we humans think about it, and that it’s discoverable -- with fallibility -- via the values and methods of science.
Maybe I misunderstand you still. You assert that there aren’t any analytic propositions, correct? But as said in #54, I don’t. If so, we might indeed have to agree to differ.
To put it another way, I’m asserting that analytic propositions can be identifiable and recognisable, even from our synthetic reality.
*some analytic propositions
and to go full circle, and tautologically, the truths from those can be recognised as absolute truths.
What would the world look like if you were wrong? If you can’t answer that question, then it’s just making definitions as far as I’m concerned right now. (Clearly, you’re not making a deep complex mathematical statement.)
I think the key is operationalizing it.
If I’m right, then every technologically advanced alien species is going to teach the same kind of math to their children. They’re going to start with whole positive numbers, then integers, then rationals, then reals, then imaginary and complex numbers. They’re going to develop calculus. The formulation and presentation might be different, but there will be obvious isomorphisms between their math and our math.
If I’m wrong, then maybe technologically advanced alien species will have radically different, commensurable mathematical systems. Those systems will be just as successful as ours, and maybe even more successful, but be wildly different. How do you absolutely disprove such a thing? By writing a fallible math proof?
If I’m wrong, then maybe the facts of math change depending on the majority belief of people. There are plenty of fictional worlds where reality is determined the consensus of creatures in it. It’s epistemically possible that we’re living in such a world, but the epistemic probability is vanishing low based on the available evidence. I admit that this is hard to even imagine because of the deep training that we’ve both had in math (presumably), and because of the obvious truth that math is fixed and objective and does not depend on consensus, but it might.
I can make the same sorts of statements about physics that I just did about math. Clearly, any technologically advanced alien species will have something like our periodic table of the elements. They’ll have the same knowledge of chemistry, and the same knowledge of Newtonian physics, and quantum theory and relativity. Maybe they will have advanced beyond such theories, and they’ll only teach such theories in the history of physics class, like we teach the Phlogiston theory in our history of physics class. But maybe it could be otherwise. Maybe there are radically different ways of understanding our universe. I sincerely doubt it, and I think that anyone else who doubts it is a little (or a lot) crazy, but that’s a statement that I make based on my fallible understanding and interpretation of the evidence.
In other words, I think you’re talking about platonic ideals, and to me, that’s in “not even wrong” territory. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Gerrard:
So, we can circle back to the post topic.
ID vs evolution.
To both, the world looks the same. Yet each repudiates the other’s conclusions.
That is to say, to IDers, the world looks the way it is because it was Intelligently Designed; to evolutionists, the world looks the way it is because of contingent iterated natural non-designed events.
They can’t both be right (being mutually exclusive), yet the world looks the same.
I describe myself as a kind of positivist or post-positivist. If I can’t understand what it would even mean for a non-definitional claim to be false, then I can’t understand what it would mean for it to be true either.
Again, John, I gave you my conditions for ever engaging with you again. You’re not meeting those conditions. So, fuck off and die in a fire already. I have absolutely no interest to engage with the most dishonest person that I have ever talked to for more than 5 minutes, just so that they can lie about it to win the argument to stroke their own ego.
Consider that there may be aliens that live inside the sun. The applied sciences they have built are entirely different to ours. No physics, chemistry or biology, there are no translatable equivalents. However there are some absolute truths from analytic propositions in the formal sciences that they recognise as we do, and which can be mapped to our understandings via translation from their synthetic to analytic to our synthetic. 1+1=2. Sum from 1 to N of positive integers equals (N*N+N)/2. No?
I just see bald assertions with no means to determine if you are right or wrong. Again, as a kind of positivist or post-positivist, I literally do not understand what you are trying to communicate to me unless you can explain how you might be wrong, and how we might learn if you are wrong.
I’m sorry that I don’t understand what you are trying to say. I don’t know what else to say. I know this must be frustrating, and I’m really sorry about that.
Gerrard:
Heh. You’ve just engaged with me (or do you believe you haven’t?) by writing that comment.
Clearly, your must consider your conditions have been met.
(empiricism FTW!)
Maybe this will help. To me, math and logic are games that we play with pencils on paper. There are certain rules for what is allowed and not allowed as the next steps. Based on those rules, we can generate many results, and sometimes those results are quite surprising and quite useful. We can play these games entirely in our head too. They’re conceptual games. I can imagine the world before my training in mathematics. If you made certain basic calculus claims to me back when I was 10, I would be amazed that they were true, and I would ask “how do you know that?”. At that moment, I could imagine, in some non-distinct imprecise way, that the world might have been otherwise. But then I learned the mathematical proof, and I trained my mind in that way, and so now it’s hard to understand how it might have ever been otherwise. But we are not born knowing the known and proven truths of math, and so you need only consult any child to understand how it might have been otherwise.
Gerrard:
Therefore everything that is dependent on “math and logic” is derived from games that we play with pencils on paper. Such a weak basis!
(IT, science, finance, that sort of stuff 🙂 )
Or how about this? What are you asking me to consent to? Repeating back the words verbatim, or perhaps with some grammatical rearrangements? That’s not very interesting. That’s just word salad. Or perhaps I can use this claim as a premise to further deduce other novel claims? If so, now we’re cooking with gas(tm)!
Didn’t mean to upset you in any way Gerrard; if you’re sorry, I’m sorry too. I’ve just been trying to explore the thinking that prompted me to write comment #28; I don’t have any other destination in mind. I’ll come back later, maybe tomorrow, and see whether anyone else has added any pithy insights. Have a good one.
Oh, no problem at all. No offense at all. I’m having a great night. It was a great conversation! Good night!
Heh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)
This thread now has more comments than the wandering monks. Lol.
It’s fun to see arguments about epistemology, specifically “what is ‘truth'” in a context of why physicists sometimes have trouble taking philosophers seriously.
So do philosophers. 😉
moarscienceplz @11:
In my less humble opinion, it’s been a very mixed bag.
I’d love to hear what you think you learned. My opinion of Hawking as a communicator is pretty low. He peddled a picture ‘explaining’ Hawking radiation, involving a pair of virtual particles, which is utter crap, and he knew it. But the rubes lapped it up, and it probably helped sell books and get him TV time.
How do you think exposure of ideas works? Science journalist picks up on something that looks ‘sexy’, producers and publishers agree, and bob’s your uncle. What philosophers do isn’t generally regarded as ‘sexy’. Come to that, most of what physicists do isn’t ‘sexy’. How many TV shows have you seen about condensed matter physics?
@13:
My nomination for silliest comment on the thread.
One other comment about 1+1=2. I can almost imagine a world where that’s not true for material things. Consider apples. Placing one apple next to another apple indeed makes a collection of two apples. How could it be otherwise? Consider velocity. In outer space from rest, drop a rock, accelerate to 1 m/s relative to that first rock, stop accelerating, drop a second rock, and accelerate to 1 m/s relative to the second rock. You might think that you are moving 2 m/s relative to the first rock — 1+1=2, right? — but you would be wrong. That’s not how it works in the real world. According to relativity, it’s a speed that is ever so slightly less than 2 m/s. 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, at least not in this case.
And yes, I understand that 1+1=2 in every case, and that the problem here is that speeds don’t add linearly ala the simple + operator for whole numbers, and that addition of simple numbers is an inappropriate model. The point is that I’m trying to expand your mind about how the world might have been otherwise. Maybe not math itself could have been different, but the applicability of math to the physical world could have been otherwise, and thus the self evident-ness of pithy statements like 1+1=2 could have been very different.
@82: “He peddled a picture ‘explaining’ Hawking radiation, involving a pair of virtual particles, which is utter crap, and he knew it. ”
I must have been out of the loop. Can you explain (or provide a link explaining) what is wrong with this view? I mean, I get that virtual particles are a mathematical trick of perturbation theory and arguably not at all real, but in the absence of a full-fledged quantum theory of gravity I would think it’s pretty much what we’re stuck with for now.
Oh boy, I woke up to find that this thread has exploded!
Thanks for all the comments. There are so many points raised that I hardly know where to begin. Part of the problem is that I have addressed each and every one of them in detail in my book. The arguments required book length treatment and I am at a loss as to how to make them more concisely without it looking as if I am just repeating assertions. Let me at least try and make clear what I mean.
I think we need to distinguish between empirical facts (the sun rose and set yesterday) that we can agree on and the theories used to explain those facts, such as what makes the sun behave so reliably. My argument is about the theories.
Suppose we agree that there is an external reality that exists independently of us. (Some philosophers challenge this but that takes us too far afield and so let us grant it.) The question is about the truth of the theories that we use to describe and understand that reality and whether there is a unique theoretical construct (the ‘truth’) that we either have reached or can reach and are heading towards. My conclusion is that there there is no reason to think that such a unique theory exists. What we have are theories of different degrees of effectiveness and, even if there is a uniquely correct theory, we can never know if we have reached it. What would be the markers that we have finally got it right?
The ‘truths’ of mathematics have been also part of the discussion. The equation ‘1+1=2’ can be viewed as an empirical statement that can be tested by counting objects. The problem is that we cannot count every pair of objects that exist in the universe because there are an infinite number of them. So any such empirical tests are necessarily limited and we have to extrapolate and declare on the basis of a few tests that it is ‘obviously’ true, which is hardly a rigorous proof. While we may dismiss such concerns as overblown in the context of something like ‘1+1=2’, most theorems are far from ‘obviously’ true.
But we could also view ‘1+1=2’ as a theorem arrived at using axioms and the rules of logic. If the axioms are true and the rules of logic are valid, then we can claim that the theorems that result represent true knowledge even if we cannot test it with every single pair of objects. But as Godel showed, we cannot prove within such axiomatic treatments of number theory that we will never reach a theorem that contradicts an earlier theorem. The fact that we have not done so so far merely means that we may not have extended the tree of theorems sufficiently far. But if any theorem has the possibility that its negation could also be a theorem, then that means it cannot be established that a theorem represents true knowledge.
rblackadar @84: You can read the paper here;
https://www.brainmaster.com/software/pubs/physics/Hawking%20Particle%20Creation.pdf
It’s 20+ pages long. The ‘virtual pair’ picture occupies one paragraph;
“should not be taken too literally” is an understatement. There is no link I’ve seen between the ‘picture’ and the calculations. That goes for pretty much any nonsense you might read about ‘virtual particles popping out of the vacuum’.
Still, Hawking went on to ‘explain’ via this ‘picture’ in books, and I’ve heard it repeated on TV shows. The excuse I’ve heard is that it enables lay people to understand what’s going on. It doesn’t. It’s just another in a long list of pretty stories which are bullshit.
“20+ pages long”
True, but I suspect you meant to say 200+ 🙂
Holms @87: No, the article runs from p199 to p220 of Communications in Mathematical Physics 43.
Thanks, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Never read it before!
Someday I hope to shake off my rubehood.
rblackadar @89: Except for a few limited areas of knowledge, I’m a rube. Far too late for me to shake off a significant amount of my own rubehood, I’m afraid.
There should never have been a debate on “intelligent design” in the first place. Creation myths are ubiquitous, but myths are all they are. “Intelligent design” as an explanation for the origin of life on Earth is as nonsensical as the idea that television sets contained tiny people who acted out all the programmes, and anyone who proposed it be taught in schools as though it were serious should have been laughed out of the room.
Actually, if we were still using cathode ray tubes, I don’t think it too far-fetched that the idea of tiny TV people could have developed into a full-blown conspiracy theory.
Do you think that some theories are “more correct” or “more true” than other theories? Do you think that the uninterrupted practice of science will produce theories which are “more correct” than previous theories — over the long term? If you can grant those two things, then I have no complaints. I think I see your point, which is talking about something else; not talking about what we’re talking about.
Gerrard @#92.
No, I cannot grant those two things.
As I describe in my book, old theories are replaced by new ones based on judgments made by scientists about their perceptions about which theories better address the problems that they are interested in at that particular time. This process is time and context dependent and thus not entirely objective since the questions of interest change with time. The idea that scientific theories are objectively getting truer with time is not justified by the historical record.
Why people think of science as progressing linearly towards the ‘truth’ is largely due to the way that scientific history is rewritten after each paradigm change, to give the impression of inexorable progress.
As I said, this issue has been the subject of much discussion by historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science and the arguments are subtle and complex.
Once again, I would pose the question: If, as you seem to believe, scientific theories are approaching truth, how would you know if and when the true theories have been found?
Hi all.
Absolute truth within mathematics.
The claim that absolute truth cannot be achieved in mathematics can be refuted by considering proof by definition.
When the number 1 is used within our mathematical framework, a definition is used, although abstract in a real world sense, is unambiguous. To then say that 1 is 1 within that mathematical framework is tautological, trivial even, but absolutely true nonetheless. But this is important. Tautology is the very basis for saying that absolute truth exists.
Numbers are not the only thing that can be defined however. Logical operations can also be defined, and those definitions are also tautological. But then with natural numbers and logical operations defined, all of which are proved by definition and consequently absolutely true, formulae can be constructed from these that are also absolutely true.
The commutative rule for addition is one example (1 + 2 = 2 + 1). The commutative rule, having defined positive integers and the addition operation, both proved by definition, does not have to be tested on all possible combinations of positive integers to ensure its absolute truth. The proof of it is absolutely true because it is a direct consequence of the definitions of positive integers and the addition operation.
Nor does it have to be tested on objects outside the mathematical framework. On the contrary, absolute truth is lost when mapping from the analytic world to the synthetic world. If you are counting objects, and want to know that one of them plus two of them equals three of them, the truth or otherwise of that depends on how well you map your objects into, and out of, the mathematical frsmework.
Moreover, once you do this mapping, the results can no longer be “absolutely” true, as Gerrard said. It is still absolutely true within your mathematical framework that 1 + 2 = 3. But if counting apples, and saying this one plus those two is three apples, who knows? A trick of the light may have made you think that there were two apples in the latter group when there was only one. One of the apples may have been a reflected image or hologram, or fake. It may have actually been a pear.
However that does not affect the absolute truth of the formula you have within your mathematical framework. Within the framework, 1 + 2 = 3 can be unambiguously, completely, true, if all elements of the equation are appropriately defined. Any objections relying on mappings into and out of the mathematical framework can be discarded.
Now, as Mano alluded to, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem shows that there will be theorems that are undecidable within the mathematical framework you are using, and truths that cannot even be expressed in tbat framework. But that doesn’t mean that none of the statements you can ever compose within that framework can be absolutely true! Just because the sphere-stacking proof cannot be judged as absolutely true, and even though it may never be, it does not mean that the statement 1 + 2 = 3 is not absolutely true.
Mano
Thanks for the clarification! I don’t know if either of us really want to get into this argument. I just wanted to make sure I understand you correctly.
If I wanted to argue, I would start with further clarification from your part. I’m astounded that you believe that scientific knowledge isn’t getting closer to truth. Do you look both ways before you cross the street? Why? To avoid cars, presumably. This simple scenario involves a lot of cultural context, such as the existing of cars, roads, marked street crossing, legal rules of the road and social etiquette, etc. However, given that specific context, that specific circumstance, that specific experimental apparatus, there are good answers and bad answers for how a human can cross the road without being hit by a car. The answer to that question is not culturally dependent. It doesn’t vary by cultures. It is a fact that looking both ways (and not crossing when you see a car coming) substantially reduces your likelihood of injury compared to not looking, closing your eyes, and walking across the same road.
…
file thirteen
You made a fundamental mistake in your post. The reason for the uncertainty around the sphere packing proof has nothing to do with Goedel’s incompleteness theorems. The problem is only that the proof is very, very long and very, very complicated, and it’s very, very hard for a mere human to very every single step — some of which are quite novel — is correct.
I say again, have you ever written a math proof that arrived at a false conclusion? Surely you have. You made a mistake in the math proof. How do you know that you’re not making a mistake now?
file thirteen
Specifically, how do you know with absolute certainty that you’re not making a mistake right now? That’s the rub. Mathematics may be absolute truth, but our knowledge of mathematics is not held to absolute certainty (beyond perhaps basic definitional things).
“It doesn’t vary by cultures.”
By this, I mean take any person from any culture, and put them next to an American road right now. The truth about which strategies are safer or riskier are absolutely true and do not depend on the culture of the person plucked from a random place in time and space.
verify* every single step
Sorry for so many posts. I reviewed the first before posting. I swear!
You misunderstand, it doesn’t have to have any relation. I just chose the sphere packing proof as an example of one that could not be derived from first principles (because otherwise there would be no doubt as to its correctness) and only because you mentioned it first. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem applies to entire frameworks of mathematics, not individual proofs.
The answer to that question depends on the nature of truth, and I’m not talking absolute truth now, just “normal” truth. I aim to get into that tomorrow once I feel I’ve left others enough time to raise objections to my last comment, and then only assuming that I’m not bogged down replying to a bunch of them. But you’re mistaken if you believe I require absolute certainty before I can assert that absolute certainty exists.
Gerrard @97:
Ever tried to cross a road in Paris?
Gerrard. @#95,
Scientific theories are not like the everyday scenarios you describe like how to cross the street safely. They usually involve long chains of deep inferential reasoning using data arrived at using complex and sophisticated instruments. They are not things that we can determine based on our sensory experiences. So whether they are thought to be true of not, or better than the theories they replaced, is determined by the collective judgment of usually a very, very small cohort of scientists who are competent to make such judgments. But they are judgments nevertheless, not forced upon us by the empirical world. There is no objective, observer-independent way way to make that determination.
To think that the current scientific theories are true in any absolute sense is to think that somehow we happen to be lucky enough to live at a time when the true theories have been discovered, The history of science is replete with examples of scientific theories that were considered true but are no longer thought to be so. If scientific theories are true, how could they become false later?
As I have already asked you twice already, if scientific theories are approaching truth, how would we ever know if we ever reach that state? What do you think could serve as markers that we have finally arrived at true theories? This is an important question that must be addressed by anyone making truth claims about science.
I do not want to plug my book but if you really want to go deep into this question and away from the folklore that surrounds popular ideas about the nature of science, I would strongly urge you to read it because I do address all your concerns in great depth.
Rob
Please read all of what I wrote. I addressed that very specifically. Again, I clarified that I meant take anyone from any culture, time, and place, and place them next to a (busy) American road. To further build on to that, a particular busy American road at a specific street intersection on a specific date and time in history. There are right and wrong answers here which are in absolutely no way relative to the cultural background of the randomly chosen person.
Mano
I don’t know what you mean. Ever since the advent of modern science proper, history is not replete with such examples. For example, Newtonian mechanics has been replaced, but Newtonian mechanics is not wrong. Newtonian mechanics still worked. It was still quite useful and “true”. The discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics does not change that. At this point, you’re walking directly into Asimov’s relativity of wrong, and I would simply repeat that argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relativity_of_Wrong
I don’t think I have to do any such thing.
We may never reach an error-free true theory. Even if we did, we cannot know so with absolute confidence.
This is a red herring of absolute confidence. It is also an error thinking that the possibility of reaching a perfect theory is a precondition of the possibility if the advancement of science. Rather, what if it’s turtles all the way down, ever more correct theories that we can discover, with no finite progression that leads to perfection?
I simply have to be able to identify when some theories are better than other theories. I don’t need this to be a total order. A partial order will suffice. Which brings me back around to my crossing the road example. I think that there are clearly some theories which are better than other theories.
Ok, now I’ll add my 2c to the discussion about
Truth, not absolute
To be clear, I’ve said my piece on absolute truth and now when I refer to “truth” below I’m talking about the concept of truth in everyday life, which I agree is never absolute. I stress this only because I don’t want to muddle the two arguments, which is also why I delayed talking about it immediately after the other post.
To recap, back in the second half of my comment #14 I wrote “I think science does have to be true within imposed constraints.” That was in response to Mano’s assertion that science can be valid even though it doesn’t have to be true, but I did have to clarify in comment #17 that by science I meant the scientific theories rather than the scientific process of constructing those theories, during which, although the scientific method may be used during that process, as Mano points out there are no constraints on what actually takes place to arrive at the theories.
It still may turn out our argument may be one of semantics, but I think that a scientific theory is not actually valid if it isn’t even true within proscribed limits. It may be internally consistent, but if the conclusions it makes are false, or just as bad, useless, it can’t be called valid. An example might be “what goes up must come down”. If we limit the meaning of that theory (scientific in the sense that it can be tested) to that of human experience before Newton and in human environments in Earth’s atmosphere (on earth, not out in space) then most of humanity would consider it “true”, call it science, and make use of that piece of knowledge.
But then scientists showed that hydrogen gas goes up and (probably) didn’t come down. Even if the theory is amended to say “except hydrogen”, and people are aware that there may be other exceptions, the original theory still has to be true to not be discarded. It’s kept and deemed to be science in preference to other theories because there is a preponderance of evidence that “what goes up never comes down” is demonstrably false and therefore not science, and “what goes up, the gods decide whether comes down or not” is of no value, and while maybe valid (who knows?), there is no evidence other than hearsay evidence for it, it is untestable and therefore unscientific, and of no value even if true.
That’s my reasoning for saying science has to be true, and I believe that attempts to water that statement down merely weaken the word “truth” until it is rendered meaningless. If not, what is an example of a scientific equation that is valid outside the limits in which it is true?
[file thirteen, you wrote ‘proscribed’ but from context I think you meant to use ‘precribed’ — proscription is pretty much the opposite of prescription]
I presume you meant ‘prescribed’ not ‘precribed’ JM?! Just teasing, you’re right, prescribed not proscribed.
Why do you think we have to have a way of knowing when a true theory has been found in order to be justified in believing that scientific theories are approaching truth? The latter belief is justified by considering the logical and empirical relationships between earlier and later theories. Usually (not invariably) the latter explain more facts and enable more andor better predictions of what future empirical enquiry will discover than the earlier (and when the earlier give answers to questions that the later do not, e.g. “Why must planetary orbits be circles or combinations of circles?”, explain why these questions are ill-founded).
KG:
Because, if one what does not know what the truth actually is, how can one determine how comparatively close to it different competing theories might be?
Yeah, but that hardly exhausts the universe of possibility.
For example, it’s also justified by pragmatic efficacy — within our local spacetime regime.
(Newton’s theories once were as pragmatic as can be)
John Morales@108,
If by “determine” you mean “prove beyond any conceivable doubt”, of course you can’t. Do you think that you can’t be justified in believing something unless it is established beyond any conceivable doubt?
Since your next sentence begins with “Yeah”, I take it you concede my point. If a belief can be justified in more than one way (actually I don’t think pragmatic efficacy does justify belief, at least without additional premises but that’s another argument), that doesn’t mean it isn’t justified by one of them.
BTW, John, it certainly isn’t the case that you need to have a criterion for when you’ve reached a goal in order to know whether you are getting nearer to it. For example, I don’t know exactly where Attila the Hun was born. But I’m confident I would be getting nearer to that spot if I were to go due East from my current location in Edinburgh.
True, schmue.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/231732/can-we-tell-when-an-established-theory-is-wrong/231762#231762
Rob:
Nah.
Mano, Gerrard et al:
I do think theories progress towards truth, albeit not linearly. Here’s why.
Firstly, note that life evolves towards producing more intelligent creatures (in a non-linear way, and if anyone takes from that that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, they are entirely wrong but this message is going to be long enough without having to explain why). This is a byproduct of the arrow of entropy proceding inexorably forward, meaning an unavoidable information increase over time. And as there is a higher amount of information in a complex environment than in a simple one, and natural selection selects animals best equipped to deal with their environments, selecting intelligence becomes more advantageous as time progresses and the world becomes more complex.
Now evolution is a process that applies in other areas than just Biology, and one can consider human scientific theories as also an area where selection takes place; only this time the selection is made by humans, not death (natural selection). Over time though, humans will select theories with more usefulness over ones with limitations or incorrectness.
The best theories in physics would be ones that provide information that completely and accurately reflect every part of the physical world. Such theories probably don’t exist. But over time, the approximations humans select for use will approach the best that humans are capable of developing that reflect the processes that occur in the universe. There’s no reason not to call that evolution towards absolute truth, even though it will almost certainly never reach it.
As a final point, note that that human selection of theories is itself ultimately driven by the evolution of life. That’s because there is a driving force (evolution) towards ones of more intelligence, as discussed above. Humanity may die out, but evolution will still function to increase the overall intelligence of creatures, and it is likely that more intelligent creatures than humans, with more truth in their theories, will develop somewhere, perhaps not on Earth but at the very least in worlds in distant galaxies that we will never see.
(The chance of humanity being the most intelligent creature in the universe is as likely as one of the mountains on the planets in our solar system being the tallest relative to it’s planet’s mass of all the mountains in the universe).
file thirteen
I think we’re basically on the same page. I think our disagreements was me talking about an esoteric side point (and trying to lead you to the conclusion that the esoteric claims that you’re talking about are not meaningful). I think we both have substantial disagreements with Mano regarding basic epistemology.
Gerrard, ahem. I figure Mano is much too polite and humble to point this out, but I’m neither.
“I am a theoretical physicist and retired Director of UCITE (University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education) at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.”
(Indicative)
Fuck off John. Die in a fire.
Gerrard, we get it, you are aggrieved at JM. But resorting to invective every time he replies, no matter how annoyingly, to each comment of yours has become tiresome. Admittedly I’ve told him to drop dead in the past myself, but I treat each new message on its merits.
Dealing with blog trolls is a first-world problem, and descending to the level of verbal abuse is an admission of defeat. I sympathise; tbh it would make me feel a bit better to end every message I send by telling Putin to suffer and die, but it would be off-putting to some readers and impotently juvenile anyway.