reality ontology infinite universe quantum math

i'll answer my own question

science Does Not Equal

philosophy

  On 4/3/2011 at 5:20 AM, vamos scorcho said:

 

in a large universe how do they 'know' that there are no 'beings' or extraterrestrials who have transcended physical matter and exist on a different level? in short, Gods?

 

by definition, a God would be an extraterrestrial. a 'being' beyond our planet, perhaps beyond our plane of understanding.

 

I wonder if they have taken this into account. I assume they have, kind of. but I've never seen indication that they consider a power much greater or intelligent than them to exist.

dawkins (gigantic douche) and krauss are scientists; they believe in the scientific method. they believe in things that are provable by evidence through experiments. they have theories, which are assumptions that are not yet provable by evidence but may be in time be proven through experiments. they don't hold the theories to be necessarily true, but they hold them as things that may, possibly, in time be proven - through experiments. they don't believe in god, because there is no evidence and no experiment at present that can or cannot prove god's existence.

as carl sagan said, 'what is the difference between the invisible dragon in my garage which spits heatless fire, and no dragon at all?'

Ann Druyan has bean on the NORML board of directors for 10+ yrs. (:

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110320/LOCAL01/103200369/Genius-work-12-year-old-studying-IUPUI

I have to wonder what constitutes evidence.

God by a basic generalized definition...

is not a Christian God, a hindu God.

God is the question of what the universe is. . . where did it come from. what was before the big bang. what is the universe.

this is at the heart of the 'God' quandary. by the Vamos obvious definition, at least.

I notice that Krauss in this video [and Dawkins 4ever] seem more focused on the generalized human idea of what God is [like saying something ridiculous like 'Jesus wasn't resurrected' well no shit]. i suppose it's more or less irrelevant to their personal interests.

in the end I guess I want to think I'm not atheist, because by definition an atheist claims to know one thing is true. that there is NO God.

but they are going by logic. their entire belief system is the idea that everything should be based on logic and observable phenomena. i suppose that is a great philosophy to live by. at the same time i have to wonder if that philosophy would lack certain things other philosophies might offer. such as the philosophy of 'not knowing.' or Taoism, or things like that. they are logical philosophies more or less separate from science, but they are still quite logical in their own way.

to Carl Sagan I would say: the difference is that one is the truth, and one is a delusion. Which is which... probably doesn't really matter. And truth is probably flexible in the end.

Thankfully, Carl Sagan was apparently an agnostic and my respect for him is great while my respect for Dawkins is slim to nonexistent.

either way we should admit we know 'fuck all,' realistically. as Krauss basically admits at the end of his talk. humility.

  On 4/3/2011 at 5:36 AM, vamos scorcho said:

I have to wonder what constitutes evidence.

 

God by a basic generalized definition...

 

is not a Christian God, a hindu God.

 

God is the question of what the universe is. . . where did it come from. what was before the big bang. what is the universe.

this is at the heart of the 'God' quandary. by the Vamos obvious definition, at least.

 

I notice that Krauss in this video [and Dawkins 4ever] seem more focused on the generalized human idea of what God is [like saying something ridiculous like 'Jesus wasn't resurrected' well no shit]. i suppose it's more or less irrelevant to their personal interests.

 

in the end I guess I want to think I'm not atheist, because by definition an atheist claims to know one thing is true. that there is NO God.

 

but they are going by logic. their entire belief system is the idea that everything should be based on logic and observable phenomena. i suppose that is a great philosophy to live by. at the same time i have to wonder if that philosophy would lack certain things other philosophies might offer. such as the philosophy of 'not knowing.' or Taoism, or things like that. they are logical philosophies more or less separate from science, but they are still quite logical in their own way.

 

 

to Carl Sagan I would say: the difference is that one is the truth, and one is a delusion. Which is which... probably doesn't really matter. And truth is probably flexible in the end.

 

Thankfully, Carl Sagan was apparently an agnostic and my respect for him is great while my respect for Dawkins is slim to nonexistent.

 

either way we should admit we know 'fuck all,' realistically. as Krauss basically admits at the end of his talk. humility.

provide me with either evidence god exists, or an experiment which might alter my belief that he doesn't, or else stop wanking yourself off.

edit: and carl sagan was a secular humanist, the same as me.

man.

go to about 59:45 minutes in this video and this guy comes up to ask a 'stupid question.'

question: "How do you wrestle with infinity? Your theories seem to deal with a finite amount of matter. In my mind the 'universe' is defined by 'everything' where in your words there are multiple universes which are all contained within something else [more or less]"

this is pretty relevant to the past few pages of this thread.

cool.

there are no stupid questions. it is an amazing talk, isn't it?

it's pretty good. actually I had seen it a year or two ago i think from reddit ...

i remember when i saw it then i thought it was mostly 'bollox' because of all the childish anti spirituality snickering bs which I felt rendered the points he made somewhat meaningless.

it's better now that I can see it for what it is. a scientist is not a philosopher, their job is to study and understand what is right in front of them. they don't go past that because they have come to a point where they see no reason to, evidently. and this is my flaw in not understanding the value of science, of what is physical and quantifiable.

however, Krauss said at one point, "We knew atoms existed before we could prove they existed. all evidence pointed in that direction, but we didn't know for sure."

so what I take from this is that accepted science is often predicated by informed belief.

it's a thin line. very often we have theories that we more or less know to be true. but because adhering to the scientific method and maintaining scientific rigor is so hugely important, no-one can step right out and say it. fermat said that he had a proof that no three positive whole numbers a, b, and c could satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for any whole number value of n greater than two back in 1637, but amusingly stated he didn't have room in the margin of his notebook to include it. it wasn't actually proven until 1995 (and then it took a genius to take bits of different parts of maths and combine them in totally unexpected ways to do so), even though everyone basically knew it was true.

that people don't jump to the assumption that something is true is tremendously important. five hundred years ago, it was held as true that the sun went around the earth.

this is an interesting coincidence.

see Krauss video 2 years ago.

make thread relevant to existence of infinity / God / and so on. the general feeling of all these questions.

edit: you post Krauss video in here.

so, 3 or 4 days ago this crazy debate happened

Craig vs. Krauss : Is There Evidence for God?

someone sum up the thread for me.

but i wanted to say that there's nothing specially hard about dealing with the concept of infinty (at least mathematically speaking).

Also, I didn't read the whole article, is what vamos posted an excerpt from it? but i can see why the mere assumption that the universe is infinite would open the door for everything that is possible to... be. parallel universes and whatnot. it's a consequence of the borel-cantelli lemma, it is a theorem that basically says that if something can happen and you give it enough chances for it to happen then it will happen eventually. so universe being infinite means you are giving EVERYTHING a lot of chances to happen. so naturally, it will.

Maybe you've heard this problem. You give a bunch of monkeys typewriters and let them type whatever they want. What are the chances that they will eventually type the full works of Shakespeare in chronological order (the monkeys are assumed immortal)? the answer is is it will happen with probability 1.

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:01 AM, vamos scorcho said:

 

 

what a charlatan

yeah. not a fan of that craig guy.

Krauss's rebuttal is poorly delivered but his points are kind of interesting.

the thread and people here here are mostly irrelevant. if you're interested though some good links have been posted.

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:11 AM, GORDO said:

but i wanted to say that there's nothing specially hard about dealing with the concept of infinty (at least mathematically speaking).

in my linguistics courses, i've been told many times that human language(s)'s uniqueness rely on the fact that you can make an infinite number of (well-formed)sentences.

I tend to naturally disagree.

If you place this reasoning in a synchronic (out-of-time) environment and consider a sentence to be called as such has to be a)grammatical b)acceptable (ie, a sentence is not acceptable once it's over a certain length) and that there are(is?) a finite number of syntactic rules : you have to conclude there is a finite number of sentences.

I asked this on a maths forum, you know, just to be sure. I got insulted.

maths maths maths

u guys say MATHS

why dont you just say MATH

WAHT IS THE POINT OF THE EXTRA S.

THERES NO NEED FOR IT

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:41 AM, Babar said:

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:11 AM, GORDO said:

but i wanted to say that there's nothing specially hard about dealing with the concept of infinty (at least mathematically speaking).

 

in my linguistics courses, i've been told many times that human language(s)'s uniqueness rely on the fact that you can make an infinite number of (well-formed)sentences.

 

I tend to naturally disagree.

If you place this reasoning in a synchronic (out-of-time) environment and consider a sentence to be called as such has to be a)grammatical b)acceptable (ie, a sentence is not acceptable once it's over a certain length) and that there are(is?) a finite number of syntactic rules : you have to conclude there is a finite number of sentences.

 

I asked this on a maths forum, you know, just to be sure. I got insulted.

not sure I understand what you're trying to say, but if "a sentence is not acceptable once it's over a certain length" is true, and there's only a finite number of words, then yes, there's only finite number of well formed sentences, you don't even need the rules part.

yeah and i forgot the creative aspect of language, but still, there are limits to creativity.

But i'm not convinced, as it's a really common statement. I was almost sure I read it in Chomsky's works and since he's a mathematician …

  Quote

“A finite-state grammar is the simplest type of grammar which, with a finite amount of apparatus, can generate an infinite number of sentences.”

Syntactic Structures.

what does that mean ?

the documatary viia posted on the first page is brilliant.

neither infinity nor finity make any sense at all.

  On 4/3/2011 at 7:18 AM, Babar said:

yeah and i forgot the creative aspect of language, but still, there are limits to creativity.

But i'm not convinced, as it's a really common statement. I was almost sure I read it in Chomsky's works and since he's a mathematician …

 

Chomsky isn't a mathematician, he's a linguist and general intellectual.

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:11 AM, GORDO said:

...the borel-cantelli lemma, it is a theorem that basically says that if something can happen and you give it enough chances for it to happen then it will happen eventually. so universe being infinite means you are giving EVERYTHING a lot of chances to happen. so naturally, it will.

Couldn't the same series of events just keep happening over and over forever? Why would every possibility have to arise just because there's infinite area/timeframe for it to happen within? I swear there's a logical fallacy in that theorem, but I hear it so often from different people who seem convinced it's air tight. I don't find it very convincing at all.

  On 4/3/2011 at 9:40 AM, Zephyr_Nova said:

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:11 AM, GORDO said:

...the borel-cantelli lemma, it is a theorem that basically says that if something can happen and you give it enough chances for it to happen then it will happen eventually. so universe being infinite means you are giving EVERYTHING a lot of chances to happen. so naturally, it will.

 

Couldn't the same series of events just keep happening over and over forever? Why would every possibility have to arise just because there's infinite area/timeframe for it to happen within? I swear there's a logical fallacy in that theorem, but I hear it so often from different people who seem convinced it's air tight. I don't find it very convincing at all.

well, the math is solid. (click for proof) but the universe isn't math. there's also a hypothesis of independence in there that may not apply to a lot of things in reality.

  On 4/3/2011 at 4:22 AM, luke viia said:

welcome to the cat box plop shop

  On 4/3/2011 at 9:40 AM, Zephyr_Nova said:

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:11 AM, GORDO said:

...the borel-cantelli lemma, it is a theorem that basically says that if something can happen and you give it enough chances for it to happen then it will happen eventually. so universe being infinite means you are giving EVERYTHING a lot of chances to happen. so naturally, it will.

 

Couldn't the same series of events just keep happening over and over forever? Why would every possibility have to arise just because there's infinite area/timeframe for it to happen within? I swear there's a logical fallacy in that theorem, but I hear it so often from different people who seem convinced it's air tight. I don't find it very convincing at all.

let's suppose you're flipping a coin. Is it possible to have an infinite series of tails ?

iteration 1: 1/2 chacnes to get tails

2: 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4

3: 1/8

so with N being your iteration count, your chances of getting a series full of tails is expressed by

f(N) = 1/2^N

so it tends to zero, and it's impossible to have an infinite series of tails. Now if you're talking in wittgensteinian terms, what is thinkable is logically possible (but you're stepping out of the traditional statistical mathematics.)

i am a strange fing emitting fields and manipulating quantum universe tangents. wine instead of beer!! see, there? i just split universes in parallel by deciding. the universe is awesome. i am awesome. and this is turning into a lion post

  On 4/3/2011 at 10:19 AM, Babar said:

  On 4/3/2011 at 9:40 AM, Zephyr_Nova said:

  On 4/3/2011 at 6:11 AM, GORDO said:

...the borel-cantelli lemma, it is a theorem that basically says that if something can happen and you give it enough chances for it to happen then it will happen eventually. so universe being infinite means you are giving EVERYTHING a lot of chances to happen. so naturally, it will.

 

Couldn't the same series of events just keep happening over and over forever? Why would every possibility have to arise just because there's infinite area/timeframe for it to happen within? I swear there's a logical fallacy in that theorem, but I hear it so often from different people who seem convinced it's air tight. I don't find it very convincing at all.

 

let's suppose you're flipping a coin. Is it possible to have an infinite series of tails ?

With a coin you have two options, both equally likely. With the breadth of all possible experience you've got many more options, some very likely, and some completely improbable. I think there's much in the realm of improbability that may well never happen even given an infinite amount of time. The problem with a lot of these theoretical scenarios is that they will use a very simple analogy and apply it to something far more complex, which doesn't always make sense. It's something I encounter a lot with various philosophers, and it never ceases to be somewhat aggravating. (Not that I'm finding any of this discussion aggravating in the least, just so we're clear.)