Belief Vs. Knowledge

[alexey]

Yes.

But you didn't answer the question, what did you learn?

You come up to a mean looking biker, call him a wuss, and he slaps you in the face. What did you learn?

Peter, if you say that you can meaningfully talk about probabilities of imaginary things, then we are at an impasse.

[JMS]

This is a common mistake. In science, laws are observations, theories and hypothesis are explanations.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

 

No actually all scientific method is based upon observation.   Laws are the highest order of scientific understanding where the hypothesis explaining the observations can be quantified and predicted typically through a numerical formula.   For example Galileo's law of falling bodies claims that the distance traveled by a falling body is directly proportional to the square of the time it takes to fall.  So Galileo observed different sized stones falling at different speeds and noodled out that they all followed the same formula through his observations...   X = AT².  Where X is the distance the body fell, A is a constant and T is the time the object takes to fall.

 

 

Scientific theories sumarize a hypotheis that have been supported by repeated testing and observation.  Such as Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Theories are not provable or quantifiable as laws are, but represent a consensus understanding by scientists entirely supported by observation. 

 

A scientific postulate  a statement accepted as true on faith for the purposes of argument or scientific investigation;  such as the abundance of talking cats with hats, you and Pete are arguing about,  existance of water,  and any other base assumptions you want to suggest but not absolutely prove in your Law or Theory or Hypothesis...   

 

Finally Hypotheis, which is more or less like a guess where you try to explain your observations.   Hypothesis are created and discarded as needed to support the data...  Some Hypothesises are better supported than others.  

[JMS]

You come up to a mean looking biker, call him a wuss, and he slaps you in the face. What did you learn?

Peter, if you say that you can meaningfully talk about probabilities of imaginary things, then we are at an impasse.

 

I would say if the biker "slapped" you,   we all learned you like to hang out in lesbian biker bars saying provocative things to the ladies who you find both threatening and oddly alluriing.    That's just a amalgomation of a few hypothesis at this point but over time it could become a theory.   If you start talking about clowns we may have to go to an entirely new hypothesis.   If you start loosing teeth from these repeated facial blows we may be able to fashion a law.

 

And the way one addresses low probability factoides that pedantics bring up to keep you down is through postulates.   Try it...  Wave your hand at Peter and say... "that's a postulate of the hypothesis or discussion"..   i.e.  cats not talking or wearing clothing... water being present.. etc etc etc...

[alexey]

JMS - that sounds about right, albeit you did not explicitly say that laws are observations and theories are explanations.

I think it is important to highlight that the word "theory" in the scientific context has a different meaning from the colloquial context. A common line of attack on the theory of evolution frequently uses this misleading tactic, suggesting that it being a "theory" and not a "law" indicates something about how sure we are about it. In science, explanations cannot do better than become a "theory".

[alexey]

... Try it... Wave your hand at Peter and say... "that's a postulate of the hypothesis or discussion".. i.e. cats not talking or wearing clothing... water being present.. etc etc etc...

thank you for the idea, but i do not think it will address the problem. Peter will just call it "faith" and say, see, it's all faith, so there is no difference between real things and imaginary things.

I like the position we are currently in. Peter is reasoning about probabilities of imaginary things, and that is clearly absurd.

[PeterMP]

JMS - that sounds about right, albeit you did not explicitly say that laws are observations and theories are explanations.

I think it is important to highlight that the word "theory" in the scientific context has a different meaning from the colloquial context. A common line of attack on the theory of evolution frequently uses this misleading tactic, suggesting that it being a "theory" and not a "law" indicates something about how sure we are about it. In science, explanations cannot do better than become a "theory".

 

You just made a mistake, I suspect:

 

http://es.redskins.com/topic/332273-what-conspiracy-theories-do-you-buy-into-even-a-little-bit/page-9

 

Don't ask him about Mendel's laws (or was it one of those other biological laws, JMS?)

 

And I'm still missing where you disproved God doesn't exist or that he can't make talking cats.

 

Anyway, have fun with JMS and evolution 

[alexey]

...

And I'm still missing where you disproved God doesn't exist or that he can't make talking cats.

...

I cannot disprove that god exists, just like i cannot disprove existence of any imaginary entity.

Neither can I reason about relative probabilities of imaginary entities... And you say you can. I'm glad we can end this on a clear impasse and not some vague frustrated disagreement.

[mbws]

 “I don't want knowledge. I want certainty!” –David Bowie

[JMS]

JMS - that sounds about right, albeit you did not explicitly say that laws are observations and theories are explanations.

I think it is important to highlight that the word "theory" in the scientific context has a different meaning from the colloquial context. A common line of attack on the theory of evolution frequently uses this misleading tactic, suggesting that it being a "theory" and not a "law" indicates something about how sure we are about it. In science, explanations cannot do better than become a "theory".

 

And since I am one of the largest practitioners of such a tactic I will take this opportunity to say it's a perfectly valid line of thought.

The theory of evolution which Darwin suggested and defended with his voluminous collection of empirical evidence;  looks nothing like the theory of evolution modern scientists loosely believe in today.  Loosely because even with modern tweaks it still doesn't fit all the known observations.  In fact Darwin's sole contribution to a theory of evolution that being natural selection brought about by spontaneous mutations has been entirely dis-proven.   Darwin was not the first to theorize diversification of species comes from evolution,  he just had the best explanation and support back in the 1850's.   A scientific fact which is entirely lost on the dogmatists on both sides of this needlessly contentious discussions.

 

No the fact that we can both prove a law,  demonstrate it,  and use it to predict future events means it is a higher form of understanding than a theory.   That is a scientific fact.    On the other hand,  a theory is not just a guess.   A theory represents the best belief of our current scientific understanding,  while not being provable, demonstrable,  or otherwise determinative.

 

Do all the holes in evolution mean creationism is a more scientifically acceptable theory.    No...   It just means all that we have discovered since Darwin's time leads us to ask more questions.    The major flaws in evolution are...

 

(1) Darwin's "Origin of the Species" is entirely silent on how Life first began.... worse what became scientific hypothesis on how life began(Primordial Soup),  in violation of an accepted law of science has now become problematic in it's own right based upon more scientific understanding of early earth.

1. (*)--No Viable Mechanism to Generate a Primordial Soup.
2. (*)--Forming Polymers Requires Dehydration Synthesis,  water breaks down proteins into amino acids not the other way around.
3. (*)--RNA World Hypothesis Lacks Confirming Evidence ( we can't produce life from innert objects in a lab much less keep a straight face suggesting it could occur in nature ).
4. (*)--Unguided Chemical Processes Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code.  ( what came first the chicken or the egg?  Why would an early chemical process create Genetic Code when no mechanism existed to read that code except that transcribed on the code itself )..
5. (*)--No Workable Model for the Origin of Life

 

In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides was given the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. During his acceptance speech, he offered this stark analysis, reprinted in the respected journal Chemical and Engineering News:

The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea.

 

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/top_five_probl067431.html#sthash.KHY3uwUZ.dpuf

 

(2) The earth is simply not old enough to account for all the diversification of species we see today.

(3) In all of recorded human history we have never witnessed diversification of species,  only the contraction of species diversification.

(4)  The fossil record shows long periods of stagnation followed by relatively short periods of rapid genetic diversification.  Darwin did not predict this,  nor did he address it.   There is no consensus among modern evolutionists what mechanism could account for such a pattern.   

 

This leaves us with pretty much zilch...  modern evolutionists don't have a consensus today on what mechanism causes evolutionary diversification.     So basically all we know is based upon all the evidence,  they do...   Yet we are pretty much entirely in the dark on how, why, or what causes it.

[JMS]

You just made a mistake, I suspect:

 

http://es.redskins.com/topic/332273-what-conspiracy-theories-do-you-buy-into-even-a-little-bit/page-9

 

Don't ask him about Mendel's laws (or was it one of those other biological laws, JMS?)

 

And I'm still missing where you disproved God doesn't exist or that he can't make talking cats.

 

Anyway, have fun with JMS and evolution 

 

Why not ask me about Mendel's Laws? 

1. the Law of Dominance  - if you have a pair of genes the one which shows up in the progeny is most likely the dominant one.

2. the Law of Segregation - that during the production of gametes the two copies of each hereditary factor segregate so that offspring acquire one factor from each parent.

3. the Law of Independent Assortment - when two or more characteristics are inherited, individual hereditary factors assort independently during gamete production, giving different traits an equal opportunity of occurring together.

 

Or Pete are you suggesting that Mendel didn't have mathematical proof supporting his Laws yielding to predictive abilities on his scientific experiments on pea plants...   or are you saying that Thomas Morgan didn't subsequently show these same mechanisms at work in animals ( dosophila melenogaster ) or fruit flies.

 

(*) Holly Crap I spelled drosophila melenogaster correctly, except for one letter..  I put an i after the l at the end of drosophila.

[alexey]

JMS,

Oh my, a real life evolution denier!

Here is a huge page with information for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

And here is where you can find a list of creationist claims:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

[PeterMP]

I cannot disprove that god exists, just like i cannot disprove existence of any imaginary entity.

Neither can I reason about relative probabilities of imaginary entities... And you say you can. I'm glad we can end this on a clear impasse and not some vague frustrated disagreement.

 

My cat told me to tell you this is a simulation, and cats are the simulators.

 

Can't disprove that one either, can you?

 

Like I've already said you don't have much of an imigination, do you?

 

A = the probability that there is  a talking cat and it wears a hat  I don't what that number is, but since I can't rule options like the above, it must be greater than 0.

 

B = the probability that there is a talking cat that does not wear a hat and as above, it mush be greater than 0.

 

A+B > A

 

JMS will probably tell you I'm being pedantic, but JMS also will tell you that Mendel's Laws have a better foundation in science than the theory of relativity.

[alexey]

My cat told me to tell you this is a simulation, and cats are the simulators.

 

Can't disprove that one either, can you?

That is correct, I cannot disprove that claim.

A = the probability that there is  a talking cat and it wears a hat  I don't what that number is, but since I can't rule options like the above, it must be greater than 0.

 

B = the probability that there is a talking cat that does not wear a hat and as above, it mush be greater than 0.

 

A+B > A

Peter, I think it is absurd to talk about relative probabilities of imaginary things. You can just imagine the opposite.

[JMS]

JMS,

Oh my, a real life evolution denier!

Here is a huge page with information for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

And here is where you can find a list of creationist claims:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

Yes yes and you didn't address a single one of my stated holes in evolution.  

 

As for being an evolution denier, not at all.   I just am familiar with the holes in evolution which you can review for yourself in any scientific text on modern evolutionary thought.   Thus I believe it to be a poor choice for dogmatists either pro or con.   I personally freely admit Evolution is the consensus best choice scientific solution to how species came into being.    Species evolve.   How, and why we don't know.   Hell we don't even know species are capable of evolving.   As for "the Origin of the species",  or a species Darwin's text is silent on the topic. Still evolution remains on top because no alternative hypothesis supports as much of the evidence we have collected as evolution.  Not because Evolution is the perfect solution.   Which I guess is too complex an topic for many folks who really are looking for a square hole and frankly on both sides are willing to ignore the round peg.

 

I believe the debate on evolution is a microcosm for what's wrong with our educational system.  It's two groups saying "god wills it"...  with neither discussing the actual theory,  it's strengths and  weaknesses.   Or being able to rationally or convey the support for evolution in the face of the problems with evolution..   Actually why it remains on top even though it's got some mighty big flaws.

 

Alternatively why Darwin was arguable the most important and influential scientist of the last 200 years.

 

Hell they don't even teach the theory in our schools,  not a rational understanding of it... ... they teach the dogma... either pro or con....

[alexey]

Yes yes and you didn't address a single one of my stated holes in evolution.

I gave you a whole list of addressed arguments! Not only it covers your arguments, it probably has arguments you did not even know. You can fill your playbook with even more bad arguments if you wish.

 

As for being an evolution denier, not at all. I just am familiar with the holes in evolution which you can review for yourself in any scientific text on modern evolutionary thought. Thus I believe it to be a poor choice for dogmatists either pro or con. I personally freely admit Evolution is the consensus best choice scientific solution to how species came into being. Species evolve. How, and why we don't know. Hell we don't even know species are capable of evolving. ...

I am not sure who are these "we". I know these things and I am not even a scientist.

 

I believe the debate on evolution is a microcosm for what's wrong with our educational system. It's two groups saying "god wills it"... with neither discussing the actual theory, it's strengths and weaknesses. Or being able to rationally or convey the support for evolution in the face of the problems with evolution.. Actually why it remains on top even though it's got some mighty big flaws.

In my view, evolution denial is not just what's wrong with our educational system, but with our society in general.

 

Alternatively why Darwin was arguable the most important and influential scientist of the last 200 years.

Hell they don't even teach the theory in our schools, not a rational understanding of it... ... they teach the dogma... either pro or con....

I find the focus on Darwin to be an interesting aspect of evolutionary denial. It's like Darwin was the prophet, his teachings are authoritarian, and the whole thing falls apart if he was wrong on anything. Who cares about Darwin? Yeah he did a great job.. but he could have never existed, he could have been wrong on something or everything, he could have changed his mind on everything, whatever... that would not have reduced the overwhelming amount of multidisciplinary evidence for evolution.

Have you heard about the ring species? What are your thoughts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

Are you against a specific aspect of evolution or common descent in general? Are you offering an alternative theory? Does it account for all the evidence listed here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

[twa]

Peter, if you say that you can meaningfully talk about probabilities of imaginary things, then we are at an impasse.

Sorry but need to do a drive by

Can things exist that you cannot directly observe or imagine?....or is that impossible

[alexey]

Sorry but need to do a drive by

Can things exist that you cannot directly observe or imagine?....or is that impossible

Thought exercises, sci-phi, fantasy type stuff aside, I do not know how we can say anything about things that do not interact with reality... and imagined things do exist - they exist in our imagination

[Stadium-Armory]

Until the unanswered questions are answered, we can't say for certain that anything is known. 

 

Somehow I think Deepak's talk on consciousness makes me feel better about this problem:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEF7T-Yy3kQ

 

I want you to know that there are no colors in the real world, there are no fragrances in the real world, that there’s no beauty and there’s no ugliness. Out there beyond the limits of our perceptual apparatus is the erratically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup. And we’re almost like magicians in that in the very act of perception, we take that quantum soup and we convert it into the experience of material reality in our ordinary everyday waking state of consciousness ~Eccles

[JMS]

I gave you whole list of addressed arguments! Not only it covers your arguments, it probably has arguments you did not even know. You can fill your playbook with even more bad arguments if you wish.

 

Yeah which one was that and can you paraphrase with with your understanding of what you think it says?

 

 

I am not sure who are these "we". I know these things and I am not even a scientist.

 

 

Come on Alexi,  you don't even know that there are different levels of scientific understanding.   You think a Scientific Law is equivalent to a theory.   They aren't.    You don't know the "Theory of Evolution" we think is most accurate today has progressed a rather far cry from what Darwin proposed.   You don't know Darwin had no answer to the creation of life,   You don't know no scientist has ever created or observed the creation of a new species from an existing species in all of human recorded history.   Hell I'm not sure you know what a species is....   Not being insulting here... Just observing that your entire belief in evolution is faith based...Faith based because I'm sure you know some of the evidence in favor of Evolution but if you don't even bother with some of it's flaws you are really taking it on faith...

 

In my view evolution denial is not just what's wrong with our educational system, but with our society in general.

 

Nope,  what's wrong with our educational system is people believing or disbeliefing things like evolution not based upon a command of the facts but based upon the jingo phrases they learn in 7th grade biology through freshman intro to general biology if they progress that far.   Because that far doesn't really give one a command of much,  yet folks will argue till their blue in the face.

 

Like it weakens the theory to know where the holes are... HELLO!!!  knowing where the holes are is science.   That's why we have levels of scientific understanding....

 

I find the focus on Darwin to be an interesting aspect of evolutionary denial. It's like Darwin was the prophet, his teachings are authoritarian, and whole thing falls apart if he was wrong on anything. Who cares about Darwin? He could have never existed, he could have been wrong on something or everything, he could have changed his mind on everything, whatever... that would not have reduced the overwhelming amount of multidisciplinary evidence for evolution.

 

What fell apart.   I stated Evolution remained the consensus opinion of scientists on the best theory to most explained observed evidence on how species were formed.   And seriously it wasn't the moral majority who discovered that natural selection alone does encompass the mechanism of how species change.  It was scientists who benefited from 150 more years of scientific knowledge.

 

Have you heard about the ring species? What are your thoughts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

It's interesting quirk of nature...  it's basically three or more populations or organisms where there are at least two end point species who can't interbreed with each other but genetic diversification occurs because a bridge population or populations occurs which can allow the two non breeding species to share genetic diversity.   The significance of this is a species is defined as two individuals which can breed and create a fertile offspring is said to be the same species.   A ring species suggest specieation is taking place as two related species are no longer able to inter breed.    So far observed in some species of birds and salamanders.

 

 

Are you against a specific aspect of evolution or common descent in general? Are you offering an alternative theory? Does it account for all the evidence listed here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

 

 

 

No and No.

[alexey]

No and No.

Ok thanks.

[JMS]

Until the unanswered questions are answered, we can't say for certain that anything is known. 

 

Which is a great argument for stagnation and never getting out of bed in the morning.  It's also the reason the scientific method includes postulates...  assumptions to be taken as given.....   which for sure mean we don't know everything..  but ultimately are meaningless to scientists because guys like Newton were able to write fundamental laws of physics even though postulates he counted on were in error

 

Would you really have told Isaic Newton to stay in bed because he didn't imagine what might happen to newtonian physics if they were accelerated to fractions of the speed of light?   Yielding Relative Physics and a more complete understanding of Newton's ideas hundreds of years after newton?

[JMS]

Sorry but need to do a drive by

Can things exist that you cannot directly observe or imagine?....or is that impossible

 

 

Much of what Einstein theorized could not be observed in his time.   Certainly nobody imagined Relative physics before Einstein yet it was always there.   So sure the answer is Yes and Yes.

 

Likewise if you've ever heard of Schrodinger's cat it's a thought experiment on how to represent something which is unknown.

A cat in a box,  due to a random event you don't know if the cat is alive or dead...  so you imagine it as neither or both.  It's a model for a theoretical argument used to interpret quantum mechanics..

[Stadium-Armory]

Which is a great argument for stagnation and never getting out of bed in the morning. 

 

Or, depending on your disposition, is a good reason to keep searching for the answers to the unanswered questions. 

[JMS]

Or, depending on your disposition, is a good reason to keep searching for the answers to the unanswered questions. 

 

 

No the quote I was responding too was about not knowing anything unless you know everything on a given issue.

And that's frankly hogwash.   We know a lot.   We know a hell of a lot.   But we don't know everything on most given subjects and we frankly may never know everything.   If you would have told a physicist that Newtonian physics was only part of the equation 100 years ago he would have said you were nuts...   Then an obscure patent clerk who couldn't even get a job teaching in a university wrote a paper which theorized that newton was wrong on some things like the property of light,  and his theories on motion were not entirely accurate....   The same theories which made him the smartest man on the planet and the president of the royal science society....

 

We will never know if there is another Einstein in the wings waiting to shed new light on what we don't yet know.   But it really doesn't matter because we base our knowledge on observation and as long as we do that when we do figure out a new nugget of knowledge;  it certainly moves us closer to the truth and in the right direction...

 

Newtonian physics were accurate enough to land a man on the moon and maybe in coming decades to land a man on mars.  To say we don't know anything if we don't know everything is frankly undefendable..

[PeterMP]

That is correct, I cannot disprove that claim.

Peter, I think it is absurd to talk about relative probabilities of imaginary things. You can just imagine the opposite.

 

Assigning the probability has nothing to do with what you can imagine though, it has to do with what you/we can conclude based on the evidence that you/we have.

 

You can imagine something could be different, but the evidence we have doesn't support that.  The evidence we have supports that

(A + B ) > A

 

More importantly though, in every case I can think/know of, I can IMAGINE the opposite is true.

 

Your argument for not assigning a probability if we can imagine the probability is not true/accurate is an argument to not assign a probabilities in every single case that I can think of.

 

Every single paper I've published doesn't have much value because I can imagine the conclusion suggested/supported by every possible p-value I've determined is wrong (i.e. I can imagine the "opposite" in every case) based on your argument.

 

That type of thinking would bring science to a halt.

 

(I really should be getting paid for this.)

 

Which is a great argument for stagnation and never getting out of bed in the morning. 

 

The fact that we might not like what people will do with certain information has no bearing on the validity of the information.

 

If all of a bank's employees have left for the day leaving all of the doors, including those to the vault, wide open, the fact that people might/will rob the bank does not change the fact that the doors have been left wide open.

 

Your argument is an argument to deny the truth because you do not like the possible consequences.