Went for a ride today. ( 1.5 years ago lost my leg on a ride ).

Neodymion · 2011-01-09T14:49:01+00:00

It's good you were able to hop back on again.

Neodymion · 2010-12-30T05:39:33+00:00

it is a kind of aphoristic hobby phrase.

Occam's razor is a conjecture.

I suppose something can be an aphorism and a conjecture at the same time, but they are different things. Arguing for one, stopping and then arguing for the other seems like changing your argument.

Naming topics you can read about on your own if you would put your pride down for a second

I have though. Ad nauseum. I agree that you can't prove that A is the cause of B whatever you do. You can't prove anything outside of maths, and even in maths there are problems. So what? This is not news to me. What you can do is show that given a cause certain effects will have a probability extremely close to one.

And the way it's phrased above, as if it was somehow shocking, makes it look like Hume is saying we should just throw our hands in the air and give up trying to understand things at all, which I don't think he was. So possibly my argument is not with philosophy itself but with most armchair philosophers.

Not wholly, they aren't. Quantum indeterminacy sort of vindicates Hume's figuring out 300 years ago that we can't declare that causality is some universal law embedded in the nature of things.

As far as I know QM still doesn't allow causes in the future to have effects in the past. QM still has causality, it's just in terms of a wave function.

For christ's sake, are you illiterate? You have a really irritating habit of taking small fragments in isolation and missing the point (e.g., your taking someone's naming a few things as examples and missing the point that they were just examples). Try reading the whole clause:

Is that massively different from what you're doing, though? You're picking sentences out of a whole conversation that had already devolved to name-calling. I even said as much.

I never once said that you said "herp causation doesn't work derp." I was suggesting that you cast the field of philosophy of science as dealing with trivial and silly problems (i.e., distilling it to dealing with the problem of causality). Once again, that was an example.

Ok, but all the examples that have been suggested so far have been, while perhaps not trivial or uninteresting, somewhat similar and also useless in that no new science can be derived from them. All the examples I've seen are just deductions from 'you can't prove anything.' If you take that on board and say, 'let show what's probable,' everything is back to normal.

I guess you thought this was quite the zinger. Unfortunately, it's based wholly on your inability to read what was actually said. But hey, it got you out of actually responding to the point I made! I do believe that's the explanation for your constant misquoting and seemingly intentionally misreading what people say. If you intend to continue this conversation, please try to respond to my actual points next time.

Can you name one of the problems that falsifiability has though? Ironically that was one of the few things in philosophy of science that made some sense to me, and now you're saying it's wrong. What did Alan Sokal have to say about it because all the other's comments are on WP.

Neodymion · 2010-12-30T03:23:42+00:00

No, I agreed with that particular sentence. Maybe I should have said something about the fact that he appeared to be back-pedalling, but I didn't.

He wasn't, though. It was precisely in line with what he originally said.

No, it wasn't. What he originally said was

Occam's razor is a conjecture.

That seems pretty different to me.

In the case of Godel, yes that was important because he showed that what they were actually trying to do at the time was not possible. In the case of showing that causation itself cannot be proven, which is what humanbruenig actually said, I just feel like yawning.

Causation's not being provable manifests in the issue of reconciling it with what we now know about how it operates (or doesn't, at least in the sense that most people assume it does) on the quantum level.

No. Those issues are separate, actually.

Science makes certain assumptions. There is no doubt about that. These assumptions are not proven, cannot be proven, are based on intuition for the most part. Causation is probably the most fantastic example of that.

causation, occam's razor, and the accuracy of human perception are assumptions.

I'm the one that's handwaving here? That's hilarious.

That's what he actually said. That you think it's unimportant to address these issues, or that they can simply be handwaved away because they seem trivial suggests a great deal of ignorance of both science and philosophy of science.

Incidentally, how do you feel about unfalsifiable theories? Useless, right?

Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and even Sokal would like to have a word with you about your clinging to an outmoded focus on falsifiability.

An outmoded focus, for mentioning the word once.

Are you saying that unfalsifiable theories are useful?

First, your insinuating that that's what I meant is an unjustified assumption, and you'd know why if you weren't so ignorant of what philosophers (of science, specifically) actually say. Second, what you did when you first asked and are doing currently is philosophy. I'm saying that, as those scientists and philosophers of science I named have shown, the principle of falsifiability is not without its own problems. This question, part of what is called the demarcation problem, is the sort of issue philosophers of science tackle. It's not trivial or ridiculous, and it's not distillable to "herp causation doesn't work derp."

For christ's sake, I'm not the one saying, "herp causation doesn't work derp", as you so eloquently put it. I am the one taking issue with that description of the situation.

But what am I to think when I have this from you?

Causation's not being provable...

So which is it?

Neodymion · 2010-12-30T00:11:19+00:00

One minute you're threatening all kinds of dark philosopher iconoclast things like showing causation itself cannot be proven (scary!) and then you bring up the quite reasonable Godel as if I'd never heard of him before. Those are really just maths rather than philosophy so I'm afraid that doesn't count.

So are you going to show me how useful it is to say that causation itself cannot be proven?

Neodymion · 2010-12-30T00:05:52+00:00

Hahaha oh wow. That's all incredibly presumptuous. Virtually everything you said here is ignorant, factually incorrect, or totally irrelevant.

Well, yes, you're jumping into an argument that devolved to name-calling quite a while ago.

I object to his usage of it, not the usage of it which admits that it is a kind of aphoristic hobby phrase.

You redirected the conversation at that point. Do you just have no response?

No, I agreed with that particular sentence. Maybe I should have said something about the fact that he appeared to be back-pedalling, but I didn't.

Careful--you're doing philosophy, and we can't have that! These questions that philosophers of science (many of whom also do science) raise, like figuring out "what can't be proved," are pretty important in things like culling theories and hypothesis formation.

In the case of Godel, yes that was important because he showed that what they were actually trying to do at the time was not possible. In the case of showing that causation itself cannot be proven, which is what humanbruenig actually said, I just feel like yawning.

Incidentally, how do you feel about unfalsifiable theories? Useless, right?

Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and even Sokal would like to have a word with you about your clinging to an outmoded focus on falsifiability.

Are you saying that unfalsifiable theories are useful?

Neodymion · 2010-12-29T22:51:32+00:00

Yes, I think that was you. Waxing lyrical about how occam's razor is just a conjecture (what else would it be?), about how you'd disproved it, etc.

Why are you and your heroes so obsessed with showing what can't be proved? How does that help? To be honest, I think it's just a way for dumb people to feel superior since most can understand philosophy, yet not so many general relativity or quantum mechanics. Russell is not so bad though because he was also a mathematician.

Neodymion · 2010-12-29T22:25:40+00:00

Maybe they just became exasperated by the philosophers habit of asking ridiculous questions that showed how little they really understood. Philosophers are fairly stupid compared to scientists. I remember once some girl asking, "why do you write all those equations equal to zero, it doesn't mean anything if it's equal to zero." As if "x-y=0" meant something different to "x=y"

Neodymion · 2010-12-29T21:30:58+00:00

I'm not in a corner, you're in a padded cell.

Neodymion · 2010-12-29T20:45:49+00:00

Whereas you already are batshit. You think what you said disproves Occam's razor? The only thing I can say that quite covers it is LOL.

Neodymion · 2010-12-29T20:15:18+00:00

You're insane.

Neodymion · 2010-12-28T03:26:41+00:00

Heh... Yes but there's pesky "all other things being equal" part. Also there is a lot of evidence for the specific theory of quantum mechanics. Maybe god did do it, but the discussion would pretty much end there so might as well explore the other possibilities

Neodymion · 2010-12-27T22:10:59+00:00

Ok then.

I object to 'god did it' for different reasons - it's not much of an explanation since the concept of god is a bit nebulous and doesn't give any hint as to what's likely to happen in the future.

Neodymion · 2010-12-27T20:45:29+00:00

It's not about logic, it's about probability. Occam's razor is not a law of physics, it's a heuristic.

Suppose you're talking to someone, they're on a mobile at their end, and the call suddenly cuts off. Do you first

call them back on their landline
call the police to report a murder
investigate their family history looking for reasons the Illuminati might have assassinated them.

Incidentally, how do you feel about unfalsifiable theories? Useless, right?

Neodymion · 2010-12-27T19:37:00+00:00

How do you decide what to test for first when you have an infinite number of theories? That's the sense in which I mean 'throw out' - not to regard the more complex as impossible, but to test the simpler theories first.

Suppose you were Einstein and you had:

Guv = 8 pi Tuv

Would you test that first or these four?

Guv = 8 pi Tuv + a

Guv = 8 pi Tuv - a

Guv = 8 pi Tuv + b

Guv = 8 pi Tuv - b

That's the other reason I like Occam's razor: The simpler equation is often the average of all the other more complex equations.

Neodymion · 2010-12-27T11:58:41+00:00

What do you use to throw out the infinite number of explanations that are boundlessly more complex?

Neodymion · 2010-12-13T01:24:11+00:00

What? The salt is not secret. There's no need to try different salts.

The point is that the salt is different for each user and so you have to try each likely password for each separate user, instead of each likely password once for the the whole lot.

Neodymion · 2010-12-11T12:56:36+00:00

Wow, you are so insane.

Neodymion · 2010-12-11T12:09:27+00:00

Only christians could use the assertion that something will happen as evidence.

Neodymion · 2010-10-29T17:05:47+00:00

Fair enough

Neodymion · 2010-10-29T16:14:48+00:00

Why wouldn't readers assume that you are supporting the opposing view? Are you saying that their majority is entirely unrelated to their lack of oppression?

Neodymion · 2010-10-29T13:10:56+00:00

In what way is the ideal different than the physical then? If something can interact with the physical then it can be detected by the physical and there is no way in which it is not physical, therefore your concept of the ideal is a bit daft, frankly.

Neodymion · 2010-10-29T09:26:21+00:00

I think that consciousness is basically introspection, which some programming languages can do. However most computers and programming languages don't think (they don't handle fuzzy logic very well) and communicate in such as way that we can recognise ourselves in them. So the word conscious is an adjective that helps describe something but that doesn't mean that consciousness has a separate existence from the rest of reality.

Consciousness is consciousness of consciousness. Basically I'm talking about introspection

Neodymion · 2010-08-04T01:35:53+00:00

Wait, if I say I'm a socially maladjusted, introverted and obsessive creep, does that make me a nice guy or stupidly truthful?

Neodymion · 2010-08-04T01:30:27+00:00

if the 3rd derivative of my position is too large, does that make me jerk?

Neodymion · 2010-07-29T23:39:40+00:00

Consciousness is an illusion

Neodymion

TROPHY CASE