Scientists may destroy the Earth in 2008 - Reprive, you now have until next year

[Locke]

Meh, we've had a good run.

Now, I'm going to go on a 3 month bender and hope like hell the world is going to end because I'll be dead either way.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Itse

I guess what ever floats your boat. Personally I go with the latter option. Science is fascinating and surprisingly useful from time to time. I always like to keep some around the house.

EDIT: Btw I meant to go more the way of "problem of induction", although it's pretty much the same thing when described like this (=badly). Descartés somehow never really made that much of an impression on me, but I really liked Hume at certain point. Funny guy. That was also about the point where I realized that I don't really want to be a philosopher after all. It's been about fourteen years since I last read that stuff.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction, for those who care)

I heard the jury's still out on science.

But yeah, what you described does fit Hume's ideas of skepticism; nothing wrong with the way you described it, I just didn't make the connection. As I understand Hume, the only way we can justify the inductive process is by inducing that it's been effective in the past.

A thing about the LHC though: the scientific process should not generally lead to such a wide range of differing theories. If everyone is working from the same observable phenomena, and following the same scientific principles, they should arrive at the same conclusion (in the same way that a variety of early scientists, working independently but using the same evidence, all deduced that the earth was round). You've got a whole generation of physicists who are coming up with these theories that are based on further theories, and have little relation to observed results. And the LHC will hopefully give enough evidence to disprove a few of these theories (or at least cause their authors to spend some late night rewriting things), and allow the rest of the theories to exist until the next, bigger collider is built.

[Rhettzky]

Originally Posted by Locke

Meh, we've had a good run.

Now, I'm going to go on a 3 month bender and hope like hell the world is going to end because I'll be dead either way.

Damn, I never even though of that. It's been a while since I had a good bender and screw quitting smoking. I'm smoking more from this day forth.

[Itse]

Now that we're getting philosophical here, I actually thought of something else that Hume said that kind of relates to this (in my mind at least.)

Essentially, Hume stated, with decent backing arguments, that a rational mind never believes in miracles since there is always a more likely explanation. However, he left quite blatantly open that this doesn't mean that miracles couldn't happen. Which is, in a way, true, if you think of miracles as "stuff you'd never have thought of as possible".

The problem with this logic is of course that even if miracles would happen, a person who is "rational" in the way Hume describes here would still disbelieve them, no matter how much the evidence mounted. Every single miracle is discounted, and thus every following miracle would be discounted, and so on.

Obviously, this leads to two conclusions;

1) Purely rational minds don't make good scientists, since they would rather disbelieve things they previously thought as impossible, and thus the most amazing scientific breakthroughs would've propably never happened. From this follows the second conclusion:

2) For the advancement of science (and civilization and human happiness), we have to accept that occasionally "miracles" do happen.

(There's also a third conclusion which states that "rational" people end up as partisan bigots. But that's a different subject.)

With that in mind, replace "miracle" with "the universe blowing up".
Close enough I would say. Less trumpets.

Which is why I don't laugh at people like Jolinar (joke as I may about the subject in general). They kind of only have to be right just once for it to matter.

I'm not saying that we should never do anything that could theoretically blow up the universe. I just think worrying about it is indeed a valid point of view which can be reached through careful and informed thinking.

[Rhettzky]

For the advancement of science (and civilization and human happiness), we have to accept that occasionally "miracles" do happen.

If you replace the word 'miracle' with 'inprobability', then that's how I look at it. Sort of like how it's not a miracle that a piece of bread came out of a toaster with the virgin mary's face charred onto it. But if you apply a probability to it, 1 in a billion for instance, then chances are that there have been over a billion pieces of bread toasted so chances are that it's happened.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Itse

Essentially, Hume stated, with decent backing arguments, that a rational mind never believes in miracles since there is always a more likely explanation. However, he left quite blatantly open that this doesn't mean that miracles couldn't happen. Which is, in a way, true, if you think of miracles as "stuff you'd never have thought of as possible".

The problem with this logic is of course that even if miracles would happen, a person who is "rational" in the way Hume describes here would still disbelieve them, no matter how much the evidence mounted. Every single miracle is discounted, and thus every following miracle would be discounted, and so on.

Sure that makes sense if you create some definition of a rational person that would disbelieve anything, but that doesn't make any sense.

A rational person would change their mind in light of new evidence. If the miracle is that wood floats and I refuse to believe it despite floating down the river on a log, then that's not the sign of a rational mind but rather an irrational mind!

If I get to redefine words my way I can say anything I want

That's the point behind science.. the "miracle" is something that is unknown BUT that is real, therefore can eventually be understood and in theory reproduced.

[evman150]

Ya, miracle is a loaded word. It's pretty tough to remove the ecclesiastical connotations and associated negative stigma in the scientific community. As such, I would dispute Itse's argument as merely semantical, and therefore null and useless.

Plus it's question begging in that it assumes modern rationalists follow Humean rationalism.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Itse

Now that we're getting philosophical here, I actually thought of something else that Hume said that kind of relates to this (in my mind at least.)

Essentially, Hume stated, with decent backing arguments, that a rational mind never believes in miracles since there is always a more likely explanation. However, he left quite blatantly open that this doesn't mean that miracles couldn't happen. Which is, in a way, true, if you think of miracles as "stuff you'd never have thought of as possible".

Okay, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to tweak that slightly.
There's a logical problem in that definition in that if a miracle is something you believe is impossible, then to believe in a miracle is to believe in something that you believe is impossible, which would be a contradiction.

Maybe we can define a miracle as something that the general scientific community believes is impossible, or better yet, something which contradicts an existing law of science.

The problem with this logic is of course that even if miracles would happen, a person who is "rational" in the way Hume describes here would still disbelieve them, no matter how much the evidence mounted. Every single miracle is discounted, and thus every following miracle would be discounted, and so on.

Well, the rational scientist would not go into an experiment expecting a miracle, and if a miracle occured, they would immediately attempt to make it a non-miracle: check for errors in the experiment, check for reproducability, and as a last resort, rewrite the laws of science to allow for this new exception. The advantage that the non-rational scientist would have is that the rational scientist may not think of the experiment in the first place, since they would assume a result that simply supported existing knowledge. But the non-rational scientist would have the same obligation to check for errors and reproducability.

Obviously, this leads to two conclusions;

1) Purely rational minds don't make good scientists, since they would rather disbelieve things they previously thought as impossible, and thus the most amazing scientific breakthroughs would've propably never happened. From this follows the second conclusion:

Science needs both types: the people who come up with new theories (non-rational) and the people who try to debunk them (rational). A good scientist is never working to prove an existing theory right, they're always working to prove a theory wrong, even if it's their own. Good science isn't all about the breakthrough theories, a lot of it is about the dull diligence work. And if the non-rational thinker simply has a different prediction of the outcome of an experiment, that doesn't change the results.

2) For the advancement of science (and civilization and human happiness), we have to accept that occasionally "miracles" do happen.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that statement.

(There's also a third conclusion which states that "rational" people end up as partisan bigots. But that's a different subject.)

Sure, different subject, but I'll take a quick shot at it. There are partisan bigots who shoot down any new theory, but there are also a lot of partisan bigots who have come up with 'miracle' theories and are too passionate about them to attempt to disprove them or listen to criticism.

With that in mind, replace "miracle" with "the universe blowing up".
Close enough I would say. Less trumpets.

Okay, except that the range of theories about what will happen is huge, and many of them are miraculous, according to my definition. The people who expect the universe to end and the people who expect a time loop and a lot of the people who have their little pet theories are all predicting miracles.

Which is why I don't laugh at people like Jolinar (joke as I may about the subject in general). They kind of only have to be right just once for it to matter

I'm not saying that we should never do anything that could theoretically blow up the universe. I just think worrying about it is indeed a valid point of view which can be reached through careful and informed thinking.

I've got no problem with people coming up with theories. The harder part of science is coming up with demonstrable proof, and that hasn't happened yet. It's one thing to predict a miracle, but science is about then taking these miracles and de-miracling them, applying scientific process.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by photon

A rational person would change their mind in light of new evidence. If the miracle is that wood floats and I refuse to believe it despite floating down the river on a log, then that's not the sign of a rational mind but rather an irrational mind!

Well, the Humean idea of a "miracle" essentially boils down to "something for which there is always a more reasonable explanation". For example that you were dreaming / hallucinating. This might not be the case if you just see a piece of wood floating, but if you see what all our senses and knowledge says is identifiable as a UFO (in the X-files sense) or an angel, I think many of us might first assume that there's something wrong with our heads / eyes, or that it's a hoax, a government project, what ever. Because It Just Can't Be what looks like. (And if it's just something you read in the papers, well, media is always wrong anyway.)

Now, Hume wrote his stuff way back when and if you actually get into theoretical philosophy then there's tons more that could be said about the subject (most of which I propably don't have a clue about as the morals of science don't interest me that much and I really haven't read that much philosophy anyway).

So for clarity, I want to say that I just used this little bit of history for my own purposes, because I wanted to say what little I have to say on the subject. That was about it. A hopefully interesting parallel.

Originally Posted by octothorp

Okay, except that the range of theories about what will happen is huge, and many of them are miraculous, according to my definition. The people who expect the universe to end and the people who expect a time loop and a lot of the people who have their little pet theories are all predicting miracles.

Of course you're propably right.

I don't really know much about this particular subject and it's potential miracles, and to be quite honest I don't much care. Maybe someday some idiot scienties will blow me up and maybe I will cry about it afterwards, but I wouldn't want a world where I would get to decide who gets to try.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Itse

Well, the Humean idea of a "miracle" essentially boils down to "something for which there is always a more reasonable explanation". For example that you were dreaming / hallucinating. This might not be the case if you just see a piece of wood floating, but if you see what all our senses and knowledge says is identifiable as a UFO (in the X-files sense) or an angel, I think many of us might first assume that there's something wrong with our heads / eyes, or that it's a hoax, a government project, what ever. Because It Just Can't Be what looks like. (And if it's just something you read in the papers, well, media is always wrong anyway.)

I still don't get it, a rational person who witnessed a single incident of something that looked like an angel or UFO would marvel at the experience, but would also know that to jump to the conclusion of believing in said things based on a single anecdotal experience is not rational, it's irrational.

But history has shown that that same rational person when presented with things that are miracles, but are REAL (i.e. affect reality in some way) will strive to do everything they can to understand it rather than reject it as proposed.

Anyone who knows anything about quantum theory, or really understands the implications of general relativity.. those things are truly magical, yet we can access them through science. I know people who reject general relativity, and they usually aren't rational, they're usually irrationally dogmatic.

Seems to me the Humean idea of evidence is flawed, since anything we perceive with our senses is poor evidence. One of the strengths of science is its ability to overcome our deficiencies. Look at a good magician, or watch a skilled pick pocket or grifter, they can manipulate the human attention easily and show how truely inadequate our mind is.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by fredr123

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/230

As the LHC supposedly gears up, Harvard physicist Kevin Black, based at CERN, investigates rumors that the particle accelerator may, in fact, soon be shut down—by ripples from the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein's_Bridge_(book)

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by photon

Seems to me the Humean idea of evidence is flawed, since anything we perceive with our senses is poor evidence. One of the strengths of science is its ability to overcome our deficiencies. Look at a good magician, or watch a skilled pick pocket or grifter, they can manipulate the human attention easily and show how truely inadequate our mind is.

We can over come the deficiencies to a degree, but is it enough?

No matter what, humans are still bound by our limited senses to experience the world. Sure, we can artificially heighten some of them so that we can experience things that we otherwise couldn't. For example, we can experience types of radiation outside our normal optic range. However, the only reason we had a hunch that they were there to begin with is because we could see and feel their effects. I find it hard to believe that in a universe as vast and complex as ours, that it can be experienced exclusively with the 5 senses that evolution has allowed us to have. There are likely phenomena all around us that we will never be able to understand or even conceive of because our minds and senses haven't evolved in that way.

I remember a thread on here about the possibility of aliens and one person commented on how if there are aliens, there is a good chance that we would never be able to communicate with them. They could have totally different senses, and they could have evolved in such a way that notions we take for granted; like 'up and down' or 'left and right' might not mean anything to them.

Ah, I'm kind of loosing the direction of the topic, but the point is just that there are aspects to the natural world that I doubt we'll ever be able to comprehend no matter how far we advance in science. They might even be things that are relatively simple in the complexity, but we just haven't evolved in a way that allows us to think on that level. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it does make me uneasy trusting it 100%.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I remember a thread on here about the possibility of aliens and one person commented on how if there are aliens, there is a good chance that we would never be able to communicate with them. They could have totally different senses, and they could have evolved in such a way that notions we take for granted; like 'up and down' or 'left and right' might not mean anything to them.

Ah, I'm kind of loosing the direction of the topic, but the point is just that there are aspects to the natural world that I doubt we'll ever be able to comprehend no matter how far we advance in science. They might even be things that are relatively simple in the complexity, but we just haven't evolved in a way that allows us to think on that level. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it does make me uneasy trusting it 100%.

IE: Will we ever be able to translate dolphin or whale speech?

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

IE: Will we ever be able to translate dolphin or whale speech?

That's not really what I meant.

Take any scientific theory. Gravity, particle theory, etc... The only reason why scientists even concieved of it to begin with is because through at least one of the meer 5 senses evolution has bestowed on us, they were either able to witness the phenomena or witness the effects of the phenomena. There are likely phenomena that we will never be able to aknowedge or understand and our deficiencies will never be able to overcome simply because we haven't evolved that way.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

That's not really what I meant.

Take any scientific theory. Gravity, particle theory, etc... The only reason why scientists even concieved of it to begin with is because through at least one of the meer 5 senses evolution has bestowed on us, they were either able to witness the phenomena or witness the effects of the phenomena. There are likely phenomena that we will never be able to aknowedge or understand and our deficiencies will never be able to overcome simply because we haven't evolved that way.

How about like the existence of dark matter, where really we know nothing about it, and our only reasons for thinking that it exists is because all the mathematical equations that we have for the universe say that it must exist. But all of our current abilities to study matter and particles seem to be ineffective on dark matter, and it makes up the vast majority of the matter in our universe.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by octothorp

How about like the existence of dark matter, where really we know nothing about it, and our only reasons for thinking that it exists is because all the mathematical equations that we have for the universe say that it must exist. But all of our current abilities to study matter and particles seem to be ineffective on dark matter, and it makes up the vast majority of the matter in our universe.

But all those equations are based on things that we have been able to observe. The idea of dark matter was deduced from other observations on phenomena that we can experience.

[driveway]

^I see where you're going with the argument, FA, and I sort of agree with you, but I will present you with this counter-argument.

You postulate that: because of our evolved limitations there are certain aspects of the universe which will forever remain closed, inaccessible, unknowable to us. I would argue that since the potential unknowable phenomenon are taking place within the universe that we and everything we can observe occupy, it seems extremely unlikely that these phenomenon would always have zero effect on anything and everything we are capable of observing, either directly or indirectly.

This leads me to the conclusion - not that we know everything - but that we are capable of eventually knowing almost everything. The more we keep pushing and probing and delving and searching and smashing things, the more and more likely we are to run into stuff that only shows up at strange times and in strange places and can lead us to strange knowledge.

[photon]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

We can over come the deficiencies to a degree, but is it enough?

No matter what, humans are still bound by our limited senses to experience the world. Sure, we can artificially heighten some of them so that we can experience things that we otherwise couldn't. For example, we can experience types of radiation outside our normal optic range. However, the only reason we had a hunch that they were there to begin with is because we could see and feel their effects. I find it hard to believe that in a universe as vast and complex as ours, that it can be experienced exclusively with the 5 senses that evolution has allowed us to have. There are likely phenomena all around us that we will never be able to understand or even conceive of because our minds and senses haven't evolved in that way.

I remember a thread on here about the possibility of aliens and one person commented on how if there are aliens, there is a good chance that we would never be able to communicate with them. They could have totally different senses, and they could have evolved in such a way that notions we take for granted; like 'up and down' or 'left and right' might not mean anything to them.

Ah, I'm kind of loosing the direction of the topic, but the point is just that there are aspects to the natural world that I doubt we'll ever be able to comprehend no matter how far we advance in science. They might even be things that are relatively simple in the complexity, but we just haven't evolved in a way that allows us to think on that level. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it does make me uneasy trusting it 100%.

We already measure things that are completely beyond our five senses. The weak force, the strong force, time dilation and lorenz contraction, dark energy, casmir force, and many others. What of the five senses led us to discover quantum entanglement? Which of the five senses can we use to "see" the force that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerated pace? We didn't discover time dilation because it was directly experienced.

These things fall outside our five senses, but they do share something in common, and the part I bolded in your quote speaks to that. If something is real, if it is part of our reality, our existence, then it has an impact on that reality. Not everything that is real can be directly observed, some things are inferred from observation with instruments that give us other senses, or expand our senses far beyond their original capabilities.

To say we have a good grip on reality is hubris, but if something is real, eventually we will find a way to test it, measure it, understand it, because it is real. If there's no way to interact with it, then its existence is a philosophical question.

Weather we'll truly be able to understand everything, that's a good question, but it may not be a necessary one. No one really understands the quantum world, we have models which describe and predict the behaviour of things at that level, it's a highly successful model, one of the best ever conceived by humanity.

We may be relinquished for a long time to simply using the math to describe the reality and not understanding the underlying mechanisms (I won't say forever because forever is a long time and a million years of living with quantum theory may allow us to eventually really understand it), however not understanding it doesn't make it any less real or make the theory any less correct. The theory still makes predictions that continue to be confirmed, even if we haven't a good idea of the underlying structure.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

That's not really what I meant.

Take any scientific theory. Gravity, particle theory, etc... The only reason why scientists even concieved of it to begin with is because through at least one of the meer 5 senses evolution has bestowed on us, they were either able to witness the phenomena or witness the effects of the phenomena. There are likely phenomena that we will never be able to aknowedge or understand and our deficiencies will never be able to overcome simply because we haven't evolved that way.

I was trying to make the point that communication with aliens could be bizarre and ultimately unfeasible...perhaps likened with trying to understand the intelligent animals with deep social communication (whales for example) on our own planet. The same goes for their evolutionary senses and perception of the world are so different from ours despite the shared genome.

As for bridging your ideas of seeing the universe through your senses with what Photon says, yeah...On that intrinsic level, we're probably relgated to looking at things through math and artificial constructs since we're not born with higher dimensional perception.

[tussery]

Can I open my eyes yet?