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We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

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Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#481

Post by craftsman »

tresqotheq wrote: post #324
craftsman wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t use the concept of causality outside of the universe, then the idea that there’s a creator outside of the universe who caused the universe is already out of bounds.

> who caused the universe is already out of bounds. "caused" can mean a different thing. Imagine causualty in a 3d FPS video game, and the creation of the game itself. Though they are similar in semantics, one is different from the other.

Ah, well in that case, the parent poster can just say that asking about the cause of the creator is a valid thing to talk about, because they mean a subtly different kind of ‘cause’ than the kind of cause you told them wasn’t valid to talk about outside of the universe.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#482

Post by craftsman »

tresqotheq wrote: post #329
craftsman wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not only in whether they are verifiable, whether they are verified, but also whether things which are produced from them actually seem to work. Religious claims fail at all three: they are not verifiable, they have not been verified, and they don’t seem to work.

Moving goalposts much? > which are produced from them actually seem to work. Oh yea, religeious things also seem to work. For example, prayers and other religeous offerings. That is how these things survive so long.

Except when we test them, they don’t seem to work after all. Would you fly on an airplane engineered by someone trained in engineering, or a plane engineered by someone who relied only on inspiration from a deity? Would you go to the hospital with doctors who practice typical Western medicine, or a hospital in which the doctors only pray over you? Etc.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#483

Post by craftsman »

tresqotheq wrote: post #329
craftsman wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not only in whether they are verifiable, whether they are verified, but also whether things which are produced from them actually seem to work. Religious claims fail at all three: they are not verifiable, they have not been verified, and they don’t seem to work.

Moving goalposts much? > which are produced from them actually seem to work. Oh yea, religeious things also seem to work. For example, prayers and other religeous offerings. That is how these things survive so long.

And no, that’s not moving goalposts.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#484

Post by craftsman »

tresqotheq wrote: post #329
craftsman wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not only in whether they are verifiable, whether they are verified, but also whether things which are produced from them actually seem to work. Religious claims fail at all three: they are not verifiable, they have not been verified, and they don’t seem to work.

Moving goalposts much? > which are produced from them actually seem to work. Oh yea, religeious things also seem to work. For example, prayers and other religeous offerings. That is how these things survive so long.

The fact that things seem to work does not mean that they actually do work. We all are subject to cognitive biases which can trip us up. Most people aren’t very good at recognizing when that happens. That’s why these things survive so long.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#485

Post by edgyquant »

necovek wrote: post #385
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Her argument could be applied to the idea of the Big Bang itself What's wrong with that? The thing about science is that it cannot pretend that it knows. It needs to prove. To which end, I don't think we should be supposing that we're going to know. Otherwise we're doing religion.

Science is, effectively, religion/faith in a particular set of base presumptions (axioms of set theory or logic theory guide all "logical" reasoning). Basically, limits of human mind understanding things come with just having to trust some things are simply so. The biggest difference from things more commonly referred to as "religions" is that science invites you to challenge all these assumptions and look for a bett…

It’s treated that way by the masses but it most certainly isn’t. You aren’t going to find the origin of reality via science but science is used to describe reality.

Otherwise I agree. It will always be our approximation and until we meet aliens and do science with them we can’t be sure all of reality isn’t a construct of the human mind.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#486

Post by craftsman »

tresqotheq wrote: post #331
craftsman wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t reply to the question I was asked, so I reply here: How many have I verified? I’m not sure of the #, but I’ve verified much of classical physics, chemistry, astronomical observations, and lots of things in electronics (some of which rely on quantum mechanics) and electromagnetism. But as I said, they question is not whether you or I have personally verified everything, but whether they are verifiable in princ…

> The claims of a holy man are not. How come? The claims of holy men are verified by other holy men.

Except you can find another group of holy men who disagree with that group. And a third group that disagrees with those two groups. The number of groups ends up quite large, and nobody can quite seem to figure out a way to test whether one group has it a bit more right than the others.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#487

Post by edgyquant »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #467
lisper wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science is, effectively, religion/faith No. No no no no no!!! Science is a process . The result of that process is explanations for phenomena. And the reason this matters is that the particular explanations produced by the scientific process turn out to give you the power to make extraordinarily accurate predictions about (certain aspects of) the future, and thus give you a tremendous amount of leverage in becoming…

Not to lend any credence to the antiscience above, but nothing about science being a process or even the falsifiability and other safeguards of that process preclude it from religious adherence. Even if they’re extraordinarily accurate processes, “it” absolutely can be and sometimes is treated as religious. Elevating science as a process of knowledge acquisition does it a disservice too. Scientists make mistakes, hav…

How is it anti science to say the science is just our best approximation?

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#488

Post by craftsman »

tresqotheq wrote: post #338
craftsman wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my sibling for my first reply. My second reply is that it’s important whether things derived from two different claims actually work. Make two hospitals: one which follows standard Western medical practice, and the other which does not and instead performs prayers over its patients. I can predict which hospital will have better patient outcomes.

> I can predict which hospital will have better patient outcomes. That is quite besided the point. The point being every patient who goes there believes the hospital us doing western blah blah blah... Let me simplyfy it even more. The common mans dependence of "science" is based on beliefs. Just as it was on religion at an older time. That scientific method is more trust worthy, does not make that dependence not base…

You seem to be focused on the so-called common man and his inability to do anything more than just believe things. I think you do this common man an injustice.

Let’s say this common man is religious (pick one) and is going about his day and is injured in some accident. He is taken to a hospital, and one which he knows is aligned with his religious beliefs. Upon arriving the doctors triage him and tell him he’s bleeding internally. But then they tell him that they have assembled a team of highly respected members of the religion to which he adheres and these persons are revered among its followers. They are about to lay hands on him and pray for his internal bleeding to stop. He asks if they will also be performing surgery, to which they reply that no, their god is loving, caring, and will hear the prayers of the faithful and heal him.

Now if you really are talking about the truly common man, this common man will, with whatever strength that remains, object quite strenuously! He will insist that a doctor perform surgery on him immediately and stop the bleeding.

And why does this common man do this? Because what he really believes is that while his religious beliefs may provide some type of assurance and comfort, when the rubber meets the road, he’d like some science, please.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#489

Post by barrysteve »

ben_w wrote: post #322
barrysteve wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not adding the complexity, it's out there. One would hope we're aiming at modelling nature. The human body is incredibly complex and making simple theories about it doesn't help so much. As you said, Go is incredibly complex and it took ML to tackle it. ML is a good case, is it simple or is it complex? The ideas we use to communicate the program are simple enough. It's polynomial regression or it's a neural ne…

As I say, you're using the words "complex" and "simple" in a fundamentally different way than Sabine (and most every scientist) is using them. For science and scientists, it's the complexity/simplicity of the rules that matters. You're arguing against a point Sabine doesn't make.

Yes I understand that, you missed the point. The rules are just an idealized form of something more complex.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#490

Post by craftsman »

al_mandi wrote: post #455
eis wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.) > The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused. Inside our observable universe? Yea most likely. We can't deduce that the same hold true outside the universe. Einstein explai…

> Inside our observable universe? Yea most likely. We can't deduce that the same hold true outside the universe. Which is why we rely on the honest news. Prophets like Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses Prayers of God be upon them all proved that they came with a message. They performed miracles, and their character is well known. It's basically an inductive proof.

The claims that they performed miracles and various testaments to their good character are hearsay, not evidence.

If one man claims that god said to him “such and such”, he may think that god has spoken to him, but I’m not obliged to. All I can say with certainty is that he is a person who thinks god spoke to him and subsequently told me about it.

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