We're born with a belief in the supernatural, says scientist

bonkey

pH wrote:

Well given that 0.9999... = 1, I'm not sure I see the point!

Why (and since when) is that a given?

I'm not sure I find the reduction of things to probabilities, either useful or sensible.

Not being useful or sensible to you is entirely different from being non-useful and/or non-sensible.

I'm willing to bet that the fine differences between (say) Newtonian and Relativistic physics are entirely non-useful to you, and could understand how the notion of going through all those extra complexities involved in the Relativistic physics calculations would therefore seem nonsensical to you also.

That doesn't mean they're worthless. It means that they are subjectively worthless from certain perspectives. This pedanticism is relevant - if only because it harks back to CatSteven's assertion that what serves as proof to him may not be proof for others. This is an admission that what he's referring to isn't an objective proof, but - at best - a subjective one.

I'm sure very few people will disagree that subjective proofs for God's exist. The problem is that subjective proofs aren't worth much.

I am 100% certain in gravity.

You can be. That doesn't make gravity 100% conformant with our models of it. It just means that you believe it is.

Maybe the details of the theory (how strong it is, what causes it) will change, but that doesn't stop me being 100% confident that I'll remain attached to this planet, and the moon will continue to orbit this planet.

Again - you can be as confident as you like. That doesn't make you right, nor does it change the fact that science cannot share your 100% certainty.

Put another way, if you're not 100% sure (certain) then you're 100% - X%. Unless you can quantify that X% in a meaningful way (I'm 99.998374% certain that we evolved and here's how I calculated that number) then why bother?

Because the acceptance that X has 0 and 100 as exclusionary lower and upper bounds is central to the constant-revision nature of science. The only unassailable truth about science appears to be that there are no other unassailable truths.

Why bother? In the case of science, the acceptence that established truths are not unassailable has been central to the progression of science.

On the other hand, the benefit of being able to apply definite probabilities to everything has not been shown to be central to anything beneficial.

So it would seem that your question needs to be turned around. Why bother worrying about the exact percentage? What's the significance of it? What will knowing or not knowing an exact value for it bring about? We have established that there can be benefits from accepting that established truth can be significantly wrong and should always be open to revision etc. Thats why we bother accepting that something cannot be known scientifically with 100% certainty.

robindch

> > Well given that 0.9999... = 1, I'm not sure I see the point!
> Why (and since when) is that a given?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_0.999%E2%80%A6_equals_1

> I am 100% certain in gravity.

You shouldn't be. Have a read of Feynman's elegant chess analogy:

Richard Feynman once noted that discovering the laws of physics is like trying to learn the laws of chess merely by observing chess games. You notice that bishops stay on the same color squares; you write this down as a law of chess. Later, you come up with a better law – bishops move diagonally. And, since diagonal squares are always colored the same, this explains why bishops always stay on the same color. This law is an improvement – it is simpler, and yet explains more. In physics, discovering Einstein's theory of gravity after knowing Newton's theory of gravity is a similar type of discovery. As another example, noticing that pieces don't change their identity in a chess game is similar to discovering the law of mass-and-energy conservation.

Eventually, say, you see a chess game in which a pawn reaches the other end of the board and is promoted. You say, "Wait, that violates the laws of chess. Pieces can't just change their identity." Of course, it does not violate the laws of chess; you just had never seen a game pushed to that extreme before.

The whole Feynman video is here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6586235597476141009&q=Feynman

Zombrex

pH wrote:

How very paranormal and unscientific of you!

"X exists, I can't quantify it or measure it but take my word for it - it exists!"

You don't need to be able for quantify something for it to exist

a + b = c where 0 < a,b,c < 1 ... I haven't quantified a, b or c in that, but they all exist in the sum.

As bonkey explains know X isn't important. The only important bit is to not assume it is 100%, because it can't be. Using Feynmans chess analogy (which I had not heard before but I have very glad I have now since it is very nice), you can never know if you have actually learnt the rules of chess. You might have, and you might think you have, but you cannot know for sure. No one is going to tell you that you have learnt ALL the rules of say how a knight can move. You can only realise you haven't learnt all the rules when you see something that doesn't fit your previous set of rules.

So you think that you have a pretty good grasp of the rules of gavity to say that you will not fall off the Earth tomorrow. You are probably right. But you can't know for certain.

pH

Wicknight wrote:

You don't need to be able for quantify something for it to exist

a + b = c where 0 < a,b,c < 1 ... I haven't quantified a, b or c in that, but they all exist in the sum.

I'm presuming in your example you're defining 'exist' and > 0, well great if you start of with an axiom that it exists ( 0 < a,b,c < 1) then you can conclude that it exists!

Let's say c is the total force that you feel downwards.
Let a = the force due to gravity
Let b = the force due to invisible pixies pulling you down.

What about

a + b = c ( where 0 <= a,b,c <= 1)? This is a much fairer representation of what I'm saying, from which you can conclude nothing about the value of 'c'

So you think that you have a pretty good grasp of the rules of gavity to say that you will not fall off the Earth tomorrow. You are probably right. But you can't know for certain.

Are you allowing be be 100% certain of past events? I'm 100% certain I didn't fall of the earth and float to the moon yesterday! - will you allow me that?

That said, I'm not sure you've backed up the statement :

You don't need to be able for quantify something for it to exist

I feel it is wrong, but we may end up in a tangled mess of agreeing definitions of 'exist' and 'quantify'. To me the definition of an object's existence is synonymous with quantifying/measuring it somehow.

Also the statement "We can never be 100% of anything" - surely the statement itself is included in the set of things you can never be sure of, hence you can't be sure of that statement, so you might be able to be 100% sure of something?

bonkey

pH wrote:

Are you allowing be be 100% certain of past events? I'm 100% certain I didn't fall of the earth and float to the moon yesterday! - will you allow me that?

I wouldn't. Not with 100% certainty. Close to 100%, sure.

I was reading something on this recently. THe thinking went like this...

If teh universe is "open ended", then it will go on expanding forever, with mass getting more and more distributed, notionally forever. However, once we have this infinite timeframe, we end up with some unfortunate conclusions.

For example, it is possible (but massively unlikely) for quantum events to allow (say) a particle to jump from one location to another, without passing through the intervening space. THe probability of this occurring drops with the distance, but is still non-zero.

The probability of every particle the universe en masse jumping so that the end result is a lower state of entropy than where it was before the jump is almost zero, but over infinite tiume that becomes a certainty.

If thats a certainty, then we can't be certain that our apparent history is our actual history, and that we haven't spontaneously arrived at some point along it from such a jump.

So you can be almost entirely certain of past events, but not 100%, because there's the remotest possibility that its all just an illusion, and that the universe sprang into existence via quantum uncertainty somewhere "along" our history line. Anywhere from Planck Time ago (most likely, as it has highest entropy of all past states) to Planck Time after the Big Bang (least likely, as it has lowest entropy of all past states).

Also the statement "We can never be 100% of anything" - surely the statement itself is included in the set of things you can never be sure of, hence you can't be sure of that statement, so you might be able to be 100% sure of something?

There may be things that we could be 100% sure of.
We just can't be sure of it.

jc

Zombrex

pH wrote:

I'm presuming in your example you're defining 'exist' and > 0, well great if you start of with an axiom that it exists ( 0 < a,b,c < 1) then you can conclude that it exists!

No, X isn't the likelyhood something exists. X is how confident you are something exists, or in a more general sence, something is true.

X can't be 0% or 100% since you cannot be completely positive something is either true or false. That is no reflection on if something is or is not true

Using the example above, the rules of chess are fixed, but we can never be sure we have actually learnt all the rules from just watching the game.

pH wrote:

What about

a + b = c ( where 0 <= a,b,c <= 1)? This is a much fairer representation of what I'm saying, from which you can conclude nothing about the value of 'c'

Well there you are saying you can be 100% certain something is true, or 100% certain something isn't true (you are 0% certain it is true)

pH wrote:

Are you allowing be be 100% certain of past events? I'm 100% certain I didn't fall of the earth and float to the moon yesterday! - will you allow me that?

No, as the movie the Matrix demonstrated quite well

That said, I'm not sure you've backed up the statement :

pH wrote:

You don't need to be able for quantify something for it to exist

Quantify exactly how certain you are it is or is not going to rain tomorrow.

Any value you put on it (56% certain as opposed ot 57% certain) is going to largely meaningless in a specific sense, and could change at a whim. That still doesn't mean you do not have an certainity it is or is not going to rain tomorrow. The certainity exists, but you have no meaningful way of quanifitying it.

pH wrote:

Also the statement "We can never be 100% of anything" - surely the statement itself is included in the set of things you can never be sure of, hence you can't be sure of that statement, so you might be able to be 100% sure of something?

Owww .. my brain ...

Well I think science accepts that the uncertainty applied to study of things external to ourselfs, ie the universe. This is because we are not told by anything the actual rules of the chess game, we can only observe the game and attempt to work out the rules. But at no point can we be sure we have actually cracked it.

If on the other hand we make up the rules of the chess game ourselfs (ie mathematics rules, certain philiosophies etc) then we can be certain of things because we have actually defined the rules themselves.

Schuhart

The Atheist wrote:

The bottom line is we are stuck with what we can perceive whether we like it or not.

I think this is an important point. It makes me think that the starting point nearly has to be clarification about perception. It’s next door to an old Woody Allen gag about epistemology. ‘Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know this?’

There is an amount of useful discussion simply on how people acquire knowledge, and where we know human perception can be faulty. But taken too far, that simply means any discussion of any kind is impossible. Maybe the Quran doesn’t exist, or was first published last week, and we are all suffering from a delusion that it has been around for over a thousand years. Before any engagement at all is possible, we have to assume the world is there, and we are living in it.

We can also acknowledge an element of belief is involved in accepting a materialist conception of creation. I do not personally have the expertise to demonstrate evolution. I’m really operating on a belief that reports of scientific research are correct. I’m probably stronger on what I would see as the holes that emerge from any organised religion when its doctrines are submitted to scrutiny. So why do I go with evolution? Because I reckon religion is bunkum, so creationism isn’t the answer which makes me willing to accept that what science reveals is much closer to the truth.

The two beliefs are not identical, though. I know that if for some reason I feel a need to query evolution, I can personally view the published literature on the subject. I can read the material challenging the orthodoxy.

On the other hand, if I’m a theist and I want to substantiate my belief in god, there is no published research that I can refer to. I don’t know if I’m putting this well, but I think this is the key practical difference between ‘belief’ in science and ‘belief’ in religion.

pH

No, X isn't the likelyhood something exists. X is how confident you are something exists, or in a more general sence, something is true.

That is a very subtle distinction, one that if it exists I can't see.

Using the example above, the rules of chess are fixed, but we can never be sure we have actually learnt all the rules from just watching the game.

I appreciate Robin's chess analogy, but I don't find it appropriate in this case. I totally agree that by observing the rules of chess you never know you've got them all. However I'm asking not "how certain you are in the rules of chess", I'm asking after studying all these rules "How certain are you that the game of chess exists?" I fail to see how your knowledge of the rules (how much/many you know) of the game affects your certainty in the games existence.

pH wrote:

You don't need to be able for quantify something for it to exist

Quantify exactly how certain you are it is or is not going to rain tomorrow.

Any value you put on it (56% certain as opposed ot 57% certain) is going to largely meaningless in a specific sense, and could change at a whim. That still doesn't mean you do not have an certainity it is or is not going to rain tomorrow. The certainity exists, but you have no meaningful way of quanifitying it.

You seem to have moved away from your original statement:

You don't need to be able for quantify something for it to exist

Are you now saying that this is only applicable to probability?