We Have a *Fundamental* Problem

[evenwolf]

There are actually only two religions in the world that have the concept of good and evil.

Yes, this is a bit overstated.    Do you mean of the current major religions?   Because there are hundreds, possibly thousands of mythologies to sift through to prove the statement you made correct.



And I agree that we put too much weight on labels... but in order to convene with other humans you usually need to conform to a set of standards.   And sure enough there are others convening elsewhere with their own standards, and boom you have labels.   I believe that people should convene with each other, so removing labels altogether is mucho difficult.

[Ishmael]

Oh right, three. And yes I meant the "world religions" as they are labeled. All the others have the concept of good and bad, ringt and wrong, and people try to do the good thing. But they don't, what I've been taught, fear any supernatural evil. If they've done wrong they fear the same gods that bring them all the good if they are good.

And I don't think many ancient mythologies really had true evil either. Not that I know them all, though.

[SSH]

Oh right, three. And yes I meant the "world religions" as they are labeled. All the others have the concept of good and bad, ringt and wrong, and people try to do the good thing. But they don't, what I've been taught, fear any supernatural evil. If they've done wrong they fear the same gods that bring them all the good if they are good.

And I don't think many ancient mythologies really had true evil either. Not that I know them all, though.

You've just contradicted yourself. And redefined all the terms you used in your previous assertions. And you're still wrong. A typical example of internet debate... 

Christians don't fear any supernatural evil as they believe that Christ defeated it on the cross.

Some branches of Christianity don't believe in a personified or supernatural evil force.

Zoroastrians believe in a supernatural evil force.

[Redwall]

Ancient mythologies had arbitrary gods who killed you (or worse) for looking the wrong way. Or if they felt like it. Because the world was arbitrary and that was a pretty good explanation at the time.

evenwolf: that's why the world still sucks. Seriously, I agree, we can't live without labels, but I do think things go a lot better when people recognize labels for what they are.

[Ishmael]

Oh right yeah, people don't fear the evil. They fear the good. But there still is the evil, which no matter how long ago has been defeated still lives. Tho I'm just a bystander observing the matter here, I wouldn't really know. And I'm not trying to argue against anyone, atleast no-one's yet denied christianity among the couple of others really having something labeled evil. Tho, if there was no evil what would be the point of constantly trying to cleance oneself from it? It's a very contradictious religion alltogether.

[Lionmonkey]

Tho, if there was no evil what would be the point of constantly trying to cleance oneself from it?

To make yourself more cleansed than others. That's it! I've cracked it! All the pieces of the puzzle are together! A Christian person does all this stuff in order to show everyone else how better, cleaner and holier he/she is than others. It's like A max lvl epic gear owning a lvl 1 noob. It's all about ownage!

[Oliwerko]

A Christian person does all this stuff in order to show everyone else how better, cleaner and holier he/she is than others.

Sadly, many people do this. And it basically denies the basis of christianity itself.

[Redwall]

It's a very contradictious religion alltogether.

Again, this is nothing unique. People are contradictory. And they can't be any other way. Instead of picking holes in something that's easy, why not try for something hard, something that's supposed to be logical and consistent and non-contradictory? Take physics, the study of the most fundamental, basic parts of the universe, and what do we humans have to say? Schrodinger's cat, entanglement, and more: it doesn't work. The universe is impossible. Take mathematics, the basis of all structure, organization, order, and what do we humans have to say? Godel's incompleteness: it doesn't work. Math is broken.

Push anything far enough, and you'll find everything is flawed. Nothing makes sense. But that only matters if you decide it does.

[tube]

Take physics, the study of the most fundamental, basic parts of the universe, and what do we humans have to say? Schrodinger's cat, entanglement, and more: it doesn't work. The universe is impossible. Take mathematics, the basis of all structure, organization, order, and what do we humans have to say? Godel's incompleteness: it doesn't work. Math is broken.

Your examples (like Gödel's theorems and Scrödinger's cat) do not necessarily mean that the sciences are broken, but that our current understanding of them, the theories we've come up with so far have flaws. Actually Schrödinger used his famous thought experiment pretty much to say that quantum mechanics are damn confusing, and that our understanding of them is far from complete. In any case it's not really a paradox or proof of anything of the sort you describe.

Push anything far enough, and you'll find everything is flawed. Nothing makes sense. But that only matters if you decide it does.

Push anything far enough, and you'll find it confuses the hell out of you. But that only matters if we're talking about everyday things like brushing your teeth or making an adventure game. Let's leave the hard stuff like quantum physics and female psychology to the Einsteins of the world.


PS: Sorry about dragging this even further from the topic.

[evenwolf]

Add this to the stack.

[Redwall]

Your examples (like Gödel's theorems and Scrödinger's cat) do not necessarily mean that the sciences are broken, but that our current understanding of them, the theories we've come up with so far have flaws. Actually Schrödinger used his famous thought experiment pretty much to say that quantum mechanics are damn confusing, and that our understanding of them is far from complete. In any case it's not really a paradox or proof of anything of the sort you describe.

While I'm not a physicist (or a mathematician), my understanding of these things is that they're not saying "we don't understand why this is", they're saying "we can't understand why this is". Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's, which I probably should have mentioned above) as an intrinsic, inevitable property of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe. The same goes for incompleteness: while again, I'm not a mathematician, my understanding is that it's demonstrating a fundamental property of mathematical systems. Granted, intrinsic and fundamental properties often turn out to be not-so-intrinsic-and-fundamental given enough time, but they're not intended as expressions of a lack of understanding. (It also seems to me that incompleteness is the one less likely to be overturned, and that's the only one you really need anyway, because every order can be expressed as a mathematical system--that's what makes it order--and therefore applies.)

[sharprm]

While I'm not a physicist (or a mathematician), my understanding of these things is that they're not saying "we don't understand why this is", they're saying "we can't understand why this is". Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's, which I probably should have mentioned above) as an intrinsic, inevitable property of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe.

I'm no physicist either but people who skim read physics books and mix in some Buddism are annoying because its hard to know if it is BS. Are you sure there are things that can't be understood or is it there hasn't been a theory developed yet or is it they need more experiments? Perhaps you have misunderstood the limitations of our understanding.

Something that seems off: the uncertainty principle is about a trade off between measuring two quantities - location and momentum. I don't know how they measure these two quantities but it would use some device (eg. sensors, photographic plate), not humans.

Getting back on topic they found experimental proof that the purple teli tubby was gay.

[RickJ]

. Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's, which I probably should have mentioned above) as an intrinsic, inevitable property of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has absolutely nothing to do with human beings or measuring devices.  It is a fundamental property of the universe and to date there have been no evidence to suggest otherwise. 

[evenwolf]

Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's)

Redwall, I'm no physicist either, but I'd say you'd be safer quoting Murphy's Law in the future.   I know I do all the time!

[paolo]

A mathematician chips in (I'm not a mathematician by trade, but I have a degree in the subject):

One of the great things about mathematics is that it works. All of the other sciences stem from it, and it is its consistency that means we are able to do science at all. If it weren't true that every time you added 2 to 2 you got 4, then it would not be possible for us to do science, and, indeed, the universe would be a very strange place, if it were even possible for it to exist at all.

Gödel's incompleteness theorem is not a flaw in mathematics. Put simply, it says that however much we develop mathematics, there will always be new mathematics to be discovered. So it shows that mathematics is infinite, not that it is flawed.

Here's a simple example (this is not quite what the theorem is on about, but it illustrates the point behind it): consider the everyday counting numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... If you add any two of them together, you get another counting number; for example, 3 + 5 = 8. Combining two numbers of a particular kind and ending up with another number of the same kind is the concept of "completeness" that the theorem talks about.

But if you subtract one from the other, you can end up with a number that isn't a counting number; for example, 3 - 5 = -2. So you need to throw zero and negative numbers into the mix if subtraction is always going to work. Now multiplication of any two of these numbers gives you another one of the same kind, but if you divide one by another, you can end up with a different kind of number, that is, a fraction like 1/2. So for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division all to work, you need fractions as well as whole numbers. (I'll ignore the thorny issue of dividing by zero here, as that's another matter.)

So this set of numbers seems to be complete for any sort of arithmetic you might want to do. But it's not... you can square a number by multiplying it by itself (eg, 3 x 3 = 9) but doing the opposite operation, square roots (that is, finding what number multiplied by itself gives a certain number - for example, the square root of 4 is 2, and of 25 is 5), often gives numbers that are neither whole numbers or fractions. The square root of 2 is not a whole number and neither is it a fraction. So we have to bring in another set of numbers (called irrational numbers) so that we can always do square roots (of positive numbers and zero).

And so it goes on (finding the square roots of negative numbers is very useful in maths, but these square roots are not whole numbers, nor fractions, nor irrational numbers, so mathematicians invented more numbers so that they could do maths with the square roots of negative numbers). Every new mathematical concept that mathematicians come up with allows them to do things that result in something outside the scope of mathematics as it has been developed so far. This is what Gödel's incompleteness theorem states, in a nutshell.

Sorry to drag this thread away from the original topic, but Redwall's assertion that "maths is broken" is false and I felt it needed to be countered.

[SSH]

Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's)

Redwall, I'm no physicist either, but I'd say you'd be safer quoting Murphy's Law in the future.   I know I do all the time!

I prefer Cole's Law:

Spoiler

Thinly sliced cabbage

[close]

[aussie]

Cole's Law is just trouble.

[Redwall]

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has absolutely nothing to do with human beings or measuring devices.  It is a fundamental property of the universe and to date there have been no evidence to suggest otherwise.

All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.

Paolo: I realize math "works", of course, and that's it's not "broken". But you point out that mathematics is infinite, which means it cannot be complete, which is what I meant. Basically, no structure/system/organization/order (which are all fundamentally mathematical) can be absolute, there is always something that cannot be contained by it, something above/beyond/outside of it. Math is very useful, and works within specific points of reference, but it can never be the end-all arbiter of truth, nor can any structure/system/organization/order, which is what a great many people aspire towards.

[EldKatt]

All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.

Ironically, in my experience, just about the only people who even suggest that science would ever aspire to "absolute truth", are those who are eager to announce that it can't. A scientific theory is a model that can explain the stuff that actually happens. The scientific method is a way of devising and testing these models, and one that happens to be successful at accomplishing just that. That's all there is to it. Who says it's absolute truth? No physics or chemistry textbook (or teacher) tells you, "this is what atoms really look like". It tells you: if atoms looked like this, then this would happen, and since that's what actually does happen in the real world, it's a successful model, and good science--regardless of what atoms really look like. To be honest I've hardly ever heard anyone claim, with any other motive than immediately refuting it, that we really do know exactly what atoms look like, or by extension that any scientific theory or model is infallibly true and nonnegotiable.

[RickJ]

All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.

Could you please explain what this has to do with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle other than you and he have used the word "uncertainity"? 

[edit]
Well said Eldkatt