Is The World Old Or Young? Can We Trust Scientific Reasoning?

[precious_roy]

john doran:

it sounds like you’ve got bell’s inequality a bit backward: bell showed that any violation of his inequality entailed a world that is (A) non-real or (B) non-local. that is, you can’t have a world that is both local and real.

bell himself believed in the hidden variable approach, as did bohm and debroglie (and numerous others).

aspect’s experiment - the one that allegedly confirmed that bell’s inequality is, in fact, violated - is not uncontroversial (franson, for example, claims the timing constraints on the first run not to have been sufficiently precise to rule out a local reality).

Really? I guess I did misunderstand it a bit. But doesn’t quantum mechanics reject local realism? If not, then I totally don’t understand this…

I’m just curious as to why there hasn’t been much advancement in hidden variable theory, or maybe there has and I don’t pay attention. Ever since I left school my brain just continues to shrink. Let that be a lesson to all you whipper snappers, don’t leave school.
john doran:

all model-selection and interpretation is philosophical.

Well, everything is interpretational when you get right down to it. But yes, I agree with this assessment. What I was saying is that I cannot prove it so I don’t assert it scientificness (if there is such a word).

 

[john_doran]

precious_roy:

Really? I guess I did misunderstand it a bit. But doesn’t quantum mechanics reject local realism? If not, then I totally don’t understand this…

“QM” doesn’t accept or reject anything - it’s just a bunch of mathematical formalism and experimental data. certain interpretations of that data are incompatible with certain ontologies. the traditional (copenhagen) interpretation of QM rejects locality.

of course, if bell is right, then any interpretation of QM as it currently stands must be non-local. but he himself felt that QM was just a temporary expedient.

the significance of bell’s finding was that he controverted the EPR conclusion that the world must be local, since special relativity entails that there can’t be superluminal transactions, something contradicted by canonical QM. on that point, bell wondered if it wouldn’t be better to go back to lorentz-poincare relativity, which assumed the privileged frame of reference of the ether. i tend to agree.

precious_roy:

I’m just curious as to why there hasn’t been much advancement in hidden variable theory, or maybe there has and I don’t pay attention.

because science doesn’t actually progress in the way that most people seem to think it does: it’s far from being the application of some kind of algorithm to competing theories to see which one has the most equable balance of simplicity, fit, elegance, predictive success, experimental confirmation, and so on - there is politics, personality, and power to be considered also.

precious_roy:

Well, everything is interpretational when you get right down to it. But yes, I agree with this assessment. What I was saying is that I cannot prove it so I don’t assert it scientificness (if there is such a word).

but that’s all “science” is - an interpretation of the data. if scientists don’t attempt to understand what the results actually mean, then what are they doing? instrumentalists are like this, but i doubt there are many of those on the front lines of science: the deep impulse is to understand how the world actually is, not simply which procedures yield the best numbers.

 

[precious_roy]

“QM” doesn’t accept or reject anything - it’s just a bunch of mathematical formalism and experimental data. certain interpretations of that data are incompatible with certain ontologies. the traditional (copenhagen) interpretation of QM rejects locality.

of course, if bell is right, then any interpretation of QM as it currently stands must be non-local. but he himself felt that QM was just a temporary expedient.

the significance of bell’s finding was that he controverted the EPR conclusion that the world must be local, since special relativity entails that there can’t be superluminal transactions, something contradicted by canonical QM. on that point, bell wondered if it wouldn’t be better to go back to lorentz-poincare relativity, which assumed the privileged frame of reference of the ether. i tend to agree.

Right…Lorenz Poincare. Is that the local time theory or whatever it is? I dig that but I don’t know enough about it to assert its correctness.
john doran:

because science doesn’t actually progress in the way that most people seem to think it does: it’s far from being the application of some kind of algorithm to competing theories to see which one has the most equable balance of simplicity, fit, elegance, predictive success, experimental confirmation, and so on - there is politics, personality, and power to be considered also.

True, but I am assuming someone believes that there are hidden variables and is thus formulating a theory. Or at least I hope that they are.
john doran:

but that’s all “science” is - an interpretation of the data. if scientists don’t attempt to understand what the results actually mean, then what are they doing? instrumentalists are like this, but i doubt there are many of those on the front lines of science: the deep impulse is to understand how the world actually is, not simply which procedures yield the best numbers.

Best predictive numbers, sure, and interpretation of the data to provide future predictability. I only take a scientific theory as far as I can throw it. Some are more interesting, like brane cosmology, but most are pretty mundane and don’t really demonstrate anything about the underlying principles, like gravity (although superstring theory is a bit more interesting). Is evolution the idea true as in actually what happened? I have absolutly no idea. It can provide some nice medicine though.

But then again I am what most would consider a philosophical skepticist, so I tend to be a bit odd.

 

[precious_roy]

buffalo:

No, that the test for design is repeatable.

Wait, so if I understand, you are saying:

There is a test for design. And the theory says that the test for design is repeatable and verifiable. So if we test for design and it appears statistically probable that design was necessary for evolution to occur, then so be it.

So is this asserting that ID is a pure science? If not, what is the utilitarian value of this statement?

 

[buffalo]

Why would SETI have anything to say about ID or evolution?

The only thing like that I have seen from any SETI group is the Drake Equation , an estimate for the number of technologically advanced life forms that might be in the galaxy at any one time.

I would be interested in seeing what you’re referring to.
I can see developing a list of characteristics that would differential designed from non-designed things

But to assign a probability…I’m sure the ID folks would just assume that it was 1

SETI is searching the randomness of background noise for designed noise.

 

[buffalo]

precious_roy:

Wait, so if I understand, you are saying:

There is a test for design. And the theory says that the test for design is repeatable and verifiable. So if we test for design and it appears statistically probable that design was necessary for evolution to occur, then so be it.

So is this asserting that ID is a pure science? If not, what is the utilitarian value of this statement?

There are odds for design. I don’t know of a valid repeatable test just yet.

Yes, then so be it. It takes the darwin (atheistic) part of evolution away from consideration.

 

[precious_roy]

buffalo:

There are odds for design. I don’t know of a valid repeatable test just yet.

Yes, then so be it. It takes the darwin (atheistic) part of evolution away from consideration.

Heres my beef with this.

The point of ID is to refute the Darwinist part (if you define that as the atheistic interpretation) of evolution. That’s fine, but that is an interpretation of evolution. If ID is attempting to refute that part of evolution by using scientific methods, which it does appear to do, then it is more like a proposal used to refute an interpretation about a scientific theory. It is science, yes, because it uses scientific methods, but I don’t see how it could be elevated into the upper ranks of scientific theory because it does not seem to offer any more utilitarian value than does evolution. Yet anyway.

That is my whole thing.

 

[buffalo]

precious_roy:

It is science, yes, because it uses scientific methods, but I don’t see how it could be elevated into the upper ranks of scientific theory because it does not seem to offer any more utilitarian value than does evolution. Yet anyway.

That is my whole thing.

Since when does it have to pass a utilitarian test to be valid?

 

[precious_roy]

buffalo:

Since when does it have to pass a utilitarian test to be valid?

It doesn’t; that is why I made the comment about it being a pure science and not an applied science.

 

[precious_roy]

At any rate, I don’t have problems with the concept of Intelligent Design itself, I have a problem with people who now already equate it with evolution in terms of its status of a scientific theory. Now modern synthesis, the change in allele frequencies over time, is a law because it is observed all the time in laboratories and is not violated. Evolution is a theory which explains why this change happens and how it could result in the diverse organism set we see today. At this point, although ID does propose some testable results, I have not seen any actual results and would thus classify it as a conjecture. So people trying to say that we should teach and unobserved pure science right now, and I mean right now, in high school is where I draw the line.

So I’m spent and that’s all I am going to post in this thread.

 

[buffalo]

precious_roy:

At any rate, I don’t have problems with the concept of Intelligent Design itself, I have a problem with people who now already equate it with evolution in terms of its status of a scientific theory. Now modern synthesis, the change in allele frequencies over time, is a law because it is observed all the time in laboratories and is not violated. Evolution is a theory which explains why this change happens and how it could result in the diverse organism set we see today. At this point, although ID does propose some testable results, I have not seen any actual results and would thus classify it as a conjecture. So people trying to say that we should teach and unobserved pure science right now, and I mean right now, in high school is where I draw the line.

So I’m spent and that’s all I am going to post in this thread.

Aww.

Evolution makes no predictions. It is not observable, repeatable or verifiable through experiment.

 

[steveandersen]

buffalo:

Aww.

Evolution makes no predictions. It is not observable, repeatable or verifiable through experiment.

I don’t want to turn this into some schoolyard-shouting match of “Yes it does.” “No it doesn’t.”

BUT

Evolution does and has made predictions.
The predictions it has made are on the order of "Given Species A in Strata B and Species Y in Strata Z; then for the theory to be correct there must be species L in strata M”. This has been done many times. The classic example is the discovery of the “ur-ant” but recent work such as that with whales and tetrapods also qualifies.

As has been pointed out many times speciation has been observed both in the wild and in the laboratory. (The laboratory work also qualifies as predictive since if you’re predicting that speciation will occur and it does then QED.)

 

[buffalo]

steveandersen:

I don’t want to turn this into some schoolyard-shouting match of “Yes it does.” “No it doesn’t.”

BUT

Evolution does and has made predictions.
The predictions it has made are on the order of "Given Species A in Strata B and Species Y in Strata Z; then for the theory to be correct there must be species L in strata M”. This has been done many times. The classic example is the discovery of the “ur-ant” but recent work such as that with whales and tetrapods also qualifies.

As has been pointed out many times speciation has been observed both in the wild and in the laboratory. (The laboratory work also qualifies as predictive since if you’re predicting that speciation will occur and it does then QED.)

Satisfy me then - what predictions does it make about humans? What species will we turn into?

 

[freesoulhope]

Where not gonna turn in to anything else. Even if evolution is true, that doesnt mean that “Humans” are the result of it. But animals?
thats anouther story. and as for the pro evo’s on this thread, all you have said is that science is blind, there for how can we rely on the results if we dont consider that there are forces beyound what we undestand through science that drive evolution.

Imagine, you stumble on to a road, your walking up the road and realise that its continuous with no other roads branching of from it. So then you make up a theory that the road is a “constant” and goes on forever. Because your blind science has decided that the road is constant, when you do finally reach a cross road with different turns pointing to different possibilitys, you will ignore the evidence, because your blind science has decided that the road goes on constantly forever.

 

[steveandersen]

buffalo:

Satisfy me then - what predictions does it make about humans?

(A) That no human remains older than about 50k years will be found in Australia or the western hemisphere
(B) That no human remains older than 200k years will be found at all
(C) That genetic variations will be higher and older in Africa.
(D) That skin tones of native populations vary depending upon latitude

Satisfied?

buffalo:

What species will we turn into?

You want predictions of the future?
Well that is full of unknown variables that make that kind of prediction difficult.
This is science after all not divination.

Take rocket science for example. Rocket science is hard but we just sent a vehicle on a 9-year flight to Pluto because we know with a high degree of certainty where Pluto will be in 9 years. But what happens if in 4 years a big asteroid hits Pluto and affects its orbit? Then it won’t be where we predicted it to be and the space ship misses. Therefore the predictive capacity of classical mechanics breaks down under unknown variables. There is a similar problem with evolution; it is greatly affected by unpredictable events. Since we don’t know what conditions will be how can there be a prediction of how things will specifically adapt to it in the future?

It is similar to metrology, which also can’t make predictions very far out.

The other problem with future human evolution is that many of the prerequisites for evolution are missing. No portion of our population is reproductively isolated from any other and the population is very large. This makes it difficult for drift or selective pressures to greatly affect variance.

Besides, we now have technological/cultural fixes to environmental difficulties rather than just biological ones. If it gets cold we invent a coat; light skinned people use sun block in the tropics and dark skinned people drink vitamin D enriched milk at the poles. These fixes happen far faster than biological ones ever do so I don’t know what factors will affect variance in the future.

I can predict with some certainty that the sickle cell gene will continue to disappear in populations no longer endemic to Western Africa. I’d bet money on that one.

What sort of prediction can ID make?

 

[buffalo]

quote=steveandersen That no human remains older than about 50k years will be found in Australia or the western hemisphere
(B) That no human remains older than 200k years will be found at all
(C) That genetic variations will be higher and older in Africa.
(D) That skin tones of native populations vary depending upon latitude

Satisfied?

You want predictions of the future?
Well that is full of unknown variables that make that kind of prediction difficult.
This is science after all not divination.

Take rocket science for example. Rocket science is hard but we just sent a vehicle on a 9-year flight to Pluto because we know with a high degree of certainty where Pluto will be in 9 years. But what happens if in 4 years a big asteroid hits Pluto and affects its orbit? Then it won’t be where we predicted it to be and the space ship misses. Therefore the predictive capacity of classical mechanics breaks down under unknown variables. There is a similar problem with evolution; it is greatly affected by unpredictable events. Since we don’t know what conditions will be how can there be a prediction of how things will specifically adapt to it in the future?

It is similar to metrology, which also can’t make predictions very far out.

The other problem with future human evolution is that many of the prerequisites for evolution are missing. No portion of our population is reproductively isolated from any other and the population is very large. This makes it difficult for drift or selective pressures to greatly affect variance.

Besides, we now have technological/cultural fixes to environmental difficulties rather than just biological ones. If it gets cold we invent a coat; light skinned people use sun block in the tropics and dark skinned people drink vitamin D enriched milk at the poles. These fixes happen far faster than biological ones ever do so I don’t know what factors will affect variance in the future.

I can predict with some certainty that the sickle cell gene will continue to disappear in populations no longer endemic to Western Africa. I’d bet money on that one.

What sort of prediction can ID make?
[/quote]

Nope. I was hoping that the predictions would be on not what we think we will find, but on the changes that will occur to humans. And the adaptatons you cite are microevolution. None of these indicate what species humans will evolve into.

I didn’t frame the question as ID having the answer. But the answer would be whatever we were designed to be. If we were designed to be human, we will continue to be human.

 

[steveandersen]

buffalo:

Nope. I was hoping that the predictions would be on not what we think we will find,

That’s probably the best I could do. shrug
Like I said this is like meteorology. It is too dependent on initial conditions and subsequent variables to make any prediction on the time scales we are talking about worth the paper they written on. Evolution is a response to conditions so unless you know the conditions you can’t say anything about the response.

That is why I would bet money on the sickle cell prediction I made. It is occurring on a much smaller timescale and we have a very good idea of the variables that drive it.

buffalo:

but on the changes that will occur to humans.

You provide the conditions that we’ll have to live under for the next 100k years and I’ll provide the prediction.

buffalo:

And the adaptatons you cite are microevolution.

That the species didn’t exist until 200k years ago is “micro” evolution? I don’t buy that artificial micro/macro split but if I understand it speciation is macro by definition.

And that still doesn’t address observed speciation in the laboratory.

buffalo:

None of these indicate what species humans will evolve into.

If you want the future you’ll need revelation, a fiction writer, or a crystal ball, not science.

buffalo:

I didn’t frame the question as ID having the answer. But the answer would be whatever we were designed to be. If we were designed to be human, we will continue to be human.

Of course since you and I and our children’s, children’s, children’s, great great great grand children will be long dead before any biological change ever became apparent. We can predict away all afternoon and no one will even know.

I’m far more comfortable with a prediction of things that had to have happened and a subsequent confirmation in the field.

The only alternative I can think of is putting our predictions in a time capsule and hoping the Eloi and Morlocks get a good laugh at them.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

freesoulhope:

please feel free to display your opinions on this subject.
I would like to hear peoples opinions on the subject.

While It is true that truth cannot contradict truth,

This is by no means self-evident; and even though it may be true, applying this saying needs more discernment that it has somes received - the saying is not a club for knocking in the head such ideas as one may wish to see the back of.

and that God cannot contradict himself. Does that mean that what we have come to understand as “main steam scientific theorys” is correct and should be taken in with out Qeustion?

Are the laws of pysics continuos through out the universe? what i mean is, how do we know that the methods of reasoning on which we devolop theorys holds true to every thing we pecieve in are univeres?

is the laws of physics “constant” in are reality, that we might measure everything acording to are perception of reality?

I would very much like to hear peoples opinions on this matter, and also on whether or not we should ignore young earth creationist and anti evolutionist, who obviouly percieve a fualt in scientific reasoning. what do you think?

Are they just reacting acording to there faith or do they really see holes in the theorys that the scientific community is putting across to us?

The same intellectual principles that allow us to be in contact with a world perceived by us as external to ourselves, are at the foundations of scientific enquiry - and of all other disciplines and activities. If my senses deceive me when they tell me that there is a universe of realities which includes dinosaurs and fossilised trees, there is no reason why I should trust them when they tell me there are Popes and dogma and the magisterium. Because the conscious subject thinking of parsecs & Megatheria, is the same conscious subject who thinks about creeds and doctrines.

Cut away at the physical sciences - and the other sciences, such as theology, also suffer.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

freesoulhope:

…

Imagine, you stumble on to a road, your walking up the road and realise that its continuous with no other roads branching of from it. So then you make up a theory that the road is a “constant” and goes on forever. Because your blind science has decided that the road is constant, when you do finally reach a cross road with different turns pointing to different possibilitys, you will ignore the evidence, because your blind science has decided that the road goes on constantly forever.

Inductive skepticism might be a problem for evolution, but it’s also a problem for anyone who thinks that breathing is necessary for life. If you want to use inductive skepticism to discredit evolution, fine, but it has far-reaching implications, down to (frankly) pretty much every single action you or I or anyone ever takes.

In addition, were scientists to be confronted with phenomena which contradicted previous inductive conclusions, then they would most likely revise their theories - as happened with classical mechanics, relativity, and among other things, the orbit of Mercury.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

steveandersen:

That’s probably the best I could do. shrug
Like I said this is like meteorology. It is too dependent on initial conditions and subsequent variables to make any prediction on the time scales we are talking about worth the paper they written on. Evolution is a response to conditions so unless you know the conditions you can’t say anything about the response.

That is why I would bet money on the sickle cell prediction I made. It is occurring on a much smaller timescale and we have a very good idea of the variables that drive it.

You provide the conditions that we’ll have to live under for the next 100k years and I’ll provide the prediction.

That the species didn’t exist until 200k years ago is “micro” evolution? I don’t buy that artificial micro/macro split but if I understand it speciation is macro by definition.

And that still doesn’t address observed speciation in the laboratory.

If you want the future you’ll need revelation, a fiction writer, or a crystal ball, not science.

Of course since you and I and our children’s, children’s, children’s, great great great grand children will be long dead before any biological change ever became apparent. We can predict away all afternoon and no one will even know.

I’m far more comfortable with a prediction of things that had to have happened and a subsequent confirmation in the field.

The only alternative I can think of is putting our predictions in a time capsule and hoping the Eloi and Morlocks get a good laugh at them.

The apes will probably find the time-capsule = black monolith ?] first, and be told not to touch it by their Lawgiver 655 years later, the planet will be destroyed by the Doomsday Device