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The Debate Hall Social Thread

Dre89

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Yeah I know people will put the prayer thing down to luck. I'm more curious to know if there's a known physchological action occurring when I'm feeling that euphoric feeling.

Also you're Australian, it's football not soccer. I am very passionate about this issue.

The universe hated me when I was a keeper trying to save penalities. I've faced something like thirteen penalties. If I guessed the wrong way, it'd be a **** saveable penalty. If I guessed correctly, it'd be put right in the corner, or I'd get a touch on it and it'd go in anyway. I only saved two. One got hit in on the rebound, the other one got retaken because I apparently came off the line too early, then I guessed correctly on the second try but he put in the corner.

Add to that like the two best saves I ever made were pointless because they scored off the resulting corners.

Life can be so hard sometimes when you're privellaged enough to play recreational sport.
 

AltF4

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It happens for the same reason people believe in all kinds of ridiculous nonsense like alien abductions, the loch nes monster, bigfoot, and homeopathy. There's not one answer, there's many:

a) Some percentage is fraud and liars. People who go to a haunted house and claim to see a ghost, just because they want an interesting story to tell. Innocent white lies, or even bigger ones in the case of homeopathy.

b) Psychological effects: As demonstrated by the eye's blind spot, your brain makes up data all the time depending on what it thinks ought to be there. What you "see" is not an objective view of reality. What you see is what your brain decides that the data should be interpreted as. Sometimes it's very wrong. EDIT: Some people claim to have seen Elvis (recently) and I don't doubt that they have. But that doesn't mean Elvis is still alive.

c) Subtle body language. The reason why it's imperative to have double blind studies in social science is to eliminate these kinds of effects. If you ask someone "Did I pray for you last night?" there are hundreds of subtle clues that you give off naturally that convey the supposedly hidden answer. This is entirely subconscious and you can't prevent doing it just by trying not to.

d) Confirmation bias. You remember the hits and ignore the misses. Even if you may have an interesting case here, what about all the thousands or millions of times that this failed? Even if the odds of guessing the answer correctly were 1 in a million, that's not very rare. When you consider that millions of random events happen to you on a daily basis, each one having a "1 in a million" chance to do something memorable. But you don't remember all those millions of missed events. The mind naturally glazes over them and just remembers the hits.

EDIT:

e) Luck. Sometimes you just get lucky. It happens. Correctly guessing a Yes/No question a few times is not rare. Assuming perfect entropy in the answers (which it won't have, so these are overestimates) even if someone correctly guessed a question 5 times in a row, the chances of doing it by luck are 1 in 2^5 = 1 : 32. Not exactly a rare occurrence.
 

Bob Jane T-Mart

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Yeah I know people will put the prayer thing down to luck. I'm more curious to know if there's a known physchological action occurring when I'm feeling that euphoric feeling.
I can't tell you'd have to speak to a psychologist. Anyone at Uni doing that would know a lot more than I do.

Also you're Australian, it's football not soccer. I am very passionate about this issue.
Hey, at least I don't play Rugby.

The universe hated me when I was a keeper trying to save penalities. I've faced something like thirteen penalties. If I guessed the wrong way, it'd be a **** saveable penalty. If I guessed correctly, it'd be put right in the corner, or I'd get a touch on it and it'd go in anyway. I only saved two. One got hit in on the rebound, the other one got retaken because I apparently came off the line too early, then I guessed correctly on the second try but he put in the corner.

Add to that like the two best saves I ever made were pointless because they scored off the resulting corners.
Nobody favours the keeper when a penalty is taken. If you can save one, successfully, even one, you've done an excellent job. The only penalties I didn't score were the one's I missed. Though, when you miss them you feel like a right idiot.
 

Dre89

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It happens for the same reason people believe in all kinds of ridiculous nonsense like alien abductions, the loch nes monster, bigfoot, and homeopathy. There's not one answer, there's many:

a) Some percentage is fraud and liars. People who go to a haunted house and claim to see a ghost, just because they want an interesting story to tell. Innocent white lies, or even bigger ones in the case of homeopathy.

b) Psychological effects: As demonstrated by the eye's blind spot, your brain makes up data all the time depending on what it thinks ought to be there. What you "see" is not an objective view of reality. What you see is what your brain decides that the data should be interpreted as. Sometimes it's very wrong. EDIT: Some people claim to have seen Elvis (recently) and I don't doubt that they have. But that doesn't mean Elvis is still alive.

c) Subtle body language. The reason why it's imperative to have double blind studies in social science is to eliminate these kinds of effects. If you ask someone "Did I pray for you last night?" there are hundreds of subtle clues that you give off naturally that convey the supposedly hidden answer. This is entirely subconscious and you can't prevent doing it just by trying not to.

d) Confirmation bias. You remember the hits and ignore the misses. Even if you may have an interesting case here, what about all the thousands or millions of times that this failed? Even if the odds of guessing the answer correctly were 1 in a million, that's not very rare. When you consider that millions of random events happen to you on a daily basis, each one having a "1 in a million" chance to do something memorable. But you don't remember all those millions of missed events. The mind naturally glazes over them and just remembers the hits.

EDIT:

e) Luck. Sometimes you just get lucky. It happens. Correctly guessing a Yes/No question a few times is not rare. Assuming perfect entropy in the answers (which it won't have, so these are overestimates) even if someone correctly guessed a question 5 times in a row, the chances of doing it by luck are 1 in 2^5 = 1 : 32. Not exactly a rare occurrence.
Firstly, the prayer thing was done over the phone. And I didn't ask her if she knew I prayed for her or not, she just said it first thing, so there were no clues for her to pick up on. And even if there were, she wouldn't be the type to pick up on them anyway.

As, for the euphoric feeling, there's no confirmation bias. It happens 100% of the time. It's different to asking him for things, because I've got things soon after asking him, but then I've also not got them either, so I don't mention that because that would be confirmation bias.

As for the brain one, there isn't anything to see. I talk to God, or think I need to talk to him more, and I suddenly get a euphoric feeling over me, every time. It's not a matter of my brain making me see something that isn't there, it'd be more like my brain associating a positive experience with the thought of God to encourage me to believe in him, due to the positive effects of that.

The wierd thing is though that there's been plenty of times where I wished I didn't believe in him, and that I liked the world better without him. It was more comforting for me to believe that he didn't exist, yet I still got that euphoric feeling So I'm really confused by what my brain is doing to me.
 

Bob Jane T-Mart

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As, for the euphoric feeling, there's no confirmation bias. It happens 100% of the time. It's different to asking him for things, because I've got things soon after asking him, but then I've also not got them either, so I don't mention that because that would be confirmation bias.
As far as you remember. Human memory is a rather weird thing. A lot of events slip from your grasp. But I actually think that there is something going on in your brain that's making you feel happy when you pray.

The wierd thing is though that there's been plenty of times where I wished I didn't believe in him, and that I liked the world better without him. It was more comforting for me to believe that he didn't exist, yet I still got that euphoric feeling So I'm really confused by what my brain is doing to me.
Hmm... I wouldn't have clue. We'd need a psychologist or something to analyse this properly.
 

Nicholas1024

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@Dre
Was she right every single time, and roughly how many times would you guess it was?

Because although 5 or even a dozen times in a row can be attributed to luck, it doesn't take terribly long for the probabilities to approach zero. (To give a good comparison, there's roughly a one in a billion chance to get 30 heads in a row. So if she were to guess correctly for every exam over the course of a couple years in college/high school/whatever, then I think it's safe to rule out random chance.)
 

Dre89

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@Dre
Was she right every single time, and roughly how many times would you guess it was?

Because although 5 or even a dozen times in a row can be attributed to luck, it doesn't take terribly long for the probabilities to approach zero. (To give a good comparison, there's roughly a one in a billion chance to get 30 heads in a row. So if she were to guess correctly for every exam over the course of a couple years in college/high school/whatever, then I think it's safe to rule out random chance.)
It wasn't that many times, probably around 5 or under. That doesn't sound like many, but it's not like she'd just be guessing to try and trick me into believing that my prayers are working. On the nights I prayed, she felt some form of sensation, that she was being aided or uplifted in some sense, and the times I didn't she didn't feel any of that and hard a much harder time completing her assignments.

I guess it could just be a coincidence that she had that uplift on those nights I prayed (and only those nights) and then assumed I prayed for her on those nights and didn't on the nights she didn't feel it.

Rv- If you're suggesting I'm advocating things like near death experiences and miracles then you're wrong.

I just mentioned the talking to God thing to find out the phsychological stance on it, and just mentioned the prayer thing because it potentially raises the probability of the euphoric feeling being God (I repeat potentially).
 

rvkevin

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Rv- If you're suggesting I'm advocating things like near death experiences and miracles then you're wrong.
I'm not. I just shared what I considered to be an interesting hypothesis concerning them that I hadn't considered before. Namely, that they expect they are going to die and then imagine what is next. For the religious, this means the pearly gates; for the secular, a funeral.
 

Dre89

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I've heard of naturalistic explanations for NDEs before. I think out-of-body experiences are a more potentially legitimate case, because they provide knowledge that the person couldn't have attained without leaving their body. I'm still on the fence about it though.

Ok another random question. Take this paradox I thought up the other day-

There is a stone in a cave which says "everything in this case is faulty and corrupt".

Is this just a standard self-referential paradox (the classic SR paradox being 'this statement is false') or is it a modification of it?

It seems different to me because unlike the standard SR paradox, which either ends in a truth or falsehood (or neither really, or both at the same time), this one always ends in a falsehood-

-The message is not true (everything in the cave is not faulty and corrupt), meaning that the stone is faulty and corrupt, because it has a false message.

-If what the stone says is true, then it also applies to the stone, meaning that the stone is also faulty and corrupt, meaning its message is not true.

-If the message is true, but does not apply to the stone, then that means that there actually is something in the cave that isn't faulty and corrupt (the stone), meaning it is a falsehood again.

So what I'm asking is, is this just the 'this statement is false' paradox, with different subjects, or is it a different kettle of fish?

I know it's a random question but it's bothering me.

The other question is that is it possible that everything in the cave actually be F and C? Because if it is, that means the stone would be too, despite having the correct message. So can the stone be F and C if it actually has the correct message?
 

Bob Jane T-Mart

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@Dre

This is the paradox you're basically talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradox

I'm sick of trying to make a post and have the modem cut-out, so I can't really be bothered to put much effort into this one. Sorry.

The middle case of your analysis is a bit weird. You mention that the stone is correct, and is hence false because it's right about everything inside the cave being faulty and corrupt. The stone is therefore correct and false, not just false.

The last case a moot point, because there is no "it only applies to everything else" phrase on the stone. If there was, it could be true without being well false.
 

Dre89

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Yeah you're probably right about the paradox. I think I was too desperate to create my own paradox.

I think I may have come up with two logical fallacies. They're definitely fallacies, it's just a question of whether they've already been identified before (which they probably have).

Also, random update, I'm starting to think those euphoric feelings I was having were definitely psychological tricks. The reason why I think that is because I started getting that feeling just now when I was thinking some pretty bad thoughts. It kept coming back up when I thought these things, and these are definitely things a God would not encourage me to do.
 

Nicholas1024

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I'd say the answer to that question could be true or false. It's completely possible that something in the cave isn't faulty/corrupt and it's just the stone lying. It's also possible that everything including the stone is faulty/corrupt, and the stone just happens to be right (kinda like a broken clock, just because it's faulty doesn't mean it's wrong 100% of the time.)
 

Dre89

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But the message on the stone would be faulty.

If a message is faulty that can't mean anything other than it being wrong.

:phone:
 

Bob Jane T-Mart

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Another thing guys, with the school term beginning soon, I'm not going to be able to post anywhere near as often around here. The final year, coupled with final exams is unfortunately a lot of work, and a lot rides on it. Sorry guys.
 

Evil Eye

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I've never been a fan of professors that feel theory trumps practicality and empiricism with regard to what they dedicate their teaching to and expect you to learn. But I have learned to deal with it, as it seems like the easiest curriculum to mill out from year to year with minimal fuss.

However, the text I am reading right now is absolutely godawful. This isn't just theory-focused. It is theory in a complete vacuum of anything that truly exists. I am literally reading about theory about theory. Theorizing about theory. Creating theoretical orientations about theory. And on and on it goes, in an endless rabbit hole of "why am I paying hundreds of dollars to read this ****?"

Times like these are why I hate our archaic post-secondary educational system.
 

SuperBowser

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However, the text I am reading right now is absolutely godawful. This isn't just theory-focused. It is theory in a complete vacuum of anything that truly exists. I am literally reading about theory about theory. Theorizing about theory. Creating theoretical orientations about theory. And on and on it goes, in an endless rabbit hole of "why am I paying hundreds of dollars to read this ****?"
I'm not sure what exactly you're reading, but theorizing about theories can actually be an important subject.

I had to read studies debating the merits of different methodologies to explore a topic. They went into some serious meta issues/philosophy crap. I hated it. But I still recognize it was important.
 

Evil Eye

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@Adumb: I dabble.

@Bowser:

The thing is that I'm studying a practical degree. Or, what is meant to be a practical degree. Criminology. There is very little value in theorizing about theory for what I am studying, if only because every single intro-level class I've taken already does that, and this is a second-level course. I understand the point of understanding the way theoretical orientations can act as lenses to the way people absorb information and that this can be dissected, yadda yadda, but this can be done without excessive redundancy. You can skip rambling for nine pages of hypothetical metaphors about the very existence of theory. I get it. I get it. EVERYONE gets it. It's not a complicated idea. But it went on, and on, and on. Layer after layer after layer of disconnected theory.

I'm not taking a philosophy degree, or a philosophy course. What miniscule amount of this theorizing about theorizing about theory is actually relevant to my degree could have been summed up in one concise paragraph. Instead I'm reading the text equivalent of the long-winded ramblings of people that are high on extreme narcotics and love the sounds of their own voices. I hope that clarifies things.
 

Dre89

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EE is right.

Metatheorising isn't important in any field except philosophy because all other fields simply assume certain theories (eg. science assumes the scientific method, the empirical findings are accurate etc.).

The question of theories of for example criminology would be classed under the philosophy of criminology, not criminology itself. Although the philosophy of criminology could be done by both philosophers and criminologists.

Random question, what's more probable-

That one man kills 10 000 soldiers (all attacking him at once).

That God kills them for him.

Of course, neither is probable, but one is technically more probable than the other.

The reason why I bring this up is because invoki,ng the supernatural is generally considered the most improbabale explanation for a phenomena. Ockham's Razor also suggests to favour the theory that invokes the least amount of beings, and the theory that invokes that least amount of types of beings (eg. physical vs. non-physical).

By both these strains of logic, we should favour the theory that the man did it, but in some ways it still seems more improbable than God.

Also, ignore the moral issues of God killing people. It's more just about God doing a miraacle versus a human doing an incredibly improbable yet non-supernatural feat.
 

Evil Eye

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It's interesting. If you accept the conceit that there is a God and throw aside the moral facet of the scenario, one would assume that God killing ten thousand soldiers on the man's behalf would be more probable simply because a man being able to perform this feat is so improbable to begin with.

At the same time when you throw out the morality of the God figure, you open a lot of other hypothetical cans of worms. If there's no moral facet of this question to consider, then for what motive does God kill these 10,000 men? Why isn't God always killing 10,000 men, or the comparably stronger force in every battle? I guess it opens up a lot of the questions atheists, agnostics, and curious deists ask about God figures in the first place, haha.
 
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Random question, what's more probable-

That one man kills 10 000 soldiers (all attacking him at once).

That God kills them for him.

Of course, neither is probable, but one is technically more probable than the other.

The reason why I bring this up is because invoki,ng the supernatural is generally considered the most improbabale explanation for a phenomena. Ockham's Razor also suggests to favour the theory that invokes the least amount of beings, and the theory that invokes that least amount of types of beings (eg. physical vs. non-physical).

By both these strains of logic, we should favour the theory that the man did it, but in some ways it still seems more improbable than God.
I don't think you can even compare the two, mostly because it's essentially impossible to determine a probability for one of the two. We can't even determine a justifiable probability for the existence of god in the first place... How could we even determine the probability of his actions? That we would jump to the idea in the first place that god is more probable is simply a failure of our intuition taking precedence over our logic.
 

Dre89

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EE- Forget that I said God kills 10 000 people. Just imagine he did some random miracle like make a mountain hover in the air or something like that.

BPC- But people do have a general idea of the probabilities.

For example, Ockham's Razor would say to favor the man killing 10 000 people, because the latter theory posits the existence of an extra being (God).

It's also generally considered that a supernatural explanation is by definition the most improbable explanation of any event.

My point in bringing up the thought experiment is that it appears to defy the traditional protocall, because it does appear more likely that God would do a miracle than one man kill 10 000 soldiers.
 

rvkevin

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Dre. said:
For example, Ockham's Razor would say to favor the man killing 10 000 people, because the latter theory posits the existence of an extra being (God).
Occam's Razor says don't multiply entities beyond necessity. If it is necessary to invoke a second entity because one is insufficient to explain the facts, then it does not violate Occam's Razor. Although, if you are going to invoke the supernatural, you might as well say that the guy was Neo (a ghost, someone who is immortal, etc.), which would make this proposition more probable than a God helping him. This avoids any moral quagmire EE brought up and doesn't invoke a second entity. If you take this approach, then, yes, it makes sense that the man killing 10,000 attackers is more probable.
 

Dre89

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But the man scenario doesn't invoke the supernatural, that's the idea.

The whole point is that the general consensus is that the supernatural is less probable than the natural, yet in this scenario it doesn't appear to be the case.

Also, let's just say it was an evil demon instead of God to avoid the moral problem.
 

rvkevin

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What is the probability of one man defeating 10,000 attackers? Do we even assign a non-zero probability to this? What odds would it take for you to bet on the guy?
 

AltF4

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Well, sure, once you grant the existence of an all-powerful deity who cares deeply for the everyday lives of humans, then "god did it" becomes a perfectly likely and logical explanation for all sorts of things. War started? New family member born? Found your car keys? God did it. If we lived in a world where the existence of such a being were not questionable and obviously existed, then it would be silly to think that god didn't interfere with the man fighting off 10,000 others.

That would be like the characters in Harry Potter seeing a man levitating, and then asking the question "was that magic, or did I hallucinate seeing it?". For them, it was far more likely to be magic than a random hallucination. Because in their world magic obviously exists.

The hypothetical situation is only interesting is you consider the existence of a god to be an open question. I suspect you can anticipate my response: The supernatural is by definition the least likely explanation for any event. Many more rare things have happened in the real world than a measly case of 1 man fighting off 10,000 successfully.

And furthermore, the entire line of reasoning is objectionable. "Find an instance of one rare thing happening, attribute it to god". And in practice, the "rare thing" invariably turns out to be either curiously unproven to ever have happened, or in fact exceedingly mundane and not rare at all.

What I might listen to is a whole series of events which are thought to be rare but can demonstrably be seen to occur at a higher rate than they should. And even then, this happens all the time in normal science. You'd have to go through a lot of hoops to start eliminating all natural explanations before delving into the supernatural.
 

Nicholas1024

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Right, IMO before you turn to the supernatural, you want to make sure that there's no reasonable natural explanation. However, if you have extensive data that basically says "As far as we know, this should never happen", and you know for a fact that the event did in fact happen (You personally saw it, it was on national news, whatever), that's when you turn to the supernatural.

To give an example, let's say a guy claims he can levitate rocks with his mind. With today's technology available, there's a lot of ways he could fake that, so just watching him do it (unless he were to do it to something impossibly huge like Mt. Everest, which our technology couldn't duplicate/do so without being obvious) wouldn't be enough. No, you'd want to force him to do it in a controlled environment, lifting a rock of your choice (so it wasn't prepared to be magnetic or such), in a location of your pick (to keep the outcome from being influenced from any setup he might have had), and perhaps with some scientific instruments to monitor things more precisely.

If after all that, he's still levitating the rock and you can't detect why (No string or such holding it suspended, no magnets in play, etc.), that's when it's time to say "Okay, perhaps this guy is in fact for real."
 

Dre89

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Alt- The question of God's existence is open in this scenario. It doesn't assume his existence.

And I don't care about all your hypotheticals that don't apply to this scenario.

It's a question of whether the principles of OR and the supernatural always being the most improbable explanation always hold true.
 

Evil Eye

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Business theory is infinitely more interesting and digestable than theory-about-theory-about criminological theory
 

GoldShadow

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Right, IMO before you turn to the supernatural, you want to make sure that there's no reasonable natural explanation. However, if you have extensive data that basically says "As far as we know, this should never happen", and you know for a fact that the event did in fact happen (You personally saw it, it was on national news, whatever), that's when you turn to the supernatural.

To give an example, let's say a guy claims he can levitate rocks with his mind. With today's technology available, there's a lot of ways he could fake that, so just watching him do it (unless he were to do it to something impossibly huge like Mt. Everest, which our technology couldn't duplicate/do so without being obvious) wouldn't be enough. No, you'd want to force him to do it in a controlled environment, lifting a rock of your choice (so it wasn't prepared to be magnetic or such), in a location of your pick (to keep the outcome from being influenced from any setup he might have had), and perhaps with some scientific instruments to monitor things more precisely.

If after all that, he's still levitating the rock and you can't detect why (No string or such holding it suspended, no magnets in play, etc.), that's when it's time to say "Okay, perhaps this guy is in fact for real."
Of course, this is assuming our science and technology is adequate to explain such a phenomenon, and that if it's unexplainable by current scientific/technological means, it's possible the guy is for real. I'd take the opposite road.

If despite everything, our science and technology can't explain it, it's not necessarily that it's beyond the realm of science/tech, but that our science/tech knowledge is not yet advanced enough to explain it, and someday in the future it very well might be easily explained.
 

Nicholas1024

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Except our science and tech is advancing to the point where we know almost everything about the universe. We know of the four fundamental forces that dictate everything that happens in the universe, and we're likely only another 50-100 years away from actually unifying the four and getting a complete theory of EVERYTHING. A few hundred years ago, you'd have had a point. But our science is getting close to where "Huge discovery that opens up amazing new possibilities everyone would have called impossible" is becoming less and less likely. Also, even if it is super-tech and can be done easily 200 years from now, you'd still have to explain how some random guy managed to get his hands on something that can do that (and why it's not being used for more practical applications.) Unless you're of BPC's train of thought that nothing can ever be used as evidence for the supernatural except pure logic (which basically makes the claim "There is no God" or "We cannot know if there is a God" unfalsifiable statements), I don't see what more you can ask evidence-wise.
 

rvkevin

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Nicholas1024 said:
Except our science and tech is advancing to the point where we know almost everything about the universe.
This line of thought is self-defeating for if you're hypothesis is true, then it would flip science on its head and we would have to start over again. So many principles of physics would have to be discarded if we found an omnipotent being. Conservation of mass, gone. First and second laws of thermodynamics, gone. Speed of light being the natural speed limit, gone. Conservation of angular momentum, gone. Conservation of energy, gone. Omniscience would violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. When you propose something that can do anything, including violating physics, you can't then say that we know anything since it would upset all of what we thought we have learned.
 

Theftz22

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So many principles of physics would have to be discarded if we found an omnipotent being. Conservation of mass, gone. First and second laws of thermodynamics, gone...Conservation of angular momentum, gone. Conservation of energy, gone.
The conservation laws and thermodynamic laws are stated for closed systems, which means that since any system in which an omnipotent being acts from the outside is not a closed system, there would be no violation. The laws would still hold in general whenever the being didn't act, but again, no violation because the laws are stated for closed systems. That's like saying that if there were a multiverse and it could somehow causally effect our universe from the outside, all these laws would be violated.

Speed of light being the natural speed limit, gone.
This one might end up being false anyway due to the results at CERN. In any event, the speed of light could end up still being considered the "natural" speed limit, insofar as we count the omnipotent being as "supernatural".

Omniscience would violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Not if you accept an interpretation of quantum physics on which the uncertainty is merely epistemic rather than ontic. Many such interpretations exist.
 

rvkevin

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underdog22 said:
The conservation laws and thermodynamic laws are stated for closed systems, which means that since any system in which an omnipotent being acts from the outside is not a closed system, there would be no violation. The laws would still hold in general whenever the being didn't act, but again, no violation because the laws are stated for closed systems. That's like saying that if there were a multiverse and it could somehow causally effect our universe from the outside, all these laws would be violated.
I know its for a closed system, but an omniscient deity can still violate it. Even if we consider that it is outside of the universe, that still composes a closed system. It doesn't matter if he chooses not to, but he still can. An omnipotent being can be considered part of a system that is closed and then violate the second law of thermodynamics. If not, then we have found something that an omnipotent being can't do, which would be contradictory. The only way to reconcile this is to say that the being becomes more disordered, but I'm not sure if that has any meaning for a 'supernatural' being.
This one might end up being false anyway due to the results at CERN. In any event, the speed of light could end up still being considered the "natural" speed limit, insofar as we count the omnipotent being as "supernatural".
Sure, we could tag everything we know with "well this doesn't apply in situation X" (here being when the deity acts). I'm sure we would count that as knowledge, right? That would be like saying Newton understood gravity. His laws of motion were accurate, except in situations close to the speed of light. It makes a mockery of what it means to understand something. If something can change around the gravitational constants at will, then that would totally revert our understanding of mass and gravity to square one.

By the way, basically everyone in the science community thinks that there was a flaw in that measurement, even the team that recorded it (+1 for skepticism).
Not if you accept an interpretation of quantum physics on which the uncertainty is merely epistemic rather than ontic. Many such interpretations exist.
If it is an epistemic principle, an omniscient deity would still violate it. You can't say there a principle in which X can't be known, and then say that a being that knows X doesn't violate said principle. The reason we have the Uncertainty Principle is because of the way you get information from (i.e. measure) an object, not because of quantum mechanics.
 

Theftz22

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I know its for a closed system, but an omniscient deity can still violate it. Even if we consider that it is outside of the universe, that still composes a closed system. It doesn't matter if he chooses not to, but he still can. An omnipotent being can be considered part of a system that is closed and then violate the second law of thermodynamics. If not, then we have found something that an omnipotent being can't do, which would be contradictory. The only way to reconcile this is to say that the being becomes more disordered, but I'm not sure if that has any meaning for a 'supernatural' being.
You could say that there is a closed system that comprises the omnipotent being and the universe, but what reason would we have to think that the conservation laws apply to that system? The conservation laws are not absolute, there are laws of nature that we've discovered empirically within the context of observations within our own universe. We don't have any good reason to apply those laws to anything outside of the universe.

Sure, we could tag everything we know with "well this doesn't apply in situation X" (here being when the deity acts). I'm sure we would count that as knowledge, right? That would be like saying Newton understood gravity. His laws of motion were accurate, except in situations close to the speed of light. It makes a mockery of what it means to understand something. If something can change around the gravitational constants at will, then that would totally revert our understanding of mass and gravity to square one.
All we are doing is quantifying the law. It's not as if this isn't already done, for instance there is the implicit quantifier, in the actual world, such that the law is:

In the actual world, the speed of light is the speed limit.

Because surely we don't want to say that's it's logically impossible for something to go faster than the speed of light, just actually impossible. And similarly we can add the quantifier, for all natural beings. I don't see what the issue is with that.

In any event, it's not at all obvious that the speed of light being the natural speed limit is a necessary law of physics. On the Lorentzian interpretation of relativity, there is no restriction on things going faster than the speed of light, and even on the Minkowskian interpretation, it's not that things can't go faster than the speed of light, it's that particles can't the accelerate from subluminal velocity to superluminal velocity. There is no restriction on particles which always travel at superluminal speeds.

Indeed, Bell's theorem seems to confirm that things can travel at superluminal speeds (from wiki, "Results of tests of Bell's theorem agree with the predictions of quantum mechanical theory, and demonstrate that some quantum effects appear to travel faster than light."). That's why JS Bell himself advocated the Lorentzian interpretation of relativity ("There is no intention here to make any reservation whatever about the power and precision of Einstein’s approach. But in my opinion there is also something to be said for taking students along the road made by Fitzgerald, Larmor, Lorentz and Poincaré. The longer road sometimes gives more familiarity with the country." -JS Bell, How to Teach Special Relativity).

Lorentz anticipated the possibility of superluminal velocities and how they would confirm his interpretation in 1913:

"Finally, it should be noted that the daring assertion that one can never observe velocities larger than the velocity of light contains a hypothetical restriction of what is accessible to us, [a restriction] which cannot be accepted without some reservation."

In sum, the speed of light being the "natural speed limit" is not a law of physics but a presumptuous restriction made for the advancement of a Minkowskian interpretation of relativity theory. Anyone who accepts the existence of an omnipotent being is perfectly in line with modern physics to reject that interpretation in favor of a Lorentzian interpretation. Results of Bell's theorem are confirmatory of that position and any new results from CERN would simply be icing on the cake.

By the way, basically everyone in the science community thinks that there was a flaw in that measurement, even the team that recorded it (+1 for skepticism).
And have they succeeded in finding a flaw yet?

If it is an epistemic principle, an omniscient deity would still violate it. You can't say there a principle in which X can't be known, and then say that a being that knows X doesn't violate said principle. The reason we have the Uncertainty Principle is because of the way you get information from (i.e. measure) an object, not because of quantum mechanics.
On the interpretations of quantum physics I'm advocating, the uncertainty principle entails that X can't be known by humans because of the limitations we have in measuring quantum particles, not because of any fundamental indeterminacy of reality itself, hence why the uncertainty is epistemic and not ontic. But for an omniscient being, he wouldn't even need to measure the particles in order to know the facts about position and momentum of those particles. Hence he doesn't encounter any uncertainty problem. So long as propositions about the momentum and position are true, which they are by nature of the uncertainty being merely epistemic, an omniscient being would know them.
 

rvkevin

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You could say that there is a closed system that comprises the omnipotent being and the universe, but what reason would we have to think that the conservation laws apply to that system? The conservation laws are not absolute, there are laws of nature that we've discovered empirically within the context of observations within our own universe. We don't have any good reason to apply those laws to anything outside of the universe.
There is no reason that the laws would apply to that system. That is the point, hence why I said it would violate said laws. You’re simply stating the obvious. Of course science does not deal with absolutes and is able to adapt to new information by revising previous paradigms. However, you don’t then say that the previously discarded paradigms showed that we then had a wonderful understanding of how the universe operates.
Because surely we don't want to say that's it's logically impossible for something to go faster than the speed of light, just actually impossible. And similarly we can add the quantifier, for all natural beings. I don't see what the issue is with that.
Yeah, I just re-read what Nicholas wrote and it is hilariously at odds with what you say here. “We know of the four fundamental forces that dictate everything that happens in the universe, and we're likely only another 50-100 years away from actually unifying the four and getting a complete theory of EVERYTHING.*” Let me add your qualifier: *Except for that magic thing.

It would be like saying of course magic isn’t real. We have a firm understanding about sleight of hand and how they perform their tricks. However, that David Copperfield fellow, he’s something else, he’s the real deal. This shouldn’t be a surprise or greatly affect our understanding of the universe in a significant way; we’ll just tag a disclaimer onto every physical law that we have discovered saying *This doesn’t apply when David Copperfield is performing. Do you really think this doesn’t have profound implications for the sciences?
In any event, it's not at all obvious that the speed of light being the natural speed limit is a necessary law of physics. On the Lorentzian interpretation of relativity, there is no restriction on things going faster than the speed of light, and even on the Minkowskian interpretation, it's not that things can't go faster than the speed of light, it's that particles can't the accelerate from subluminal velocity to superluminal velocity. There is no restriction on particles which always travel at superluminal speeds.
So you’re adding the restriction that said being can’t decelerate below the speed of light? Can we please stay on topic? Omnipotence means all-powerful. Omnipotence means he can emulate being a human that can turn water into wine and walk on water. It would be a little hard to do that while traveling greater than the speed of light. Even if your proposition is correct that a finer distinction needs to be made for this principle, an omnipotent being would still be able to violate it. Also, since he would be able to take the form of particles, he would then be able to manipulate them in such a way that would violate everything that we know about them.
And have they succeeded in finding a flaw yet?
It’s built on assumptions that can’t be verified, which is why the skepticism is warranted. It has been proposed that some of these assumptions may have been in error. For example, the accurate measurement of a couple hundred miles which required a margin of error of a couple inches may have been an error. Whether this measurement is correct, we don’t have a means to verify it. However, this doesn’t prevent people wailing on the internet claiming that the result as accurate.
On the interpretations of quantum physics I'm advocating, the uncertainty principle entails that X can't be known by humans because of the limitations we have in measuring quantum particles, not because of any fundamental indeterminacy of reality itself, hence why the uncertainty is epistemic and not ontic. But for an omniscient being, he wouldn't even need to measure the particles in order to know the facts about position and momentum of those particles. Hence he doesn't encounter any uncertainty problem. So long as propositions about the momentum and position are true, which they are by nature of the uncertainty being merely epistemic, an omniscient being would know them.
By what method does this being know the position and speed of a particle without interacting with it? It requires more than simply there being a correct answer since knowledge implies some sort of justification. This being must have some method for obtaining said information without interacting with said particles. How does it do this, by magic?
 

Sucumbio

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This board died fast. Is everyone just bored with the recent topics or are people like, going out and enjoying the sunlight or something...
 
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