Re: The Death of RAB?
Thursday, the 1st of September, 2005
Mikhail:
The stance assumed by Mike Morris depends on discerning
an unfathomable mystery at the core of human agency.
I said:
Not exactly. Only an as-yet-unfathomed mystery.
I *do* suspect it will not be fathomed, and, ala
Penrose, I could sketch in physics and math why
this might be so. But whether it will able to be
fathomed or no will not be dependent on such
sketches, but only upon its successful fathoming,
when and if that happens.
Mikhail:
Your tortuous syntax
I said:
I just read now twice over and don't get "tortuous" here.
Mikhail:
You don't get "ala" or "whether it will able to be fathomed or no"?
I think I can diagram it and that it is correct. Since
I usually leave out words in typing onscreen (witness "it"
meant after "read" about 6 lines up from here) I figured
I'd left out something, so I re-read it, and it still
seems to me to read like I'd speak it. I mean, it's
not Newsweek copy, but it's also not anywheres near my
worst attempt in that direction. Or yours, for that matter.
Mikhail:
[syntax]
fails to disguise a crucial concession that
vitiates your objections to socioeconomic determinism so absurdly
affected by the sophist. There is no reason to denounce a heuristic
analysis formulated in the terms of market forces, merely because
our current understanding of economic dynamics falls well short of
the degree of predictive accuracy found in Newtoniam mechanics.
I said:
I'm sorry, but I don't see that this is much of a concession
at all. I have never complained about heuristics understood
as heuristics. The problem is heuristics understood as something
more than heuristics.
Mikhail:
To do otherwise would impugn the Aristotelian
foundations of physics, without which the
Newtonian breakthrough would not have taken place.
I said:
I am wholly agreed. However, let us not forget that
Bode's Law was also one of those Aristotelian-science
attempts at a "foundation" for solar-system astronomy.
There is a real issue about whether "human science"
can be reduced to physics. Possibilities include:
(1) It can't, as well as (2) It can, but it won't
do us any good when we do reduce it---that is,
there may be no epiphenomenal law at all, just
heuristics that work or no, depending on stuff we
are doomed not to understand, because we cannot
connect the micro up to the macro description.
The proof in science of course is always in
the pudding. It works if and when it works. If you are
still in the Aristotelian phase, there is a legitimate
course of study there, a science, something I think I
have always agreed to. In the words of Rutherford,
"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
The trick is not to pretend you are doing physics if
all you are doing is stamp collecting.
Mikhail:
Once again, this concession suffices to dispel your objections
to socioeconomic determinism.
Nonsense. It ain't a concession, and the fact that you even
begin to think it a concession means you never read my claim
in the first place. It was right there in the design of the
"McDonald's experiment" all along. If a person has this
"religious" or "classical ethical philosophy" derived
thing called "free will", then he might well behave in
a certain "predictable" way 10,000 times in a row, but he's
still not a loaded die. The mechanism is hidden, and almost
certainly not simple. That's the basic problem. So, the
question remains whether empirically watching him always
react this way and not that way 10,000 times in a row tells
us anything about the 10,001st time. So, what you do is
publish a paper formulating the observed correlation as an
heuristic, epiphenomenal law. But, that law is not like
quantum electrodynamics, with any rootedness in anything
fundamental. So, it remains *heuristic*---of the nature
of a guess of possible use in finding further things out.
Mikhail:
As before, constant congruence
of your ideology with your interests serves as the most salient
datum to support its inductive inference.
I simply don't understand your proposal,
repeated as nauseum in this forum. You have told
me (and us all) that you yourself have taken your
father's money, as he was entitled (as its owner)
to gift it or lend it or invest it with you. Is your
use of that money congruent with your ideology or not?
It would seem to me not. So, do we infer that the
mismatch between your behaviour and ideology constitutes
empirical proof of free will? Or is it that you don't
live your ideology, that is, that philosophy for you
is not a self-examination of how one ought to live?
You simply miss the point every time you bring up
your prediction that I won't write anything in opposition
to inherited wealth. I know I'm quite predictable in
many ways. In fact, I have many habits I positively relish.
Moreover, I have behaviours I cherish, such as trying hard
to align my ideology and my acts. But, that is more important
to me than what I eat for lunch at McDonald's if I so eat.
And yet, *even at McDonald's* I am a creature of habit and always
order fish sandwiches, never a hamburger. But I'm not going
to go out and eat a hamburger in response to someone's prediction
on usenet that "OK, Mike, well, I see that every time you've
ever gone to McDonald's since you were a kid, you've ordered
fish sandwiches, so *I predict you will order a fish sandwich*
if you ever go there again. Hah!" That doesn't constitute other
than a heuristic, stamp-collecting kind of prediction.
It isn't what I specified as a scientific law, method M. So,
it isn't worth it to me to even attempt choking down a hamburger
in empirical falsification of such a prediction. And that's
even in a case where there is approximately zero moral and
personal value attached to the difference between a fish
sandwich and a hamburger to me. Your prediction that I won't
write against inherited wealth is exactly like the prediction
that "If Morris eats at McDonald's, then he orders fish." It
isn't rooted in anything but stamp-collecting science.
By the way, do you imagine I *wouldn't* write against
inherited wealth under *any* circumstances? I mean, say,
if I were offered $100M to write an essay advocating the
forfeiture of every last penny of parental worth by the
state at death of the parents? Or if I were given the option
to write such an essay instead of undergoing some torture?
Or, even were a certain Puckish mood to take me, as it
sometimes does?
Mike Morris
(msmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
.
Relevant Pages
- Re: Undecidability in Physics
... are you agreeing with Svozil? ... Turing's remarkable comment suggests that he had given fresh thought to physics since writing the 1948 and 1950 papers. ... it was even argued by Sir Arthur Eddington that on account of the indeterminacy principle in quantum mechanics no such prediction is even theoretically possible.' ... It is unlikely that Turing was being drawn to Penrose's view of quantum mechanics as involving an uncomputable element. ...
(sci.logic) - Re: Time is a concept
... The maximum energy of the ejected electrons is independent of the ... without at all accepting that its ... are few if any scientists in theoretical physics at the moment who are ... prediction, and you'd rather sit and wait for that one to show up. ...
(sci.physics.relativity) - Re: Inaccurate QM Prediction
... I've extracted more information from the text "Quantum Physics of Atoms, ... energy equation that has incorporated specially relativistic effects. ... reality," you would think they would have also compared Dirac's prediction ... How does this compare to the QED prediction? ...
(sci.physics.relativity) - Re: Aether - a few idea to define it
... physics than yours. ... the more momenta is required to trigger the event. ... lifetime prediction, so that it can be tested independently? ... change would likely to be too slight ...
(sci.physics) - Re: Aether - a few idea to define it
... physics than yours. ... isolated particles that are not passing through any matter at all. ... or the charge on a capacitor after it is shorted. ... lifetime prediction, so that it can be tested independently? ...
(sci.physics) |
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