The purpose of the statement was to show Max that there is nothing wrong with considering the possibility that a law of conservation could change.

I agree with this. I even pointed out to Polis in the youtube channel that for a law conservation to go from a state of persistence to a state of non persistence would require a cause....that an atheist could argue that the reason laws of conservaton persist is simply because there is nothing to cause them not to persist.

A mathematical description is just that....a description. It is not nature. I think you are making an error by conflating the two.

ROFL. You're the one MAKING THAT EXACT MISTAKE conflating laws with reality all over the place. Like.. here:

The law, which is some words/math invented by people, didn't change. Reality changed in your example while the law continued to predict what it always predicted (now very incorrectly) because it can't do anything else.

There are two very simple points:

It's not logically impossible that nature could up and do completely crazy stuff at any point. Nobody disagrees with that. It's called the induction problem.

It is logically impossible that a mathematical equation that says E(t)=constant can also say E(t)=not constant.

By repeatedly conflating various parts of these two things, you've managed to make like 50 completely ****tarded nonsense posts while not being able to understand anything anybody ITT says and not even understanding what Polis says. His argument is terrible (science has no way to provably dismiss the induction problem.. no ****, it's not supposed to, and it gets worse from there), but even it doesn't make the simple mistakes that you're making over and over.

At this point I do not understand what the argument is about. If you have dropped the claim that some observable property of conservation laws is clear scientific evidence of the existence of a manipulated reality, then I do not see where there is a dispute between you and Max.

Max and I like to argue. I hold a lot more respect for him then I might lead on in a thread like this. I do think he is so wrapped up in the math that he fails to reckognize it is just a description and not the actual law of nature itself.

Polis's argument is not scientific. It isn't based on some testible hypotheses but rather a set of premises. The same can be said of the claim that the laws of nature are eternally unchanging....How can you even test a claim like that?

In any event Polis's argument about the persistence of being is just an element in a larger argument. Another element of his larger argument is a claim that the laws of nature are intentional. If I start arguing that here, I will probably be arguing against it with Polis on youtube.

A great deal of silly recriminations and useless talk could have been avoided if some charity had been applied to the discussion in order to first come to agreement on terminology. Stu is talking about the regulatory features by which the universe actually works - which we may or may not have much of an inkling. Max et all have been talking about the mathematical human constructs called laws of physics designed to describe, explain, and predict experimental data. Reasonable discussion is impossible until both sides agree on terminology.

A discussion is a little like the prisoner's dilemma. It goes best when both sides cooperate. This was a train wreck of defection after defection with both sides thinking they were making themselves look like the smart one. They weren't.


PairTheBoard

It's not like the induction problem wasn't mentioned multiple times, explained to him, linked, and "admitted to" ITT. Continuing to tard it up with the same "but induction problem!!!!" after that is pretty much trolling/willful ignorance no matter what terminology he's arguing it in.

Stu posted that he was talking about how the universe actually works when using "laws" language. That was ignored. The two sides should have concentrated on getting an agreed upon terminology. Neither side made any attempt to do so. Stu was not talking about the induction problem. You were talking about the induction problem. Stu was not talking about the human constructs we call laws of physics. You were talking about the laws of physics. Stu was talking about how the universe actually works. You should have recognized that and asked him to use different terminology for that. Both sides should have worked harder at communicating rather than trying to sound smart.


PairTheBoard

From Sklansky's Stu quote in post #1 to start this thread.

Which terms do we have to define? quark, charge, electron, proton...."?

Yeah, he was. Explicitly.

Which is exactly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction bullet point 2 in his terminology.

He was also ****tarding the "conservation" of math. Explicitly.

Even interpreted charitably, that's completely wrong, and it had been explained why multiple times.

Terminology should have been more consistent, but the end result would still have just been stu ****ing up basic logic and repeating "induction problem!!!!" 500 times using slightly different words.

I'm taking about the discussion over the constancy of so called laws of conservation.


PairTheBoard

I had no trouble seeing what he was getting at. Neither should have you. Harping on technical imprecision rather than seeking out the point he was trying to make amounts to just as tiresome a ****ing up of the thread.

I have no dog in this fight. Those are my observations.

As far as the Polis argument goes I think it fails on at least two points. First, it should be noted that the mathematical human constructs we call the laws of physics do not cause anything in the universe to happen. They certainly do not cause the stone in Polis' hand to persist in existing. The stone persists in existing - at least momentarily - because that's the way the universe is. Or put another way, the regulatory features by which the universe operates are such that the stone persists to exist - at least momentarily.

Now, we don't know whether those regulatory features of the universe are constant or variable. We assume they are constant and so attempt to capture them as such in our laws of physics. We have no evidence to indicate otherwise. But they might not be constant. Maybe they change every 20 billion years or so. Maybe they will leap to a new order of things this December 22. We don't know. However, and this is the relevant point, if they are constant for the life of the universe then the reason they are so is because that's the way the universe is. It's a rather slippery bit of questionable logic for Polis to insist that another regulatory feature must be present to keep them constant. Either the universe has the quality of lifelong constant regulatory features or it doesn't.

I think Polis tries to make his argument plausible via some tricky word play with the word "conserve". He argues that "laws" of conservation are required for the stone to persist in existing and since laws of conservation are required for something to persist there must be additional laws of conservation to "conserve" the laws of conservation. He has a hidden premise here that no thing can conserve itself. The stone requires a law to conserve it and the law reqires another law to conserve it ad infinitum. He concludes there must be some self conserving entity not subject to his premise that no thing is self conserving and so that entity is what we think of as god. According to Polis, only god can be self conserving.

In my opinion, any god that hangs his hat on such slippery psuedo logic as proposed by Polis here is a rather pinheaded god.


PairTheBoard

I knew what he was getting at too. That's why I said "induction problem" to him more than once, translated his objection into completely common jargon-free language that even he should have been able to follow, and linked the SEP page for it. Gumpzilla had said it as well. And then, after being told "yeah, there is no proof that nature won't get uppity, and everybody knows that", he still keeps asking to see the birth certificate over and over.

I mean would you really make a bet now, that even with it all completely laid out, that he won't keep making what are in effect the same crappy arguments that have already been addressed?

It fails for another simple reason as well- where he says early on you have to accept god or abandon science, that's not even an argument since science isn't in the business of doing what he says you need to accept god to make it do. Then there's the whole fail of assuming determinism outright (and then giving nondeterministic examples later). So besides the whole science, therefore determinism, therefore god argument making no sense at the "therefore god" point as you pointed out, it pretty much fails everywhere else too.

I think that's another Polis argument being discussed in another thread. In this thread Stu linked to a utube where Polis goes on a quest to find evidence of god. After searching through the brush he uncovers a stone, takes it home, washes it and holds it in is hand. He then asks why the stone doesn't cease to exist. Why doesn't it just go poof. He then claims the reason is laws of conservation which require a conserving law which requires a conserving law ad infinitum until you get to a self conserving entity which is exactly what we think of god being.


I claim the argument fails in the first place because so called "laws of conservation" are human conceptual constructs which cause nothing in the universe and may not even remotely resemble the actual regulatory features of the universe under which the stone persists in existing - at least for the moment. Also, those regulatory features may or may not be constant over the life of the universe but if they do happen to be constant then the reason is because that's how the universe is. If that's the case then Polis would say those regulatory features are self conserving and therefore they must be god. That's where I claim he fails in the second instance. Regulatory features of the universe may logically be constant over the life of the universe without the features necessarily being god.


PairTheBoard

What you're talking about is also in the paper I referenced (google xian intent phil, top hit). After reading that, I really didn't feel like sitting through the video too since it didn't appear to cover any new ground and I'd already seen more than enough epic fail from him.