science and maths

@Caroline,

Caroline;88434 wrote:

Yeah? (Sarcasm really doesn't suit you), yeah what is your point, you stated that suicide is good

No, I never said that. I said it is not always bad.

Caroline;88434 wrote:

so what is your conclusion or are you going to continue this tone like you always do and I'll just wont bother debating with you again

You don't think this is an exaggeration?

Caroline;88434 wrote:

like when you didn't want to know anymore when we were discussing domestic violence which I was hoping we could both learn something but its not about learning with you is it?

domestic violence? I must have lost track of the post, I am not even sure what you are talking about to be honest. If it is not about learning for me then don't respond to me, as simple as that.

Caroline;88434 wrote:

All I've seen in alot of your posts is alot of sarcastic comments, people just wont bother debating with you anymore. Shame.

It is a shame that you see them as sarcastic. "A lot" is a bit of an exaggeration. If you don't like me for some reason why not just say so? These provoked posts are to do what? Why invite me back here only to scorn and flame me?

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@rcs,

Can we drop this part of the conversation and get back on track?

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@rcs,

No Krumple it has nothing to do with trying to provoke you or disliking you, I'm just tired of people sniping and not actuallly debating, some/alot of what I said was not directed at you especially the bit about people just poke fun of others posts, (in the other thread). You know that we are friends and I value you, I'm just tired of it Krumple, I so want a good debate. I'm really sorry, I don't know why I was so harsh and to a friend, please accept my apologies. Paul I'm sorry for going off topic, I will stay out of this thread, I just wanted to apologise to Krumple.

1 Reply

@Caroline,

Krumple, nothing you are saying has anything to do with scientific exploration. It is just idle metaphysical speculation with a utilitarian bent.

As far as the explanatory power of science and math; mathematics is the art of puzzle making and solving. Any puzzle would have domain in mathematics. If the puzzle is solvable then mathematics can be used to solve it. It may be that new techniques and ways of thinking about the puzzle must be developed, but this has countless time before.

Science can at most tell us everything about how physical objects interact. It can give us closer and closer approximations to how physical events take place and what consequences they have. Science is a system developed for exploring everything physical (anything that can be sensed or measured even indirectly) and everything that has a physical consequence (which seems to make it necessarily physical).

---------- Post added 09-07-2009 at 05:21 PM ----------

Krumple;87278 wrote:

Also if love and like carried different degrees and were drastically different. Why is it in speech we NEVER hear, "I like and love sushi."? Because both denote a positive response and the reason we don't hear it is because we present a positive only once never twice. The same goes for people who hate to hear double negatives in sentences.

Do you understand the idea of upwards containment? Love=> Like but Like does not imply love. If we order a gradation of positive emotions a>b>c>d... if we say A(x) (we feel A about X) and A>n>m>.... we automatically imply that we feel the other less intense degrees of emotion towards X.

I would like to reiterate my point that we have an upper bound of 2^4,000,000,000,000,000 possible mental states (since we have 4,000,000,000,000,000 neurons on average,granted the actual value is much less than this but certainly much higher than 4,000,000,000,000). I would wager that a good bulk of these could represent emotional states and that there is quite a bit of gradation.

What I can say scientifically without making moral judgments is that there are a great many neuronal configurations that correlate to emotions. What I cannot say is whether these emotions are 'good' or 'bad'. such judgments are outside of the scope of pure science. They may be o.k. in profiteering and technology development, but not in science.

1 Reply

@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic11235;88826 wrote:

Krumple, nothing you are saying has anything to do with scientific exploration. It is just idle metaphysical speculation with a utilitarian bent.

Metaphysical? Are you kidding me? Thanks for the joke, I laughed quite a bit after reading that.

Zetetic11235;88826 wrote:

Do you understand the idea of upwards containment? Love=> Like but Like does not imply love. If we order a gradation of positive emotions a>b>c>d... if we say A(x) (we feel A about X) and A>n>m>.... we automatically imply that we feel the other less intense degrees of emotion towards X.

I explained this, I don't see how this is any different than what I said.

Zetetic11235;88826 wrote:

What I can say scientifically without making moral judgments is that there are a great many neuronal configurations that correlate to emotions. What I cannot say is whether these emotions are 'good' or 'bad'. such judgments are outside of the scope of pure science. They may be o.k. in profiteering and technology development, but not in science.

Once again, I can categorize them and you do it all the time. If you are configuring a statement to respond to a question or to make a claim, you structure sentences in such a way that they describe the very fact that I am pointing out. You do it all the time without even realizing it.

I'm still laughing about the metaphysical comment, thanks again for the humor.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;88851 wrote:

Metaphysical? Are you kidding me? Thanks for the joke, I laughed quite a bit after reading that.

All normative claims are metaphysical. I'm sorry if you do not understand this basic fact.

If you say that 'X is bad' deviates in meaning from 'I dislike X' then you are making a normative claim that ultimately rests on metaphysical speculation. If you do not think that they vary, then 'bad' reduces to an expression of distaste which in no way would factor into a scientific dialogue about human reactions to stimuli. I assumed that you took 'bad' and 'negative' and 'good' and 'positive' to indicate that a normative framework exists by which we could measure such a status of the reactions in a scientific way. I am sorry but such a claim is metaphysical and has no place in a scientific discussion.

Even if you did only intend to express your distaste or favor for a class of actions, your assertions are still strictly non scientific.

1 Reply

@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic11235;88862 wrote:

I assumed that you took 'bad' and 'negative' and 'good' and 'positive' to indicate that a normative framework exists by which we could measure such a status of the reactions in a scientific way.

Yeah, you said it, not I.

Bad does not always denote a negative and since I'm at it, good does not always denote a positive.

Once again their context is the distinguishing factor. Just like I have mentioned three times previously.

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@rcs,

I am still confused... my conclusion is that science cannot explain every thing.. so what can we actually take from science if they cannot explain everything?

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@rcs,

rcs;89142 wrote:

what can we actually take from science if they cannot explain everything?

Nothing can explain everything. Not even the entirety of all human cerebral endeavors can explain everything.

We can take from science answers to the questions that science asks, and we will have varying degrees of confidence in these answers based on the strength of the inquiry.

If science asks "how old is Mt. Everest" or "what happens if you expose staphylococci to tetracyclines", then we can get answers to those questions.

Science cannot answer "why is avarice sinful" -- but it would never ask that question anyway.

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@Aedes,

Yes, and here's a point of view:

Science, since its beginning, has been an aspect of human culture just like your reasoning ability is part of you.

In the same way you experience life and then retreat to your thoughts to reason on it, science responds to human experience.

If you're in heavy traffic and someone swerves in front of you, a less reasonable part of you takes over: the part that acts without thinking: reflex. Human societies work the same way.

So for example when the maniacs are coming over the hill to destroy us, it's not science that leads us, it's a more primal part of us. To the extent that scientific endeavors continue during this kind of crisis, it mainly in response to the crisis.

The idea that science should be our governor is tied to an episode in the 18th century when that became a common view. The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick are literary expressions of the fallout of this: implying that it's asking too much of science and leads to the image of the mind attacking the heart.

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@Krumple,

Krumple;88939 wrote:

Yeah, you said it, not I.

Bad does not always denote a negative and since I'm at it, good does not always denote a positive.

Once again their context is the distinguishing factor. Just like I have mentioned three times previously.

But that is not my point. My point is that what you are talking about has nothing to do with science and thus nothing to do with the subject of this thread a fortiori. So I ask you this: What do you hope to demonstrate here, and why?

---------- Post added 09-09-2009 at 04:01 PM ----------

Arjuna;89233 wrote:

Yes, and here's a point of view:

Science, since its beginning, has been an aspect of human culture just like your reasoning ability is part of you.

In the same way you experience life and then retreat to your thoughts to reason on it, science responds to human experience.

If you're in heavy traffic and someone swerves in front of you, a less reasonable part of you takes over: the part that acts without thinking: reflex. Human societies work the same way.

So for example when the maniacs are coming over the hill to destroy us, it's not science that leads us, it's a more primal part of us. To the extent that scientific endeavors continue during this kind of crisis, it mainly in response to the crisis.

The idea that science should be our governor is tied to an episode in the 18th century when that became a common view. The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick are literary expressions of the fallout of this: implying that it's asking too much of science and leads to the image of the mind attacking the heart.

Logic serves to show us the results of actions given a set of circumstances that are likely to be true. Action itself comes from the Limbic System.

Since I am unclear about your point in the last paragraph, here are two responses:

Take 1)The reactionary sentiment you cite has a point, but it is overstated. The problem comes from dogmatism; one can use reason in one's own actions and be efficient as there is plenty of leeway for adaptation of method. When something becomes 'policy' it stops being adaptive, it becomes restrictive and is rarely still logical. Policy may refer to old logic, but it is not logical in and of itself. It is a control method, and it is more or less unconditionally flawed. That is not to say that policy doesn't have its place.

Take 2) When people forget that their existential woes cannot be answered by science (unless they simply want to medicate themselves and forget) they become dangerous. They begin to worship science and forget that science can only tell us what things do in relation to eachother. If we were to answer every scientific query at the most fundamental level, we would still be left with 'why?'. Science does not deal in transfinite lines of questioning. It does not deal with subjective qualms and existential suffering.

1 Reply

@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic11235;89259 wrote:

Logic serves to show us the results of actions given a set of circumstances that are likely to be true. Action itself comes from the Limbic System.

With spinal reflexes, the action potential comes directly out of the spine. Like if you step on something sharp, you jump to the other foot. This sophisticated action is very reasonable, but no reason was involved.

Zetetic11235;89259 wrote:

If we were to answer every scientific query at the most fundamental level, we would still be left with 'why?'. Science does not deal in transfinite lines of questioning. It does not deal with subjective qualms and existential suffering.

Well said. Except that straying into the transfinite happens without any existential woes. If I have a 12 volt battery and there's infinite resistance across the terminals, what's the voltage across the terminals? That was a question on test I once took. I looked around at everybody else writing, and thought... what? The answer was 12 volts. It's a 12 volt battery.

When I approached the instructor after class with some confusion over what happened to Ohm's Law when the resistance became infinite, he said: "oh.. well it's not really infinite...there are ions in the air. It's infinite for all practical purposes." Practical minded people don't ask the impractical questions that would reveal the limits of commonly used scientific models.

But what we're looking at here is the relationship between science and technology. There's ongoing give and take between them.

1 Reply

@Arjuna,

Arjuna;89295 wrote:

Well said. Except that straying into the transfinite happens without any existential woes. If I have a 12 volt battery and there's infinite resistance across the terminals, what's the voltage across the terminals? That was a question on test I once took. I looked around at everybody else writing, and thought... what? The answer was 12 volts. It's a 12 volt battery.

When I approached the instructor after class with some confusion over what happened to Ohm's Law when the resistance became infinite, he said: "oh.. well it's not really infinite...there are ions in the air. It's infinite for all practical purposes." Practical minded people don't ask the impractical questions that would reveal the limits of commonly used scientific models.

But what we're looking at here is the relationship between science and technology. There's ongoing give and take between them.

That isn't a transfinite line of questioning though, its a mathematical question that refers to an entity with defined properties named 'infinity'. Of course in mathematics we use various objects that we call infinite; for example:a countably infinite set can be put in one to one correspondence with the natural numbers, an uncountably infinite set cannot.

Strangely enough; as useful as it is, analytic geometry does not have any totally accurate visual representation. Every visual representation of the set of solutions to X^2+y^2-1=0 (that is the unit circle on the XY plane) is a rough estimate. Furthermore, it is infinitely off because if we were to zoom in on any representation we would find relatively large gaps at the molecular level, whereas a circle on the XY plane is infitely dense (there is a value C between any given A and B).

Dispite this seemingly great disconnect with physical reality, calculations based in coordinate geometry and multivariable calculus correspond with physical phenomena in a highly accurate way. This is because we can define a section of 3-space as having some specified ammount of, say, mass. Then this will correspond with some object, so when we compute density we get an accurate result. The only difference is that the mass is (technically) smoothly distributed in our model, but discretly distributed in reality. There are (almost) always (relatively) inconsequential parameters that allow us to adopt an ideal model that is not toally perfect but gets the job done.

Back on target; a transfinite line of questioning would be something of the form :
Q:Why X?
A:Because Y
Q:Why Y?
A:Because of Z
Q:Why Z?
A:Because V
Q:Why V? ect....

1 Reply

@Zetetic11235,

I think I understand what you're saying.

The difference between infinite and transfinite hinges on the difference between discreet versus continuous?

You're right: inconsequential parameters allow us to adopt an ideal model that is not perfect, but gets the job done.

The models are so useful that we don't really care if they're leading us to make assumptions that aren't verifiable or even logical. The same principle underlies religious belief.

The issue of plugging infinite resistance into a scenario (for instance a helium tank that's completely sealed) is not one of having to live with a fudge factor. Contemplating this scenario reveals that the pressure in such a tank is undefined. Potential energy doesn't exist in any meaningful way separate from an actual event. I'm sure that's obvious, but I'm pointing out that the model suggests that it exists somewhere independent of an event.

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@Arjuna,

I use infinite and transfinite interchangeably. My point is that a Transfinite line of questioning is completely different from a single question that deals with the concept of 'infinity'.

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@Sasori-sama,

Sasori-sama;86969 wrote:

In my opinion, science and maths are everything!

depends one what you mean by "explain". You can explain a rainbow using quantum mechanics, but i can still ask why quantum mechanics is true. Why should we live in a world govern by those laws?

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