The Most Critical Question!

[AnssiH]

Alternatively, you might pretend not to know it, while computing the expectations to compare it with. If there were nothing more than this behind the nature of time, and past vs. future, it would mean that the greatest problems we face for our welfare are mere illusions (a quite distinct thing from saying there may be some way to solve them).

 

I don't understand what you are getting at with that comment. Do you mind elaborating?

 

I already cautioned you about confusing this type of thing with choices between non equivalent options.

 

I don't understand this either. Are you saying that I have made undefendable choices between non-equivalent options?

 

I understand what you mean them to be, but you are extrapolating between lookalike things.

 

Same thing here. Can you explain this objection(?) little bit more specifically, I wouldn't like to guess too much.

 

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

If you do indeed believe you understand the text, upon reading another text on the same subject, you would expect to find the text consistent with your expectations and, if it wasn't, you would either presume there was some error in your understanding or that the writer of the second text didn't understand what he was talking about. It is your overwhelming penchant for the latter presumption which Anssi and I find so difficult to deal with.

 

Well I am indeed often surprised by his responses. And I was surprised about that question about how would a student reckon his understanding of a manuscript. I would have expected this to be trivially understood as a matter of being able to interpret the manuscript in some manner that is consistent with your expectations about the subject matter you interpret the manuscript to be about. Qfwfq, if you don't see how that is so, then yes we certainly are still not communicating on this matter.

 

I'm always trying to preserve my good faith towards people's intentions, so I assume Qfwfq is participating because he is interested in trying to understand what we are talking about. But I chose to not comment on this and many other issues that he is complaining about, because it seems there is some deep conflict in the terminology we are using. I think his comments of "finally made Anssi see" have got something to do with him feeling we are speaking the same language a bit more. I did not change what I'm saying, I have just adjusted my terminology to whatever I think he understands best.

 

On the same tack, I don't think he can make sense of your explanation about the meaning of the indices, and I think the next critical point of communication would be to reach understanding about what the "universally valid definitions" are, and what they aren't.

 

And Qfwfq, I guess I could mention that I don't particularly appreciate the "in the end he got off the hook by saying..." implications. I can assure you, I am not here just to make crazy arguments and then trying to find myself out from them. That is not my idea of fun. Apart from that, this is kind of an interesting excercise in communication.

 

LaurieAG, I've seen different versions of his presentation of this matter and certainly he is reacting to complaints, in that he is trying to make the presentation clearer when there's something that has clearly been misinterpreted. I have not seen the relevant actual argument changing.

 

My statement was far more fundamental. In whichever manner or by whichever method you draw whichever kind of expectations, the very fact of doing so at all implies making an assumption about the source of the data (about which expectations are being drawn). I discussed this most general assumption with Anssi and you seem to have totally missed it. The assumption is that whatever features of the data you are basing those expectations on is due to something about the nature of the source (as opposed to being mere apophenia). Is that assumption general enough now? I got Anssi to explicitly recognize it.

 

I believe what you were referring to was that inductive reasoning contains the tacit assumption of "whatever was true before, will continue to be true in the future". Which is essentially the definition of inductive reasoning so I was surprised why you even felt the need to point such thing out, but I responded something to the effect of "if you mean the assumption that is part of the definition of inductive reasoning then yes we are on the same page".

 

Likewise I do not understand the need to point out that having generated expectations via inductive reasoning, is a case of basing your expectations on something about the underlying information. In the most general sense I would say it contains the assumption that there are some sort of recognizable recurring features to the underlying information. I wouldn't like to make any assertions about in what sense these features are recognizable. But the underlying premise of the whole analysis is that all our expectations must be fundamentally products of inductive reasoning, as long as the mechanism that generates our expectations does not make any undefendable assumptions about the meaning of the information.

 

I believe we reached understanding about that little bit.

 

All in all, it appears we are all pointing out almost the same thing, but if course I can never be quite sure, that's just my interpretation of it :I

 

Gee Dick, it almost looked like you were implying this. Well, of course you weren't! I should have known!

 

Well, as a matter of fact, you should have... :I You can't seriously think that's what he literally meant... Let's focus a bit again.

 

The idea was just that all the data is available to your analysis, which you can perform in the order you choose.

 

If you have "all the data" that you ever will get for your analysis, it just means you are not going to be validating your model via expectations. Of course you can consider those models valid exactly like we consider any world view valid due to it being a perfect fit for all our "past". At the same time, it is central to our world views that we continuously generate expectations which continuously validate or invalidate our model. You don't actually have a problem with that assertion, right?

 

I don't understand at all what parallel you see with your example of Sudoku, to the topic we are discussing. I don't even know if you are agreeing or disagreeing with something, by making that comment. Are you trying to make a point about how understanding Sudoku is not in some way a matter of generating valid expectations about some information?

 

-Anssi

[Qfwfq]

Anssi, from your last post, you don't seem to be following what I say, the connections between things and even the sequence of quotes and replies. I had tried to point out something to Dick that I had been discussing with you, it set him off into one of his rants and some people even showed their disapproval of his first reply to it. I mostly tried to address his points and you should be able to follow that. If you could make a better effort, I'd be more willing to address your queries in your previous post.

 

Qfwfq, if you don't see how that is so, then yes we certainly are still not communicating on this matter.

Suppose the subject of the manuscript is totally new to you and it is the first time you are learning anything about it; you can't have any expectations about the subject, nevertheless you can understand what the manuscript is saying unless too much propedeutic knowledge is necessary. I mentioned this example not being so good, because understanding a manuscript requires not only understanding Portuguese, Finnish or whichever language but also lot of previous semantic familiarity; that's exactly why I thought up the sudoku example. Surely you could relate it to what I was getting at without so much difficulty?

 

On the same tack, I don't think he can make sense of your explanation about the meaning of the indices, and I think the next critical point of communication would be to reach understanding about what the "universally valid definitions" are, and what they aren't.

What am I missing about it, in your opinion? On what basis are you gauging my understanding of it?

 

I am not here just to make crazy arguments and then trying to find myself out from them.

I told him how you addressed the matter and it implies you should have no objection to my examples in which there are no "expectations about future data" according to what folks usually mean by this. Yes this is an extremely interesting excercise in communication. :hihi:

 

I believe what you were referring to was that inductive reasoning contains the tacit assumption of "whatever was true before, will continue to be true in the future".

Actually that's slightly more restrictive than need be and I have put it as a more general and fundamental tacit assumption. It seems there is no way to get the message across. Note that I did not mean:

a case of basing your expectations on something about the underlying information.

The reason I exageratedly emphasized the some in the word something is because I meant an extremely general assumption, which doesn't require one to make any assumptions about what in the poltergeist the recognizable features are due to, nor even about how they are due to it, and I even consider it restrictive every time you add the word recurring in your arguments. Do you have any idea what I mean when I juxtapose this assumption to apophenia?

 

If you have "all the data" that you ever will get for your analysis, it just means you are not going to be validating your model via expectations. Of course you can consider those models valid exactly like we consider any world view valid due to it being a perfect fit for all our "past". At the same time, it is central to our world views that we continuously generate expectations which continuously validate or invalidate our model. You don't actually have a problem with that assertion, right?

Here you are going right against what you had said in defence against the objections concerning expectations about the future. You are no longer making it a pure matter of appropriately defining these terms, as you did in the previous few days. This makes it seem useless to address your first query about my previous post or to clarify what I'm saying about all data being known.

 

Apart from this, the only relevance I see with ever more future data is that, the more comes in without shattering the model, the more we tend to be confident of it and the less are the chances of pure apophenia. From a purely logical point of view there is no difference at all; each new batch of data, once come, is part of the past data and the "expectation" is replaced by a "yet more validated" except it may differ also because one has values instead of probability distributions. A larger mole only gives better confidence against apophenia (or even some unknown and non equivalent interpretation that the believed one just happens to match with for the limited data). This confidence also depends on how low is the entropy of the model (or data format which it can be thought of). What I mean is:

 

If you find a matrix of 9 by 9 digits on a paper, the requisite of it being a sudoku solution means that the value of some of the digits implies constraints on the value of others, without any ordering that counts as past vs. future more than others. No doubt that it may have a meaning to whoever wrote it, which is totally unknown to you (or no meaning at all?), and it just happened to comply with these requisites, but the more of them you see from the same source the more you suspect someone was actually solving this type of puzzle (and heck it is a format with a low enough entropy in ratio to the same number of similar matrices with totally arbitrary digit values). Sure, the more of them you have found day after day on a desk where you are cleaning up in the evening, the more you "expect" the future ones to be of the same format, but all the same if you had found many of them in a notebook on a departed geezer's night table, you would have the same confidence as in the other case, on the evening your validations reached an equal number of them; in this case there is no compulsory past vs. future between the different matrices. Needless to say, the expectation that you form as you validate more and more of them is no more of a restriction than "valid sudoku" whereas, in the validation of each single one, requisites are implied on the value of digits; the more of them are considered (as a "past" subset), the narrower the restriction may be on values of a "future" subset. Obviously, I quote the words past and future because I'm just abusing of them to indicate which digits are used to imply constraints on which others. Do you understand the example?

[AnssiH]

Anssi, from your last post, you don't seem to be following what I say, the connections between things and even the sequence of quotes and replies. I had tried to point out something to Dick that I had been discussing with you, it set him off into one of his rants and some people even showed their disapproval of his first reply to it. I mostly tried to address his points and you should be able to follow that.

 

I know, don't worry. Let's just try to focus onto the real issues here.

 

Suppose the subject of the manuscript is totally new to you and it is the first time you are learning anything about it; you can't have any expectations about the subject, nevertheless you can understand what the manuscript is saying unless too much propedeutic knowledge is necessary. I mentioned this example not being so good, because understanding a manuscript requires not only understanding Portuguese, Finnish or whichever language but also lot of previous semantic familiarity;

 

So then you do recognize that any sort of understanding of something being "a manuscript page", and any sort of understanding about something being written on it, and any sort of understanding of the subject matter of that text, is purely a function of the concepts that have been defined in your world model, whose validity is purely a function of the validity of the expectations its generates?

 

Do you even disagree with any of this? Because I can't tell.

 

that's exactly why I thought up the sudoku example. Surely you could relate it to what I was getting at without so much difficulty?

 

No I don't understand why is it that any sort of understanding of something being a Sudoku would entail anything else but some part of reality being interpreted as such a thing.

 

If you have undefined information, and you manage to interpret something in that information as "Sudoku", don't you think that the world model where the necessary concepts (such as spatial positioning of numbers etc) exist, would also have to come to exist without explicit knowledge about the meaning of the information. I.e. we are talking about concepts that exist inside a world model whose validity is judged by the expectations it generates.

 

On the other hand, if you go against the definitions that were given, and consider the information to not be undefined, but to be instead explicitly "Sudoku", how does that have anything to do with anything we are talking about?

 

What am I missing about it, in your opinion? On what basis are you gauging my understanding of it?

 

On the basis that you are making trivally invalid objections, which I'm sure you would not make if you had better understanding of our terminology. I can't know where the misconception is. With all likelyhood there is a number of critical subtleties a bit off.

 

I told him how you addressed the matter and it implies you should have no objection to my examples in which there are no "expectations about future data" according to what folks usually mean by this.

 

Let's try to stick with the definitions DD is using. Sometimes the subtleties in the definitions are critical.

 

Do you have any idea what I mean when I juxtapose this assumption to apophenia?

 

No, I can't be sure what you think when you refer to apophenia. I have a number of possibilities in my mind, but they are all a bit strange. The one interpretation that I find most likely right now is that you are saying something about how a case of apophenia would mean the defined entities would not actually correspond to the structure of reality at all. I find that interpretation a bit strange because I wouldn't expect you to make such an argument, so I don't know.

 

Here you are going right against what you had said in defence against the objections concerning expectations about the future. You are no longer making it a pure matter of appropriately defining these terms, as you did in the previous few days.

 

Alright, let's solve this. Please find the exact pieces of text which to you seem contradictory, then I'll try to figure out how you interpret them.

 

The rest of your post doesn't seem to be at odds with anything I've said, but if you did actually mean to make some sort of objection with it, let me know.

 

-Anssi

[Qfwfq]

Do you even disagree with any of this?

It's the very reason why I went for something simpler, but it turns out it was no use. :doh:

 

If you have undefined information, and you manage to interpret something in that information as "Sudoku", don't you think that the world model where the necessary concepts (such as spatial positioning of numbers etc) exist, would also have to come to exist without explicit knowledge about the meaning of the information.

For goodness' sake Anssi, can you not distill the essence? If you can't, then of course you judge my objections to be trivally invalid. Did you not read the last part of my post before replying thus?

 

Really Anssi, if I can't make examples like that because I'm taking the spatial arrangement of the marks on the paper (and the paper itself) for granted, then why should I understand your posts and suppose that you exist, just because I believe I'm seeing my PC screen because it exists, I foolishly trust that the spatial arrangement of pixels has appeared on it according to sequences of feeble little pulses that came in from across the globe (which I gullibly believe to exist of course) and look like English words according to another sequence of feeble pulses that came from the PC which I undefendably assume you were sitting in front of and typing on? Let's get over it! Replace "reality" with what some ape was doing when it made those marks on that paper and follow the logic about interpreting that data according to a model.

 

I.e. we are talking about concepts that exist inside a world model whose validity is judged by the expectations it generates.

And I was talking about what you mean by expectations.

 

Let's try to stick with the definitions DD is using. Sometimes the subtleties in the definitions are critical.

How about if we try to make some sense, for once?

 

No, I can't be sure what you think when you refer to apophenia. I have a number of possibilities in my mind, but they are all a bit strange. The one interpretation that I find most likely right now is that you are saying something about how a case of apophenia would mean the defined entities would not actually correspond to the structure of reality at all. I find that interpretation a bit strange because I wouldn't expect you to make such an argument, so I don't know.

Are you able to follow the structure of people's arguments? Why would you understand me as meaning it that way? Were you perhaps misled by the word juxtapose, by which people usually imply a strong contrast? I would have preferred to use counterpose instead, but English is such a lousy language that its speakers never use it and tend to replace it with the one I used; I checked only now and found that it does at least exist. Wow! I could have used it! :doh: But I think my meanig was clear enough by the overall argument.

 

Anssi, I meant that the fundamental, most general assumtion is that the features of the data NOT be mere apophenia. Did I sufficiently emphasizse the not? I meant that in order to NOT be apophenia, they've gotta be due to something eh? What's the trouble in sorting out what I said yesterday? You know, all those things we sooooooo foolishly rely on, like the sun rising and setting, the seasons, the right way to cultivate crops or make things that work properly...:rolleyes:

 

In short, how the heck could we survive on mere apophenia? I've been struggling over the past months to get you to state that it can't be so, with you always mistaking it for undefendable ontological assumptions, and now you think I'm saying that it is.

 

Please find the exact pieces of text which to you seem contradictory, then I'll try to figure out how you interpret them.

Gosh you make it tiring. When you wrote things like:

Focus especially on the part where I point out that we only validate our understanding via, what I call "expectations" (I suspect you now understand exactly what I mean by that, and the word "future" is arbitrary label to anything that is "not yet known")

were you not saying that it suffices to give the word future an ad hoc definition? What then did you mean by "not yet known" and why did you put it in quotes? How does it differ from comparing a known part of the data with what a model implies about it considering other parts of the data?

 

The rest of your post doesn't seem to be at odds with anything I've said, but if you did actually mean to make some sort of objection with it, let me know.

It wasn't meant to be some sort of objection, I only meant to establish some mutual understanding about the logical nature of the topic under discussion.

[Catalyst]

The answer is pretty simple. Science is always asking 'Why?' Now admittedly, that's so simple it's quite complex. In order to know why you have to what, when, where, who, and how. And of course you can put pretty much anything observable or measurable after the word 'Why', which only adds to the complexity. But as far as I can tell, the critical question behind science is 'Why everything? Why is it? What is it? How does it work?'

[AnssiH]

It's the very reason why I went for something simpler, but it turns out it was no use. :doh:

 

What was the reason and did you mean to disagree or not? Please realize you are not exactly unambiguous either.

 

For goodness' sake Anssi, can you not distill the essence?

 

No I can't, you are being extremely ambiguous.

 

If you can't, then of course you judge my objections to be trivally invalid. Did you not read the last part of my post before replying thus?

 

I had skimmed it and it was very ambiguous. Are you saying that you understood and agreed with DD's comments about "understanding" being a case of valid expectations about something, and somehow that made you want to talk about Sudoku?

 

Really Anssi, if I can't make examples like that because I'm taking the spatial arrangement of the marks on the paper (and the paper itself) for granted, then why should I understand your posts and suppose that you exist, just because I believe I'm seeing my PC screen because it exists, I foolishly trust that the spatial arrangement of pixels has appeared on it according to sequences of feeble little pulses that came in from across the globe (which I gullibly believe to exist of course) and look like English words according to another sequence of feeble pulses that came from the PC which I undefendably assume you were sitting in front of and typing on? Let's get over it! Replace "reality" with what some ape was doing when it made those marks on that paper and follow the logic about interpreting that data according to a model.

 

Are you making an argument about it being foolish to not believe to the existence of your own definitions, or are you talking about a prediction-wise validity of those definitions or are you agreeing with what I'm saying?

 

Are you able to follow the structure of people's arguments? Why would you understand me as meaning it that way? Were you perhaps misled by the word juxtapose, by which people usually imply a strong contrast? I would have preferred to use counterpose instead, but English is such a lousy language that its speakers never use it and tend to replace it with the one I used; I checked only now and found that it does at least exist. Wow! I could have used it! :doh: But I think my meanig was clear enough by the overall argument.

 

It's mostly the ambiguity with the word "apophenia" that is giving me trouble.

 

Anssi, I meant that the fundamental, most general assumtion is that the features of the data NOT be mere apophenia. Did I sufficiently emphasizse the not? I meant that in order to NOT be apophenia, they've gotta be due to something eh?

 

Here various possibilities to the meaning of the word "apophenia" are all giving me strange interpretation of that text.

 

For instance, if it referred to the idea that the information that we use for our world model is not connected to "actual reality" at all, then it would be the same as assuming that there is a reality out there, which never manifests itself to us in any way whatsoever.

 

Or if it referred to the idea that the defined entities of our world view do not correspond to the (hypothetical) actual objects of reality, then I would not expect you to make that argument, because I thought you already understood all this business of prediction-wise validity not being the defense of the existence of any defined entities, and our world views as semantical models of some undefined information.

 

All the other interpretations I can think of seem to make even less sense.

 

Overall, I can't understand what argument you are even making, unless you are saying something incredibly trivial that is in agreement with everything I've said.

 

What's the trouble in sorting out what I said yesterday? You know, all those things we sooooooo foolishly rely on, like the sun rising and setting, the seasons, the right way to cultivate crops or make things that work properly...:rolleyes:

 

The "so foolishly" bit makes me think that, you probably think that I've said something to the effect that it would be foolish to believe that the future resembles the past. Which is odd because it has been voiced many times that this assumption is exactly the fundamental component behind our expectations.

 

Or perhaps you are somehow thinking that, to not believe to the existence of the defined entities of one's own world view is somehow the same thing as not believing to inductive reasoning.

 

In short, how the heck could we survive on mere apophenia?

 

Perhaps you could try to state more clearly what "apophenia" means to you, then I can respond.

 

Your questions about whether or not I contradict myself;

 

Focus especially on the part where I point out that we only validate our understanding via, what I call "expectations" (I suspect you now understand exactly what I mean by that, and the word "future" is arbitrary label to anything that is "not yet known")

 

Here I am explaining why my definition of a world view is essentially "any logical construction which generates expectations about information whose explicit meaning is unknown", and that this is so because our world views are exclusively validated via the expectations they generate.

 

If you have "all the data" that you ever will get for your analysis, it just means you are not going to be validating your model via expectations. Of course you can consider those models valid exactly like we consider any world view valid due to it being a perfect fit for all our "past". At the same time, it is central to our world views that we continuously generate expectations which continuously validate or invalidate our model. You don't actually have a problem with that assertion, right?

 

Here I'm pointing out that our current world view is a function of our past, and we consider it valid on the basis that it fits all the past data. Then I continue to comment why my definition of a world view includes the component of "not yet known information" (which I call "future"), by saying; At the same time, it is central to our world views that we continuously generate expectations which continuously validate or invalidate our model.

 

If that component was not part of my definition, it would just mean that all world views were entirely static constructs, without any temporal or dynamic component in their definitions. Essentially, if all the available data is known from the get-go, then what would you generate expectations of? Nothing would ever "happen".

 

were you not saying that it suffices to give the word future an ad hoc definition?

 

I said we can always call the "not yet known [information]" future. I.e. we can make an epistemological definition "future" = "the information I do not explicitly have".

 

I.e. it is the information of which you only have expectations, and those expectations arise from your world view. Their validity will validate your world view, e.g. any experimental verification of any theory.

 

What then did you mean by "not yet known" and why did you put it in quotes?

 

To highlight it.

 

I believe my above comment answers what I mean by it.

 

How does it differ from comparing a known part of the data with what a model implies about it considering other parts of the data?

 

I believe here you are referring to the process of generating a valid model for some known set of information, i.e. if your model did not fit all of the information, it ought to be considered invalid. And if it was a perfect fit, it ought to be considered valid. This is all exactly in line with everything I'm saying and everything in DD's analysis.

 

I guess the only bit you were missing was why is the idea of "not yet known information" part of the definition of explanation. Do you have objections about that bit?

 

-Anssi

[Qfwfq]

Anssi, since reading your post yesterday morning, I've been trying to think what the heck more I could say that would be of any use. It seems hopeless when you refuse to follow, with a better effort. I already told you why I got on to apophenia but it's no use if you can't follow my logic, with the not's and the if's and so on. Do you understand how to apply modus tollens in logic?

 

If I can't get a point across no matter how I spell it out and it ends up you don't even know why I was attempting to do so, there's no point insisting with you. You and Dick can believe I'm failing to follow your logic, but you can't convince me it is so when I've achieved quite a lot of things (nothing great, mind) based on logical and mathematical reasoning. Especially tracking down why software doesn't work the way it's required to work, it can take an exasperatingly exact analysis and, in the end, you can't be of the opinion that it no longer does the wrong thing when it still does. I say this because I spent the whole of yesterday debugging a program that I wrote Saturday and some of those bugs were mighty hard to catch. You would struggle to persuade me that it's me that's failing to catch your logic.

 

Overall, I can't understand what argument you are even making, unless you are saying something incredibly trivial that is in agreement with everything I've said.

Actually, I was indeed saying something incredibly trivial, except that is not in agreement with quite everything you've said. :shrug:

 

Or perhaps you are somehow thinking that, to not believe to the existence of the defined entities of one's own world view is somehow the same thing as not believing to inductive reasoning.

I've been saying all along that it isn't that simple, at all. It isn't nearly that simple. It isn't even remotely that simple. I've been trying to get it across to you for some time and, instead of understanding my points, you ask me why I make tham at all and you come out with this fine example of how you keep mistaking my arguments to be in support of undefendable ontological assumptions. :doh:

 

If that component was not part of my definition, it would just mean that all world views were entirely static constructs, without any temporal or dynamic component in their definitions. Essentially, if all the available data is known from the get-go, then what would you generate expectations of? Nothing would ever "happen".

Firstly, you logic is a bit fudged there. It means a world view might be so. Nope, it doesn't imply them all being so of necessity.

 

That said, you are committing petitio principio too, if this is your objection against arguments supporting Modest's point, that a world could be conceived in which there is no notion of time, hence no meaning for the notion of expectations.

 

To highlight it.

No small wonder we get into so many misunderstandings. Quotes are usually used to indicate there being some semantic issue (except when actually quoting something and sometimes even with a slightly sarcastic note); in a case like this one, where the term isn't coined on the fly, it usually indicates it isn't meant in quite the ordinary or literal sense. Given that you explicitly stated you meant future as an arbitrary label for that, I'm not exactly guilty of the misunderstanding. Actually, it looks more like you are wiggling out of what you had said, once seem that it goes a way you hadn't anticipated; that's the impression it suggests to me anyway.

 

I believe here you are referring to the process of generating a valid model for some known set of information, i.e. if your model did not fit all of the information, it ought to be considered invalid. And if it was a perfect fit, it ought to be considered valid. This is all exactly in line with everything I'm saying and everything in DD's analysis.

Well then what are you raising so many objections for!?!?!?!? Ooooops...:doh: I wuz fergittin' about:

I guess the only bit you were missing was why is the idea of "not yet known information" part of the definition of explanation. Do you have objections about that bit?

I haven't been objecting to "that bit" because I understand a) how it inevitably exists in our reality, B) the psychological importance of not knowing yet as a persuasive indicator that conclusions hadn't been led by it and c) the fact that one can see an increasing amount of information as being finite at any given point but potentially without a fixed limitation. Think about this:

 

When is it that you check the validity of a world view with new information? Is it possible to do so before the new info has become known? At that same point, are the expectations of any use for a validation? Would you deny the answers being in the negative? If you can't deny this, let's think about after the new information has become known. How does it differ from any past info? It is now just as known as previous info. The only bearing is that, if you had already drawn conlcusions (and the word already is the only reason for calling them expectations) then there is less room for dispute over the possibility that in drawing those conclusions you had been unwittingly led by some aspect of the information itself, but this doesn't have any bearing from the pure logic and mathematical point of view. Sudoku is an examle of cases in which such disputes are no problem to overcome. Size of the entire dataset does have a bearing on statistical matters like confidence, but again from the pure logic and mathematical standing, at any time the dataset is what it is; any analysis that constitutes an actual degree of validation is on already known data and a trend of increasing confidence with time is logically no different from the dependence on size being typically increasing. I'm probably wasting my time again on this...

[AnssiH]

Anssi, since reading your post yesterday morning, I've been trying to think what the heck more I could say that would be of any use. It seems hopeless when you refuse to follow, with a better effort. I already told you why I got on to apophenia but it's no use if you can't follow my logic, with the not's and the if's and so on. Do you understand how to apply modus tollens in logic?

 

I understand what it is, but I don't understand what exactly do you refer to with "how to apply modus tollens in logic", or how does this relate to what you are saying. Just so you know, I'm not refusing to follow you, I'm very much trying to figure out what you are saying. That's why all the questions.

 

If I can't get a point across no matter how I spell it out and it ends up you don't even know why I was attempting to do so, there's no point insisting with you. You and Dick can believe I'm failing to follow your logic, but you can't convince me it is so when I've achieved quite a lot of things (nothing great, mind) based on logical and mathematical reasoning. Especially tracking down why software doesn't work the way it's required to work, it can take an exasperatingly exact analysis and, in the end, you can't be of the opinion that it no longer does the wrong thing when it still does. I say this because I spent the whole of yesterday debugging a program that I wrote Saturday and some of those bugs were mighty hard to catch. You would struggle to persuade me that it's me that's failing to catch your logic.

 

I don't understand why you would assign it to me, that I'd suggest it's merely an opinion whether a computer program does the wrong thing or not.

 

What I would say is that it is only an opinion that the method with which your computer program performs its intented function, is the only valid method of achieving the same thing. I'm saying there exists many valid methods and choosing between these methods is arbitrary.

 

That is, there are very many components to your computer program, and if you have a bug in some component, it just means it doesn't perform the function that the other components require it to perform.

 

But at the same time there exists a different set of such components, which collectively would perform the same end result.

 

All I'm saying is that, likewise, the terminology - the definitions - of a world view achieve the intented result of "generating valid expectations", but the fact that one terminology generates valid expectations, does not mean there doesn't exist other equally valid terminologies.

 

Do you remember those complaints you made, about how it is not just a matter if interpretation whether someone has got a shirt on or not? What I tried to explain to you back then was that your terminology still has got to be a self-coherent set.

 

When I say that there exists other self-coherent sets of definitions, I am not saying there exists a self-coherent terminology which otherwise yields exactly the same interpretation as your current terminology, except that one person would be missing a shirt.

 

Likewise, you can't just change one little component in your program and still expect it to behave the same. But you can carefully adjust multiple components in a way that it doesn't affect the end results.

 

Notice the repeated hammering of the words "self-coherent".

 

Do you understand how this is analogous to the definitions of our world views?

 

Firstly, you logic is a bit fudged there. It means a world view might be so. Nope, it doesn't imply them all being so of necessity.

 

This boils down to the reasons why we are choosing to analyze constructs that are validated by the expectations they generate, and why it is considered as an absolute necessity to any "explanation of undefined information" (i.e. why choose such definition of "explanation). I would like you to think about the following very carefully;

 

What kind of general definition would you give to "a world view"?

 

When thinking about this, consider that you can't just say it's "any means of understanding undefined information" as long as our "understanding" is always - as far as we know - actually a case us being able to generate correct expectations. If you do think it's more, you have to define how to measure such a thing.

 

I mean, whenever we think we have a proper understanding or proper explanation of any undefined information, we can never tell whether our own terminology is actually the one and only correct set.

 

So if you can't tell whether your terminology is correct, but you can tell whether it is self-coherent and whether it produces correct expectations, then let's see, how would we measure a validity of a world view...

 

This does very much boil down to what do we mean by "understanding", and that is what DD was trying to comment about. It is erroneous to make the assumption that understanding really means explicitly correct terminology. Understanding this completely is the key to solving the original problem referred to in the OP.

 

That said, you are committing petitio principio too, if this is your objection against arguments supporting Modest's point, that a world could be conceived in which there is no notion of time, hence no meaning for the notion of expectations.

 

Like I said before, I am trying to point out that our "understanding" or our "explanations" or our "world views" are always exclusively validated by the expectations they give. I'm saying it in order to point out that producing valid expectations does not ensure that you are using the one and only correct terminology. That is the reason I am exclusively focusing onto constructs that are like our world views, i.e. constructs that are validated via expectations.

 

Now the idea that there may exists world views that do not generate expectations in any sense what-so-ever just means that they are not like the constructs that we call our world views, and I would not call them world views.

 

Ultimately that complaint arises directly from the idea that "understanding" is something that entails some sort of actual knowledge about what something is, and making that assumption in the context of our world views is exactly the error that seems to be so persistent and it is exactly what makes people think about this too naively. Think about what do we really mean when we consider ourselves to "understand" something, and think about what would that mean in the context where no expectations can be generated.

 

I think if you think about this a bit, you should realize that modest' idea just entails a construct that does not have the critical characteristics that any so-called "world view" has. That is why I said it is like arguing "maybe there's a duck that isn't a bird; you can't tell until we see one!". Well, I can tell the taxonomists would not call it a duck and that such argument does not render any study about "ducks" moot, because any such study is ABOUT THOSE THINGS THAT WE DECIDE TO CALL DUCKS BECAUSE OF THEIR CHARACTERISTICS.

 

I'm sorry about the caps but to be honest, I find it quite ridiculous that I have to spell this out so many times.

 

No small wonder we get into so many misunderstandings. Quotes are usually used to indicate there being some semantic issue

 

Well granted there is also a semantic issue in that "not yet known information" can be "not known" in many senses. I.e. it's meaning may not be known, or its interpretation may be too general to satisfy the observer "i.e. I just saw some blue lights but I don't know what they where", or in the case how I meant it, the information has not been yet "received" at all.

 

That was probably part of the reason I added the quotation, but I am also under the impression that you know how I meant it anyway.

 

(except when actually quoting something and sometimes even with a slightly sarcastic note); in a case like this one, where the term isn't coined on the fly, it usually indicates it isn't meant in quite the ordinary or literal sense. Given that you explicitly stated you meant future as an arbitrary label for that, I'm not exactly guilty of the misunderstanding. Actually, it looks more like you are wiggling out of what you had said, once seem that it goes a way you hadn't anticipated; that's the impression it suggests to me anyway.

 

I don't understand why you say that.

 

Well then what are you raising so many objections for!?!?!?!? Ooooops...:doh: I wuz fergittin' about:I haven't been objecting to "that bit" because I understand a) how it inevitably exists in our reality, B) the psychological importance of not knowing yet as a persuasive indicator that conclusions hadn't been led by it and c) the fact that one can see an increasing amount of information as being finite at any given point but potentially without a fixed limitation. Think about this:

 

That's all good, and you should keep exclusively in mind that we are interested of analyzing the constructs with which we "understand reality", so it is quite important that we don't just naively consider "understanding" to be a case of actually knowing explicitly something which at the same time we know cannot be explicitly known (i.e. whether our terminology is correct).

 

Like I've said before, I do believe you agree with all that me and DD are actually saying, or at least the essential bits (I believe so on the basis of some of your comments from the past), and the main problem is that it's too easy to misunderstand what I'm trying to say. This business about whether or not expectations are a universal propery of all world views is a grand example. If you go after the possibility of having a world view that does not generate expectations, you are simply analyzing something that is, under careful analysis, unlike our world views.

 

There's a very good reason why expectations are considered to be the central characteristic of our world views, and why that is also central to the analysis about universal properties of all world views that could possibly be considered valid. I would wish to establish clear understanding about that one detail.

 

When is it that you check the validity of a world view with new information?

 

When you actually get that information, just like in any physics experiment.

 

Is it possible to do so before the new info has become known?

 

No.

 

At that same point, are the expectations of any use for a validation?

 

No.

 

Would you deny the answers being in the negative?

 

No.

 

If you can't deny this, let's think about after the new information has become known. How does it differ from any past info? It is now just as known as previous info.

 

Yes, it is essentially part of your "past".

 

Just like all of your past, you view it in the terminology of your own world view. Your world view contains definitions which tell you how a tennis ball behaves, and if your expectations of those things you call "tennis balls" are not met, you try to find a reason for it. Sometimes you are forced to create additional rules to your world view, which explain why something happened in such and such specific context. And sometimes it becomes more reasonable to change your definitions more fundamentally, in order to reach a simpler set of rules.

 

At the same time, having a valid set of definitions does not mean it is the only valid set to explain the same underlying information.

 

The only bearing is that, if you had already drawn conlcusions (and the word already is the only reason for calling them expectations) then there is less room for dispute over the possibility that in drawing those conclusions you had been unwittingly led by some aspect of the information itself, but this doesn't have any bearing from the pure logic and mathematical point of view. Sudoku is an examle of cases in which such disputes are no problem to overcome. Size of the entire dataset does have a bearing on statistical matters like confidence, but again from the pure logic and mathematical standing, at any time the dataset is what it is; any analysis that constitutes an actual degree of validation is on already known data and a trend of increasing confidence with time is logically no different from the dependence on size being typically increasing. I'm probably wasting my time again on this...

 

No not at all, that all sounds to be quite in line with what I'm thinking.

 

Also consider this from the perspective that the rules you define into your world view need to represent all of your past data, and more useful world views are essentially cases of representing some collection of information in simpler rules (i.e. what Kuhn calls paradigm shift), then you should understand what DD means by saying that out world views can be seen as essentially compression mechanisms. They compress a large amount of information into a simple set of rules.

 

You know all of this can still be summarized with the simple notion; prediction-wise validity of a model does not prove its ontological correctedness. A high confidence into one's own terminology always arises from the experience that all of our past can be thus easily explained. The idea that one's own high confidence proves their explanation is absolutely correct (that their defined entities must exist), even though logically they can't prove such a thing, is called belief.

 

-Anssi

[Qfwfq]

Anssi, you have every right to choose the definition of words you prefer, as Modest has the right to define the word duck in a manner which comprises a glacier and to define the word bird in a manner which doesn't. I can define a world view as a model which one proposes all data should fit (and isn't valid if not so). You have simply chosen to define it as being restricted to cases where there is a sequence of datasets, so distinguishing between new and past data. Specify this, and perhaps everything is fine, as long as you make it clear that it is your choice, which means that any correctly deduced conclusions must rest upon that choice too.

 

I see no point in you repeating the same things time after time ad nauseam when I'm not unable to follow them. Your whole post was superfluous and if you can't get my points there's no use continuing.

[modest]

Specify this, and perhaps everything is fine

 

Exactly. Anssi, further specify that other concepts of "an explanation of reality" exist. Do not say, as DD has said, "any explanation of anything must be generalizable into [my equation]..."

 

Do not assume that time must be non-deterministic because you have defined "explanation" such that it explains info in a non-deterministic way.

 

As Will said,

 

As to the major error- dick takes his symmetry constraints and moves to his "dirac-type" equation as if this is the only way to implement these symmetries. This is simply not true- there are many equations (with very different solutions) that obey the symmetry constraints that are not dirac type.

 

In order to answer the question "how can we build a model of reality if we can truly know nothing about the nature of the reality in which we live?" we cannot make assumptions such as 'time is non-deterministic like quantum mechanics and *not* deterministic like classical mechanics'. To assume that reality (any reality) must agree with such an assumption defeats the purpose. To say 'yes, but I defined reality such that it *must* be non-deterministic' completely defeats the purpose.

 

Now, Anssi, what if there were two dimensions of time? Would this comply with Doctordick's definition of time (that the future is unknown and the past cannot be changed)? No. Since you propose the same constraint on the idea of a worldview, you cannot assume that your idea of a worldview is universally valid without making indefensible assumptions about reality... even if the only thing you are saying is that worldviews "track changes". Because... your idea of a 'change' already puts constraints on the nature of reality.

 

Just because we think reality is a certain way doesn't mean reality is, in fact, that way.

Just because you think worldviews must behave a certain way doesn't mean they must, in fact, work that way.

 

You are looking to model any explanation of any reality and what you've ended up doing is to model explanations consistent with your worldview. This does not solve the thread's concern.

 

~modest

[AnssiH]

Anssi, you have every right to choose the definition of words you prefer, as Modest has the right to define the word duck in a manner which comprises a glacier and to define the word bird in a manner which doesn't. I can define a world view as a model which one proposes all data should fit (and isn't valid if not so). You have simply chosen to define it as being restricted to cases where there is a sequence of datasets, so distinguishing between new and past data. Specify this, and perhaps everything is fine, as long as you make it clear that it is your choice, which means that any correctly deduced conclusions must rest upon that choice too.

 

I see no point in you repeating the same things time after time ad nauseam when I'm not unable to follow them. Your whole post was superfluous and if you can't get my points there's no use continuing.

 

I believe I specified all these aspects quite clearly in my posts many pages ago.

 

You know you could also try to define how in these "other kinds of world views" their validity is measured (as oppose to verifying them via expectations). There hasn't been any attempt to give a different measure, despite a lot of complaints to my offering. You may see this as a bit side-tracking, but perhaps it's fun challenge for you guys to think about; can you define a measure of validity that is different from "by generating valid expectations"?

 

I know you said "by pretending to not know some part of the data and generate expectations about that", but that is just semantics, it's the same procedure and yields the same conclusion about the uncertainty of the chosen terminology. What makes it non-general is that this procedure is only restricted to cases where all the undefined information is available at the get-go. (i.e. in terms of DD's analysis, like he said, that just means all the information appears in one "t", which is just another way to say that the reality would be entirely static in that particular terminology. It is simply more general to allow multiple t's)

 

Apart from that, I take it you don't have any relevant objections to what I've been saying.

 

I'll post few comments about the hard problem of consciousness at some point when I get around to it...

 

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

Do not assume that time must be non-deterministic because you have defined "explanation" such that it explains info in a non-deterministic way.

 

No one has made such definition.

 

As Will said,

As to the major error- dick takes his symmetry constraints and moves to his "dirac-type" equation as if this is the only way to implement these symmetries. This is simply not true- there are many equations (with very different solutions) that obey the symmetry constraints that are not dirac type.

 

No one has said his equation is the only way to express those symmetries.

 

In order to answer the question "how can we build a model of reality if we can truly know nothing about the nature of the reality in which we live?" we cannot make assumptions such as 'time is non-deterministic like quantum mechanics and *not* deterministic like classical mechanics'. To assume that reality (any reality) must agree with such an assumption defeats the purpose. To say 'yes, but I defined reality such that it *must* be non-deterministic' completely defeats the purpose.

 

You worry too much about things you don't understand correctly. I don't want to imply like it's necessary to carefully read and study what DD is trying to say, but if you don't want to make the attempt, it would also be polite to stop making ruckus after it has been pointed out that you are completely mis-interpreting this thing.

 

In other words, I agree completely with your above sentiment, but you are barking up the wrong tree.

 

Now, Anssi, what if there were two dimensions of time? Would this comply with Doctordick's definition of time (that the future is unknown and the past cannot be changed)?

 

Of course it would. Any world view which defines time that way can be represented in DD's definitions.

 

No. Since you propose the same constraint on the idea of a worldview, you cannot assume that your idea of a worldview is universally valid without making indefensible assumptions about reality... even if the only thing you are saying is that worldviews "track changes". Because... your idea of a 'change' already puts constraints on the nature of reality.

 

Suppose you travel in time, 10 years into the future to meet yourself and then come back. Is it not your world view that interprets and views that experience as a case of having been traveling in time and now you've come back? That "time travel experience" is now in your past, not in your future.

 

You only have expectations about your future. You probably now have an expectation that 10 years from now, you will meet your past self. But you don't know whether that will actually happen or not, i.e. it is "information you do not have but you have expectations of". In the terminology of me and DD, it is your "future".

 

Let's stretch those brain cells a bit; suppose that, for the next summer, you reserve a time travel holiday which takes you back in time to the 16th century. In an epistemological terminology, which does not make any assumptions about how you happen to conceptualize reality, is that holiday experience considered to be in your "past", or in your "future"?

 

Do you want me to explain why your "past", as it has been defined, cannot be changed, i.e. why such an idea is a logical fallacy?

 

And as DD mentioned many pages ago, to suppose that there is no such thing as "change", you can always just use single "t" index. Have a ball analyzing the consequences of that.

 

Overall, I can only repeat that I do understand what you are complaining about, but unfortunately, me and DD are not making any of those assumptions you are assigning to us.

 

-Anssi

[modest]

Do not assume that time must be non-deterministic because you have defined "explanation" such that it explains info in a non-deterministic way.

 

No one has made such definition.

 

DD has assumed that time is non-deterministic and stated that he makes no assumptions that are not absolutely necessary to the definition of an explanation. Add one and one and you're likely to get two.

 

As Will said,

As to the major error- dick takes his symmetry constraints and moves to his "dirac-type" equation as if this is the only way to implement these symmetries. This is simply not true- there are many equations (with very different solutions) that obey the symmetry constraints that are not dirac type.

 

No one has said his equation is the only way to express those symmetries.

 

:rolleyes:

 

Are you serious with this?

 

Let me start at the beginning...

 

Classical mechanics explains data (DD has claimed that classical mechanics is an explanation).

 

Doctordick claims that any explanation of anything requires the fundamental elements of that explanation to obey his equation so long as the explanation is internally consistent (I can give you quotes). This is the claim that would seem to solve the problem introduced by this thread—that every explanation—every 'worldview'—can be recognized as useful and valid without reference to our perceptions. If, after all, every explanation must follow DD's equation regardless of the real nature of reality then we don't have to worry about it following our perceptions.

 

The fundamental elements of classical mechanics do not and cannot obey his equation (for reasons that have been given a number of times)... therefore... the claim on which this thread is built is completely mistaken. It is shown mistaken by example.

 

I can point this out dozens of times and you can ignore or obfuscate it rather than address it, but it is nonetheless true. The only rational response I've seen is that classical mechanics is *not* internally consistent, but I showed via a quote from Feynman and some MIT professor just how mistaken that assertion was. If there is some other rational response, I haven't seen it. And, I'm frankly getting tired of all the irrational ones.

 

You worry too much about things you don't understand correctly.

 

There can be no doubt... you assert the validity of things for which you have very little, if any, understanding. It should not surprise you so greatly when your faith in the validity of something you do not truly understand turns out mistaken.

 

I don't want to imply like it's necessary to carefully read and study what DD is trying to say, but if you don't want to make the attempt, it would also be polite to stop making ruckus after it has been pointed out that you are completely mis-interpreting this thing.

 

I have direct quotes and a counterexample, so don't go down that road.

 

The failure of DD's analysis has nothing to do with my understanding.

 

The data that classical mechanics perfectly explains cannot obey DD's equation regardless of how you wish to perceive my understanding of his analysis. It is just so much handwaving and redirection.

 

Quite simply, his claim is disproved by example and is, therefore, no solution to this thread's concern. Of course, your faith does not allow you to accept this. But, it is nevertheless true.

 

~modest

[Qfwfq]

I believe I specified all these aspects quite clearly in my posts many pages ago.

You are however denying it to be a specific case rather than universal.

 

You know you could also try to define how in these "other kinds of world views" their validity is measured (as oppose to verifying them via expectations). There hasn't been any attempt to give a different measure, despite a lot of complaints to my offering. You may see this as a bit side-tracking, but perhaps it's fun challenge for you guys to think about; can you define a measure of validity that is different from "by generating valid expectations"?

I already did but you refused to follow.

 

I know you said "by pretending to not know some part of the data and generate expectations about that", but that is just semantics, it's the same procedure and yields the same conclusion about the uncertainty of the chosen terminology.

When I said that, it was an attempt to show how two things are logically equivalent. You are now objecting by saying they are the same thing. It isn't necessary to actually pretend, I spelt out quite clearly that I meant it in the sense of avoiding any dependence of what you are drawing "expectations" about; this is of course figuarative language that I used exactly to illustrate the point. You could say that you draw the conclusions as if you didn't already know (in which case they truly would be expectations). It's amazing that you can't follow.

 

What makes it non-general is that this procedure is only restricted to cases where all the undefined information is available at the get-go.

Nothing makes it not general, because it applies equally well to both cases. Why do you think it's me that's restricting the matter when I'm being more general?

 

Apart from that, I take it you don't have any relevant objections to what I've been saying.

Not so fast... I've plenty of objections.

 

As Will said,

As to the major error- dick takes his symmetry constraints and moves to his "dirac-type" equation as if this is the only way to implement these symmetries. This is simply not true- there are many equations (with very different solutions) that obey the symmetry constraints that are not dirac type.

No one has said his equation is the only way to express those symmetries.

You are neglecting that he had said "with very different solutions" and I doubt you're able to understand the matter in full. It is what I also said more recently than him (and had more feebly tried to address longer ago). If you (or Dick) can't prove the equivalence of the choices made between the initial premises and the FE then you can't say "and nothing else". What you are left with is only the notion that any description of reality has these symmetries... what a great new discovery.

 

Suppose you travel in time, 10 years into the future to meet yourself and then come back. Is it not your world view that interprets and views that experience as a case of having been traveling in time and now you've come back? That "time travel experience" is now in your past, not in your future.

I quite agree there would be handsome implications, if this were possible. So much that folks who understand them reckon it senseless to hope for the possibility. Guess what, it's somewhat the reason I had attempted to follow up on Modest's points about time. You see, a world view in which that is possible, in order to be self consistent, would have to differ very much from our familiar one, just like when we were discussing the example of Claudia Schiffer's husband being me instead of that other bloke. For instance:

Let's stretch those brain cells a bit; suppose that, for the next summer, you reserve a time travel holiday which takes you back in time to the 16th century. In an epistemological terminology, which does not make any assumptions about how you happen to conceptualize reality, is that holiday experience considered to be in your "past", or in your "future"?

Wow, what a huge stretch those brain cells! :rolleyes: Quite obviously it would be in the traveller's future. That's why I'd be talking to as many historians as possible, before the holiday, so as to find all possible ways of paying for the trip and even a mighty spot more than it. Unfortunately, I would also have to be utterly careful not to do a single thing during the entire holiday that could cause any of my ancestors not being born, down to myself, else I would also need to go shopping around for the appropriate world view, according to which I could exist all the same. Experts recomend that I ought to start shopping around well before the holiday, and call it off if the problem hasn't been already solved prior to departure.

 

Do you want me to explain why your "past", as it has been defined, cannot be changed, i.e. why such an idea is a logical fallacy?

Along the lines of what I wrote above?

 

And as DD mentioned many pages ago, to suppose that there is no such thing as "change", you can always just use single "t" index. Have a ball analyzing the consequences of that.

What I've been thinking of is the consequences of Dick's analysis being valid, while also considering the logical equivalence I've been talking about. Have we perhaps discovered why my recent points are such monstrous dragons?

[AnssiH]

DD has assumed that time is non-deterministic

 

He has not made that assumption anywhere.

 

To say that any undefined information can be so modelled, is not to say it is the only way to model it.

 

Are you serious with this?

 

Dead serious.

 

To say that a model of undefined information complies with these constraints says almost nothing about what specific definitions can be used. The options for specific definitions are completely open at that point; any set of definitions that is self-coherent is allowed. Like Qwfwq sarcastically says "what a great new discovery". Exactly; FE in itself doesn't amount to ANY claim that isn't already painfully obvious to any thinking person.

 

The confusion you have is probably about the choices he makes in the further derivations. They are deliberately chosen to point out that IF you make those choices (that have been made in physics), we force some other definitions into a specific form, in perfectly logical but unobvious fashion. It is not to say, that those choices need to be made.

 

Your complaints arise from your assumption, that he puts those definitions forward as necessary, and that is why I'm saying you are absolutely correct when you say they are not necessary, but you are making a misinterpretation when you think such claim has been made.

 

Trust me with this, and then try to think about what is he really saying, without jumping to the first conclusion you made long time ago.

 

The issue with classical mechanics is dead simple in my mind, but it's hard to explain it to you because you are just jumping to conclusions with a number of erroneous interpretations you have set to in the past. I'll just point out some clarifications, let me know if they make sense to you;

 

Classical mechanics explains data (DD has claimed that classical mechanics is an explanation).

 

Doctordick claims that any explanation of anything requires the fundamental elements of that explanation to obey his equation so long as the explanation is internally consistent (I can give you quotes).

 

To understand what he is claiming with that phrase exactly, keep in mind that it means a 1:1 translation exists between any specific self-coherent terminology and the notation used to express the FE. I.e. it doesn't mean all valid explanations must use his notation in order to be valid.

 

The validity of that claim arises simply from the fact that "the FE in itself doesn't amount to any claim that isn't already painfully obvious to any thinking person". It's just few logical requirements for self-coherency.

 

Note that Qfwfq's doubts about this are rather in whether the exact expression form of FE is really as generally valid as the separate symmetry expressions. (Albeit I suspect he may think that in using anti-commuting elements, DD is arguing that it would be necessary to use them)

 

This is the claim that would seem to solve the problem introduced by this thread—that every explanation—every 'worldview'—can be recognized as useful and valid without reference to our perceptions.

 

No, the claim is that our perceptions are an interpretation, which is a function of our world view, and any view that produces valid expectations from undefined information (the information underlying our perception) is considered valid. That is what constitutes the model you use to understand reality.

 

I.e. the way you perceive reality is not a starting point for starting to build your world view.

 

If, after all, every explanation must follow DD's equation regardless of the real nature of reality then we don't have to worry about it following our perceptions.

 

He has never said that the underlying information would not affect our world views. Effectively he is referring to the issue, that the terminology that is our perceptions, is not the only way to validly understand reality. Well, physicists already know that perfectly well, and work with that issue every day.

 

The fundamental elements of classical mechanics do not and cannot obey his equation (for reasons that have been given a number of times)... therefore... the claim on which this thread is built is completely mistaken. It is shown mistaken by example.

 

Now let's take a step back and see what he is really claiming. Please think about this without jumping to those old conclusions you have in your head.

 

"Any explanation that is self-coherent must obey the FE, when that explanation is properly translated into his notation."

 

An "explanation", as per his definition of explanation, refers to an explanation of undefined information. I.e. a construct whose defined entities are based on recurring activity of the data one way or another.

 

An explanation being "self-coherent" in his definitions refers to it obeying the symmetry arguments exactly. (Essentially it is what is required for self-coherency if and only if you talk about explanation of undefined information, as oppose to starting from some assumed set of definitions)

 

The set of definitions that we call "classical mechanics", can be expressed in his notation if and only if you make certain appropriate ad hoc definitions. Effectively, it can be seen as an approximation of the FE.

 

To say it is an approximation is essentially the same as to say, that the translation from undefined information to the definitions of classical mechanics can be seen as slightly violating his equation.

 

This violation is in many cases negligible, just like ignoring relativistic corrections can be seen as negligible in certain circumstances. Cases where a correction is sorely needed are, surprise surprise, cases where the chosen coordinate systems move in terms with each others. A correction to that violation amounts to be, surprise surprise, relativistic definitions.

 

Now when you (and Feynman and MIT professors) say "classical mechanics are perfectly self-coherent", you are not even talking about the same topic as DD is. No one is arguing about what they say, we are trying to point out what we are actually talking about. You are essentially referring to how those definitions, when taken at face value, do not conflict with one another. What DD is talking about is essentially whether they conflict with the symmetry arguments, which come to play only if you talk about a set of definitions that is generated to explain undefined information.

 

That is why me and DD have been saying that you are making a double whammy with that argument. First, classical mechanics do "obey" the FE in that it can be seen as an approximation of FE, and second, it is not self-coherent (by what we mean with self-coherency), in that those approximations contain assumptions which cause your expectations to be a function of the chosen speed of a coordinate system.

 

If you wonder why in our terminology "obeys the symmetry arguments" is often short-handed with "is self-coherent", this is simply due to it being seen as a conflict within the set of definitions, if some expectations are considered to be a function of some immaterial aspect of the notation. I.e. an aspect which needs to be there for representation purposes, but whose value ought to be arbitrarily chosen. Like, the location of the origin of a coordinate system, or in this case, the supposed speed of a coordinate system.

 

If this all sounds confusing, I hope you would at least see that you are not really interpreting this thing correctly at all.

 

There can be no doubt... you assert the validity of things for which you have very little, if any, understanding.

 

Eh... Trust me, I do understand what DD is talking about, and you don't. That is not to say you are too stupid to understand it, it is really almost an accident that me and him happened to share the terminology when we started talking, making communication easy.

 

Your comment also reflects the idea that understanding physics is necessary to understand what he is talking about. Not true, all you need is an ability to follow his definitions, and some ability to logical thinking.

 

Has it ever occurred to you that, if objections as trivial as yours were actually valid, a theoretical nuclear physicists might have, at some point along the past few decades, thought of them? Maybe, just maybe, you don't understand what he is actually claiming?

 

Please keep that possibility open...

 

I have direct quotes and a counterexample, so don't go down that road.

 

The failure of DD's analysis has nothing to do with my understanding.

 

...pretty please...

 

The data that classical mechanics perfectly explains cannot obey DD's equation regardless of how you wish to perceive my understanding of his analysis. It is just so much handwaving and redirection.

 

Quite simply, his claim is disproved by example and is, therefore, no solution to this thread's concern. Of course, your faith does not allow you to accept this. But, it is nevertheless true.

 

Yeah my faith which makes me think I understand what DD is talking about, is nothing against the solid fact that you know you understand him.

 

Well in that case I'm glad I mis-understood him, because through that mis-understanding, I have discovered something very interesting which actually appears to be logically valid! I thought DD had discovered it but I guess it was just a mis-understanding. Would you like to hear about it?

 

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

When I said that, it was an attempt to show how two things are logically equivalent. You are now objecting by saying they are the same thing.

 

You said they are logically equivalent, and I have only agreed to that point.

 

I commented that this does not constitute an alternative to my definition precisely because "they are the same thing", by which I mean "they are logically equivalent".

 

I have not in any point at all said anything about the future affecting our expectations. When physicists talk about how they validate their models by the predictions their models make, they are not claiming to see the future.

 

These procedures being logically equivalent also means they yield the same conclusion about the arbitrariness of the chosen terminology. Don't you agree?

 

Nothing makes it not general, because it applies equally well to both cases. Why do you think it's me that's restricting the matter when I'm being more general?

 

Clearly you have a mis-understanding about what I said. Let's put it this way, if we are looking for a general notation for expressing the defined entities of world views, is it more general to:

 

A: allow only one static "moment of time" to be expressed

B: allow either only one, or alternatively any arbitrary number of "moments" to be expressed

 

Effectively the objection reads "by allowing dynamics to be represented, you have made an assumption that dynamics exist". Well, then represent just one "t". Like I said to Modest, have a ball analyzing that possibility.

 

You are neglecting that he had said "with very different solutions" and I doubt you're able to understand the matter in full. It is what I also said more recently than him (and had more feebly tried to address longer ago). If you (or Dick) can't prove the equivalence of the choices made between the initial premises and the FE then you can't say "and nothing else". What you are left with is only the notion that any description of reality has these symmetries... what a great new discovery.

 

I haven't had a good time to focus onto the anti-commuting elements part on the other thread but I'll try to get around to it soon, then you could voice your concerns there.

 

In the mean time, I hope you at least understand what the claim is. That any other valid option is logically equivalent to the choices he is using, i.e. arguing between them would be just a matter of semantics.

 

And yes, the FE does not amount to any great insight in itself, as has been voiced many times.

 

I quite agree there would be handsome implications, if this were possible.

 

Yes indeed, but I would like to just focus onto what his definition of the "future" really means. The thing is that even if you receive some new information "about the past", it can only be your world view which interprets it as an information about the past.

 

Using the "t" index and defining the "past" and "future" the way DD defines them, does not restrict it in any way, for you to interpret some experience as a time travel experience. Sure there are also some logical reasons why that idea would not logically fit to our current idea of reality, at least not even remotely in the way depicted in popular culture.

 

I.e. I completely agree with;

 

You see, a world view in which that is possible, in order to be self consistent, would have to differ very much from our familiar one

 

Wow, what a huge stretch those brain cells! :rolleyes: Quite obviously it would be in the traveller's future.

 

Indeed.

 

And that's exactly how simple and straightforward DD's definitions are.

 

You would be surprised how many people have fought about this exact point, insisting that "information about the history can't be in the future!". And how difficult it is to explain to them what DD actually means. I am having very similar difficulties in the above post with Modest, because he is convinced he understands what DD is talking about, and thus he is convinced DD is saying trivially recognizable non-sense.

 

Along the lines of what I wrote above?

 

No, actually not. I mean, that's not the issue I was referring to.

 

I mean, since DD defines the past as "the information you have accumulated", i.e. all the information that your explanation is based on, and the future as "the information you do not yet have", it just means that even if you do travel back in time with disastrous consequences, everything that has happened to you, including that "old present", then that "time travel experience", and then that "new catastrophic present", is still information in your personal past; your world view is still entirely a function of the information you have accumulated during those experiences, and nothing in that set of information changes "after the fact". (Albeit its interpretation can change)

 

When that time traveller would say "crap, I changed the past", he is referring to the idea of some "ontological past", i.e. things he assumes to be so in terms of his world view. Nothing has changed in his personal past; he still remembers his childhood, and making the time travel, just like before.

 

On the other hand, if your memory about your personal past does actually change - I'm sure you realize trivially - it would just mean you can't remember that anything has changed. Which just makes it a moot possibility; your world view needs to still fit that set.

 

I.e. in the terminology of DD, "your past" can be, always and universally, considered as a static set in the analyzis; there is no logical possibility that any world view would have to correctly represent dynamics to the "past", as he has defined "past".

 

I hope this also makes you roll your eyes and think what a trivially obvious point, because then you get what I'm saying. And then you would also be surprised how many people fight about this, Modest included.

 

What I've been thinking of is the consequences of Dick's analysis being valid, while also considering the logical equivalence I've been talking about. Have we perhaps discovered why my recent points are such monstrous dragons?

 

I make a big deal about subtle things for the simple reason that they reflect conclicts somewhere in the terminologies we use in the communication.

 

Exactly like the person who would insist that the information we get when sitting in the history class is information about the "past", would not, and are not, able to follow anything DD is saying.

 

-Anssi