[anon291]

In the sense that science is ultimately a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality (which is not a universal belief by any means, and is utterly religious in nature), then yes, this is true. On the other hand, if we take an irreligious look at things and try to keep focus on just what we observe, one is forced to make the opposite conclusion, as the very basic building blocks of reality are not uncoverable, non-replicable, and seemingly not governed by anything but randomness.

[Thiez]

Science is based on the hypothesis that stuff that worked yesterday will work the same way tomorrow, and it tries to discover the rules that govern the stuff. There is nothing religious about it. It's a safe assumption to make; if there are no rules or the rules can change in arbitrary ways, science should be able to detect that, too. We've seen enormous scientific progress throughout human history, and based on this history I think it's safe to say that it's the best way to learn about our world that we've discovered.

[anon291]

> Science is based on the hypothesis that stuff that worked yesterday will work the same way tomorrow

If you believe this assumption, you're believing a statement on faith and faith alone. I agree with you. I absolutely believe stuff will work the same tomorrow as yesterday at some level of abstraction.

> science should be able to detect that, too

Hmm... it might. It might not. For example, if 'god' (for lack of a better term) decided to make all spin states that he was going to make spin up instead be spin down from here on out, we would actually have no idea, despite those two 'states' of the universe certainly being different.

[fngjdflmdflg]

What do you mean by the basic building blocks of reality? The very machine you are posting your comment from can only be manufactured because the laws of physics don't change, and these machines and their manufacturing process operate on the atomic level. Similarly, do you have an example of a well defined experiment that would not produce the same result consistently? You can win a noble prize easily by publishing such an experiment. Lastly, if someone did produce an experiment that did not produce consistent results, that is, an experiment performed twice with all variables staying the same, but the result of the experiment being different, then the theory that all well defined experiments are reproducible would be wrong. It isn't axiomatic.

>try to keep focus on just what we observe

That's all science is though – making observations. Writing hypothesis and making experiments are etc. are just a means to creating things to observe. I'm curious, what did you observe that you felt was not bounded by some static law of nature?

[anon291]

> What do you mean by the basic building blocks of reality?

I was thinking photons which, when passed through a diffraction grating one at a time will cause an interference pattern on average but whose individual course is -- as far as we know -- unpredictable.

This flies in the face of the idea that the universe is perfectly predictable.

> The very machine you are posting your comment from can only be manufactured because the laws of physics don't change, and these machines and their manufacturing process operate on the atomic level

Indeed.. an axiomatic religious belief that has incredible amounts of evidence and that has proven very useful, but for the reason I mentioned above, certainly could not be the case. We shouldn't confuse the laws of statistics either certainty, even if the law of large numbers usually works.

> Similarly, do you have an example of a well defined experiment that would not produce the same result consistently?

I mean there are hundreds of them at this point. Passing single electrons or photons or buckeyballs through diffraction gratings (humans too!, we think). The stern Gerlach experiment. I can go on. Determining the individual spin states of entangled pairs of particles.

> Lastly, if someone did produce an experiment that did not produce consistent results, that is, an experiment performed twice with all variables staying the same, but the result of the experiment being different, then the theory that all well defined experiments are reproducible would be wrong

Well like I said we have lots of experiments whose results are different and who we cannot predict (some of which the math says we can never know), and yet, at the macro level we do science anyway because of our religious belief that it usually is okay.

For someone who purports to defend science, I'm shocked at the level of ignorance yet arrogance in this comment.

[int_19h]

It is only unpredictable if you confine yourself to a single branch. If you embrace Many Worlds and simulate things accordingly, creating branches as needed, the result of such simulation is consistent and reproducible.

[anon291]

Many worlds is a completely unprovable phenomenon

[int_19h]

It is not a phenomenon; it's simply one way to model reality - and arguably the simplest one because it has no woo like "observers" and "collapse".

[anon291]

Wavefunction collapse has no 'woo'. It's simply the application of a non-commutative operator. Many worlds has 'woo' because it supposes the existence of infinitely many unobservable worlds. Thomas Aquinas question of how many angels are on the head of a pin seems to be a more fruitful exercise. At least the head of a pin can be given a quantified size. On the other hand, no one can tell you where these multiverses exist. How they exist. What measure they occupy, or anything else. They are as unreal as angels. Unless you believe in them (which is fine, just admit it).

[fngjdflmdflg]

Everyone admits to being unable to predict individual quantum interactions. My point is that above the quantum level these interactions don't have much of an effect. The reason that I didn't assume you were talking about these interactions is because you seemed to be rejecting scientific observations altogether. The context of your comment was in replying to the comment that "everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it." Your response didn't read at all like you were talking about quantum interactions because you could have just said that. In fact it is usually common in such threads to reply "but what about quantum interactions?" to such comments. The way I read "a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality" was that you disagreed that the equations in physics textbooks will change at some point. The reason I thought that was the context was "Everything is governed by laws" so I thought you were saying that the laws are not unchanging.

Now reading your post, you seem to actually agree with most current scientific understanding. You don't actually seems to be saying that the laws of physics will change, Ask any physicist if some classical interaction will certainly happen the way it should. They will not say that it will happen with 100% certainty but rather that it is extremely likely that it will happen that way.

>an axiomatic religious belief that has incredible amounts of evidence

ie. not axiomatic.

>and yet, at the macro level we do science anyway because of our religious belief that it usually is okay.

I'm confused by what you are saying here. You agree that we can understand quantum interactions within "the laws of statistics" even if we can't know them for certain. So why would we change what we do on the classical level based on that? You can just add "extreme likelihood of following this equation" to every classical equation. How would you do science differently?

Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant?

It seems like what you really might mean is "due to quantum level interactions, an inorganic object that reproduces the same classical effects of the brain will not have consciousness." Is that correct?

[anon291]

You should really be doing a bit more defense here given how completely off base your initial comment was, but whatever.

> Everyone admits to being unable to predict individual quantum interactions.

No.. not everyone, including you, before this comment. You asked for experiments that do not produce the same results, and I gave you several examples. That in and of itself refuted your initial arguments.

> My point is that above the quantum level these interactions don't have much of an effect.

Really depends what you're talking about, it's not true that every macro interaction has no phenomenon that relies on quantum mechanics. In other words, classical physics cannot explain several macro phenomenon.

> The reason that I didn't assume you were talking about these interactions is because you seemed to be rejecting scientific observations altogether.

That's your assumption not mine. If I were you, I'd think about why I made it.

> everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it.

> Your response didn't read at all like you were talking about quantum interactions because you could have just said that. In fact it is usually common in such threads to reply "but what about quantum interactions?" to such comments. The way I read "a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality" was that you disagreed that the equations in physics textbooks will change at some point. The reason I thought that was the context was "Everything is governed by laws" so I thought you were saying that the laws are not unchanging.

In other words, you are upset when I pointed out that science itself relies on unprovable assumptions. Again, that is not my problem to resolve. The inner tension between the aspect of science where we discover laws and the reality of the universe, which is that it seemingly randomly chooses what to do, is a tension for you to resolve, not me. But the belief that all things obey laws is a religious one. It is is an unprovable one, and when such interactions were discovered caused a major metaphysical problem for scientists, which you completely gloss over.

> Now reading your post, you seem to actually agree with most current scientific understanding. You don't actually seems to be saying that the laws of physics will change, Ask any physicist if some classical interaction will certainly happen the way it should. They will not say that it will happen with 100% certainty but rather that it is extremely likely that it will happen that way.

The 'current scientific understanding' that not every scientist shares. In response to the knowledge that the universe is not predictable, some scientists have simply accepted that and have relaxed their initial claim (which is, again, a religious one) that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty. That's one resolution. Some claim yet more esoteric ones, for example, that we live in a simulation (again, a religious belief). Some claim that the universe branches(again a religious belief, since it's unprovable). The only claim here that does not rely in some unseen reality is the first, which, again, is a major departure from what science was.

> I'm confused by what you are saying here. You agree that we can understand quantum interactions within "the laws of statistics" even if we can't know them for certain

Sure, in a colloquial sense, we can understand them. At no point did I refute this point, but accepting it is an implicit rejection of the comment I replied to that everything follows laws. A better restatement might be that 'as far as we know, many things seem to follow predictable patterns at sufficiently high levels of complexity', which is a very different statement.

> Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant?

I'm not sure, but either way, this question is not on me to answer, because the person I responded to was the one claiming that conscious is physically explainable using the now-disproven idea that the universe is predictable at every level. Certainly, again, based on what we just said, brains might be using some unknown laws of physics, given that neurons do indeed operate at the molecular/atomic level (individual enzymes and neurotransmitters... who knows).

Finally,

> The way I read "a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality" was that you disagreed that the equations in physics textbooks will change at some point.

You have no possible way of knowing whether they will or won't. In fact, some things become easier to explain about our own universe if they did indeed change, but I digress, because -- again -- no one has any clue. The belief that physics won't change is a prime example of a religious belief in science. The belief in a firm un-changing reality governed by principle un-changing laws. It's telling that this is a common aspect of divinity in the monotheistic religions that birthed science. More specifically, in the Christian West's view, this is the 'immutability' of God. I would argue from a humanist perspective that this belief in God's constancy (as opposed to the fickleness of nature spirits) is what gave birth to Western science.

Now that I've defended myself, I'm going to say a few words about this interaction. Firstly, you admit (thank you) that you made a few assumptions based on my framing of the commenter's belief system. I have noticed that many science-minded people get upset when you point out that science also comes with a set of beliefs that are tacitly accepted as true without any proof. I'm not sure why this is the case, since it seems most human endeavors ultimately do, but the response to this, instead of curiosity, was -- from my perspective -- wild accusations of not believing in science. To the contrary... I believe in science -- a lot. It's proven incredibly useful, and also, I do believe the universe follows laws, even if we can't see it. But I just admit it's a belief and move on with my life instead of being zealous about it.

[fngjdflmdflg]

>No.. not everyone, including you, before this comment.

It's interesting how you deny that classical equations really hold true yet you will comment on what I actually believe.

>You asked for experiments that do not produce the same results, and I gave you several examples.

What I really meant was experiments that do not follow the laws we have so far discovered about nature. In the classical realm, that means experiments that do not produce the same results. In the quantum world, it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough). Nobody had mentioned quantum randomness at that point so there was no need to mention it. And if you can run an experiment that produces an unexpected histogram in some quantum field, yes, you will get a Nobel prize. I think that I could have worded it better to include quantum effects, but it still was clear in my opinion that I was talking about the rules we have discovered so far not changing, as I said at the end "what did you observe that you felt was not bounded by some static law of nature?" It is clear in this question that I am talking about the laws being static, not that every individual particle's movement can be predicted absolutely, even though that is essentially true in the classical world, which was what I was referring to in when I said experiments produce the same results.

>it's not true that every macro interaction has no phenomenon that relies on quantum mechanics

Ok. But there is no classical effect where quantum randomness is observed.

>That's your assumption not mine. If I were you, I'd think about why I made it.

I made that assumption because you called science a religion (which I still disagree about). Most people that call science a religion do not believe in science at all. For example there are a lot of people that do not believe in germ theory or believe that the earth is flat. These are generally the people that called science a religion. Being that you didn't make your point very clearly, that is what it sounded like you were saying, given the context.

>In other words, you are upset when I pointed out that science itself relies on unprovable assumptions

I just didn't understand the point you are making. In fact, I am still unclear on whether you believe that the laws of physics are static or not. It seems your main point now is that you cannot definitely determine future events because of quantum randomness. But that all future events can be definitely determined is not something science relies upon. "The belief that all things obey laws" is not something that science relies upon, given "law" is defined as an algorithm whose inputs are any material conditions and outputs are exact location of that material at some given time step. This is not what was meant by "Everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it." We are not talking about the movements of individual particles here.

>Sure, in a colloquial sense, we can understand them [...] but accepting it is an implicit rejection of the comment I replied to that everything follows laws

But that was said in a colloquial sense. We can use the probability distributions we find in nature to build things. And when our histogram looks more like a straight line than a curve we can safely rely on it. Also, I don't know were you got your definition of the word "law" but "the second law of thermodynamics," for example, is a probability, and we call that a law. Technically I could leave a cup of hot water out in a cold room and it would get even hotter, it just isn't statistically probable. And we call that observed probability the second law of thermodynamics. If someone said "I will use the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow to inform my decision of buying sunscreen" would you tell him that he should really say "as far as we know, many things, including the sun, seem to follow predictable patterns at sufficiently high levels of complexity leading me to buy sunscreen?"

>[some scientists now claim] that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty.

Please cite one physics journal where this claim is made. No physicist will say that quantum randomness cannot possibly have an effect on the macro scale. The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room.

>The only claim here that does not rely in some unseen reality is the first, which, again, is a major departure from what science was.

Ok, and? Your claim was that it was axiomatic. If scientists have departed from this idea, it was not axiomatic or religious. Scientists also parted from Newtonian gravity. What point are you making here.

>> Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant? >I'm not sure, but either way, this question is not on me to answer "science itself relies on unprovable assumptions" "science is ultimately a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality"

>brains might be using some unknown laws of physics, given that neurons do indeed operate at the molecular/atomic level (individual enzymes and neurotransmitters... who knows).

This is completely false. The brain does not operate at the atomic level. It actually operates at a level above the atomic level. It is a bit higher than that of modern day computer processors, which have a gate size of about 45 nm. It is also clear that it is the neurons that cause the brains activity, and conceptually neurons have no reliance on any atomic effects at all. (Similar to how logic gates have no reliance on atomic effects, and can be carried out by hand, just very slowly).

>You have no possible way of knowing whether they will or won't

What point are you making here? The world could end do to physics expiring right after finish reading my comment. That is true but a useless statement. Nobody disagrees with this point they just don't preface all their statements like "in event that the laws of physics don't drastically change tomorrow, do you want to get something to eat?"

>The belief that physics won't change is a prime example of a religious belief in science

Science doesn't say that physics won't change. Science doesn't say anything. All science does is give us observations. It's not like science pops out of a microscope after you do an experiment and says "now you have discovered my next lesson, right that down in the textbook of science." You cannot definitely accept anything as true the way you describe. You cannot even definitely accept that what you see is real. For example the quantum randomness that you see might not be real. You can't actually make a single positive statement beyond the rules of thought (which are axiomatic, or religious as you would say).

>It's telling that this is a common aspect of divinity in the monotheistic religions that birthed science.

What about the Romans' complete lack of scientific advancement? What about Greek science and Babylonian mathematics? The Scientific revolution was started by Christian Universities beginning to use Greek works (for example that of Aristotle and Eudoxus).

>you made a few assumptions based on my framing of the commenter's belief system

Yes, but you could have made your point much more clear.

>I have noticed that many science-minded people get upset when you point out that science also comes with a set of beliefs that are tacitly accepted as true without any proof

Are you referring to ZFC? Or the three rules of thought? Or Occam's Razor?

>wild accusations of not believing in science [...] I believe in science -- a lot

There is no such thing as believing in science

>I do believe the universe follows laws

That is a belief. That makes you "religious" in your terms. Yet you said we should "take an irreligious look at things." An irreligious look at things, under your definition, would be to make zero positive statements.

[anon291]

> it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough)

Oh I see so you deny the idea that carrying out the same quantum experiment could result in a very unlikely outcome.

> Ok. But there is no classical effect where quantum randomness is observed.

c

> I made that assumption because you called science a religion (which I still disagree about).

I did not. I said science is based on religious beliefs about the underlying nature of reality. Namely that it is constant and follows laws.

> We can use the probability distributions we find in nature to build things

Are we talking engineering or science?

> The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room.

Then how are you getting your histograms to always match?

> Ok, and? Your claim was that it was axiomatic. If scientists have departed from this idea, it was not axiomatic or religious. Scientists also parted from Newtonian gravity. What point are you making here.

Well science originally was a belief that the universe was like an automaton, following predictable laws deterministically. Today that is not the case, which means that the universe does not observe deterministic laws, which is what the comment I replied to insinuated. You seem to have correctly given up on this, but still express a belief

> This is completely false. The brain does not operate at the atomic level.

It really depends on what you mean by 'operates'. Potassium/Sodium ions are fundamental to brain workings.

> Nobody disagrees with this point they just don't preface all their statements like "in event that the laws of physics don't drastically change tomorrow, do you want to get something to eat?"

You literally said the laws of physics don't change.

> All science does is give us observations

Right, and from those observations, they do not deny the possibility that the universe follows laws. However, you constantly make the positive statement that the universe does follow laws. Again, a religious statement. I have not made any inconsistent statement. I have said I believe, as you do, that the universe follows laws, but I am honest in that that's religious.

> Yes, but you could have made your point much more clear.

But if I did that you would still be thinking your scientific belief system is based on reason, instead of religious.

> Are you referring to ZFC? Or the three rules of thought? Or Occam's Razor?

I mainly meant the belief that the universe follows laws at all.

> An irreligious look at things, under your definition, would be to make zero positive statements.

That's correct. Positive statements require a belief system that will inevitably contain axiomatic laws. These laws are religious in nature. Even if they have no reference to the divine, they are taken on faith. A common one today is a belief in an immutable universe.

[CooCooCaCha]

That’s not what science is at all. If reality changes science will adapt.

[mistermann]

You are declaring it to be a fact that science is flawless. Defining something to be true by definition can certainly cause it to be appear to be true (read some forum discussions among even smart people on the internet if you do not believe this), but it doesn't guarantee that it will be.

[tomrod]

Science is adaptable to reality -- therefore, it reflects reality as it is presented.

Esoteric arguments portraying an ineffable, unobservable stream of will that never interacts with reality is not observable by definition; since it doesn't interact with reality, it can be safely ignored. Roko's basilisk be damned!

[anon291]

> portraying an ineffable, unobservable stream of will

I'm not sure why you feel the need to bring divinity into this. The universe is not purely a automaton not because of some purported unobservable god, but simply because all experiments indicate that we cannot predict the behavior of the basic building blocks of the universe.

[tomrod]

I agree with your assessment. I mentioned the friction people to stem the path where when people begin speaking about multiple streams of access to knowledge, they are typically attempting to inject a common apologetic approach to make theology or philosophical arguments for divinity of various types and definitions.

[mistermann]

> Science is adaptable to reality -- therefore, it reflects reality as it is presented.

Are the adaptations both flawless and adequate to meet the claim? How would such a thing be tested to confirm truth?

[CooCooCaCha]

I think some people think science rejects mystical explanations because science is rigid and stubborn and has it's head buried in the sand.

But no, it's because there's no proof. If we had evidence that something mystical was happening then it would be a huge breakthrough and it would eventually become science.

[anon291]

And that would not be me, because at no point did I say we needed a 'mystical' explanation. I'm just pointing out the universe is not always predictable, but -- just as it did many years ago -- this often causes a lot of distress, especially on pop science forums.

[CooCooCaCha]

Please stop replying in my comments. Your responses are offensively stupid.

[mistermann]

How do you know fine-grained details about the actual actions and cognition of millions of people that you have never met?

Furthermore, do you think there's something about becoming a scientist that converts Scientist Humans into perfectly rational beings?

[CooCooCaCha]

I have no idea what you're talking about. And I'm not sure how you're getting "science is flawless" from what I said, or what that's supposed to mean.

[mistermann]

You said that science does not behave like a religion at all (zero faith based thinking, as just one example).

You also said: "If reality changes science will adapt". If this is not essentially a claim that science ~"understands reality", then what is it claiming?

[anon291]

If laws change; laws imply that things always work the same, but they don't. At a micro level the universe is describable in the aggregate, but seemingly unpredictable.

Science can change sure, but it cannot predict the unpredictable. You're not wrong to say science adapts but to say that quantum uncertainty hasn't caused the metaphysics of science (or at least some scientists) to change, is intellectual dishonesty.

[fngjdflmdflg]

I would call it a "law" that if I sample from a normal distribution I am more likely to sample from the mean than from the tail. The law is not on a specific draw but what the histogram will look like. The same way I wouldn't jump off a bridge because someone might jump off right after me with a parachute and attach it to me I wouldn't bet against classical laws due to quantum interaction. Can you name any specific physicists who should change their outlook? How should they be doing experiments differently due to your point?

[anon291]

Thought experiment. I have a machine that produces a standard normal distribution. I know this because I built it and tested it a lot (alternatively, have God/divinity/an oracle/whatever build this machine).

You sample from it 100 times and get the number 3000 every time.

What can you say about the machine? Did it follow a normal distribution? Really?

How much was your statement about normal distributions able to predict what happened?

What does it mean for something to follow a law? The word law comes from a legal background for rules in human society. If society makes a law, can that law be broken following a normal distribution?

> I wouldn't bet against classical laws due to quantum interaction.

In my daily life I do not. However, given that the inner workings of the human brain are not explicable in our current understanding of physics, I don't need to 'bet against classical laws' there. We already know that something is going on.

> Can you name any specific physicists who should change their outlook?

There are several competing outlooks in physics right now. One is the 'shut up and calculate' approach which admits there are unknowable, unobservable, unmeasurable 'systems' (for lack of a better word) and all we can do is make colloquial statistical claims about them. Another is that the universe is always predictable and quantum choice is due to the branching of the universe into many observable worlds (although they never explain why my conscious experience only follows one path... one is forced to conclude they believe some quantum process is in play). Another is that quantum physics is just completely wrong (unlikely). Another is that consciousness (which is undefined) is a crucial feature to quantum mechanics and is necessary to cause collapse of the wave function. There's pilot wave theory which requires there to be an unseeable aether (and again, admits no way to measure the aether, so I'm not sure that exists).

There's a whole list of spiritual beliefs about quantum mechanics here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...

Depending on your belief in what takes place (and it's really truly a belief, and in some systems, it's going to stay that way), take your pick of scientists who should change their outlook.

> How should they be doing experiments differently due to your point?

They shouldn't. Most physicists do good work explaining the way the world works, but they also admit that there are unknowable, unobservable, unmeasurable systems that govern it. The comment I replied to claimed otherwise.