You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

fdrake

Comments

A baby is born at 10pm in New York. Someone looks at their watch. Since the measurement process took a second, we can't justifiably say the baby's bee...
November 28, 2017 at 14:49
There's also the question of (eco)system boundaries. Hereditary mechanisms are embodied at the organismal level but operate above and below it; prosai...
November 28, 2017 at 14:25
Say that the radiocarbon dating of a dinosaur fossil took a month, is it then illegitimate to claim that it's more than a month old?
November 28, 2017 at 11:39
It isn't what philosophy has always sought to do, though. The empirical character of phenomenology let it internalise that kind of dialogue between li...
November 28, 2017 at 11:38
To make it easier, if you give me a sequence of 10 moves, I'll tell you whether it's losing or not. EG: denote by W a day that you work and N a day th...
November 28, 2017 at 11:33
I don't think it's feasible to keep believing in the universality of economic rationality when there are plenty of scenarios which don't contain it. W...
November 28, 2017 at 10:55
Acting in someone's self interest isn't actually a clear thing game theoretically unless strategies can be discussed. To 'act in your self interest' i...
November 28, 2017 at 09:58
The reproductive behaviour of organisms can also be considered as part of an ecosystem though. This is why colony collapse disorder for bees is terrif...
November 28, 2017 at 09:45
When you say 'is there a theorem for that' it has to be specific to a game or class of games. There's not 'theorem for that' for games which display m...
November 28, 2017 at 09:26
I first started reading phenomenological literature when I was 18. I was impressed with the apparent ability to vary something, say a lightbulb, in te...
November 27, 2017 at 18:47
This and this are almost entirely maths free descriptions of special relativity's use of the speed of light as 'cosmic speed limit' and how it has a c...
November 27, 2017 at 17:51
One thing that game theory does in an analysis is ascribe an abstract opponent. This can be 'nature' or another player. This can be generalised to coo...
November 27, 2017 at 16:58
(1) The error analysis is correct. (2) The derived error rate is approximately 3*10^-16 seconds per second. Do these require metaphysical necessity an...
November 27, 2017 at 16:19
It's known that the error rate for that clock is about 3*10^-16 seconds per second. This implies the error rate is 3*k * 10^-16 seconds per k*second. ...
November 26, 2017 at 16:56
Noo.... An extrapolation is an extension of an analysis outside the data range for which it was estimated. Say the error rate is K seconds per second,...
November 26, 2017 at 16:35
It isn't an extrapolation, it's a rounding of the error rate translated to a timescale that denotes the sheer precision of the measurement to a lay au...
November 26, 2017 at 16:24
Would you be happy with 6*10^-16 seconds per 2 seconds? How about 9*10^-16 per 3? You can scale the error like that all you like, it still represents ...
November 26, 2017 at 15:38
Ok. If the measurement error analysis in the paper isn't wrong, that means the 1 second in 100 million years isn't wrong. Since that corresponds to an...
November 26, 2017 at 15:09
Help me out a bit. (1) Beliefs about nature and methods for deriving them are fallible. (2) The laws of nature are non-necessary. (3) The laws of natu...
November 26, 2017 at 14:14
Basically correct. If you want to talk about dark energy, you have to be able to accept solutions to Einstein's field equations as correct and the web...
November 24, 2017 at 22:56
Before Newton thought of ma=mg implies a=g, objects with little difference in air resistance fell in the same way. Before Schrodinger's equation, atom...
November 24, 2017 at 22:08
I understood you were making the claim that since the laws of the universe can possibly change. I'm not making the claim that it's impossible to chang...
November 24, 2017 at 18:53
What scientists believe about dark energy has absolutely no bearing on whether the laws of the universe will change in a given time period. Coming to ...
November 23, 2017 at 22:36
I did a bit of background reading on Smolin. From what I understand he advocates the view that the laws of physics change over time. I'm sympathetic w...
November 23, 2017 at 17:31
How does the argument go then?
November 23, 2017 at 07:00
The laws of physics have been shown to operate over all observed parts of the universe - and thus back in time more than that. It isn't a stretch to a...
November 22, 2017 at 22:42
Yes, one is an expression utilising a shared background of institutionalised prejudiced to furnish its acceptance and is acceptable, and one is an exp...
November 22, 2017 at 20:22
Don't you see the distinction between: The clock only ran for a month, so the error is at least a month. The clock ran for a month and had an error of...
November 22, 2017 at 05:11
You're always going to have measurement error in experiments. 5.4*10^-17 error in a second is ridiculously precise. As the optical lattice clock paper...
November 21, 2017 at 21:11
Any argument that purports to prove the existence of God could be called a demonstration of God's existence. That doesn't mean the person detailing th...
November 21, 2017 at 17:58
It doesn't pretend to prove God. The point of the thread is to examine the argument. If the OP was filled with ridicule of atheists and had 'checkmate...
November 21, 2017 at 17:53
I'd rather see what conception of God is engendered by the assumptions than attempt to shoehorn in a totally irrelevant conception for the sole purpos...
November 21, 2017 at 17:45
In: Ethos  — view comment
There's a blogger that links abstract properties of societies to real life impediments in the UK. How he writes is exemplary and worthy of study and m...
November 21, 2017 at 16:36
They ran for a period of a month, and they got out of phase by 2.8 x 10^-17 seconds. That doesn't mean it's only proven to be stable for a month. Quit...
November 21, 2017 at 01:07
I think you're mistaking the one measurement for another. Can you cite the passage?
November 21, 2017 at 00:38
Honestly I don't understand literally everything in the paper. I trust their error analysis. If you really want me to translate the error analysis in ...
November 21, 2017 at 00:22
Well yeah, the ratio of crime rates of those subject to the intervention and the per capita rate in the general community excluding the people subject...
November 20, 2017 at 22:00
Now we probably agree in practice if not in principle. However you're still going to be hostile to the ideas that inequality and poverty contribute to...
November 20, 2017 at 21:36
@"Agustino" Do you see a role for statistics in finding problem areas in the organisation of a society that contribute to people making immoral decisi...
November 20, 2017 at 21:30
@"Agustino" And do you propose to interview every member of a society in order to analyse its aggregate properties?
November 20, 2017 at 20:47
One of the reasons statistical approaches to gas behaviour works was because it took something incredibly complicated with loads of variables - the in...
November 20, 2017 at 20:17
Individuals are far more complicated than gas molecules therefore we can't treat them as random and use their aggregate properties to study their prop...
November 20, 2017 at 19:52
Ok. What's wrong with doing this Aug: Also: You literally just skim read the wikipedia article to find the first thing you could say to me that looked...
November 20, 2017 at 19:39
You're saying that statistics only works when the thing it's applied to is random. I gave you a counter-example. Parameter estimation is used to asses...
November 20, 2017 at 19:33
No. Physical models are fit to data which are generated deterministically. The parameter fitting process still assumes the data is indistinguishable f...
November 20, 2017 at 19:22
@"Agustino" "I believe all these facts limit my agency therefore they are false" - exactly why I stepped away in the first place. You don't actually c...
November 20, 2017 at 19:13
The statistics are part of the map. They're like signposts, signalling and quantifying relationships in the territory.
November 20, 2017 at 19:01
Supplementary post: declaring that some statistics don't apply to individuals is essentially flipping the table we're sitting around to discuss this. ...
November 20, 2017 at 17:41
You're completely forgetting the application of base rates. Also your claim that a phenomenon has to be 'truly random' to have statistics applied to i...
November 20, 2017 at 17:16
I understand it quite well, statistics apply to individuals insofar as they support your arguments, and they do not apply to individuals to the extent...
November 20, 2017 at 12:59