Thanks Andrew, I've obviously conflated Gettier with his critics. Also obviously, I agree with those critics. It is fundamentally a belief based on ig...
Ahhhhh okay no, I don't mean it is undetectable insofar as it is beyond our current or future technological capabilities. I mean it's coupling to all ...
My understanding of the problem is that Smith fails (1) on account of, in the original thought experiment, Smith deriving his knowledge that the man w...
That is a falsifiable proposition. The Sun is not undetectable. "The Sun will come up tomorrow" is a good test of the predictive power of: "The Earth ...
Bully for you, big boy! I'm happy to be called out where an error exists and will correct/clarify as necessary, although in this case if you didn't ca...
Sod it, I'm here now. I identify with this. I recall speaking to a Catholic friend of mine about how I felt wandering randomly into Durham cathedral w...
I think the thing that maybe interests you about this isn't the dark matter bit but the "before the Big Bang" bit, which this paper (I read the prepri...
This seems incorrect to me. It is essentially restating the irreducible complexity assumption as an argument against counterarguments to irreducible c...
This was a thread that was going nowhere of the OP's own volition. The point of forwarding a proof of anything is surely to invite exploration of its ...
I was thinking of something that is a consequence of, rather than by-hand contributes to, the theory. This is the case with the radion field. It contr...
Not quite, that's something that would definitely have an empirical effect on matter but is beyond our theory. I was thinking more of something truly ...
Ahh phew, not Ayn Rand Objectivism, but Objectivity. This is still an extreme end of a scale for me. For instance, if we take a human moral question, ...
The issue is not our proximity to pigs, but the commonality between human and porcine digestive systems and diets and our proximity to humans. The pig...
The first head-scratcher for me is the compatibility of objectivism with phenomonalism. Isn't the acceptance of the phenomological limit rather at odd...
This appears to be the irreducible complexity argument borrowed from anti-Darwinist creationists. It a) is no less ridiculous than the prior arguments...
That's not a betting man's argument, that's a missionary's argument, based on ignorance and bad logic. Even with only one universe, the parameters of ...
Not to make silly generalisations from one event. It doesn't need to. It ceases to be a meaningful question. Nope, by definition it is eternal. Especi...
I have no explanation that includes fine-tuning, because that's a creationist myth. That aside, the constants of the universe being as they are only d...
There's two factors to consider: 1. Genetic propensity to overemphasise smells of dangerous smells; 2. Familiarity with abundant smells. As an example...
I admire the alacrity with which you adopt overwhelming authority on subjects you're clearly not remotely informed on, but there's a whole bunch of ac...
Then if that were true, the only possibility would be intelligent creation which would be 100%, not 50%. And your argument reduces to: Given that the ...
Yes, I know, that's what I and a bunch of other people are telling you is wrong. It is an invalid starting point for Bayesian inference. Me personally...
It's the same binary question as "Is the die showing a 1" The answer then is not 50/50. Saying "the probability of God creating the universe is 50/50"...
Harsh. This is what religious indoctrination does to most people. It puts up mental barriers to true things that don't fit the pedagogically-derived r...
That is fine because "guily" or "not guilty" are a complete set of options. There are uncountably many more options than "God did it", which is a sill...
That's precisely the point. You cannot just say "Since we do not know if it is this guy, the probabilities are 50/50". And yet that is exactly how you...
Woah there! Take it easy, Banno. The probability of God's existence is only 50%. Despite this, the universe was created, so the probability goes up to...
No shit. The question isn't lacking a hypothetical immaterial: it provides one consistent with the definitions given. I agree this is an extremely nar...
This is why the question is worded as it is. What I said was a materialist viewpoint, your idealist one is different. The ontology of reference frames...
That's not what I meant, but you're right it wasn't clear. When I say the 'idea' of reference frames is material, I mean it is encoded in books, brain...
Can you justify this without personal incredulity? Otherwise you may as well cut out the middleman and say: "I personally can't conceive of a universe...
Not from an eternalist viewpoint, where it's just a fixed 4D body in 4D spacetime. It's just that there's an element of translation in how we imagine ...
I would say it shows, had I not seen Stephen Unwin use the same approach. If it is reasonable, apply it to the analogy given. The probability of Col. ...
And that was the first mistake. If you're going for Bayesian estimates, you can't just say X and !X are 50/50. At the start of a game of Clue(do), the...
This is the probability theory of the amateur theologian, not of the mathematician. The error is always the same: we cannot prove God does not exist, ...
Only if they are interpreted as being teleologically fine-tuned, which they are not. Hence the circularity. You find God in the evidence to support yo...
Well, I'd say not in this case. The idea of reference frames strikes me as material, as does the actual thing it represents. You might, if you were an...
Not completely. The gradient in 4D may be with respect to other spatial dimensions just as it can in 3D. The 3D position changes with respect to time;...
There are no signs of teleological fine-tuning. That is an interpretation that once again assumes the necessity of an intelligent creator, making the ...
Referring to the emphasised section, I'm unaware of anyone saying that spacetime contains reference frames. Reference frames are a mathematical tool f...
It arose out of the idea, espoused by myself on said thread, that if a thing does not interact with matter at all, belief in it is unjustified. This t...
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