Maybe it would be good for science to make up new words to describe laws, etc

[Keith&Co.]

So you lived in a world where no teenagers were having sex under 16?

Are you ubable to read, or just in too much if a hurry to do so?
He never said anything at all like that.

 

[skepticalbip]

So you lived in a world where no teenagers were having sex under 16?

Are you ubable to read, or just in too much if a hurry to do so?
He never said anything at all like that.

Hey, if halfie feels free to put words in Jesus' mouth, why would you be immune?

 

[Keith&Co.]

So you lived in a world where no teenagers were having sex under 16?

Are you ubable to read, or just in too much if a hurry to do so?
He never said anything at all like that.

Hey, if halfie feels free to put words in Jesus' mouth, why would you be immune?

Good point.
So Halfie has fear, disgust, misquoting, and fanatical devotion to the Pope as his three main weapons...

 

[steve_bank]

What is wrong with saying that? A ball can not roll uphill because it obeys the law of gravity. It has to fall down. The question is, "Who put this law into place?" If you say "no one," then we must ask why the ball obeys gravity? If the universe was godless, why not expect some things to fly up at random intervals?

Again you do not understand what law means in scince.

A ball rolling down hill does not 'obey the law of gravity' as if it were determined by a law of science. Laws are descriptions of observation by humans.

When we say a falling object obeys gravity it is just a manner of speaking. It does not conform to our laws of science, our laws of science are derived from observation and experiment. Outside of the math we are stuck with the limitations of language. Reality does not conform to science, science conforms to reality.

No agent or creator or purpose to reality is indeed.

Things work the way they do because that is what reality is.

 

[Half-Life]

What is wrong with saying that? A ball can not roll uphill because it obeys the law of gravity. It has to fall down. The question is, "Who put this law into place?" If you say "no one," then we must ask why the ball obeys gravity? If the universe was godless, why not expect some things to fly up at random intervals?

Again you do not understand what law means in scince.

A ball rolling down hill does not 'obey the law of gravity' as if it were determined by a law of science. Laws are descriptions of observation by humans.

When we say a falling object obeys gravity it is just a manner of speaking. It does not conform to our laws of science, our laws of science are derived from observation and experiment. Outside of the math we are stuck with the limitations of language. Reality does not conform to science, science conforms to reality.

No agent or creator or purpose to reality is indeed.

Things work the way they do because that is what reality is.

But you expect things to fall down. Who says that tomorrow things won't fall up? Is there a 100% guarantee gravity will work tomorrow? If not, how can it be a law? At best you can say, "we are 99.9% sure it will work tomorrow." Is that a law?

If science conforms to reality, then all scientists should be scared to death that things might get tragic any second! Anything could change on a whim if reality can do anything it wants! But, we don't see anything changing on a whim.

 

[skepticalbip]

What is wrong with saying that? A ball can not roll uphill because it obeys the law of gravity. It has to fall down. The question is, "Who put this law into place?" If you say "no one," then we must ask why the ball obeys gravity? If the universe was godless, why not expect some things to fly up at random intervals?

Again you do not understand what law means in scince.

A ball rolling down hill does not 'obey the law of gravity' as if it were determined by a law of science. Laws are descriptions of observation by humans.

When we say a falling object obeys gravity it is just a manner of speaking. It does not conform to our laws of science, our laws of science are derived from observation and experiment. Outside of the math we are stuck with the limitations of language. Reality does not conform to science, science conforms to reality.

No agent or creator or purpose to reality is indeed.

Things work the way they do because that is what reality is.

But you expect things to fall down. Who says that tomorrow things won't fall up? Is there a 100% guarantee gravity will work tomorrow? If not, how can it be a law? At best you can say, "we are 99.9% sure it will work tomorrow." Is that a law?

If science conforms to reality, then all scientists should be scared to death that things might get tragic any second! Anything could change on a whim if reality can do anything it wants! But, we don't see anything changing on a whim.

Even you are sure enough of the fact of gravity that you constantly risk your life on it working and avoid situations which you know will kill you if it continues to work. And hopefully you are wise enough to not rely on prayer to keep you from falling so you can step of a cliff to demonstrate the power of god and prayer - I would guess that you know deep down that prayer will not stop you from plummeting to your death. Science has the same certainty only have described it (Newton's universal law of gravitation) precisely enough to use to calculate how to put rovers on Mars.

 

[bilby]

What is wrong with saying that? A ball can not roll uphill because it obeys the law of gravity. It has to fall down. The question is, "Who put this law into place?" If you say "no one," then we must ask why the ball obeys gravity? If the universe was godless, why not expect some things to fly up at random intervals?

Again you do not understand what law means in scince.

A ball rolling down hill does not 'obey the law of gravity' as if it were determined by a law of science. Laws are descriptions of observation by humans.

When we say a falling object obeys gravity it is just a manner of speaking. It does not conform to our laws of science, our laws of science are derived from observation and experiment. Outside of the math we are stuck with the limitations of language. Reality does not conform to science, science conforms to reality.

No agent or creator or purpose to reality is indeed.

Things work the way they do because that is what reality is.

But you expect things to fall down. Who says that tomorrow things won't fall up? Is there a 100% guarantee gravity will work tomorrow? If not, how can it be a law? At best you can say, "we are 99.9% sure it will work tomorrow." Is that a law?

If science conforms to reality, then all scientists should be scared to death that things might get tragic any second! Anything could change on a whim if reality can do anything it wants! But, we don't see anything changing on a whim.

You have it arse-backwards, as usual. If there was a God that could intervene and change reality, then anything could happen. Fortunately, there isn't, so reality remains predictable - many things always behave in certain ways. And when something always behaves in a predictable way, science calls that a 'Law'.

That's literally what a law is, in science. An observation that the universe is predictable.

The hallmark of intelligence is unpredictability. Only simple systems not driven or managed by any intelligence are predictable.

That's why it's easy to predict that a bomb dropped on Tehran will fall away from the aircraft that delivers it; But very difficult to predict what the Iranians will do in response to being bombed.

 

[abaddon]

If science conforms to reality, then all scientists should be scared to death that things might get tragic any second! Anything could change on a whim if reality can do anything it wants! But, we don't see anything changing on a whim.

You think that if scientific laws don't tell reality what to do, then reality is free to do whatever it wants.

In a sense, reality "does what it wants". It "wants" to follow patterns, and does that very consistently. It does it so consistently that humans have observed and described the patterns, and chose to call them "laws". The patterns are so consistent that, as skepticalbip said, humans have been able to do remarkable things relying on how well they've described the patterns.

Actually it's the people who want reality to conform to their unobserved, imaginative descriptions who should worry that things will go berserk. If you describe reality as made by a god, then how do you get a consistent pattern from that, something you can use to make predictions with? Gods have their own will and do whatever they want.

You seem to be saying a godless universe is so random you can't rely on anything about it, and a universe with a whimsical god running it is 100% reliable. (Though the Bible tells how random the god is). That's bizarre because observation indicates reality is not at all like that.

So, I wonder, how long will it be before you repeat your mistake about scientific laws? And why won't you look it up and learn what laws are so you can avoid repeating mistakes?

 

[ruby sparks]

Why do i give a fuck what someone self-identifies as if there is no risk of harm to others?

I think that's quite an important consideration.

Because, I've been trying to come up with a good, consistent reason why the 69 year old Dutch guy should not get to change his birth certificate as regards his age (because he feels younger) while someone else can do it for their gender, and I can't think of one.

Wow you agree on age change? Suppose a 69 year old man identifies as a 15 year old. Does this mean he should be allowed to have sex with 15 year old girls?

You see the can of worms this opens up?

I didn't exactly say I agreed with age change. But I did say what I said, that I can't think of a good reason to say no to one and yes to the other. It does seem complicated and I think you have made an interesting comparison, in principle.

Justifications for treating the two things differently would, I think, have to come down to pragmatics rather than principle. For instance, we might have to limit both if it for instance caused harm to others, or other issuesas regards the workings of crucial parts of society. Something like that.

There is also the issue of genuineness. Is it actually possible for a 69 year old man to be (in his head) 15, other than in certain limited ways at certain times? I'm not sure. There was a case I read of where an adult pedophile claimed, as a defence (for having sex with a 9 year old girl), that he felt he was 9, but it was not accepted in court as being genuine. And of course it was rape in any case. As it would be in your scenario, unless the legal age was 15 in the place it happened.

So maybe it does open up a can of worms, albeit the worms may not be as big as you think.

I might provisionally say this; both should be allowed if it doesn't cause harm or other major problems. I'm thinking the 69 year old should have been allowed to use the lower age of 49 on his tinder profile. That said, I think it would be best if he made it clear he only identifies as 49, while being biologically 69. Ditto for transgender daters on tinder. They arguably should not claim to be a woman (for instance) without qualifying that they are something of a special case. In the name of honesty and clarity I mean. It is my understanding that many who are transgender do this on dating sites. Perhaps all don't. But if they don't, it might result in problems when the two daters meet, or further down the line.

The changing of birth certificates (or the omission of a piece of information, such as gender, or age) might be another matter. In that case, I might be in favour of denying both the ability to do that. But I'm still thinking about it.

 

[Keith&Co.]

[ But you expect things to fall down. Who says that tomorrow things won't fall up? Is there a 100% guarantee gravity will work tomorrow? If not, how can it be a law? At best you can say, "we are 99.9% sure it will work tomorrow." Is that a law?

Man, you suck at craps, don't you?
We have observed things falling and it's not that they fall IAW the laws of physics 99 times out of 100, or 99999, out of 100000, or Nineyum times out of a jillion. They always fall IAW the LoP. Always.
No one has ever observed a whimsical suspension of gravity or any other LoP. Ever.
Out of generations upon generations of people dropping shit, it's never been observed that one must take into account the failure of gravity (or physics).
When YOU play craps, though, it appears that your betting strategy must include the possibility of rolling a 1. Or a 34. Or a pair of purple. Because in your world, the impossible is just a little less likely...

If science conforms to reality, then all scientists should be scared to death that things might get tragic any second!

I THINK you mean 'all materialists.' Because there are some scientists who believe in magic, and one must presume some of them believe that the reality we experience is propped up by an intelligence who could change his mind.
He just never, ever, ever, ever has....

Anything could change on a whim if reality can do anything it wants!

Is there any chance you could explain the concept of 'what reality wants' in materialistic terms?
Because to me, it just sounds like babbling tomfoolery. Or bullshit.
Does bullshit work? Just... Just don't answer this question at all if you agree that you're talking utter bullshit.

 

[Sarpedon]

Am I the only one who thinks it odd that Time is being put on a level with gender identity? I mean, one is a fundamental property of the universe, and the other one is a combination of biochemistry, psychology and government paperwork amongst a single species which is well known to have problems with all three things.

 

[Atheos]

This is exactly what I've been thinking for awhile now Sarpedon. It is impossible to change the date and time an individual was born. If that date and time is documented reliably then age-related fraud and/or criminal activity can and often will be prosecuted. I'm reminded of Traci Lords, an underage porn star in the 1980's who managed to get into the adult film business with a fake ID. If memory serves she only made one porn movie after she was old enough to do so.

From a legal standpoint it matters very much how old we are. Many laws center around the age of the individual in question, there is nothing that can be done to change the date and time an individual was born, provided the definition of "born" is clear enough.

On the other hand it really doesn't matter what your gender is. People of any gender can be rapists, murderers, kung-fu masters or world leaders. I don't personally understand what it's like to have a penis but identify as a woman, but that doesn't mean someone else can't. My lack of personal experience with something must never become the basis for legal restrictions on other people even if 99% of all people feel the same way I do about it. Nothing but oppression results from that kind of attitude. Oppression is oppression no matter how small a portion of the population it effects.

 

[ruby sparks]

Am I the only one who thinks it odd that Time is being put on a level with gender identity? I mean, one is a fundamental property of the universe, and the other one is a combination of biochemistry, psychology and government paperwork amongst a single species which is well known to have problems with all three things.

This may be worthy of a separate thread.

Strictly speaking, gender identity is not being compared to time, it is being compared to age identity, which might also be described as a combination of biochemistry, psychology and government paperwork.

I don't think it's as clear cut that the two are so fundamentally different that they could not, in principle, be treated similarly. Clearly, if one throws up more practical problems than the other, then we could differentiate them in terms of pragmatics, but not so much in principle. We would have to be talking about cases where the person is being genuine about the identity in question. There may be fewer cases of that for someone claiming the subjective experience of not being a certain 'biological' age, I don't know. It may also be that age identity is more fluid (less permanent or more intermittent, depending on different situations) but I can see how a 69 year old man could genuinely and non-intermittently really feel like a 49 year old, for example.

And so I googled 'age identity' and found this:

AGE IDENTITY
http://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/798.pdf

"Age identity belongs to the domain of the subjective experience of aging. Key measures of age identity thus are subject to personal biases and misinterpretation, yet researchers in the field of gerontology have long taken the personal experience of one’s own age and aging process to be a subject worthy of investigation. Different aspects of age identity have been studied empirically since the 1950s (Barak & Stern, 1986)."

 

[ruby sparks]

On the other hand it really doesn't matter what your gender is.

I know what you mean, and in many ways it's true, in other ways not. But that's also the case for age. Possibly in different ways.

Also, there is discrimination in both cases.

 

[Sarpedon]

Ummm. Gender identity is ambiguous because the underlying 'facts' of gender are ambiguous.

Age identity is unambiguously false and frivolous because the unambiguous underlying 'fact' of time.

As someone who has always been mature for his age, I've never had any problem understanding the difference between what mental level one is operating at and the notion of time. Generally, it is only people operating at a lower than expected level who are so confused.

 

[ruby sparks]

Ummm. Gender identity is ambiguous because the underlying 'facts' of gender are ambiguous.

Age identity is unambiguously false and frivolous because the unambiguous underlying 'fact' of time.

As someone who has always been mature for his age, I've never had any problem understanding the difference between what mental level one is operating at and the notion of time. Generally, it is only people operating at a lower than expected level who are so confused.

I don't tend to agree that there being an objective standard to compare to makes age identity false. It may make it objectively false, but in a way, so what. As a subjective experience, it is not psychologically false. No identity is. We don't ask for biological or biochemical proof before accepting someone's gender identity. Gender, whatever the explanation, is taken to be the personal experience of one's own gender. Furthermore, age identity may also have biological or biochemical foundations. In a way, if it is genuine, it must.

 

[Sarpedon]

One's age is constantly changing. How can one have an 'age identity?' The idea of picking an age and 'identifying' with it when no one can stop themselves from aging is sheer madness. Transsexuality is coherent in that it focuses on a definable problem; that circumstances beyond one's control has left one with the incorrect set of genitals and hormones. It is a problem that is real, definable, correctable and afflicts a easily identified group of people. Aging affects everyone. There is no cure for being mortal.

Every goddamn person wakes up some morning wondering where the years have gone and puzzling over how we fit in. Most of us don't slide into delusion.

To trivialize the suffering of people who must cope somehow with a mind and body that don't match in an unforgiving society by equating it with some people being unable to cope with the inevitability of mortality makes me nauseous.

People who are transexual used to be defined as mentally ill. Whether that is true or not, we've found it easier and more satisfactory to change their bodies rather than their minds. There is no cure for 'age identity' lunatics, save for normal psychiatric means. Humoring the mentally ill does not aid their recovery.

 

[ruby sparks]

One's age is constantly changing. How can one have an 'age identity?' The idea of picking an age and 'identifying' with it when no one can stop themselves from aging is sheer madness.

I doubt if that's the way it works though. The 69 year old man is probably using an age identity that is '20 years less than my biological age'. As such, yes, it would change as time passed.

To trivialize the suffering of people who must cope somehow with a mind and body that don't match in an unforgiving society by equating it with some people being unable to cope with the inevitability of mortality makes me nauseous.

I agree that by comparison, the suffering and problems with one one seems more trivial than with the other. Perhaps that is a valid reason for treating them differently, and not one I had previously considered.

 

[ruby sparks]

Every goddamn person wakes up some morning wondering where the years have gone and puzzling over how we fit in. Most of us don't slide into delusion.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it was a delusion.

If, for example, one takes great care of one's physical condition, one can genuinely feel (and in some ways even be) younger (in the subjective and psychological sense) and healthier (in the objective and physical sense). And what about having 'better' genes than someone else? Literally having a longer-lasting body (or one that ages slower) than someone else? Time may be a constant, but do all bodies actually age at the same rate? I read that there are variations in things such as biological 'repair efficiency', for example.

 

[steve_bank]

What is wrong with saying that? A ball can not roll uphill because it obeys the law of gravity. It has to fall down. The question is, "Who put this law into place?" If you say "no one," then we must ask why the ball obeys gravity? If the universe was godless, why not expect some things to fly up at random intervals?

Again you do not understand what law means in scince.

A ball rolling down hill does not 'obey the law of gravity' as if it were determined by a law of science. Laws are descriptions of observation by humans.

When we say a falling object obeys gravity it is just a manner of speaking. It does not conform to our laws of science, our laws of science are derived from observation and experiment. Outside of the math we are stuck with the limitations of language. Reality does not conform to science, science conforms to reality.

No agent or creator or purpose to reality is indeed.

Things work the way they do because that is what reality is.

But you expect things to fall down. Who says that tomorrow things won't fall up? Is there a 100% guarantee gravity will work tomorrow? If not, how can it be a law? At best you can say, "we are 99.9% sure it will work tomorrow." Is that a law?

If science conforms to reality, then all scientists should be scared to death that things might get tragic any second! Anything could change on a whim if reality can do anything it wants! But, we don't see anything changing on a whim.

BTW, do you stay up nights worrying about an asteroid strike? Periodically a large one gets within the moon's orbit. Sooner or later there will be an extinction level asteroid strike, and one may creep up on us without detection. Scary shit aint it?

Science and engineering as well lives with uncertainty. Something about the best laid plans of mice and men. When therhe Brookhaven RHIC collider went on line there was a theory that the event could cause an event that ended up destroying the Earth. When the first atom bomb was detonated there was a theory the atmosphere oxygen could end up starting a global conflagration.



As a general rule something becomes a law in science after it has been used so much that we rely on it without worrying about it. There are no absolute truths. A good example was the overturning of Newtonian time with Eistien's space-time where time is variable. Which by the way has been demonstrated.

Science only addresses what is observable, testable, and extrapolated based on experiment.

Can the solar system move into a region of space where our science does not apply? There were a few Star Trek stories on that theme. We call that idea science fiction.

What makes you think that when you hit the brakes in your car that it will suddenly stop working? Other than a mechanical failure. Or the jet you are on will suddenly stop flying because aerodynamic science no longer wrks?

Science bashers always ignore their own faith in science when they have no clue about science at all.

The answer to your question is we do not know, and we are comfortable with that. If you are always questioning reality in terms of stability you are going to end up with high blood pressure.

What would really be cool if we found a huge ape that ended up climbing the Empire State Building. Or found huge ants mutated in the desert from old atomic tests. My favorite scifi movie when I was a kid,.

What if are being observed by aliens?

What terrifies me is our screwball president and what kind of war he may get us into....

What religion has always provided is a sense of security and absolutes in our chaotic existence. That is what relgion is for. It is on the believer to reconcile faith with observable and testable science.

A Jewish philosopher and rabbi wrote 4 or 5 centuries ago in A Guide For The Perplexed is that when science and interpretation of scripture conflict, interpretation must change. MOses Maimonides.