I’ve often encountered the view here that “free will” is somehow impossible because “either everything is determined or it is random.” I’ve never understood this, but it was interesting to find that, whilst reading a popular book on quantum computing I’d started a while ago but never finished...
I've often read here arguments about the necessity of god or about determinism or materialism or whatever that involve so-called laws of physics. But recently I've noticed in discussions with students and even other researchers that these "laws" are generally misunderstood. So I wanted to know...
I've been trying to write-up a concise, clear, and coherent argument against the idea that determinism, or more precisely any deterministic worldview that implicitly or explicitly relies in some way on determinism in physics, is flawed. I have thus far failed to write anything that met all three...
Nobody likes to be wrong. I'm the first to admit that I'm the last to admit that I'm wrong about something. I like to think (and there is some truth to this) that this is because I tend not to form opinions about things until I have thought about them and studied them in some depth. Thus if I...
I am not only very familiar with how certain aspects of logic, formal reasoning, and mathematics can be unintuitive or even appear to be illogical, but have actually used examples of such cases when teaching. However, an off-topic discussion in a recent thread made me realize that, at least for...
My question is pretty simple: we've all heard about the scientific method, peer-review, falsification, etc. But few of us possess either the requisite knowledge or experience to speak to what scientific practice involves. So I'm curious what members think of the scientific method: what it is (if...
I’ve often heard it said, particularly in the context of debates about free will, consciousness, etc., that because the world we experience is governed by classical physics (i.e., the “weirdness” of quantum mechanics isn’t relevant to e.g., neural activity and can be ignored), somehow the...
I've often heard people say that in some sense or another "everything" (whatever that is) is "energy". This confuses me, to put it bluntly. I often work with "energy" as it is "defined" (exists? described?) in modern physics, and this has not helped me understand the assertion that everything is...
I’ve often found here and elsewhere that the big bang theory is somehow evidence of a creator. To be fair, many scientists (including Hoyle, who coined the term “big bang” derisively) objected to the idea that the universe ever “began” for precisely this reason (or at least something similar)...
I am interested in reactions to the following passage from a paper ("Universe from Bit") by the eminent physicist Paul Davies and published in P. Davies & N. H. Gregersen (Eds.) Information and the Nature of Reality (Cambridge University Press). I apologize for the abrupt start but I wanted to...
I’ve read a fair amount of recent posts that discuss falsification. As this is not exactly a new experience nor even limited to discussions here, I thought I’d take a minute to discuss the limitations of falsification, what role it plays in scientific research, and why it fails as a criterion to...
Many times on this site, I’ve come across the argument (usually related to free will and/or consciousness) that either everything is determined, or everything is random. Often, each of these options is identified with classical physics (in the case of determinism) or quantum physics (in the case...
Revoltingest, and other know-nothing engineers, should take a moment to seriously consider the HAVOK they wreak upon humankind. I just wanted to use this forum as a...um...well..."forum"...so as to point this out. Here's where engineering gets you:
To the extent I have anything resembling a reputation here, it is associated with longwinded, overly convoluted posts and threads. This is not without reason. However, recently I was informed that an email address I had would no longer be available to me and I should save whatever emails I...
Many may remember learning that there are different categories of numbers. There are the counting numbers (1, 2, 3, 4...), the integers (...-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4...), the rational numbers (all the integers and all the fractions), and the real numbers (all the rational numbers and the irrational...
People frequently say things like "science shows that..." or "science can't tell us..." and otherwise attribute cognizance and agency to a concept. Schizophrenia comes from the Greek words for "divided in twain" and "mind" (or "divided mind"). In every scientific field, there are at least some...
Ok, even I don't believe my title. And yes, this post presents arguments that are simplistic and which are easily answered. But it isn't trivial at all. Every argument that has a simple answer is because I have avoided the complex argument, and for the rest the seemingly simple solutions aren't...
1. Introduction
I decided (for once) not to pursue a topic completely irrelevant to the thread just because of a single sentence in one post. However, I’m still neurotic, and so I feel compelled to address the issue more completely. Also, the issue may actually be of some interest to some...
What Fine-Tuning is (and isn't)
Like so many terms within the sciences, “fine-tuning” is both widely misunderstood, used inconsistently even by specialists, and misleadingly suggestive. Fine-tuning, or the fine-tuning problem, intuitively suggests (if true/real) the existence of a “fine-tuner”...
In threads about determinism, free will, causes and effects, etc., I often find here the position that either everything is determined (and therefore, according to a logically problematic inference, free will is impossible), or everything is random and free will is nonsensical or otherwise...