Your thoughts on Islam?

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

There's a reason why the death of god scared Neitzche so much and why he spent so much time trying to think of a replacement.

My point is, it doesn't matter what the facts are today, bc they will change tomorrow.

We need to trust the arbiter of truth, in order to be relaxed about it's output...

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

So did I then, I guess a couple of people were offended on your behalf; go figure...

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

We need to trust the arbiter of truth, in order to be relaxed about it's output...

For me, it's about the time and effort others put into their responses to make them as clear and meaningful as possible for the rest of the folks in the discussion. You often seem to be listening (and responding) to only what you're thinking instead of what other people said. You're even quoting yourself now, like we aren't that important.

You also often seem to put special emphasis on the vagueness of your responses, like a guru claiming, "Life is a river". I mostly ignore it because questioning it only brings more vagueness. I have to admit it offends me for two reasons. First, it seems intellectually lazy for a science discussion site (which is probably the exact opposite of the way you think of it), because you can never be wrong if you're vague enough. Second, you often talk about how much you've had to drink while posting, and I'm over 30 years sober, and enough of a snob about it to think we aren't getting to talk to the real you.

I'm not looking for arbiters, truths, or wisdom nuggets. I'm here to talk to folks about life on Earth, their experiences, and to share knowledge. I like that knowledge wrapped in transparent cellophane with a simple twist tie, not covered in opaque brown paper, glue, and duct tape.

 

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

For me, it's about the time and effort others put into their responses to make them as clear and meaningful as possible for the rest of the folks in the discussion. You often seem to be listening (and responding) to only what you're thinking instead of what other people said. You're even quoting yourself now, like we aren't that important.

Your assuming I don't want to be clear and dismiss my efforts on that basis, I'm not that clever...

[MigL]

4 hours ago, Moontanman said:

They way you define truth can be used to deny reality

I believe I already have.

4 hours ago, Moontanman said:

or even more troubling device to not take e a vaccine because you can't prove absolutely the vaccine is 100% effective

Not quite.
Vaccines with slightly better than 50% effectiveness have eliminated diseases which used to kill thousands of people.
It would be troubling ( stupid actually ) if you didn't go with the odds.

 

4 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Belief does not equal knowledge

I believe I said that.

 

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

My point is, it doesn't matter what the facts are today, bc they will change tomorrow.

I believe I said that too

Well, at least Eise reads my posts ...

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, MigL said:

I believe I said that too

Indeed, just not sure you understood the significance...

[MigL]

Significance to me, or to you ?

A 'significance' is another of those subjective terms, it is obviously not the same for everyone.
This being a science site, we should try to be more objective, or, at the very least, strive to define what a subjective term means to yourself.
Not tell others what it should mean to them.

[Eise]

19 hours ago, MigL said:

if absolute truth is unattainable, it makes no sense to use that descriptor for our current knowledge base as it is in a constant state of flux.

I fully agree that 'absolute truth' does not apply to the sciences (nor to any other 'truth capable' discourse). Let's call that 'Truth' with capital 'T'. 

But truth, lowercase 't' certainly applies to sentences that claim to reflect part of reality. E.g. 'the Eifel tower stands in Paris' is true. See also TheVat's description:

On 5/22/2024 at 3:16 AM, TheVat said:

truth is by definition statements that correspond to an objectively determinable state of affairs in the world.

Simply said: a statement is true, if it corresponds to objective facts. So this is the most simple definition of 'truth': factual sentences are 'truth-capable'. 

Now, is the sentence 'The earth is flat' true? Well, we know it isn't. Is the sentence 'The earth was flat in 4000 BCE' true? Again, no, we know that 4000 BCE the world was just as round as it is today. Does it then make sense to say that ''The earth is flat' spoken by somebody in 4000 BCE is true? She might be expressing what she really thinks, so she is 'truthful' (she really thinks the earth is flat), but the sentence isn't true at all. She just can't know it.

Nothing concerning the topology of the earth did change since 4000 BCE. What changed was how people saw the world.

Now for science: scientific theories are abstractions from true statements. They also contain how these abstractions can be translated into concrete empirical claims. Simplified: you have a theory, you put in the initial conditions that you measured or setup (when it is about an experiment), and the output of that are predictions of what you will observe, i.e. basic statements about 'affairs in the world'. If these basic statements turn out to be correct, again and again, even in very different situations (different initial conditions), then we can call the theory true, at least provisionally. (Or you can call it "best currently accepted internally and externally consistent provisionally validated model” as iNow prefers ).

Now Truth would be the ideal that for every possible state of affairs, we have a scientific theory, with which we can predict and explain all possible states of affairs.

I think that in this view it becomes clear that:

• we will never reach Truth
• but we strive to explain as many truths as possible, so aiming at Truth is still a heuristic principle
• and that trying to falsify scientific theories is the fastest way to make progress in science; repeating the same kind of measurements again and again to confirm a theory is pretty useless. 

[iNow]

17 hours ago, Eise said:

you can call it "best currently accepted internally and externally consistent provisionally validated model” as iNow prefers

Untrue!

 

🥸

[Otto Kretschmer]

By any chance, has any of you read Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah's Prophet by Ali Sina?

[exchemist]

On 5/24/2024 at 11:12 AM, Eise said:

I fully agree that 'absolute truth' does not apply to the sciences (nor to any other 'truth capable' discourse). Let's call that 'Truth' with capital 'T'. 

But truth, lowercase 't' certainly applies to sentences that claim to reflect part of reality. E.g. 'the Eifel tower stands in Paris' is true. See also TheVat's description:

Simply said: a statement is true, if it corresponds to objective facts. So this is the most simple definition of 'truth': factual sentences are 'truth-capable'. 

Now, is the sentence 'The earth is flat' true? Well, we know it isn't. Is the sentence 'The earth was flat in 4000 BCE' true? Again, no, we know that 4000 BCE the world was just as round as it is today. Does it then make sense to say that ''The earth is flat' spoken by somebody in 4000 BCE is true? She might be expressing what she really thinks, so she is 'truthful' (she really thinks the earth is flat), but the sentence isn't true at all. She just can't know it.

Nothing concerning the topology of the earth did change since 4000 BCE. What changed was how people saw the world.

Now for science: scientific theories are abstractions from true statements. They also contain how these abstractions can be translated into concrete empirical claims. Simplified: you have a theory, you put in the initial conditions that you measured or setup (when it is about an experiment), and the output of that are predictions of what you will observe, i.e. basic statements about 'affairs in the world'. If these basic statements turn out to be correct, again and again, even in very different situations (different initial conditions), then we can call the theory true, at least provisionally. (Or you can call it "best currently accepted internally and externally consistent provisionally validated model” as iNow prefers ).

Now Truth would be the ideal that for every possible state of affairs, we have a scientific theory, with which we can predict and explain all possible states of affairs.

I think that in this view it becomes clear that:

• we will never reach Truth
• but we strive to explain as many truths as possible, so aiming at Truth is still a heuristic principle
• and that trying to falsify scientific theories is the fastest way to make progress in science; repeating the same kind of measurements again and again to confirm a theory is pretty useless. 

I think this is very well expressed. +1

[dimreepr]

On 5/23/2024 at 6:24 PM, MigL said:

Significance to me, or to you ?

A 'significance' is another of those subjective terms, it is obviously not the same for everyone.
This being a science site, we should try to be more objective, or, at the very least, strive to define what a subjective term means to yourself.
Not tell others what it should mean to them.

Neither, A Single Death Is a Tragedy; A Million Deaths Is a Statistic, this statement isn't as harsh as it seems to be, whomsoever said it; we can't predict the action of a single human, but we can, with some precision, predict the actions of the average human; which is just as true today as when Assimov ventured his idea of psycohistory.

[joigus]

On 5/28/2024 at 9:31 AM, Otto Kretschmer said:

By any chance, has any of you read Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah's Prophet by Ali Sina?

I haven't, but I'm very interested in anything you might have to say about it.

Not to say I'm not enjoying the discussion on local realism and the concept of reality.

(As well as the ongoing intellectual feud between Moontanman and Dim.)  

[dimreepr]

12 hours ago, joigus said:

(As well as the ongoing intellectual feud between Moontanman and Dim.)  

Fued is to strong a word to use for someone I'd love to share a beer with, while we shoot the, metaphorical, shit... 😇

[Otto Kretschmer]

13 hours ago, joigus said:

I haven't, but I'm very interested in anything you might have to say about it.

Not to say I'm not enjoying the discussion on local realism and the concept of reality.

(As well as the ongoing intellectual feud between Moontanman and Dim.)  

I haven't read the book but I do know that is makes an argument that Muhammad suffered from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as well as Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

[joigus]

20 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Fued is to strong a word to use for someone I'd love to share a beer with, while we shoot the, metaphorical, shit... 😇

I was joking. I'd share a beer with you two too.  

3 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

I haven't read the book but I do know that is makes an argument that Muhammad suffered from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as well as Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Certainly possible. I prefer to think in terms of how the character of Muhammad has been construed through  time. Like what influential people that came after him did with his figure, as well as the early offshoots of Christianity at the time he is supposed to have lived. Don't forget it was Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Nestorian priest (Christian), who authorised him as a prophet.

[dimreepr]

25 minutes ago, joigus said:

I was joking. I'd share a beer with you two too.  

I know, it's like dad dancing; 'awkward' as funnybot explains...