Comments by Jason1083

Comment #223952 by Jason1083 on August 3, 2008 at 7:41 pm

Teratornis, I think you are reading far too much into Richard's use of the phrase "Darwinian Heritage." I don't think Richard was trying to draw a dividing line between behaviors that have an evolutionary explanation and behaviors that have a cultural explanation. He was just pointing out that while the ultimate goal of any evolutionary adaptation is to promote the survival and reproduction of the genes which gave rise to it, this doesn't provide us with any reason to reflectively adopt survival and reproduction as our ultimate goals.

2. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122715 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 9:20 pm

And one additional point - it's not as if string theory is exactly stagnant. There has been substantial progress in the past 10 years. Whether the theory is close to making sharp testable predictions is another matter - but I think to call it a failure one of two things would have to happen. Either 1) it would have to make wrong predictions, or 2) graduate students would stop entering the field because it was no longer regarded as promising. I think this is the usual way that unpromising avenues of scientific exploration die and if string theory deserves to die, I expect that it will in due course.

3. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122712 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 9:16 pm

Jason: a very good post. I think there is an independent way of assessing things, which is quantity of evidence. I recommend Woit's and Smolin's books. Surely we can only fund people like Witten exploring the borders of mathematics and physics for so long, unless they come up with some testable hypothesis?

Steve, thank you. I agree that quantity of evidence is important, it's just extremely difficult to assess as a non-physicist. Smolin can enumerate lots of objections to string theory, but if they're all weak objections, the quantity of evidence isn't on his side.

I think part of the difficulty is that string theory proponents freely admit that what they're doing is in some ways unprecedented in science. Physics has historically proceeded with a closer connection between theory and experiment. But they argue that the theory is so deep and powerful and manages to explain so much of what seemed previously to be unrelated truths that it must be right. It's just very hard to appreciate whether this is a strong argument or not without appreciating the details oneself.

4. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122708 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 9:09 pm

I recommend "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin. No equations. Discusses the string theory controversy within the physics community.

Not that you implied otherwise Rational_G, but while "no equations" means that a layman might be able to follow Smolin's arguments, it certainly doesn't mean that a layman who read Smolin's books would be well-equipped to evaluate those arguments. To do that would require a PhD in theoretical physics and a deep knowledge of "K-theory" and the other relevant branches of mathematics.

5. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122705 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Scientific funding is important. My view (as an outsider, and reading books by those who have been involved) is that String Theory has come up with very little after decades of funding.

I think in this case the volume (and content) of popular books published on either side gives a misleading impression of the state of the debate in the scientific community. Yes, Peter Woit and Lee Smolin think string theory is overrated and Brian Greene thinks it's extremely promising. But I don't think any of us can be expected to really appreciate the arguments for and against string theory - Ed Witten seems extremely impressed by the fact that string theory "postdicts" gravity and Peter Woit seems less impressed. There's no way to judge between them except to look at the number of citations their work has received and the number of other researchers in the field who find their arguments convincing. I of course agree that scientific funding is important, but I don't see any other basis for deciding how to allocate it in technical theoretical fields other than the interest a theory generates among experts in the field.

6. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122699 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 8:47 pm

I hope not. There are many theoretical physicists working on other areas, such as loop quantum gravity, than need support.

That's true, and they should be given support in proportion to the level of excitement that their ideas generate within the community of their scientific peers as measured by the number of researchers / citations in major journals in the field. I've seen no evidence that the funding for string theory is excessive by this measure. If someone researching loop quantum gravity comes up with an exciting result that generates a large number of citations and motivates other researchers to enter the field, then funding for loop quantum gravity will increase. I just don't see any other basis for someone who isn't a theoretical physicist to prefer one to the other or any other criteria which are reasonable to consider from the prospective of policy-makers who must decide on funding decisions (at least in a field so esoteric that it has no foreseeable implications for social welfare).

I'm not too familiar with the way funding works in this case, but I'd guess most researchers in these highly theoretical fields have tenured positions where they could research whatever they wanted anyway since they don't need to run expensive experiments. I'm sure the presence or absence of grants exerts some force on the direction of research, but it wouldn't prevent someone from pursuing an idea they thought was truly groundbreaking.

As an aside, Steve - are you a theoretical physicist with the requisite mathematical training to understand and evaluate string theoretic models? I don't mean this to be insulting - but if not, why do you think your opinion about the matter should count for anything? I'm not a physicist and I think whatever appraisal I might make of string theory's scientific validity is completely irrelevant. This may be the most technical field on earth and we should rely on people with the wherewithal to evaluate the technical results to decide whether they are promising. Currently, most of those people seem to think string theory is worth pursuing although there are certainly notable exceptions and the matter is far from settled within the physics community.

7. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122681 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Sorry, just read the link I posted and the description was very bad. Here is a much more intelligible discussion:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/susskind03/susskind_index.html

8. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122679 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 7:40 pm

MPhil - Steve is referring to the landscape:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory_landscape

9. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122676 by Jason1083 on February 5, 2008 at 7:35 pm

Indeed. However, as the current understanding of String Theory implies 10^500 different realities, the idea of any specific predictions that are falsifiable seems unlikely.

This is an unfair point. I am not a string theorist myself, so I can't provide a detailed answer.

The fact that so many of the smartest physicists in the world (Witten, Maldecena, 't Hooft, Weinberg, Susskind) continue to work in string theory strongly suggests that there are still good prospects of it becoming a successful physical theory even if it does not uniquely determine the geometry of spacetime.

String theory remains a vibrant field with hundreds of papers published in reputable scientific journals every year. This is the only testament laymen should need to its potential validity.

10. Can Atheists Be Parents?

Comment #107304 by Jason1083 on January 4, 2008 at 11:26 am

I think it's worth pointing out that this article is from December 7th, 1970. Much as atheists may still be maligned, their status has certainly improved dramatically since then. Anyone know what the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled?

11. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76444 by Jason1083 on October 5, 2007 at 10:50 pm

Comment #76431 by blackhaw said:

...I think Dawkins problem is that dawkins uses the scientific method for everything. The scientific method is not good for gaining all types of knowledge. Even if one just dillutes into just rational thought like many do. The funny thing is Dr. Lennox does basically the same thing but is religious.

Blackhaw, I'm curious as to what you think the scientific method is and what types of knowledge it is not good for gaining. My rough answer to these questions would be: the scientific method involves carefully stating hypotheses about the world and then testing them through observation. I would agree that this method is inappropriate for answering normative questions (e.g. "How should we treat other people?"). But Richard agrees with that as well.

He asserts (and I agree) that the scientific approach is the only reliable approach for obtaining knowledge about what the world is like - meaning what exists and what doesn't exist, and what causes things to occur. Do you dispute this claim?

12. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76307 by Jason1083 on October 5, 2007 at 12:17 pm

In reply to Comment #76280 by Teratornis

I agree with much of what you write - I certainly would not say that a person is unreasonable by virtue of being a Christian. I was asking whether a belief in Christianity should be considered an unreasonable belief. I agree that examining the purported grounds of this belief is a better way of determining whether it is reasonable than simply counting up the number of people who support it.

Still, I think aggregate statistics are immensely useful in determining whether particular arguments are good arguments. Just counting up "intelligent" people is not so useful, but tabulating the opinions of qualified people is extremely useful. Unless someone is trained as a physicist or biologist, I think the single most compelling piece of evidence we can give them that theists are misrepresenting science is polling data showing that scientists in each field reject the particular arguments being put forward.

13. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76215 by Jason1083 on October 5, 2007 at 5:30 am

Apodeictic,

Unfortunately, I'm in a rush, or I'd try to respond to your interesting remarks more fully (I think they deserve a response).

I would agree that both Dawkins and Lennox are rational in the sense that just listening to them and trying to determine the logical soundness of their arguments it would be difficult to determine who was right. One point that I think a lot of the commentators here have made is that Lennox's arguments were in various ways dishonest - arguments that only sound reasonable to people with no background in the relevant scientific fields as shown by the fact that they are rejected by the overwhelming majority of scientists in those fields (and in many cases, even the overwhelming majority of Christian scientists).

The brute fact that many intelligent people are Christians would seem to suggest that Christianity must at least be reasonable. Perhaps if reasonable is defined as a view held by many intelligent people than this would be so. Alternatively, one might think that a view is reasonable if it is supported by arguments that are not uniformly rejected by those who are best placed to judge them. At least in the scientific realm, this is not the case with theism. Scientists overwhelming reject almost all of Lennox's arguments - this judgment is based in part on anecdotal experience from asking people working in the different fields about the general sentiment, and in part on survey results and other statistics. Still, I don't think anyone disagrees with the claim that the overwhelming majority of biologists believe abiogenesis can be explained by natural causes or that the overwhelming majority of physicists believe that there is some further explanation for the fine-tuning of the basic constants and that even if there were not, there are good reasons to think these facts do not warrant an inference to design.

Which arguments of Lennox's did you find reasonable?

14. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76133 by Jason1083 on October 4, 2007 at 7:59 pm

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

- Hamlet, 1.5

I agree Bonzai - I don't see how the existence of a Theory of Everything would relate to God's existence. I'm sure if we developed such a theory theists would turn around and insist that it was a testament to God's glorious design for the world (and that it was predicted in the Bible).

I'd love to see a biblical scholar offer a scientific prediction about something with more than two possibilities. The contrast between real evidence and the kind of evidence Lennox offers up (the Bible predicted that the universe had a beginning!) is just mindboggling. He acts as though the Bible predicted the patterns of microwave background radiation observed by Wilson and Penzias. Now a book written a few thousand years ago that predicted that would have some credibility.

15. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76124 by Jason1083 on October 4, 2007 at 7:25 pm

It's worth checking what Steven Hawking actually says about this issue:

Up to now, most people have implicitly assumed that there is an ultimate theory, that we will eventually discover.Indeed, I myself have suggested we might find it quite soon. However, M-theory has made me wonder if this is true.Maybe it is not possible to formulate the theory of the universe in a finite number of statements. This is very reminiscent of Goedel's theorem.This says that any finite system of axyoms, is not sufficient to prove every result in mathematics.

Which Lennox translates as (paraphrasing from memory) - Steven Hawking has shown that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem makes a Theory of Everything impossible. Perhaps someone with no understanding of what it means to "show" something in math or physics could be forgiven for such a remark. I hope someone brings this issue to Richard's attention so he can expose Lennox as a dishonest fraud if they were to meet again.

16. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76119 by Jason1083 on October 4, 2007 at 7:07 pm

BaronOchs writes:

I think this is the thing Lennox mentions about Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything:

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/strings02/dirac/hawking/

I think that is as well. I couldn't believe it when he said that Steven Hawking used Godel's theorem to show that a Theory of Everything was impossible. What a dishonest attempt to manipulate the audience's ignorance!

There is not one physicist in the world (including Stephen Hawking) who would claim that he has shown any such thing. As an Oxford Mathematician, the least any listeners could expect of Lennox is that he would be accurate in his description of mathematical results - instead, he attempts to manipulate the audience by making his ideas seem as though they have scientific backing. And not just in physics - what percentage of scientists think that the problem of abiogenesis is insoluble by naturalistic means?

I think in the future Professor Dawkins would do well to quote more statistics and survey results to demonstrate just how strong the scientific consensus is against ideas like the ones Lennox tries to promote. He should also ask opponents who claim that there is scientific evidence for their belief to consider the consequences of that claim: if biologists explain how the first replicator emerged from non-living materials, and if physicists formulate a theory of everything, would Lennox then cease to believe in God? Of course not. And this betrays the fact that his faith is not evidence based - evidence for him is just a shroud which obscures the nakedness of his faith.

17. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71051 by Jason1083 on September 17, 2007 at 5:04 pm

Mitchell, thanks for the clarification. I think I understand what you mean now.

I guess the issue is that there are naive and sophisticated versions of the design argument.

The naive version (which I think Revcort intended) goes something like, "Look, it's a pretty flower! If you stumbled across a watch, you would think it was designed. Flowers are at least as complicated as watches - they even reproduce. God must have made flowers!" This version postulates that we would think watches were designed for some reason other than the fact that we know that humans make watches, and that some simple observation confirms that flowers also have this property. But if that were the case, then flowers would seem as obviously designed as watches.

The sophisticated version recognizes that for the argument to succeed, the inference to design must be based on something about the internal structure of flowers which is not obvious at first glance.

This argument goes something like, "Look, it's a pretty flower! If you stumbled across a watch, you would think it was designed even if you had never seen one before by virtue of its interlocking parts. When we examine the structure of a flower at the biochemical level, we find the same kind of complexity. No one has ever published an account describing every biochemical step in the evolution of anything with this kind of complexity. Therefore, something must have designed it. On an unrelated note, I like Jesus."

Unlike the naive argument, I think this version survives the objection that if it were right, flowers would seem as obviously designed as watches. Of course, it has flaws of its own, among them that a watch would seem to have an artificial origin in light of idiosyncratic features (like a knob adjustable by organisms with thumbs) that serve no purpose at all for the original object but make it easier to operate for a designer with thumbs.

18. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71033 by Jason1083 on September 17, 2007 at 3:21 pm

In Comment #71029 by Mitchell Gilks:

Say you're walking in the woods and you come accross a watch, it is obviously designed! But opposed to what exactly? Why pick out the watch at all? If everything in the woods is so obviously designed? Why pick out a painting? Why pick out a car? Isn't everything design? What are you contrasting them with? Are you not contrasting them with things that are not designed? That are natural?

I agree that the inference to design is unjustified (and in part because a complex designer begs the question as Mitchell points out); however, I don't think the above argument succeeds.

Even if everything were designed, some things could still be more obviously designed than other things, and one could try to determine if the "non-obvious" things were designed by identifying the properties they share in common with the obvious things. When it was first confirmed that certain materials were made up of atoms, it was not known whether all matter was made up of atoms. The inference that additional substances were indeed composed of atoms was made on the basis of similarities between these substances and the ones that were known to be made up of atoms, and eventually it was determined that all matter was made up of atoms.

Of course, I don't think the argument from design will fair as well ;-), but it is wrong for empirical reasons - we have simpler natural explanations, and there is no evidence of a designer - and not because it is a priori incoherent.

19. The Dawkins debate

Comment #70607 by jason1083 on September 16, 2007 at 9:43 am

I actually find the argument that God must exist because, "What caused the big bang?" to be particularly weak - akin to Newton postulating that a divine force must hold together the solar system because he couldn't solve his gravitational equations for more than two bodies.

Some popular science accounts give the impression that physicists know the big bang occurred, and have nothing more to say about the matter. It is left to philosophers and theologians to try to provide any further explanation.

This couldn't be further from the truth - physicists don't understand what exactly happened in the earliest moments of the universe, but there are active areas of research in physics trying to figure this out. Doing so will likely require a theory of quantum gravity, which physicists don't have yet but are progressing towards. Whatever answer physicist come up with might be describable by analogy in intuitive terms, but it will be based on highly technical mathematics. There are interesting conversations to be had among us laymen trying to share with one another our understanding of what the physicists mean, but we are wasting our time if we think that we have anything at all to contribute to the discussion about where our universe came from.

The idea that physicists can't ask what happened "before time" is a red herring - there are many theories which attempt to explain how our space-time might have emerged from some broader framework. None of these theories is currently widely accepted, and most are still too underdeveloped to even issue in testable predictions. Still, there is absolutely no reason to think that the big bang represents some preordained limit to scientific inquiry - it is only the current horizon.