So, what's science then?

Philosophy
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Let’s try that again,

I believe in figuring out this dimension I live in, and frankly (Write’s) constant jumps to math, and microtubules is the very antithesis of getting down with the living world reality that I’m all about and that I think too much ignored.

The constant need for the mind to jump into the metaphysical realm of conjecture and math and ultimate answers, namely god. Makes me think of Descartes who’s real claim to fame was his math and geometry knowledge, the philosophy was more of a political, sponsor chasing sort. Read his Meditations - reconciling God is obviously a preoccupation for the dude.

It’s where the self-absorbed and self-serving metaphor really started coming into focus for me.

And like I said that’s observation, just like its observation that success requires a degree of self-absorbed and self-serving. It’s just that we’ve gone way overboard and have yet to learn to recognize (deep in our hearts, where it matters) that it requires balance, all self-absorbed and self-serving, all the time, sucks, as the state of world makes clear to anyone that notices.

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Only to us, not to the rest of the universe.

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And here is the problem with religion. There are too many versions of God and some of them are in conflict. God as a kind of fundamental metaphysical intelligence is hopelessly untenable and in a 1000 years will be interpreted still differently.

The lord’s prayer as a guiding principle will be as ineffective tomorrow as it is today.

OTOH, mathematics today will be functionally exactly the same as mathematics 1000 years from now.

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Just a couple of weeks ago you were saying its proven by the predictions that have been accurate, and some other stuff, I’m not going to go searching for your quotes. I’ve been saying, and it’s the primary, easy-to-Google argument about math, that “mathematical proof” has a meaning that different from other proofs.

So, contradicting yourself, that’s one thing that makes discussions with you difficult.

Trivially obvious. That’s two.

But CC addresses the many versions. The many versions problem is being solved by anyone who takes a minute and thinks about, it doesn’t require a degree in philosophy, or even much free time. It’s in comedy, literature, cheap movies, and country songs. It’s one of the forces leading to the reduction of church attendance.

Religions weren’t doing well outside of their geographic origins, so some of them made their gods mobile, even putting them up in the sky, or into our hearts. Military force, a connection of Empire to the religion, was still needed, but democracy is breaking that down. Maybe the worst thing is, religion is bad for commerce, something it used to be good for.

But, and this #3, the thing you just ignore is that most people aren’t looking for proof of their gods. When it’s brought up, you drop back into religion not being true. Fewer and fewer people care about that. Mainly the ones who get paid to say God is true are still saying it. Try this thought experiment though; of the people who have good jobs or are otherwise settled with food and shelter, what is that stirs inside of them, that gets them to ask why? What happens when they look at a seed that just sprouted without anyone doing anything to it, just the natural forces that were there before and will be there when we’re gone, and they start to wonder, and their mind just goes, takes them through time, and connects things they’ve never connected before?

And don’t tell me you have a formula that answers that. Unless you can actually present said formula.

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You’ve lost me. We talking math or god, or human conceptions?

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[quote=“lausten, post:64, topic:10237”]
But, and this #3, the thing you just ignore is that most people aren’t looking for proof of their gods. When it’s brought up, you drop back into religion not being true.
Fewer and fewer people care about that. Mainly the ones who get paid to say God is true are still saying it.

Not very scientific, is it?

Try this thought experiment though; of the people who have good jobs or are otherwise settled with food and shelter, what is that stirs inside of them, that gets them to ask why? What happens when they look at a seed that just sprouted without anyone doing anything to it, just the natural forces that were there before and will be there when we’re gone, and they start to wonder, and their mind just goes, takes them through time, and connects things they’ve never connected before?

“Start to wonder”? About what? Doing science?

And don’t tell me you have a formula that answers that. Unless you can actually present said formula.

Oh, I don’t have the formula. But I know it’ll be of a mathematical nature.

p.s. “unfalsifiable” does not mean it is not true . It means that it cannot be proven false and theoretically that presents a practical problem.

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That’s a faith statement.

No. They can wonder about whatever they want. But yes, it’s a data point, if they want to be one. And, yes, there are scientists who have hooked up electrodes to brains and measured chemicals and done all sorts of experiments to try to understand what’s going on in our heads. I think it’s fascinating.

I remember a story about a nun who had visions. She started having other physical problems and they found something “wrong” with her brain. When they fixed it, her feeling of connectedness to something larger than herself, went away. From that, they figured out how they could stimulate someone’s brain, someone who didn’t have visions, and give them the experience. I think Michael Shermer let them test it out on him, and he reported sensing people in the room who weren’t really there.

That’s a bit extreme on the scale of “spiritual” experiences. But, I don’t think it is abnormal or dysfunctional to experience awe and wonder and to wildly speculate what those feelings mean. I don’t think we would have science if those feelings had not come first. Feelings aren’t wrong. We tell this to little kids when they get upset or angry. It’s the actions we take that can be judged.

At this point in history, if someone says they want to feed starving children because they feel called by God, I have no reason to argue with them, I’ll just jump into the work with them. But if someone says they want to kill because God spoke to them, then I’ll invoke all my arguments from reason. Actually, I probably wouldn’t start there, I would start with understanding who they think God is and what their reasoning is. That’s more likely to lead to them listening to me.

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It is demonstrable.
Let me put it this way, there is no scientist who claims that the universe is devoid of mathematical properties and that is not a faith statement.

It is not a question if the universe has mathematical properties, but if it has only mathematical properties.

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Only in our thoughts, via our thoughts. :wink:

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I didn’t say the universe is devoid of mathematical properties. Straw man. I know you’re better than that.

That’s at least the beginning of a valid question. You remind me of the statements that you can see from the 19th century, about everything that will be invented has already been invented, or that the laws of nature were pretty well known, just a few more i’s to dot. But, then came relativity and quantum mechanics. Even those were predicted to lead to a complete picture of how everything works. Granted, we’re doing pretty well, we have formulas for things that we interact with at a human scale. But the very small, the very large, the very fast, there’s still a long way to go. And, all of that comes into play with the young science of how our brains work.

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No, it accurately describes the interaction of universal values and can be used to predict future events by all living organisms, regardless if they have a brain.
(see the brainless slime mold using maths (subtraction) to solve a maze)

IMO, this is proof of the symbolized’s model effectiveness and its pertinent relationship to reality.

You cannot deny the “unreasonable effectiveness” or its predictive “accuracy”.

Only quantum seems to precede the deterministic nature of mathematics but then quantum values live in pre-physical subatomic fields and are superposed before collapsing into a physical object subject to the mathematical laws of physics.

Note that superposition is still mathematically predictive via mathematical probability equations.

DOE Explains…Quantum Mechanics

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Electrons don’t just travel in circles. Because of quantum mechanics, their positions are described by probabilities that they are in a certain location. These figures describe the probability for electrons in various configurations in a hydrogen atom.

Note that while there is list of potential (superposed) patterns, the patterns themselves are mathematical in nature and once collapsed into a specific pattern must obey the mathematical laws of physical objects.

The human brain plays no role in this at all.
Note also that the concept of the observer collapsing superposed values is changing to the concept that superposed values collapse without any human observation.

In this scenario, observation is not a result of 'looking" but of physical interaction with another physical object. Still nothing mysterious, but just too small for our current technology.

However, we are beginning to learn the rules of sub-atomic interactions.

These Fractal Triangles Made Out of Electrons Will Quite Possibly Blow Your Mind

PHYSICS13 November 2018

ByMICHELLE STARR

(Kempkes et al., Nature Physics)

The image you see above is something theoretical physicists have described as groundbreaking: a type of fractal called a Sierpinski triangle, created out of electrons on the quantum scale. It’s unbelievably small - and it could reveal new and strange things about electrons.

Electrons are a fundamental subatomic particle found in all atoms. They help bind atoms together, and are also vital to the flow of electricity - which is basically the exchange of electrons, known as a current.

They also act differently in different dimensions - for example, a wire, which is one dimension; a sheet, which is two dimensions; or a cube, which is three dimensions. These allow for different types of systems and applications.

Most fractals - a mathematical figure that can infinitely scale down, recursively repeating itself all the way - have what we call fractal dimensions. These are not dimensions in Euclidean space, as such, but a way of quantifying the complexity of fractals as a [ratio of the change in detail to the change in scale]

("Fractal Dimensions and Complexity").

So while a line has one dimension and a square has two, a squiggly line inside the square that doesn’t fill it can have a dimension between the two related to its complexity. (If you want to learn how to calculate them, you can read more here.) more…

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And you’re back down your rabbit hole

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No, no, no, you’re still missing what I’m talking about.

That’s a hint.

Nope I sure can’t.
Yeah but try predicting how your life, year, or day is going to play out.

Just a bunch of fancy words.

Yeah baby, now we talking. So the atom isn’t all empty space?
and it moves at unimaginable speeds.
That seems to me a pretty exciting thing worth talking about,
to help correct the idiotic philosophical trope that everything is empty space. But nah, so many fancy discussions still start with that empty atom model, to soften up their audience.

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Tell that to Roger Penrose.

And that somehow is a deficit of a mathematical universe where probabilities are just part of the mathematical landscape?

But again, is there a known acceptable alternative to a universe that functions in a generic mathematical fashion?

I am employing Sherlock Holmes

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

by Philosiblog on 22 May 2012 in clarity, discovery, [observation]

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, stated by Sherlock Holmes

From the curve of the wall and the shape of the tile, it is likely a subway station. From the graphic, I must say, this is the Baker Street station of the Tube. It’s elementary, when you think about it.

What does that mean?
To me, this is all about logic. If you start with everything you can think of, and then eliminate those that are impossible, you are well on your way to a solution.

That’s the first stage of solving any mystery, whether it’s a murder mystery in a book (or TV, or movie, or…) or something you expected to work, but didn’t. You have to eliminate all the things that it couldn’t possibly be, or you will have too many distractions.

Once we clear out all the distractions, we can focus on what remains. Sometimes what is left is easy to believe, other times it can seem highly improbable. However, with the impossible eliminated, what remains are the only possible solutions. And one of them must be the truth.

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They’re arguably synonymous.

Obviously,
and I look at the world and its condition and I think, this is all about logic.
And I am wholly unimpressed!

Logic is the magic answer to everything, it’s sounds like another created image of god.
Or at least religious!

Where you see only math, I guess I see only evolution,
and that produces two very different impressions.

One full of certainty, no matter how many times proven to foolish.

Other accepting of a margin of mystery.

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And therein lies the crux. Logic is not a property of the mind, but a known expressed function of spacetime. It is an axiom, a product of direct observation of physical interactions.

Abstract algebraic logic

In mathematical logic, abstract algebraic logic is the study of the algebraization of deductive systems arising as an abstraction of the well-known Lindenbaum–Tarski algebra, and how the resulting algebras are related to logical systems.[1]

History

The archetypal association of this kind, one fundamental to the historical origins of algebraic logic and lying at the heart of all subsequently developed subtheories, is the association between the class of Boolean algebras and classical propositional calculus. This association was discovered by George Boole in the 1850s, and then further developed and refined by others, especially C. S. Peirce and Ernst Schröder, from the 1870s to the 1890s. This work culminated in Lindenbaum–Tarski algebras, devised by Alfred Tarski and his student Adolf Lindenbaum in the 1930s.

Later, Tarski and his American students (whose ranks include Don Pigozzi) went on to discover cylindric algebra, whose representable instances algebraize all of classical first-order logic, and revived relation algebra, whose models include all well-known axiomatic set theories.

Classical algebraic logic, which comprises all work in algebraic logic until about 1960, studied the properties of specific classes of algebras used to “algebraize” specific logical systems of particular interest to specific logical investigations.

Generally, the algebra associated with a logical system was found to be a type of lattice, possibly enriched with one or more unary operations other than lattice complementation.

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I think that’s the crux, not the fact of what math is, or how logic is derived from reality, or whatever it is you’re saying. Logic comes from that non-feeling, emotionless, not a being, neutral on everything, stuff. Stuff like rocks and fire and hydrogen. In that x = x, x <> y, and so on. You can use it to explain why I get nervous when I pull off the interstate south of Chicago to get around some construction and find myself in a neighborhood I would otherwise have no reason to go to. I can override my fight or flight response with logic and act like I’m just driving through, no problem, but logic can’t tell me to stop feeling the way I feel. That’s not a logical statement. And for some people, logic and reason don’t prevent them from taking actions that are harmful.

Logic is descriptive. It can be prescriptive, it can be used to construct an “ought”. But the “ought” doesn’t come directly from an “is”. You could make some broad Zen statement about everything being what it is because it is what it is, but that’s not what I hear you saying.

** edit - added “not” to “what I hear you saying”

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[quote=“lausten, post:77, topic:10237”]
That’s not a logical statement. And for some people, logic and reason don’t prevent them from taking actions that are harmful.

I agree completely, but here we are again introducing humans.

Logic is descriptive. It can be prescriptive, it can be used to construct an “ought”. But the “ought” doesn’t come directly from an “is”. You could make some broad Zen statement about everything being what it is because it is what it is, but that’s what I hear you saying.

It is what it is because it cannot be anything else. It is the very essence of the spacetime “fabric”.

Do read the latest hypothesis of spacetime and how it “unfolds”.

Causal dynamical triangulation

*Causal dynamical triangulation (abbreviated as CDT), theorized by Renate Loll, Jan Ambjørn and Jerzy Jurkiewicz, is an approach to quantum gravity that, like loop quantum gravity, is background independent.

This means that it does not assume any pre-existing arena (dimensional space) but, rather, attempts to show how the spacetime fabric itself evolves.

There is evidence [1] that, at large scales, CDT approximates the familiar 4-dimensional spacetime but shows spacetime to be 2-dimensional near the Planck scale, and reveals a fractal structure on slices of constant time.

These interesting results agree with the findings of Lauscher and Reuter, who use an approach called Quantum Einstein Gravity, and with other recent theoretical work.
Causal dynamical triangulation - Wikipedia

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:rofl:

That’s exactly the point you keep trying to set aside.

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What do you think we are talking about?