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Author | Topic: Chance as a sole-product of the Universe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18633 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.1 |
from this website:
quote: Its amazing to me how people see no difference between measurable probability and the whole idea of chance as a thing. Edited by Phat, : spekllingGod created war so that Americans would learn geography. —Mark Twain "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain
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Stile Member (Idle past 294 days) Posts: 4295 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: |
Phat writes: Its amazing to me how people see no difference between measurable probability and the whole idea of chance as a thing. I can see a huge difference. But this concept of "chance as a thing" is incredibly strange and this is the first time I've heard of it. I've never thought that chance is an actual thing causing things to happen.Can you indicate any group of people that do follow such a strange idea?
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6 |
Phat writes: Its amazing to me how people see no difference between measurable probability and the whole idea of chance as a thing. You're very easily amazed. It doesn't matter whether 'chance' is a 'thing' like a table or the description of the probality of a 'thing' happening, like a coin landing heads. We all know what it means. We know that it's the occurrence of a mutation (as an example) plus selection that causes evolution and that process involves chance. So what strange point are you trying to make? If it's that because chance isn't a 'thing' evolution doesn't happen, you're very, very, wrong. If you're just saying that chance is not the causal factor, then it's a 'no shit Sherlock' moment.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Phat Member Posts: 18633 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.1 |
Im not attempting to falsify evolution. I have no issues there---it is unimportant to me.
What I am trying to do is to define this thing called chance. My take on it is it does not exist.
Tangle writes: Explain how chance is involved. Do you mean that the event is entirely random? We know that it's the occurrence of a mutation (as an example) plus selection that causes evolution and that process involves chance. at random: without definite aim, direction, rule, or method Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain
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ringo Member (Idle past 662 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Stile writes:
Reminds me of ICANT and the "existence of existence". What are the chances that chance exists? I've never thought that chance is an actual thing causing things to happen.Can you indicate any group of people that do follow such a strange idea? It's the kind of philosophical mumbo-jumbo that mike the wiz loves and Phat phalls phor.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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So, let's talk about Roulette.
When they drop the ball in the wheel, there's forces acting on the ball that cause it to end up on one of the numbers. There are a series of events, that are not based on chance, that govern where the ball is going to end up landing. It is an incredibly complicated list that is practically impossible to measure/calculate. So, from your point of view, it looks like the ball is just landing on a random number and that it gets there by chance. From the point of view of the ball and all the forces acting on it, there isn't actually any chance involved - all the numbers that come up are just a result of the processes that the ball goes through. But from your point of view all those process are invisible so as far as you can tell it is all just a result of chance.
Tangle writes: Explain how chance is involved. Do you mean that the event is entirely random? We know that it's the occurrence of a mutation (as an example) plus selection that causes evolution and that process involves chance. The event is not entirely random. There are forces in play that cause a particular mutation to happen, but from the point of view of the individual animal, all of that stuff is invisible and the mutations appear to be random. We say that they are random with respect to fitness. The environment does not reach down into the cell and cause the mutation to happen (there are exceptions to this that are unimportant to this point), so from the point of view of the environment (where the selective pressure happens) the mutation is random, or a result of chance. Chance does not cause anything. Chance is a term to describe the fact that from where you are standing, and despite the fact that there are underlying rules that govern how the even unfolds, the event cannot be predicted from the data that you have and also that a reproduction of that event given actually random inputs will behave in the same way as the naturally occurring event.
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Stile Member (Idle past 294 days) Posts: 4295 From: Ontario, Canada Joined:
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Phat writes: What I am trying to do is to define this thing called chance. My take on it is it does not exist. It does exist. Unless you're redefining it to mean something else. Even your quote talks about it: "The odds are 50/50."That's the chance, it's the same thing. Doesn't matter if it's random or not, deterministic or not... that's the chance of it happening. Any other re-definition of the word chance is simply the gambler's fallacy (if it's tails 10 times in a row... then the next must be heads because it needs to be 50/50!). That's the idea that chance is forcing something... and that's what we call the "gambler's fallacy"... because that's the idea that doesn't actually exist. It's not real. Chance is only descriptive, not prescriptive.
Explain how chance is involved. Do you mean that the event is entirely random? Chance is involved because we are aware of multiple possible outcomes without being aware of which one is determined (yet).The rate at which different outcomes can occur is called their "chance" of happening. It doesn't matter if they are truly random or fully deterministic.All that matters is that we are not currently aware of which one is going to happen, and we are also aware of multiple possible outcomes. You may be asking the question "is everything actually deterministic or is anything truly random?" But asking this question and re-defining it as "does chance exist?" is merely confusing and a re-definition of the word 'chance.'
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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I listened to a good argument by a philosopher who essentially said that chance by definition is nothing. If chance had any probability of existing---as a concept---than God would be an anachronism. Sounds like double talk to me. Of course there is such a thing as the concept of chance, the question might be whether chance is fitting description for reality. Whether or not chance renders God futile is partially a theological question and not a purely philosophical question. If there were no concept of chance, then what would the denial that chance exists as a concept be other than meaningless double talk. You are denying nothing?
So if we flip a coin, it is commonly said that its a 50/50 chance that it lands heads. Your claim is essentially that if we knew the value of all involved variables, then the result of a coin flip is determined. I can accept that to be true. The problem for your point is that not every 'chance' operates like dice, coins, and even roulette wheels. There are non-deterministic processes for which even perfect knowledge of all variables does not allow predicting the outcome. The Schrodinger's Cat illustration is one example. Quantum physical probabilities are fundamentally different from coin flips and dice rolls in that there are no hidden variables which govern their behavior. Some processes are inherently uncertain and no amount of prior knowledge allows us to decide their outcomes on an individual basis. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6 |
Phat writes: What I am trying to do is to define this thing called chance. You don't have to, it already has a definition - 2 actually. chancetʃɑːns/ noun 1. a possibility of something happening. "there is a chance of winning the raffle" synonyms: possibility, prospect, probability, odds, likelihood, likeliness, expectation, anticipation, conceivability, feasibility, plausibility; More antonyms: unlikelihood the probability of something desirable happening. "he played down his chances of becoming chairman" an opportunity to do or achieve something. "I gave her a chance to answer" synonyms: opportunity, opening, occasion, turn, time, moment, window (of opportunity), slot; 2.the occurrence of events in the absence of any obvious intention or cause. "he met his brother by chance" synonyms: accident, coincidence, serendipity, fate, a twist of fate, destiny, fortuity, fortune, providence, freak, hazard; More My take on it is it does not exist. You've just been bamboozled by bollocks.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Phat Member Posts: 18633 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.1 |
Quantum physical probabilities are fundamentally different from coin flips and dice rolls in that there are no hidden variables which govern their behavior. Some processes are inherently uncertain and no amount of prior knowledge allows us to decide their outcomes on an individual basis. When the probability can be strictly measured, chance is a good definition. When it cannot be measured, chance becomes a sort of godless deterministic factor. We may as well say God rather than chance. Chance is a way for the human mind to understand the process...yet chance is of itself powerless to determine the process. Intelligent design makes much better sense than random design. The whole idea of we humans being the "winner of a cosmic lottery" is so much nonsense.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
When the probability can be strictly measured, chance is a good definition. When it cannot be measured, chance becomes a sort of godless deterministic factor. We may as well say God rather than chance. Only if your personal recourse is to credit or blame God out of human ignorance. I imagine that lots of gamblers blame God for their losses even when the outcome is perfectly calculable and extremely likely. How is what you say here any more correct that the losing Gambler?
Chance is a way for the human mind to understand the process...yet chance is of itself powerless to determine the process. Chance is merely a description of state when an outcome is non determinable. Your statement is ridiculous. Of course chance does not contain power. It simply enables us to talk about things that do occur. Of course chance is not a choice.
The whole idea of we humans being the "winner of a cosmic lottery" is so much nonsense. Or perhaps your thought processes are simply not very rigorous. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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jar Member Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Phat writes: Intelligent design makes much better sense than random design. The whole idea of we humans being the "winner of a cosmic lottery" is so much nonsense.
Now that is just a really silly statement that makes God look pretty stupid. You seem to like making God look either stupid or evil or more often, both. How are humans any greater winners of some cosmic lottery than cockroaches or pond scum?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6 |
By total mass, micro-organisms win hands downd.
Haldene though thought it was beetles (quote later attributed to Darwin.)
The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order. That kind of thing is characteristic of nature. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Phat Member Posts: 18633 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.1 |
There is a good series on the concept of chance which I listen to regularly.
Their basic premise is that chance is logical only when verified by probability. Chance in and of itself can't cause anything because chance in and of itself is not anything.You Tube quote: Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Their basic premise is that chance is logical only when verified by probability. The statement does not convey anything meaningful. On the other hand, I do not recall hearing those words when listening to the video, so perhaps something else is actually the basic premise.
Chance in and of itself can't cause anything because chance in and of itself is not anything. This second statement seems to me to be double talk. Essentially what the writer has managed is an irratreification of a concept followed by a denunciation of said reifiication. When people say that something occurs by chance that are not saying that some entity known as chance is the actual cause. So how is it reasonable to denounce such statements by pretending that they do mean that? In any case, the summary here wouldn't convince me to purchase the book. Here is a summary from another source:
quote: Not much better. Is the entire book like this? Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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