God of the Gaps (well then, how did...")

[Sherlock Holmes]

If I see something happen I don't need to "believe" it. I WITNESSED it. Thus my question for understanding is rooted in the material world.

Well that's a different issue altogether, I largely agree but not 100%.

Cause and effect rule the day.

There, right there is an assumption!! plenty of theoreticians question that assumption too, whether nature is causal, deterministic is an open question.

Physical Laws are not assumptions.

Newton's theory assumes time is universal, the same everywhere at all times, it assumes that.
Newton's theory assumes a universal reference frame against which all observations are relative to, it assumes that.
Newton's theory predicts the luminiferous aether, it pops right out of the theory - these kinds of things were regarded as laws, true, absolutely true.

But, as a scientist I understand that if improved instruments come along, that allow us to understand a physical law at an even deeper level, then those laws can change, if however slightly.

Right, so tell me how something you claim to KNOW is true can at the same time be untrue?

Newtonian physics is still able to describe 98% of the physical world. For the remaining 1.5% we have Einsteinian physics, and an improvement on that is the Feynman Constant, and most certainly there will be some new genius come along who will open a new door to something even greater.

General relativity is NOT an improvement of Newton's theory, it is a replacement, it abandons universal time, it abandons a universal reference frame and so on. Einstein did not take Newton's theory and refine it, expand upon it, he completely abandoned the guts of the theory, the "laws" it was based on.

Einstein believed that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, their mathematical form was identical no matter where the observer is or how the observer might be moving, Newton most certainly did not assume that.

All grounded in the material world.

No belief system needed. Just hard work.

Give me an example please of a law of physics that you KNOW is true.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

I calls em like I sees em.

I happen to know a little about math. I'm blessed that way. Unlike some here.

Because of an education and a brain and a good nose, I can spot a charlatan a mile away.

You are inquisitive, Chem Engineer is not. He's a pompous arrogant charlatan.

Think about it. The mere idea that any puny human being could claim to know how God operates is ludicrous.

Elementary combinatorics tells us that if you're building an alphabet with 26 letters, you ADD the probabilities of singlets, doublets, triplets, and so on. You don't multiply, you add. Any college kid with a half a chemistry degree should know that. After all, it's fundamental for everything from particle-in-a-box to Boltzmann's entropy.

If you're selecting three letters in alphabetical order from an alphabet of 26, the formula is 26! / (26-3)! You can Google for it, there are hundreds upon thousands of web sites about math. You can even do it manually by writing out every alphabetic sequence, you'll come up with the same answer. You can even do it a different way and you'll still come up with the same answer.

You DON'T multiply 1/26;to the 26th power, that's the wrong answer.

Calculating probability requires you take ALL possible paths into account. Just like Feynman integrals, same principle.

Nature does NOT build long proteins one amino acid at a time. It builds short segments, then it puts the segments together. That's why you see a lot of repeating sections. The helical sections of proteins usually contain lots of repeating segments, because that's how shapes are built. It's rare to find a proline or a tryptophan, and when you do it means something special



Yes, I'm a loudmouth on this point and will continue to be so, because it's important to shout down the charlatans. Because the stupid bastards are loud, they're dumb and they're loud and that's a bad combination. We need to be responsible to the children and give them good information, otherwise they'll just laugh at us. You don't teach a child bad math, that's a Bozo no-no. If a kid asks you to explain something and you don't know the answer, you say "I don't know" and point him to the library. Like they say, better to be thought an ignorant fool rather than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Scruffy doesn't like fools. He growls at them. And if they growl back he bares his fangs. And if that doesn't work he likes to sink his teeth into a big dog's legs because they're usually top heavy. He likes the sound they make when they fall over

I do not approve of or respect personal slurs, accusations that someone is a "charlatan" that strikes me as arrogance not science. To call someone a charlatan is to call them a liar, a fraud, intentionally making claims they know are false.

No, it is far better to just point out errors rather than presume there's some motive for the person intentionally making false claims, even if you are correct on some point that does not prove the other person is lying, deceiving, they might just be wrong.

In mathematics we can say some argument is right or wrong, we can do that, and that's all we need do, there's nothing to be gained by presuming some nefarious motive, some sinister deception, people can be and are wrong all the time. No decent teacher would accuse a student of being a liar just because they state a false proposition.

If - as you claim - ChemEngineer has made a false statement, has incorrectly calculated something then that should be simple to prove and that should be the end of it, no need for ad-hominem.

I strongly suggest you listen to an excellent example of two people disagreeing without once insulting or denigrating the other party, this kind of dispassionate intellect is what I respect, this is a short segment (fifteen minutes) from the debate and I've skipped past the introduction, the question discussed is simple - Does God exist, this is how a true intellectual argues, no name calling, no superiority complex, no personal attacks, hopefully you learn something from this:



In mathematics a claim is either true or false, nothing else matters.

 

[BackAgain]

I do not approve of or respect personal slurs, accusations that someone is a "charlatan" that strikes me as arrogance not science. To call someone a charlatan is to call them a liar, a fraud, intentionally making claims they know are false.

No, it is far better to point out errors rather than presume there's some motive for the person intentionally making false claims, even if you are correct on some point that does not prove the other person is lying, deceiving, they might just be wrong.

In mathematics we can say some argument is right or wrong, we can do that, and that's all we need do, there's nothing to be gained by presuming some nefarious motive, some sinister deception, people can be and are wrong all the time. No decent teacher would accuse a student of being a liar just because they state a false proposition.

If - as you claim - ChemEngineer has made a false statement, has incorrectly calculated something then that should be simple to prove and that should be the end of it, no need for ad-hominem.

Holy crap. I find it a bit strange that Sherlock H has made such a cogent and logical post since I often find him to be kind of tiresome. But in the past few days I have agreed with him on a couple of his comments.

I am changing? Or is it reasonable of me to give Sherlock a second chance?

 

[scruffy]

In mathematics a claim is either true or false, nothing else matters.

Agreed.

But people who keep pushing false claims are dangerous.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Agreed.

But people who keep pushing false claims are dangerous.

I wonder, I wonder how true that claim is...

 

[scruffy]

I wonder, I wonder how true that claim is...

Look around. Should be self evident.

3 letters in alphabetical order, chosen from 26 - the correct answer is 15,600 microstates. Not 10^26.

That's 26:ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE of incorrectness.

That's more molecules than there are in a liter of Kool Aid.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Look around. Should be self evident.

3 letters in alphabetical order, chosen from 26 - the correct answer is 15,600 microstates. Not 10^26.

That's 26:ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE of incorrectness.

That's more molecules than there are in a liter of Kool Aid.

I have no idea what the actual dispute is between you an ChemEngineer so can't comment of this calculation.

 

[scruffy]

Look around. Should be self evident.

3 letters in alphabetical order, chosen from 26 - the correct answer is 15,600 microstates. Not 10^26.

That's 26:ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE of incorrectness.

That's more molecules than there are in a liter of Kool Aid.

We can apply the same formula to proteins, where the alphabet is only 24.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

We can apply the same formula to proteins, where the alphabet is only 24.

Proteins are not defined solely by the order of constituent amino acids.

 

[scruffy]

I have no idea what the actual dispute is between you an ChemEngineer so can't comment of this calculation.

There used to be a thing called Institute for Creation Research, not sure if it's still around.

They're the ones who first came up with the ridiculously erroneous math that CE is pushing.

They were told REPEATEDLY and in public how wrong they were, yet they still kept pushing the bullshit.

And the result today is, we have a bunch of well meaning Christian kids who still believe this nonsense. They're looking straight at the beautiful results of God's handiwork and can't bring themselves to accept it.

Because they were brainwashed at an early age.

 

[westwall]

Well that's a different issue altogether, I largely agree but not 100%.

There, right there is an assumption!! plenty of theoreticians question that assumption too, whether nature is causal, deterministic is an open question.

Newton's theory assumes time is universal, the same everywhere at all times, it assumes that.
Newton's theory assumes a universal reference frame against which all observations are relative to, it assumes that.
Newton's theory predicts the luminiferous aether, it pops right out of the theory - these kinds of things were regarded as laws, true, absolutely true.

Right, so tell me how something you claim to KNOW is true can at the same time be untrue?

General relativity is NOT an improvement of Newton's theory, it is a replacement, it abandons universal time, it abandons a universal reference frame and so on. Einstein did not take Newton's theory and refine it, expand upon it, he completely abandoned the guts of the theory, the "laws" it was based on.

Einstein believed that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, their mathematical form was identical no matter where the observer is or how the observer might be moving, Newton most certainly did not assume that.

Give me an example please of a law of physics that you KNOW is true.

I claimed to KNOW that if I see something occur, I will be able to describe it in a way that doesn't involve casting virgins into volcanoes.

General Relativity is a CONTINUATION of physics. It replaces nothing. It describes actions that were not imaginable during Newton's times.

The Ideal Gas Laws are true, repeatable, and measurable.

As an example.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

There used to be a thing called Institute for Creation Research, not sure if it's still around.

They're the ones who first came up with the ridiculously erroneous math that CE is pushing.

They were told REPEATEDLY and in public how wrong they were, yet they still kept pushing the bullshit.

And the result today is, we have a bunch of well meaning Christian kids who still believe this nonsense. They're looking straight at the beautiful results of God's handiwork and can't bring themselves to accept it.

Because they were brainwashed at an early age.

It still exists: The Institute for Creation Research | The Institute for Creation Research

Can you cite the article that contains the disputed math?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

I claimed to KNOW that if I see something occur, I will be able to describe it in a way that doesn't involve casting virgins into volcanoes.

I don't recall you saying any such thing about virgin's, but no matter.

General Relativity is a CONTINUATION of physics. It replaces nothing. It describes actions that were not imaginable during Newton's times.

You cannot derive general relativity from Newton's laws, the two theories are incompatible, they are each based on different assumptions.

The predicted outcomes when we assume as Newton did are different to the predicted outcomes when we assume what Einstein did.

The Ideal Gas Laws are true, repeatable, and measurable.

As an example.

Those ideal gas laws can be derived from first principles from the kinetic theory of gases, that theory makes the following assumption:

So keep trying, it's a waste of your time though, if you wanted to you could check what I say and find explanations for all this, it's not controversial, not disputed - science rests upon beliefs, assumptions, one cannot even write mathematical equations for nature unless one assumes things.

 

[westwall]

I don't recall you saying any such thing about virgin's, but no matter.

You cannot derive general relativity from Newton's laws, the two theories are incompatible, they are each based on different assumptions.

The predicted outcomes when we assume as Newton did are different to the predicted outcomes when we assume what Einstein did.

Those ideal gas laws can be derived from first principles from the kinetic theory of gases, that theory makes the following assumption:

View attachment 999581

So keep trying, it's a waste of your time though, if you wanted to you could check what I say and find explanations for all this, it's not controversial, not disputed - science rests upon beliefs, assumptions, one cannot even write mathematical equations for nature unless one assumes things.

No, they are not. Newtonian physics merely describes the actions of motion, action, reaction, force applied to objects, etc.

All based on empirical measurements and observations.

Newton invented calculus to aid him in his formulation of those laws. He realized that ratios would change over time so differential calculus was the tool he devised to deal with that problem.

You keep trying to infuse faith into everything because you are religious. You need to stop that.

I don't require faith to calculate how long it will take me to fly from point A to point B.

I just need math, and a general idea of what the winds aloft are.

Faith is spiritual. Not material.

Learn the difference.

 

[Grumblenuts]

The ideal gasbag, also called the general foul wind envelope, is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gasbag. It is a good approximation of the behavior of many gasbags under many conditions, although it has several limitations.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

No, they are not. Newtonian physics merely describes the actions of motion, action, reaction, force applied to objects, etc.

All based on empirical measurements and observations.

If you assume measuring devices convey reality with fidelity.

Newton invented calculus to aid him in his formulation of those laws. He realized that ratios would change over time so differential calculus was the tool he devised to deal with that problem.

You keep trying to infuse faith into everything because you are religious. You need to stop that.

I'm not discussing religion, it is you who has now introduced that term, you need to stop that.

I don't require faith to calculate how long it will take me to fly from point A to point B.

You need faith, trust that the aircraft won't crash, what if it's a Boeing.

I just need math, and a general idea of what the winds aloft are.

Faith is spiritual. Not material.

Faith is regarding something as true when it cannot be proven true, only in mathematics can we prove propositions are true or false. What is this word "spiritual" you speak of?

Learn the difference.

Why not point me to a physics article about it.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

I'm particularly keen to see what scruffy and abu afak delivers, given that they're smarter than everyone else here.

 

[scruffy]

It still exists: The Institute for Creation Research | The Institute for Creation Research

Can you cite the article that contains the disputed math?

I'll look for it when I get time.

 

[westwall]

If you assume measuring devices convey reality with fidelity.

I'm not discussing religion, it is you who has now introduced that term, you need to stop that.

You need faith, trust that the aircraft won't crash, what if it's a Boeing.

Faith is regarding something as true when it cannot be proven true, only in mathematics can we prove propositions are true or false. What is this word "spiritual" you speak of?

Why not point me to a physics article about it.

Ahhhhh, but you ARE discussing religion. Everytime you inject your little word faith into it, you are de facto steering the discussion towards religion.

Some instruments give outstanding accuracy, some don't. That's why you spend the money to obtain the instruments that DO have that accuracy.

And here you are trying, yet again, to inject your favorite word "faith" into the discussion.

Old Boeing aircraft are fine. However, I KNOW that the recent aircraft are having problems because DEI hires, and bean counters, have taken over the management of the company so the quality that Boeing was once known for has been pissed away.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Ahhhhh, but you ARE discussing religion. Everytime you inject your little word faith into it, you are de facto steering the discussion towards religion.

I told you the definition I was using for "faith" you can use "trust" instead or "confidence" if you prefer:

Some instruments give outstanding accuracy, some don't. That's why you spend the money to obtain the instruments that DO have that accuracy.

100%?

And here you are trying, yet again, to inject your favorite word "faith" into the discussion.

See above, we can use "trust" if you like going forward, or just "belief" but you objected that too if I recall.

Old Boeing aircraft are fine. However, I KNOW that the recent aircraft are having problems because DEI hires, and bean counters, have taken over the management of the company so the quality that Boeing was once known for has been pissed away.

Hmmm