From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Nov 12 01:10:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA11320 for chat-outgoing; Wed, 12 Nov 1997 01:10:02 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat) Received: from usr01.primenet.com (tlambert@usr01.primenet.com [206.165.6.201]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id BAA11282 for ; Wed, 12 Nov 1997 01:09:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr01.primenet.com) Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr01.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id CAA07713; Wed, 12 Nov 1997 02:09:52 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199711120909.CAA07713@usr01.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Newest Pentium bug (fatal) To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 09:09:50 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, nate@mt.sri.com, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199711120750.AAA02612@rocky.mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Nov 12, 97 00:50:34 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > > Simpler != correct. > > > > We've been here. Simpler == provisionally correct in the absence of > > empirical evidence to the contrarary. > > We've been here, but I don't agree to your 'waving of the hands' that > claims it's provisionally correct. It's a definition for a rule set called the "scientific method". Do you want to argue the existance of light bulbs? 8-). > But, the environment is similar enough that in many cases their siblings > are more alike in certain behaviors to one twin than the two are alike. I don't accept this statement without empirical evidence to back it; can you point to the studies that back this up? > Hence, you cannot model human behavior since it essentially a > chaotic system. But, even completely chaotic systems exhibit some > 'patterns', which makes is down-right frustrating when you start > to rely on those patterns, or make the assumptions that those > patterns are adequate to fully model the behavior and fall on > your face. :) :) When is the last time you saw an insurance company go bankrupt? The insurance industry relies on actuarial tables. These tables predict with a high degree of accuracy what will occur within a large population. They model a chaotic system that exhibits patterns, and they do not "fall on their face" as a result. For a less human linked chaotic system, we can look at gasses; the behaviour of a single atom in a gas can not be accurately predicted because it will interact with other atoms of gas. Enough gas, and you can not model the individual components of the entire system in real time. But you can model the behaviour of the gas, as a whole, using statistically derived "laws" (like "PV = nRT"; Pressure times Volume equalt number of Moles of gas times the gas law constant 'R' time the Temperature above absolute zero). Another chatoic system would be one in which you could draw a circle of an indeterminate radius. I don't need to know the radius to tell you the relationship between the radius and the area (assuming you draw perfect circles, and assuming you draw them in Euclidian spaces). > > > Yes, but you've only described a subset, not the entire thing. > > > > How do you think "proof by induction" works? > > Proof by induction assumes that the behavior of the system is the same > across all of the space, and it fails since the behavior and/or model we > know is incomplete. It works well with numbers since we've arbitrarily > limited the model to something simple for communication purposes. Yet we cannot observe that which we cannot observe, and therefore we must leave it out of our models if we want them to work at predicting that which we can observe. You *could* choose to add whatever terms you want to the model, so long as the terms you ass resolve to the identity matrix for that which we can observe. And then the rest of us can pretend those terms don't exist, until you can come up with empirical evidence to prove their existance. And until then, we *will* pretend the don't exist, because that makes the calculations simpler (Occam's Razor). For example, if we have a system we are modelling, and there are no relativistic effects involved, we may use Newtonian mechanics to model the system, and we will not obtain results which are different from those of using special relativity or general relativity based models. Such a model is "sufficiently predicitive", despite the fact that we know that should we speed it up above some point, the values at the far limits of our precision will start to show error. > > > > > With the same token energy maybe infinite as well.... > > > > > > > > Again, the best evidence is that we live in a closed universe. [ ... ] > Should I bring in Brian Handy, who *almost* has a Ph.D in Solar > Physics. And, don't think I'm not willing to use/abuse his knowledge > and talents. :) :) Feel free. A Solar Physics person (him) is probably going to be at least as well versed on Cosomology as a Quantum Physics person (me), and we can both argue ourselves blue about the missing mass, and both being outside our specialties, will probably resolve nothing. Then we'll have to appeal to authority. Like Hawking. 8-). But if we fail at that, then we can take the standard cosmological question by the roots ("where did the universe come from") to its reductio ad absurdum conclusion that it's simpler to say the Universe has always existed (steady state or not) than that God has always existed. > Again, you're using circular logic that I don't agree with. I assert > that the human being is *more* than just atoms spinning around, but that > requires Faith. :) :) To accept? I agree: it requires faith to accept anything for which one does not have empirical evidence. That's a definition. But to cause me to not apply Occam's Razor and accept the simpler explanation that humans are finite state automatons as my working hypothesis? For that, you will have to provide empirical data on the mass/energy equivalent of "human - just_atoms_spinning_around". Or you will have to prove that a model based on that assumption is more predictive that one based on the simpler hypothesis. 8-). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.