GrahamH wrote:ughaibu wrote: This immediately entails that science requires that we can perform at least two distinct actions, and once we've performed one, that we could have performed a different one. In other words, science requires that we "could have done otherwise".
Nope. Once we have performed one we can perform a different one. That's all that is required. Whether one could have done otherwise in a hypothesised re-run of exact conditions is irrelevant to life and science.
Let's examine GrahamH's hypothesis and see whether it really is scientifically acceptable.
First, if we take a set of a thousand procedures and state that tomorrow we'll perform exactly one, as only one of them, by hypothesis, can be performed, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine cannot be performed. So the probability of us choosing the one that can be performed is very small. Unless we have some occult ability or the universe is constantly conspiring so that these things work out for us, in other words, a miracle occurs. Neither of these are acceptable scientifically, in fact they sound to me like "woo", but neither is it acceptable to just hope we get lucky. So repeatable procedures doesn't mean
repeatable if and only if they are repeated, it means can be repeated at will.
Let's examine the hypothesis in a more familiar setting. Imagine two scientists in a pub, first A buys the beers then B buys them. Thereby they have established two procedures that can be performed: A buying two beers and B buying two beers. They're adults with normal alcohol-tolerant metabolisms, so they can handle a third beer, and in order to decide who will buy the beers, they toss a coin. This is a situation that I assume everyone is comfortable with and probably has experience of. Assuming GrahamH's hypothesis, only one of the procedures can be repeated, without loss of generality we can assume this is
A buys. Whether the result of tossing the coin is also fixed according to the hypothesis doesn't matter, but as it's the result of a human action, it would be very odd if it weren't. So, assume that it is also only possible for the tossed coin to show heads. Now, the scientists don't know what the result of tossing the coin will be, that's why scientists make observations, and they don't know who will buy the drinks, that's why they're tossing the coin, but according to the hypothesis they must arbitrarily decide
heads A buys and tails B buys, they cannot choose
heads B buys and tails A buys. Again, this requires either occult powers or a miracle, or it is a matter of chance. But what these scientists are doing is recording an observation, the observation of heads is recorded by A buying, and scientists must be able to accurately record their observations almost every time and this becomes vanishingly improbable if it is a matter of chance. Further, science is predictive, it tells us that the vanishingly improbable can be more or less ignored as a possibility and the overwhelmingly probable expected. But this means that GrahamH's hypothesis commits the scientists to the conclusion that observations cannot be expected to be recorded, this is inconsistent with the scientific requirement that observations can be recorded. So, the hypothesis requires one of three things, occult powers, miracles or vanishingly improbable coincidences, none is scientifically acceptable.
Nevertheless, A and B have another idea. They realise that if they can figure out future facts by tossing coins, another way of characterising GrahamH's hypothesis, then they can figure them out equally well by any other method that drinkers might use to decide who buys the next round. For example, whose birthday is closest to today, whose telephone number has the higher mean value of numbers, etc. This allows them to check their earlier result. As the coin landed heads up, they know that A will buy, so if they then state that they will decide who buys according to whose birthday is closest, then A's birthday must be. But this means that scientists can answer questions such as
whose birthday is closest? by tossing a coin. This isn't science, it's nonsense, and if you're not immediately convinced that it is, get a coin and test GrahamH's hypothesis by seeing if tossing it will correctly indicate whose birthday is closest, yours or your friends.