rationalskepticism.org

ughaibu wrote:Here's the first version, linked to above:

ughaibu wrote:let's assume you're correct and that there are some laws of chemistry and physics which, together with a relevant description of the brain and its environment, mathematically entail all future human behaviour. Now let's pose the question what will you be doing between 10.25 and 10:30? According to you this is fully entailed by laws and can, in principle, we computed. Take six pairs of trousers and number them, one to six, do the same for six shirts, six locations in your room, six colours and six animals, then roll five dice and wearing the clothes that match the first two dice, sit in the position indicated by the third dice drawing, in the colour indicated by the fourth dice, the animal indicated by the fifth, during the period between 10:25 and 10:30. What we're doing here is equivalent to recording our observation of the result of rolling the dice, so our ability to do science guarantees that we can do this, but if you're correct, then this means that we can compute what is mathematically entailed by laws of chemistry and physics, by rolling dice, and that is nonsense.

You could start there. Assuming determinism you consider some behaviour of a person and some dice. You set out a causal relation (the event that selects between A, B etc) between the dice rolls and the person's behaviour. So we get to some outcome which you say is an observation. Fair enough.

But you say "this means that we can compute what is mathematically entailed by laws of chemistry and physics" but no claim has been made about computing dice rolls or people with any precision so why do you assume otherwise? Whether it is entailed or not is not any claim of computability for prediction. zoon has speculated what might result if it could be done in practice which is a different point.

Then you say that if we could predict [dice etc] we could "compute what is mathematically entailed by laws of chemistry and physics, by rolling dice" which doesn't follow at all. If we could accurately predict chaotic systems then we could predict them. That is we could "compute what is entailed", but why "by rolling dice"? Why do you think that rolling dice computes anything?


Nothing in your scenario necessarily looks any different whether determinism is the case or not.



You call it nonsense and I think it is nonsense, but it's your nonsense. Maybe you can make sense of it.

And then perhaps you could explain what stops people doing science, of doing what they are instructed to do on a dice roll or a meter reading or whatever. The instructions say record the temperature on a gauge. The gauge shows 23.4°C why would the researcher write anything other than the correct value?