Mike Tintner said:Laws are indeed only true in partial models of the world which define only limited sets of factors in the events they explain.And the beautiful example of “the falling of a paper plane and a paper ball of the same mass in the real world” is a first for me.-----------------Suppose I go to drop two spherical objects of different mass but when I am about to release them I hold onto one and drop the other. Then after waiting a few seconds I drop the other. Have I proven that the law of gravity that was referred to in the section you quoted is wrong? Of course not. So why would the support of a difference in air pressure in the example that you mentioned seem to disprove the proposition that there are natural laws. The value of the abstract law is not that it is perfect but that it gives us the ability to think in new ways and some of these new ways of thinking help some people learn to find ways to make amazing inventions. Challenging the prevailing opinions does help us to find new ways of thinking as well. But you have to be willing to validate your opinions with more profound insights and effective experiments other than butt-headed obstinacy. My ideas about simplifying advanced AGI techniques are major advances. Not because they solve the complexity problem, but because they can stand as an experimental base to ACTUALLY WORK on outstanding AGI problems. However, I won't be able to convince most people that these simplification techniques are important because most of them just don't understand or believe me. I have to go out and actually do the work and get something working to demonstrate that they can lead to some useful results. So no, the laws of gravitation cannot be directly observed if you hold one object longer than the other when you go to release them. But those laws led to amazingly effective endeavors that would have been impossible without them. Jim Bromer From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: [agi] There are no universal physical laws Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 20:20:30 +0100
This is a v.g. exposition of why there are no laws in the sense Ben & others think – per past discussions here. “This Davidsonian Problematic, according to Horst, is based on an outdated (Logical-) Empiricist philosophy of science in the last century, which treats scientific laws as true universal statements about the world. Horst undermines this view through Nancy Cartwright's critique and proposes "Cognitive Pluralism" as his own alternative. Following Cartwright, he points out that if scientific laws were indeed universal statements about the world, none of them would be true. For example, even the law of gravity would be false: think of the falling of a paper plane and a paper ball of the same mass in the real world. In this sense, even physics doesn't have laws or, if it does, only ceteris paribus laws. Instead of treating laws as true universal statements about the world, Horst argues, we should view laws as part of models that isolate real causal invariants --"causal powers" or "potential partial causal contributors"-- in the world. But a model adopts a particular representational system suitable for its theoretical interest and domain, idealizes away other factors, and even fundamentally distorts how things unfold actually. Thus, in this view, laws are true only in models, and models should be evaluated not as true but only as apt. These models don't provide us with a single unified picture but only piecemeal fragments of the world. And the current status of our science is a patchwork of such partial models mostly incommensurable with one another. This pluralistic nature of scientific modeling might suggest that it is in principle futile to pursue scientific unification to get an integrated view of the nature. Horst hints at such pessimism, but he does not go as far to endorse it. He simply points out that current sciences clumsily provide pluralistic patchworks.” Laws are indeed only true in partial models of the world which define only limited sets of factors in the events they explain. And the beautiful example of “the falling of a paper plane and a paper ball of the same mass in the real world” is a first for me. (Nor are there natural algorithms (i.e. of Nature) , Matt). Oh, and notice that scientific models are “patchworks” - as indeed are all algorithms, when considered as productions, rather than how they are used/executed. http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6812&cn=394 AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
