Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!nike!cit-vax!elroy!smeagol!usc-oberon!sdcrdcf!ism780c!marty
From: marty@ism780c.UUCP (Marty Smith)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Impossibilities (...and Recommended Reading)
Message-ID: <3634@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Sep-86 11:57:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780c.3634
Posted: Tue Sep 23 11:57:47 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Sep-86 20:56:36 EDT
References: <3279@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <15634@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <346@unc.unc.UUCP> <15763@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: marty@ism780c.UUCP (Marty Smith)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 43
Xref: mnetor net.sf-lovers:8729 talk.philosophy.misc:78

In article <15763@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins) writes:
>In article <346@unc.unc.UUCP> gallmeis@unc.UUCP (Bill Gallmeister) writes:
>>
>>3. The universe is uncharacterizable in its entirety by Man, because
>>	we are only Man, and when we characterize a thing, we
>>	bring our own bias into the matter.
>
>   There is no evidence to support your statement (that the universe is
>uncharacterizable), and there is substantial evidence to the contrary
>(every successful prediction of science provides such evidence).
>
Sometimes, David, you go overboard when you blast a posting like Bill's.  I
generally don't mind when you blast me, because I usually learn a lot in the
process.  But let's not let that process grind over poor old Bill without a
few words on his behalf.  "The universe is uncharacterizable in its
entirety" seems to me to be a true statement.  I can never know the state of
the universe because the memory required to hold that state would be bigger
than the universe itself.  Even when somebody does discover the GUT theory,
it won't characterize the universe in its entirety; we will use it to
characterize whichever small part of the universe we are looking at.

As for "...we are only Man, and when we characterize a thing, we
bring our own bias into the matter."  This is a restatment of the underlying
principle of quantum mechanics that says, when we do an experiment, our
observations change the results.

>>The point of this disconnected raving is that the rules we posit are only
>>as good as the environment they are proposed in.  What is God's Truth
>>today (pick your dogma;  any dogma!) can be disproven in an instant if we
>>poke our heads out of the little rut we live in.  FTL transport will become
>>a reality, and all it will mean is that we were wrong. Again.
>
>   Or it will never become a reality, and all it will mean is that you
>were wrong.  Again.
>
>   I can't help wondering how you can be so sure of yourself, in criti-
>cizing others for being too sure of themselves.

People should be criticized when they are *too* sure of themselves.  Perhaps
Bill's point was off the mark, but people who are *too* sure of themselves,
whether they be scientists, mystics, or whatever, probably are in a rut.

					Marty Smith