The name for the point where a probability changes

It must be because you have fallen back into your usual "cause and effect" mode of thinking again, that now you have deja-vu. Your argument was already refuted on account of that:- You can hardly prove cause and effect, to the exclusion of things going one way or another, so you would also come to deny cause and effect as reliable.- The reality of probabilities is practicable, the unreality of them is not.- It is already a critical constituent part of science, and has always been a part of it's practice, that it is true that things can turn out one way or another. The possibility that it is not true has only existed as a philosophical idea in the cultural context of science.sidenote: See RAZD if you believe in things going one way or another, as I think you said you did, as a consequence your measuring of ignorance argument fails. You can't entertain both as true.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I don't see how any of this addresses what was a very simple request that you actually provide some evidence to support your position. Simply claiming that it is self-evident is not actually, in and of itself, evidence. That isn't what I said, I didn't make the two things mutually exclusive. If you actually read what I said then you might have noted phrases such as "may truly reflect reality" and "if not". I didn't say that probabilities must all be true reflections of reality or all must be measures of our ignorance.Even if all events can be assigned true probabilities which reflect a truly probabilistic universe, the probabilities which we, as fallible humans, assign to events must also encompass our ignorance of certain relevant factors.TTFN,WKP.S. I'd be happy to conduct a great debate with you at some point if you wished.

Since the notion of evidence presupposes an uncertainty as true, you can't use the word evidence in trying to find out whether or not probabilities are real. You can't assume what you seek to explain. Again it is fundamental. If you want to deny it's existence, then I will hold you to not using any words that assume the exisence of it, that would be very hard.I am not inclined to do a fundamental philosphical investigation of the issue. Generally all observations are of the past, so of course one can't see a probability there, because they are in the future. But it may be found that the act of observation presuppposes probability to be true.Sure I'd debate anytime, altough I'm travelling next days actually.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

This is pretty much just gobbledigook, human certainty or uncertainty is not the same as probability being a fundamental basis for reality. I have never denied the existence of the concept of human uncertainty. What I have suggested is that at the present time it is unknown whether the actual fundamental basis of the universe is probabilistic or deterministic.Therefore it is pointless to try and hide your total absence of evidence by pleading that I should not be allowed to use the word evidence.You are even reverting to just regurgitating my own arguments slightly revised. Which is exactly the argument I was making about your assumption of the underlying probabilistic basis of reality as part of the argument in favour of recognising the importance of probabilities resolving, or 'realizing' if you will, as fundamental to understanding reality.TTFN,WK

It is an unwarranted special exception to recognize probability as real one place, as with human uncertainty, and not recognizing it in general.Besides I would never presume to know anything like the "actual fundamental basis of the universe" in it's entirety, that is asking a bit too much.Since the notion of evidence presupposes probabilities as real, they are real according to evidence. There I'm done. Again any meaningful philosphical investigation of the issue, must not presuppose any possibility, probability, determination, to be real at all.edited to add: and why don't you give some of these significant turningpoints in the history of the universe, and of organisms, as from another thread. How you can know about these determinations, without admitting determinations exist, is beyond me.I know that Gould lamented the loss of the historical view within biology. It is no coincedence that Gould advanced the comet hitting the dinosaurs as an event which could have turned out another way. His lament of the loss of the historical view, is joined with his advocacy for evolutionists to at least recognize one single bloody determination of some significance in the entire history of life. An advocacy which he was much criticized for.regards,
Mohammad Nor SyamsuThis message has been edited by Syamsu, 01-06-2005 11:26 AM

And even if those true probabilities could be assigned to potential events that would not determine which result actually occurs (unless, and only if, it assigns a probability of 1 to only one result, and in which case it would no longer be a probability). Yeah, multiple repetitions of assertions without substance are still just assertions without substance. Someone just hasn't realized it yet ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

But you do presume to do this every time you make the assertion that 'things can go one way or another'. That has to be the poorest reasoning I ever did see!! Did you just not read my last post? Do you just hit reply and paste in one of your own previous posts with a bit of rearrangement and a few sentences taken in or out?In what way does the notion of evidence presuppose that probabilities are real? Does it presuppose that we are imperfectly able to measure things but that accummulated 'evidence' allows us a greater degree of confidence in the 'probability' that a given statement is true? Or does it presuppose that the universe is so fundamentally unstable that the concept of truth itself is liable to fluctuations based upon unknown probabilistic phenomena.Just because you can type a sentence which says this rubbish doesn't mean that it represents a coherent argument. You can string any group of words together that you like, it doesn't mean that the concept of evidence actually does presuppose that probabilities are
'real'.Care to address the question of evidence supporting your contention this time rather than wriggle around like a worm on a hook?TTFN,WK

One problem I have always had with Syamsu's ideas is that they always seem to require massively large outlays of time and resources for incredibly small returns. His ideas for studying individuals to study evolution basically made it virtually impossible to do anything as you had to study every individual in a population, no sampling allowed. Or alternatively you could only look at 1 individual and then assume that there was absoloutely no variation in the population.Now his new hobby horse is that we should try and determine the evolution of the probability matrix for absoloutely every evolutionary lineage, or even for the whole universe, so we can determine the point where there was a probability of 1 that the eye would evolve, for example. Even allowing Syamsu's somewhat massive assumption that this 'realization' event was very early on in the cosmological evolution of the universe it still represent an insanely vast amount of computation for a miniscule and as far as I can see totally unrewarding return.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 01-06-2005 11:38 AM

It is just a matter of the dictionary.This is the first definition of evidence I found. Obviously I can't use this definition to investigate whether there is such a thing as a probability, because it presupposes probability.But since it talks about it being probalistic, I assume there might be a definition of evidence, that doesn't presuppose probability. Well you give it, I can't find it, or why don't you just discard your thesis that events can't turn out one way or another as irrelevant philosphy.http://www.xs4all.nl/...philosophy/Dictionary/E/Evidence.htm"Evidence: A statement S is evidence for (against) a theory T iff S is known to be true and there is a theory T' that is not known to be false and T' implies that T is more (less) probable given S.Note this is a probabilistic characterization of what counts as evidence for or against a theory T and that it depends on there being another theory T'. But this also covers the cases when T' implies T is true or T is false, i.e. the cases of deductive proof and deductive refutation."regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

You are mistaken. I said that you should have a theory that makes you able to handle cases of a single individual, which you can't do if your theory is based on more than one individual to be there for it to apply. This does not require for every organism to be investigated individually.You are very pessimistic. There is sure more that can be done in this area once bright minds set themselves to it as a day to day task, in stead of fleeting philosphical meandering about it. It may be more simpler than you think it is, because not that many variables might matter much for something like eyes.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Well how about the Oxford English Dictionary Or Webster's It is also clear that what your definition refers to is the probability based upon current knowledge which you are so ready to dismiss as being irrelevant to the 'true' probability that you are talking about. Notice all those knowns in there? This is not talking about absolute reality but about levels of confidence based on human evaluations of knowledge. Therefore this probability is clearly distinct from, and easily distinguishable from, your own type, so I fail to see any problem for you in now furnishing us with some evidence, apart perhaps from there being none to support your stance.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 01-06-2005 12:02 AM

I don't make a distinction between recognizing probabilities in human beings, and recognizing them outside of human beings. If you recognize probabilities in human beings, you have simply accepted probabilities, and you have no reason anymore to presuppose that they don't exist.And as before, I will simply engage the argument from ridicule, or incredulity. It is beyond reasonability to suppose that a speck of dust is predtermined to be there as it is, with that particular side of the dust upward, in that exact position to the millionth of a millimeter, after floating in the skies for a year.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Which makes it even more irrelevant to evolution. Why should any evolutionary theory focus on cases of a single individual when single individuals are incapable of evolving? I think people should read what Syansu himself has said in threads such as the 'Natural selection is wrong' thread and the many other threads dealing with his views on 'Darwinism' nad judge for themselves how much I am misintrerpreting his ideas when I say that to get the results that population sampling, population genetics and evolutionary theory provide us with his 'simplified' approach would involve direct study of every individuals' reproductive success or the unwarranted assumption that all individuals in the population were effectively identical. You have absoloutely no reason for assuming this to be the case. How much calculation do you think would be required to study the evolution of the probability matrix of the universe for even the first few seconds of its existence? Do you assume that it was that period that the probability of the eye evolving reached 1, if so I would be interested in the basis of that assumption.TTFN,WK

It is just as reasonable as assuming that it could have happened any other way, just because it feels more natural to beleive the universe is probabilistic does not mean that it is.It is certainly as reasonable as believing that the probability of the eye evolving reached 1 in the first few seconds of the universe's existence, or whenever it is you have decided to locate that 'realization'?Since when were ridicule and incredulity considered a good basis for an argument?TTFN,WK

Here we go again!!!
Hello, if randomness is indeed a phenomenon in reality, If identical starting points can produce different outcomes then how can one defend determinism? I thought we hashed this all out before. I believe determinism exist up to a point, but reality can not be "nailed" down. Not only because humans can never know all the data of the system, but because the system itself is indeterminate IMO.