That or you could shut up and calculate. — Mr Bee

:up: That's me!

:up:

Okay, I don't really take issue with that sort of description, but is it also valid to say that the Higgs field is absorbing and emitting things like electrons and quarks then? That was what I was hung up about earlier in our conversation. — Mr Bee

It is valid within quantum field theory models, yes. Motion of particles themselves is formulated in terms of destroying a particle in one position and creating another in another. It depends on how slavishly you want to interpret the models. Plus, as I said, individual Feynman diagrams don't necessarily have physical meaning. These are really mathematical tools, not analogies to reality. When you work in QFT, it is helpful to think of these as physical processes, but that isn't guaranteed. Destroying a particle and creating an almost identical one is equivalent to the particle changing state. There are quite a few ontological degrees of freedom in quantum theory. That's where philosophers should come in :)

- even so, 24% is problematic — Eugen

But it isn't 24%. 24% believe p-zombies are possible. Of those, most will believe that humans have consciousness and zombies don't. Without an example of what you mean, it's difficult to imagine that the problem you're asking about exists. I think it's more likely there's been a misunderstanding. Unless you believe that consciousness as a system function isn't consciousness.

24% is merely an upper limit given by that survey. Believing in the possibility of p-zombies doesn't necessarily mean disbelieving in consciousness. An example of a philosophical or scientific publication that assumes consciousness doesn't exist would be useful for the discussion.

Irreducible consciousness might be what you've heard of. This is basically saying the soul doesn't exist, and that consciousness (as in the self, as opposed to consciousness that the ball is red) is a non-elementary function of certain systems in certain states. Anyone who ever said consciousness didn't exist was presumably labouring under the impression that their words could be seen or heard, i.e. that consciousness was in fact real.

Our discussions about the world would indeed be entirely meaningless if there was no truth. — Banno

I think this is the objectivity error in a nutshell. Everything I experience in discussion with another is a subjective experience, likewise for them. Somehow we muddle through without any access to or necessary knowledge of objective truth. I can say "Objective truth is unnecessary", you can say "Objective truth is essential", and we can disagree and yet understand one another perfectly solely on the basis of our subjective experiences of these terms being used and our assumptions that, if we had not at least a similar understanding of these things, a confusion would arise, the very meaningless discussion you predict without objectivity.

At no point in this process does an angel of objectivity turn up to keep our language, and thus our understanding of each others' language, on the same field. We are clever enough to understand that we probably have similar subjective experiences of language, and can assume until proven otherwise that we therefore have mutual understanding. Occasionally subjective experience is sufficiently incomparable that confusion genuinely does arise.

You didn't say "has motion". You were apparently mocking the idea that a 4D object moves, saying it would require a "higher-dimensional space that would be hard to conceive of." — Luke

I was rejecting the idea that the 4D object moves wrt the 4D universe, an idea that would require some other dimension of time to make sense of. I frequently said that if the 4D object has slopes or wiggles, "it is moving", i.e. has motion, i.e. is sometimes moving. Your claim that I am saying this "now", as if I hadn't repeatedly said it already, is a non-starter.

this seems like an attempt to avoid the issue I've raised regarding the existence of different 3D parts vs. your assumption of a single 3D object changing position over time. — Luke

You're acting as if a) this was your angle from the start and b) I haven't already spent quite a bit of time addressing this very point (after which you dropped it for a while), so you'll forgive me for feeling your interpreting my reluctance to repeat myself ad infinitum is another mode of your bad faith. Refer to my previous explanation of how motion is recovered without assuming the 3D object at t' is the same as that at t, if you're interested, but don't expect people to feel obliged to endlessly repeat themselves on demand. You're not paying for my time.

the eternal inflation field which may have caused the start of this universe, which may be eternal into the past, and may or may not be eternal into the future depending on whether it fully and universally collapsed into the vacuum of our universe. — Kenosha Kid

I've worded this imprecisely. In eternal inflation theory, it's still the same field, just in two different states. These states can coexist either as spatial separations or quantum superpositions (mathematically equivalent).

See the works of Sean Carroll & Jennifer Chen, and particularly Anthony Aguirre & Steven Gratton.

Can you give an example?

This contradicts your earlier statement: — Luke

It is exactly in concord. "has motion", "is sometimes moving" appear to be equivalent expressions. Again I feel a sense that your focus is not on making any sense of a 4D body having geometry but not motion -- the paradox you'd need to resolve to support your claim -- and more on trying to catch me out on thinkos and inconsistencies. It's not an argument in good faith.

Having a gradient appears to mean no more than that a 3D part has a different spatial position than the spatial position of its temporal (3D part) predecessor. That they are the same 3D part (they're not) or that there is some sort of change/motion between parts (there isn't) is what you and Pfhorrest appear to have simply assumed without argument. — Luke

As I said, I have already been through this in quite some detail. I am not inclined to do it again to save you scrolling up, especially knowing that anything I say will just be ignored.

The 4D shape is not moving. In what sense are the different 3D slices moving? — Luke

It is, as in "it is sometimes moving".

Are the 2D slices moving? — Luke

As already stated, "moving" refers to gradients wrt time not space, in the same way that "altitude" refers to height of the 2D slice, not the radius. 4D shape is a generalisation of all of these.

It may be true and even required for motion, but that doesn't mean it's true or possible in Eternalism. — Luke

I think I covered this point comprehensively a long time ago. I'm happy to clarify anything but, as Pfhorrest said, merely repeating myself is tiresome. TL;DR version: the concept of motion is recoverable even without continuity of identity, however I consider such flipbook notions of reality contra to eternalism.

"Alan Guth's 2007 paper, "Eternal inflation and its implications",[3] states that under reasonable assumptions "Although inflation is generically eternal into the future, it is not eternal into the past."" My emphasis. — fishfry

I think the confusion is between the inflation of the universe, which is described above as being eternal into the future but not the past, i.e. the universe had a start but will have no end, and the eternal inflation field which may have caused the start of this universe, which may be eternal into the past, and may or may not be eternal into the future depending on whether it fully and universally collapsed into the vacuum of our universe. Multiverse theory says it did not do so, and continued making new universes before and after ours through quantum superposition and/or local collapse.

There is also a sense in which eternal inflation fields are timeless. They expand into any dimension, but after expansion remain the same as before, e.g. $V(x_1, t_1) -\gt V(x_2, t_2) = V$.

You and Kenosha Kid are both assuming that a 3D part of the 4D object changes temporal position and/or that the same 3D part changes spatial position, but it doesn't really. — Luke

Any object is extended over time, from its creation to its destruction. I'm pretty sure I repeatedly denied that an object "changes" temporal position in classical kinematics. It has a 4D shape. If that shape is not just comprised of the same 3D slice for all times, it is moving. In the same way, a mountain is not comprised of the same 2D slice at all altitudes and thus has a spatial gradient. If you understand the latter, there's no obvious barrier to understanding the former other than, which seems evident here, insisting on features that break that symmetry. I think you are a presentist in denial. You insist on presentist notions being true in 4D for motion to occur.

The other thing I think you are both illicitly assuming is that it is the same 3D object/part over time. — Luke

Yes, but that is true of any kinematics.

Sorry, it was bedtime here. I had to actually check the Feynman diagrams to see what Pfhorrest meant. A couple of clarifications.

The Higgs field is a weak-force (radioactivity and stuff), spin 0 (scalar) field: it does not couple to spin but weak isospin and to hypercharge. Weak isospin, annoyingly, is not a kind of spin but is so called because it behaves in a similar way to spin mathematically. It is the property that couples in electroweak (electomagnetic + weak) interactions along with hypercharge, which together comprise the conserved electric charge.

Both isospin and hypercharge can be flipped under interaction with the Higgs field, conserving charge. All quantum field theories are something called perturbation theories. If you imagine adding an electron to the universe, that electron will perturb space around it, and that perturbation will affect the electron, which in turn changes the perturbation, etc. Perturbation theory allows you to calculate e.g. the electron energy by cutting off this infinite series of interactions when the higher-order terms become negligible.

One of these terms correspond to what Pfhorrest said, which is the transformation of an electron from one isospin to another. As a Feynman diagram, it looks like $e_L + h$ becomes $e_R + h$, so it's valid to say that the electron in this term is destroyed and a new one with opposite isospin is created. However, individual terms (Feynman diagrams) in the series don't necessarily have a physical meaning. It is only the sum over an infinite number of terms that is physical. That said, it is usual to associate particular diagrams with a sort of approximation to a part of the physical process.

And here's a scary thought: what if the photon's perspective (no time, no distance) is the correct one? :o

At the speed of light there is no mass. No mass can travel at that rate. Then how did energy ever give rise to mass (e=mc2)? If it cannot do anything to itself in a state of pure timelessness then how did it just spontaneously slow down and get "heavy" with matter in the first place. — Benj96

Because we get energy from two things: our mass and our momentum. Light is pure momentum: E=pc. A body at rest is pure mass: $E=mc^2$. This leads to the interpretation that any restful body is not actually at rest but is moving through time at the speed of light. So in that sense everything moves through spacetime at velocity c, but photons can only move through space, hence no time passes for a photon.

I don't believe so. I'm saying that if there is motion within a 4D object, then there should also be motion within a 3D object, given that time is just another dimension like space (time is "space-like"). That is, I'm asking about generalising from 4D to 3D. — Luke

Well, there is something like motion: spatial gradients. Given that motion is by definition with respect to time, just as spatial gradients are by definition with respect to space, you can't use them interchangeably any more than you can measure the radius of a mountain and say that's how tall it is. However you can move to a higher-order and just consider them as the same general thing: gradients with respect to 4D position.

So to me you are still being fallacious, using different premises to reach a different conclusion and acting as though there is something wrong with the believers conclusion because it doesnt follow from your premiss. Of course it doesnt, you’ve replaced their non-secular premises with your secular one. Can you answer that criticism specifically? — DingoJones

I disagree, I think rather you have not yet shown that the content of this concern of ultimate importance is actually any higher than secular concerns. That is the claim I am disputing. There's verbal innuendo toward something beyond secular scope, but it has no actual content under inspection. So someone wishes good things to happen to them and other people they wish good things to happen to. Well, you know what? Who doesn't?

I may have been unclear. Here you are talking about motion of the mountain over time (over the fourth dimension), whereas I was asking about motion of the mountain in three dimensions only (over the third dimension). — Luke

Oh, sorry, I see. We call the gradient motion if its with respect to time only. And one wouldn't call a gradient in time a hill either. In 4D, purely spatial gradients and velocities are generalised together as one thing. In relativity this is particularly important because, for other generalisations like this, it is the generalisations that are invariant, not the individual coordinates.

For instance, position generalises to (x, y, z, t). What we call the spatial parts are still there. What we call the temporal part is still there. The values of these depend on your frame of reference. As such, spatial position and temporal position separately are always frame-dependent. But the 4D position as a whole is not. (Really, length not position, but same principle.)

So what you're suggesting is about generalising the concepts of 3D shape and motion to a higher-order concept that encompasses both.

The part you bolded is meant as something important for everyone, not just themselves. Its a greater good, the greatest good, to many believers. — DingoJones

Right. So it's not just the personal concerns of the person in question but those of others. Like people who oppose injustice, oppression, etc. But not like people whose concerns are beyond people. This is still not sounding like more important concerns. Like most problems with religion, it attempts to make a virtue of anthropocentrism. The best of the human race has rather moved beyond that, and without the carrot of eternity with the big man, or the stick of eternity in the other place. Even if God himself has concerns that are purely anthropocentric, they still appear, at best, the equal of secularist concerns.

Or, as Woody Allen put it better, "I wouldn't call God evil exactly. The worst you could say is he's an underachiever."

Basically i'm saying some people know more than others however there is no end in sight of Scientists still having major discoveries of how the Universe operates and also things that relate to 10 dimensions and beyond. Like i said if we get one variable or coefficient wrong it can change our whole view of reality. — tilda-psychist

Yes, you're right and, as I said, all scientists do is model reality with empirically-verified theory. So while it's right to say our whole "view of reality" (i.e. theoretical model of it) can massively change, the change in what it predicts (phenomena) have to be extremely restricted to match prior observations. The universe may behave as if it has precisely 11 dimensions, say. It might have 111. It might only have 4 or 5. But it behaves like it has 11.

Likewise it behaves as if there's dark matter and dark energy in a universe and otherwise follows current cosmological models. And it will behave differently in future cosmological models. More dark matter, less, none, dark matter made of one thing, dark matter made of fudge. As I said before:

Dark matter is supposed to make up 80% of massive matter in order to explain the rotational velocity of galaxies. As accurate mass estimates for galaxies are on-going (e.g. only recently have we realised the abundance of supermassive black holes), it's worth treating with some scepticism. Dark matter is, sceptically, an error between current cosmological estimates of mass and current astronomical measurements of mass. — Kenosha Kid

I never mentioned a bag btw. — Benj96

Ahem.

I release the bag onto a table and let them bounce around and roll to a stop. — Benj96

If you're talking entropy in the thermodynamic sense, the order is not necessarily quantitatively different for different categories of ordering. Each category will have multiple orderings with different (low) levels of entropy. So, in answer to your question, some orderings will have more or less entropy than others.

But you seem to be introducing an element of the scientist knowing that certain orderings have more meaning than others. Putting the coloured balls in a line in order of the EM spectrum has a meaning to the scientist that balls of a fixed colour as close together as possible does not. But this in itself wouldn't affect the entropy of the system: it is the configuration, the number of elements, and the effort required that effects the entropy.

That said, since scientist + balls is not a closed system, there will be entropical effects of the scientist figuring out an ordering with meaning compared with just smushing some balls together.

Have I understood you correctly?

Thats a common theme on most forums such as this by religionists and non-religionists. If scientists have problems understanding everything then so do most people on forums like this.

Puking out information from a popular physics book doesn't make us experts.

I'm sure you are aware to the concept that when one question is answered that 10 more questions pop up in its place (a common proverb). Missing one small detail in a concept can throw off the proper conclusion for that concept. This is similar to if we have an equation missing one variable and one coefficient for example. The whole output of the equation or function can change drastically. — tilda-psychist

This is a justification for considering science a work of fiction? Or, to put it another way, how does this relate to what you quoted?

You seem to be taking not knowing something as being seen as inferior. But you just quoted me as saying not knowing is the starting point.

Welcome to the forum by the way :)

By talking to them, by listening to them, by reading about them and the writing they themselves do, by studying religion in an academic setting and by way of personal experience. — DingoJones

Same. I'm going to take your claim to authority with a slight pinch of salt if I'm honest.

Not sure where we are missing each other here...secular concerns are mortal concerns. Do you understand what I mean by that? Some believers view this world as a pale shadow of what awaits them after they/we leave this world, this world only exists as a stepping stone to whats truly important, being with god forever in paradise. — DingoJones

Right, so personal concerns then.

It's fine, I meant it quite dispassionately.
I understand, and feel no guilt, and yet... it still effects the outcome.

So how do you know what most Christians pray for?

I'm not hearing anything that justifies the claim that, even from a believer's point of view, puts believer's concerns somehow ahead of the secular world. Even the salvation of everyone is a secular concern, and I'm confident that secular means will be the means by which it is done, if it is done.

As one of the people who got the mad fucker unexpectedly banned by reporting an abusive post (against, ironically, another banned member), I would also hope that he or anyone else would be given a chance to moderate their behaviour on reflection, but obviously I respect the decision of those with a broader knowledge of his posting behaviour. (Nothing I saw spoke well of him, but I just got here.)

Also, personally I'm shameless, but it does seem unusual to name the people responsible for reporting abusive posts that led to a ban. That's not something I've seen on similar sites, but then as far as I know I've never gotten anyone banned before. I understand the idea is that it ought to be anonymous so that people feel safe to do it.

The first of these points would give me pause to report an abusive post on here, which, if others felt the same, could lead to unchecked bullying. The second would not, but might deter others.

Most believers arent like that though, many a christian will genuinely feel its of utmost importance to prioritise everyones soul, and that everyone is better off putting god first. — DingoJones

I'm sure they would, it would be the Christian thing to do. And that will help them on judgement day. Okay, that's a mean joke, I take it back.

I'm sure many Christians also pray for an end to global warming, an end to mass extinction, an end to injustice, etc. These would be obvious things to pray for, and go beyond personal salvation.

Is there anything that you know of that Christians pray for that is more important than their personal salvation and is more important than the biggest problems facing secular society? Maybe defeating Satan? Although Revelations tells us Satan will burn forever in fire and brimstone, so that would be pointless. What things do you pray for that are of more importance than the comparatively petty "social, cultural and personal" considerations I've suggested?

In other words there is a justification for the proposition A although Bob is unaware of it. — TheMadFool

I agree that's what the Wikipedia article says, which is I think in turn paraphrasing what Gettier says. I don't think it's true, though.

Plato's original loose definition of a justified belief ruled out making someone believe something that was true through trickery (e.g. a sophist convincing a jury of something true) and this is typically extended to coincidental guessing (I believe the die will turn a 6, it does turn a 6, which cannot be justified [except maybe by time-travel :rofl: ]). I think the same holds for ignorance.

Therefore Bob doesn't have knowledge of the justification for proposition A. — TheMadFool

Yes, that's a good way to put it. The original idea behind justifiable belief is to be able to account for one's belief. Smith cannot properly account for the belief "the man who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket" because he does not know he has 10 coins in his pocket or that he will get the job, i.e. his justification will itself be false.

Since for Bob proposition 2 is not satisfied, Bob's belief in proposition A is unjustified and so, Bob doesn't have knowledge — TheMadFool

:up:

... are a minuscule concern next to immortal soul and gods higher purpose.
You may not agree, but its fallacious to use different premises (there is no god or afterlife, all that stuff is bullshit) to justify the rejection of a conclusion based on different premises (there is a god and afterlife). Obviously if you dont believe you arent going to think any if that is more important than mortal concerns (which are the only concerns a non-believer has). — DingoJones

I'm saying that even as a 50/50 agnostic, I hope I'd put the future of the planet ahead of my personal fate. The notion that people who are concerned with oppression of others, equality for others, the environment, etc. have lesser concerns than someone whose chief goal, they are repeatedly told, is to look after their post mortem existence makes the fallacy entirely your own. The two are incomparable, but in quite the other direction.

It sounds like we’re just disagreeing about terminology here. — Pfhorrest

There's maybe more to it than that. I think any philosophical position with any value will, as it is refined and developed, have offshoots that begin to resemble other refined developments of other philosophical positions. Your objective morality is a lot less strict than others, allowing for contingencies that some more fundamental mind/person/culture-independent moralities (e.g. Plato, even Kant) might not. My nominal position takes instead those contingencies as a starting point, and allows for the possibility of a distant objective morality without justifying any belief in it, far from the nihilistic potential of short-sighted and opportunistic pomo critics. I think any practical approaches to moral philosophy from different assumptions would have resemble others in this way or die, or, worse, become insane ab initio rants.

Arent you essentially reinforcing Wayfarers point there? To a believer, you have your priorities out of order in not putting god or the afterlife before worldly concerns. — DingoJones

No, I think even a believer can figure out that their personality fate is not more important than the human species and the Earth beyond it. Whether they do figure it out is a different matter.

Just saying there is some correct answer or another is not dogmatic, when what that answer might be is completely open to question. Objectivism is not fideism; criticism is not nihilism.

You’re doing exactly the conflation of different things that I describing in the OP, so... thanks for the demonstration I guess. — Pfhorrest

I wasn't being wholly serious. It is certainly a stricter position. "One of you is wrong, and that's that!" My beef with this is that, unless we have a means of evaluating the objective truth, there's nothing going on inconsistent with the view that there isn't one. Referencing our discussions elsewhere, belief in it appears unjustified to me.

Sure. That’s not relativism though. That’s “situationism”. Relativism would say something more like that whether abortion is right for Anna depends on whether we ask California or Alabama, because whether people think it’s morally okay varies between those places. — Pfhorrest

No, it's forwarded by some in relativism too (I'll dig a link out later). The idea being that what is good for Alice is objectively good for Alice, even if it is objectively bad for Barbara. I'm not arguing it's merit, just saying it's out there. As someone who believes that, even if there were an objective truth out there, we wouldn't know it, I think it's an exacerbation of a bad idea.

One could equally (wrongly) claim that truth in general (even about contingent things like the shape of the world) depends on belief systems, which was my point about the shape of the world changing when you enter or leave the Flat Earth Society HQ. The prevalent belief systems change between those places, so if one held truth relative to belief systems the way moral relativism holds goodness to be relative to moral systems, then the truth would change as you walked through the door. — Pfhorrest

Sure, and you'll find nihilism at an extreme end of relativism that not only acknowledges that facts determined scientifically, technologically or otherwise empirically are with respect to systems that may contain biases, but that therefore all facts yielded by those systems are as dubious as any other. To say this is the position of relativists, though, would be like describing atheists as Stalinists. It's a weak pejorative, and leading proponents of relativism like Rorty thought it was as stupid a conclusion as you and I do. Relativism says little about the relative merits of facts, but it is quite easy to see that a fundamentalist Christian's biases are more numerous, more impactful, and more wrongheaded than any odd slight bias in science. You're talking about a small number of idiots who made a big splash because their ideas were the right kind of controversial: clickbait before the click.

On which, and I've had this discussion with other anti-relativists in different fields, science is pretty friendly to relativism. While a lot of theist postmodernists during the science wars tried to use deconstruction to lower science's standing, it had the opposite effect. At university, I was taught to be mindful of unconscious biases in a way that previous generations of physics undergraduates were not. What doesn't kill us... Which is why I've always had a fondness for people like Latour, wrongheaded as his motivations were. We owe him a debt, as we have done to every philosopher who held a mirror to us. (I still say "us" like I'm still doing active research, what a pretentious bellend!)

Objectivism as I mean it is the opposite of that. About both reality and morality. What people think the correct opinion is doesn’t matter. (But what people experience does). The correct opinion, about reality or morality, is independent of what anyone thinks it is. — Pfhorrest

RE: emphasised point... not a little bit dogmatic? I, as I said, am a sceptical relativist, but that doesn't particularly define a solid position on either. I believe that there is some objective reality behind phenomena, and that scientific modelling is a way of gaining insights on the limitations of its behaviour. But I do not believe that science is revelation. We do not access objective reality; we see the results of interactions between its parts. I suspect objective reality is something quite fundamentally different from our state-of-the-art models and, while we will always improve the accuracy of those models, we might never have a faithful representation, or know it if we do have it.

Morality is a different matter. It is quite clear to me that human morality is defined by human biology, sociology, history, and moral philosophy. Being as it is comprised of individuals who generate that morality and who have very similar genetic heritage and, in the West at least, very similar socialisation, it is no surprise that there is usually consensus on moral matters, giving the illusion of objective moral truth. Applied scientifically, this would predict that cultures whose social structures are very different ought to have different moral structures too. This wins out. It would also predict that individuals from one social structure ought to be, given the opportunity, as amenable to the moralities of other social structures as their own. This wins out. The biological bases of morality point to fairness, empathy and altruism, suggesting that, over history, the trend ought to point in those directions as we consider more and more historic cases. This wins out. Moral objectivity simply fails to justify its existence.

However, getting back to the OP, there's not much pragmatic difference in believing in a right answer that we do not have access to and believing there is not always a right answer. I think we're aligned on everything else, and I notice we tend to agree on things (I'm glad we have something to disagree on, actually, other than the meaning of the QM wavefunction, as you're great to talk to), so hopefully that suggests the errors you see I have mostly escaped, by luck if not by design.

There's one factor that ought to be considered, however - which is that from the non-believer's perspective, there can be no real merit beyond the social, cultural and personal domain. There's nothing at stake beyond that. Whereas from the religious perspective there really is something at stake - something of ultimate importance. So there's an asymmetry there. — Wayfarer

I'd say that reversing the long-term damage to the planet done by humans, while social in origin, goes beyond "the social, cultural and personal domain", being about not just what is left for us, but after us. And, while a believer may disagree in part due to the quality of their ideas, I think even a fence-sitter would argue that it's of more importance than whether a person wins eternal happiness or has an all-powerful father figure.

Well, I don't know how that got past the philosophy chekpoint. Interesting if what you say is correct. Pfhorrest seems to have been on the right track. Do you have any idea how to make Gettier's definition of knowledge make the transition from folk intuition to philosophical formalism if that's the correct word? — TheMadFool

My understanding is that responses have been of two kinds: refine the definition of justified belief, or add a fourth condition that allows for a Platonic justified belief without calling it knowledge. So the latter address your question, I think. For example, criteria are added to disallow accidental justified belief, or other kinds of belief in error. But one can just incorporate that into the definition of "justified". That's really what it boils down to: What constitutes justified belief?

If we agree with Gettier that Smith has a justified belief, then a justified belief can be one that is based on lies, misinformation, out-of-date information, etc. and, most importantly, gullibility and closed-mindedness. If Trump tells me the US have built 2,000 km of wall and he's only built 3 km, I am justified in believing this, e.g. justified in telling everyone that this is true and saying anyone who says any different is a liar.

But I have other means of telling how much new wall there is. I can check facts for myself and not just believe the first person and call the case closed. Likewise Smith was perfectly able to justify his belief that Jones would get the job by waiting for facts, such as a confirmation letter, or lack of one. The outcome of the employer changing their mind or making a mistake was always possible, but apparently not considered, or considered and dismissed for unknown reasons. Smith could have counted the number of coins in his own pocket and justified his belief that way, but apparently chose not to. On bases such as these, the belief is not justified because Smith did everything he could to be ignorant of the facts and prejudicial about outcomes, and this would have been evident in his own testimony. You could argue that he could not really account for his belief satisfactorily.

Sounds like there is motion even though nothing moves. — Luke

I would say that, if there is motion, by definition it moves.

Do the 2D cross-sections of a 3D mountain move? Is there motion in the 3D mountain? — Luke

On geological timescales, sure. On hiker timescales, not so much.

Cosmology is all guesswork. It's all fiction. — Gregory

Cosmologists, like any other scientist, build theoretical models to test against empirical evidence. If your point is that they do not know in advance that the model is the correct one, then yes, you have correctly distinguished science (which proceeds from not knowing but wanting to find out) from religion (which proceeds from pretending to know and fearing being found out).

Motion or change along the time axis is required by the definition of motion (v=dx/dt). — Luke

It is merely x that need differ. The value at one time being different to that at another. This does not depend on something moving wrt something else along either x or t.

To repeat my argument against the 3D-4D analogy, a 2D cross-section of a mountain cannot change/move in the 3rd dimension, and neither can a 3D cross-section change/move in the 4th dimension. — Luke

This is worth clarifying: it is not an analogy. Everything that is true about mountains in 3D is true about mountains in 4D.

4D is a generalisation of 3D that implements time as a dimension like space. That which is true of space in 3D remains true of spacetime in 4D. Just as a mountain has a slope in altitude wrt radius in 3D, it does so in 4D. It may also have a slope in altitude wrt time (erosion or formation).

What's this "different definition of justified belief" Gettier uses? — TheMadFool

As Pfhorrest has already said, he is using some implicit common sense definition. We can't say exactly, since it is implicit. His implicit definition of justified belief appears to be something like Plato's. His implicit definition of knowledge is clearly different, since it does not match what the JBT yields with Plato's definition of justified belief.

I don't see a profound revelation here. The two kinds of marbles were consciously ordered in the same way when they were put in the bag, became disordered in the same thermodynamical way, then were consciously reordered by someone else in similar ways. It is an artefact of the the question alone that the person did not put the marbles back in the bag together, nor is there anything obviously profound that one person ordered the two sets of marbles one way and another person another way.

I can order my record collection alphabetically by artist then by year, or alphabetically by title, or chronologically, or biographically, or in order of most use.

There are myriad ways to order something. The same pile of bricks can be ordered to create 100 different houses, but disordering any of them just gives you rubble.

If everything is relative, than everything is crooked and there is no truth about what a person is, what he has done, and what he deserves. The world would therefore be entirely abstract and meaningless if there was no objective truth. Is this enough to prove relativism wrong? — Gregory

If all houses are just bricks, and no one can live in a brick, everyone would be homeless. Does this prove houses are not made from bricks?