Comments

  • What is Fact? ...And Knowledge of Facts?
    Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon is a fact.tim wood

    Agreed. It is backed by witness depositions vetted by means of the historical method.

    2+3=5 is true.tim wood

    Somewhat agreed.

    It is true in every model-universe-world that satisfies the number theory ("arithmetic") at hand, which is by default Dedekind-Peano (PA), including its standard model-universe-world, the natural numbers .

    The arithmetic expression 2+3=5 is true because it is provable from PA.

    It does not necessarily correspond, however, to anything in the physical universe.

    For that purpose, you would still need to drag an empirical discipline into the fray. Furthermore, any empirical correspondence asserted will not be provable from any of the aforementioned number theories.

    It is only provable to be a truth about a symbolic expression that lives in an abstract, Platonic world (constructed by a number theory).
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    To be honest, you appear psychopathic to me. I'm not attacking or insulting you. You just do.frank

    And now you are even an amateur psychiatrist publicly practising medicine without a license.

    Laws vary by state, but practicing medicine without a license is illegal in all states. Common sentences range from one to eight years in prison, depending on whether it's a misdemeanor or felony offense. Many judges will also impose fines in addition to prison sentences.Criminal Penalties for Practicing Medicine Without a License

    Apparently, I would need to do the following things:

    If you think you may have undergone medical "treatment" by someone who isn't in fact licensed to practice medicine, the first thing you need to do is report the person to local law enforcement. Since practicing medicine without a license is a serious crime, you need to get the police involved. This will hopefully lead to the offender’s arrest as quickly as possible, which is important because the offender may be continuing the fraud by "treating" or attempting to "treat" other victims.

    Also, the patient should report the offender to the state medical complaint board. This board may be able to warn other potential patients and investigate how to prevent the problem in the future. For tips on where to go to make your report, see this page.

    The patient may also file a lawsuit against the offender.
    What to do as a victim of criminal unlicensed practice of medicine

    I think that, with your dangerous habit of practicing medicine without a license, you'd better have a lot of money, and a lot of time to spare, because there are numerous parties and official departments who would urgently like to talk with you about that.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    Nobody uses sharia alone.frank

    That is a jurisprudential question for which I am not the right person to produce a religious advisory.

    Your government outlawed slavery without consulting a sharia judge.frank

    Which one of the 200+ governments on this planet?

    When I fly around the globe, and while the airborne airplane crosses 35 national borders, does that mean that my system of morality would flip flop 35 times?

    As far as I am concerned, the core job of a government is to keep out other governments. I am not keen on letting them do much more than that. This view is obviously subject to the regulatory restrictions on the matter that syntactically entail from the Islamic scriptures, but on which I do not feel that I would be the right person to produce a religious advisory.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    I doubt it. Viruses mutate all the time.frank

    You are not the only one doubting things in that context:

    The director of the OSTP, Kelvin Droegemeier, wrote in the letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Marcia McNutt, that a widely disputed paper on the origins -- subsequently withdrawn -- had shown the urgency for accurate information about the genesis of the outbreak. The OSTP also supports providing wider access to scientific studies on the coronavirus. "There are still many unanswered questions about the virus, which your colleagues are working hard to resolve," he said.White House asks scientists to investigate origins of coronavirus

    The "creating evil thinking" problem is about the following sentence in the Indian research paper:

    The finding of 4 unique [HIV] inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag

    Personally, I am just waiting for new scientific reports on the matter.

    As you can see, Prashant Pradhan, Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Akhilesh Mishra, Parul Gupta, Praveen Kumar Tripathi, Manoj Balakrishnan Menon, James Gomes, Perumal Vivekanandan, and Bishwajit Kundu, have put their reputation at stake by writing that sentence. They are not just going to give up, are they? Now they obviously want vindication of their views. ;-)

    I don't think the Chinese are being arrogant. They just don't believe in human rights. But neither do you apparently.frank

    "Human rights" are a concern. They are not a formal system. We use our formal system of morality, i.e. Islamic law, to address concerns, one by one, as they arise.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    If God approves of your daughter being sold as a sex slave, what's the problem? Are you in conflict with the Divine?frank

    Islamic law forbids enslaving Muslims. Therefore, I do not run that risk by giving a proper education to daughters. In fact, external signs of Islamicity are very solid as a personal security measure. It is much better than carrying guns, my friend.

    We are completely safe in Muslim lands, and given the strange and unexplainable twist in history, also safe in most non-Muslim lands. For an atheist, the situation seems to be going in exactly the opposite direction.

    In my opinion, serious breakdowns in law and order are now on the horizon in the West. As I have argued already, the civilizing institution of marriage has lost all credibility in the West. Still, Muslims will undoubtedly be safe anyway. So, publicly proclaiming membership of the club could offer good cover from marauding gangs.

    Islam is not just a goal for the believer. It is also a tool. It is also an instrument to achieve what you want or need.

    And the Chinese government zaps people like you in the back if the head with a cattle prod for being hesitant about giving up Islam.frank

    Well, at the same time someone else seems to be engineering HIV-related viruses to teach that very same Chinese government their own lesson:

    Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag.

    Doctors in Thailand and Japan have used HIV medications to treat patients infected with the novel coronavirus with apparent success.HIV treatments provide line of attack against coronavirus

    The Chinese government had better watch out with their arrogance in all matters, and not just in matters of religion. There seems to be a trivial way of organizing reprisals readily available, and not even particularly expensive, I guess. ;-)

    That coronavirus may very well be a feat in "creative evil thinking" ... ;-)
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    Anyway, I didn't attack you. I just drew your attention to the ramifications of your disgusting beliefs.frank

    Well, you did, by turning it into a personal affair. It is not a personal affair.

    And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? 16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. — Torah, Numbers 31:15-18 (KJV)

    I personally believe what the Jewish scholar Hans Joachim Schoeps observed about Islam:

    Hans Joachim Schoeps observes that the Christianity Muhammad was likely to have encountered on the Arabian peninsula "was not the state religion of Byzantium but a schismatic Christianity characterized by Ebionite and Monophysite views."[115]

    Thus we have a paradox of world-historical proportions, viz., the fact that Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian church, but was preserved in Islam and thereby extended some of its basic ideas even to our own day. According to Islamic doctrine, the Ebionite combination of Moses and Jesus found its fulfillment in Muhammad.[116]
    Wikipedia on the views on the Ebionites of Hans Joachim Schoeps

    As far as I am concerned the schism between Pauline Christianity and Islam took place at the Council of Jerusalem, where the antinomian Peter, along with Paul, designated "apostate of the Law", more or less usurped the position of James the Just, brother of Jesus, as the legitimate successor to the leadership of the congregation of the poor.

    When prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace, was asked to succeed to Waraka ibn Nawfal, leader of the congregation of the poor, he eventually managed to achieve something that was simply amazing, and which snowballed into a global phenomenon. The prophet said that he succeeded in decoding signals en provenance from the transcendental origin of our universe, through some kind of intelligent communication mechanism, and I really believe that he did.

    Beyond that, I am not interested in your baseless criticism.

    For the believer, it is religious law that defines morality.

    I consider your assessment of one formal system of morality in terms of another one -- which is in fact not even a system -- to be system-less bullshit. Furthermore, we are not going to solve any problem with your approach, and certainly not the problem of Yazidi persecution. You are simply not doing anything useful for them or sparing them in any way from future persecution. Helping the Yazidi clearly requires something else than mere shit talk.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    We know they were gang raped because some escaped to tell about it.frank

    Gang rape is a lapse in discipline and a violation of Islamic law. There is absolutely no religious scholar in Islam who would ever approve of that. It is just bad behaviour.

    So if your daughter was captured and sold to the highest bidder, your god would approve. That's one fucked up religion you have, my friend.frank

    How many times do we need to repeat to the plebs that personal attacks are never the solution to a problem? The only thing that you achieve by attacking people personally, is to reveal your lower social class and trailer-park origins.

    Seriously, we do not discuss with people like you, because that is pointless. We use the royal mounted constabulary equipped with long, solid wooden sticks to charge at and disperse individuals of your despicable social class.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    And relating this back to Islamic law, you'd see this as evidence of the righteousness of Islam's association with slave trading? If your mother was captured and gang raped as the Yazidi women were, you'd consider that this may be approved by God?frank

    I think that there is no need to become too personal in these matters. That is just going to cloud our insights.

    In fact, these Yazidi women were in principle not gang raped but sold to the highest bidder. Especially gang rape is considered to be a serious lapse in discipline in the Islamic laws of war. Furthermore, the rules try to prevent confusion to arise over who is the father of child by demanding that sexual intercourse may not take place before the new mentrual period of the captive female slave.

    Concerning the religious status of the Yazidi:

    In William Seabrook's book Adventures in Arabia, the fourth section, starting with Chapter 14, is devoted to the "Yezidees" and is titled "Among the Yezidees". He describes them as "a mysterious sect scattered throughout the Orient, strongest in North Arabia, feared and hated both by Moslem and Christian, because they are worshippers of Satan."

    George Gurdjieff wrote about his encounters with the Yazidis several times in his book Meetings with Remarkable Men, mentioning that they are considered to be "devil worshippers" by other ethnicities in the region.

    In H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Horror at Red Hook", some of the murderous foreigners are identified as belonging to "the Yezidi clan of devil-worshippers".[89]
    Wikipedia on the historical perception of the Yazidi

    If you want some more details on the religious status of Yazidi in Islam, you can read the advisory "Is it permissible to marry a Yazidi woman?".

    - Their belief that Iblees is the peacock of the angels lead them to venerate statues of peacocks made of copper in the form of a rooster the size of a clenched fist. They take these statues around the villages to collect money.
    -In their declaration of faith they say: “I bear witness that One is Allah and Sultan Yazid is the beloved of Allah.”
    They prohibit the colour blue because it is one of the most prominent colours of the peacock.
    The Yazidi prays facing towards the sun when it rises and when it sets, then he kisses the ground and rubs his face on it.
    ...
    Then they began to venerate Iblees who is cursed in the Qur’an.
    ...
    From the above it is clear that the Yazidis are a deviant and misguided sect who are beyond the pale of Islam. Based on that, it is not permissible for a Muslim to marry a Yazidi woman, just as it is not permissible to marry a mushrik (polytheist) or Magian woman, and the like. No exception is made regarding disbelievers who are outside the pale of Islam, with regard to marriage, except in the case of the Jews and Christians, because they are originally People of the Book. As for the Yazidis and others, they have no Book in the first place; rather they are an apostate sect who combine all kinds of disbelief in one religion.
    Religious advisory on marrying a Yazidi woman

    I am not going to reject their qualification as "devil worshippers".

    In times of peace and as long as there is law and order, Yazidi populations are merely ignored by their neighbours. Unfortunately, during the slightest breakdown in law and order, these neighbouring populations will mercilessly attack the Yazidi.

    In the following article, the journalist tries to gloss over the real problem:

    Yazidis have suffered centuries of religious persecution, based largely on the false idea that they revere the sun as God and worship a fallen angel. Though Yazidis pray toward the sun, and worship seven angels, they are monotheistic, and there is little to distinguish their God from the Muslim or the Christian one.

    Under the Ottomans, Yazidi villages were raided so often that the word firman, which means “decree” in Ottoman Turkish, came to mean “genocide” among Yazidis. When Saddam Hussein was President of Iraq, Yazidi villages were razed, and their inhabitants were resettled in planned communities and compelled to identify as Arabs.

    By the time that Pir was in college, in the early two-thousands, the Yazidis counted seventy-two genocides in their history.
    The Daring Plan to Save a Religious Minority from ISIS

    It is regrettable that neighbouring mobs tend to attack the Yazidis, whenever they see the opportunity to do so, but that is the nature of a mob. I think that it is even worse that the ruling authority regularly does that too.

    I conclude that as far as I am concerned, it is preferable not to be a member of the Yazidi religion because your security will regularly be at stake, and up in the air. Furthermore, I would personally not agree to worship Satan in any way or fashion. As you know, atheists are quite in the same situation. They also seem to trigger hate reactions from the mob.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    I take this to mean that there are axioms outside the formal system of Islamic Law upon which the laws are based - and that these axioms come from Allah. Am I getting this correct - or am I at least close?EricH

    Yes, I guess that this is probably quite correct.

    It is a bit a similar situation to what you see in mathematics.

    There is no justification whatsoever for the axioms of number theory or set theory from within these theories. However, you will still find serious attempts at justification from within the philosophy of mathematics for its ontology.

    These ontological considerations are never considered part of mathematics proper. They are not even considered part of metamathematics (which intriguingly, is part of mathematics proper).

    The relationship between religious law (formal system) and the transcendental areas in religion (informal views) is the same as between mathematics (formal system) and the ontological philosophy of mathematics (informal views).

    It rejoins the general case that at the highest level of understanding there are no formal systems and there are no formal justifications.

    According to Islamic theology, human beings are born with an innate inclination of tawhid (Oneness).Fitrah in the ontology of Islam

    mathematics is an exercise of the human intuition, not a game played with meaningless symbols.Intuitionism in the ontology of mathematics

    Still, "the origins of X" debate can easily confuse the matter. That is why I try to avoid it. There is not one, single opinion at that level of understanding.

    I simply prefer to work with the formal systems themselves. I am particularly attracted to the mechanical verification of theorems within these formal systems by using the Coq proof assistant.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    But I think your goal was to show some biological basis for slavery in an ancient sex-slave trade. Your only backing for this is a mistaken notion about the difficulties of holding male slaves. I'm not persuaded.frank

    There is still an uncanny similarity between the pretty much biology-wide mating season and war.

    In an agricultural society, there would probably still be some use for male labour, if sufficiently docile, because either born in slavery or captured very young, but what use could hunter-gatherers possibly have for male slaves? They certainly weren't going to incorporate them in their hunting groups.

    I think that in slaveholder societies, many young men, especially poor but fit ones, would eagerly volunteer for war because it gave them ready access to sex and gold; things that would be much harder to obtain as a poverty-stricken young civilian male.

    The following is from the Napoleontic wars:

    As Farges has argued, conquest also involves gendered representations of the sexuality of the enemy: It is as if the women of the conquered enemy belonged de facto and almost by right to the conqueror. Insofar as a woman is concerned, this form of belonging is implicitly perceived as being sexual. The anthropological dissymmetry between male and female provides the “natural” evidence of this stereotype: the sexual act is a possession of the feminine by the masculine and not the other way round. The conqueror says “this is mine” when he places his flag over the conquered city and rapes the women. In this sense, the two actions are homologous.When Silence Reigns: Sexuality, Affect, and Space in Soldiers’ Memoirs of the Napoleonic Wars

    Some people seem to believe that this mating season-like behaviour during war would merely be a lack of discipline.

    I do not think so.

    I believe that the desire to exhibit this behaviour is the main driver behind the strong desire for young men to go to war. Humanity incessantly invents excuses for why war would be needed. In that deceptive lie, there would even be something like a "just war".

    I think that war is the primary means of reproduction, while marriage is just a brittle, civilizing hack. The dynamics of the winner rightfully taking possession of his prize has undoubtedly much more legitimacy in the eyes of anybody involved than conducting an overly pacifist and nowadays increasingly meaningless ceremony.
  • The Epistemology of Visual Thinking in Mathematics
    A fruitless endeavor, for he soon learned the set of such functions was the empty set. :worry:jgill

    Ha aha ha! ;-)
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    Adult male slaves have always been popular because they're stronger than females slaves.frank

    Possibly, but only when born in slavery; not when originally free men. Controlling free men requires a prison structure. Otherwise, it is too dangerous. Furthermore, even males born in slavery could possibly join dangerous rebellions and insurgencies.

    It is not simple to find data on at what age the slaves were typically enslaved. I have just found this:

    He offers a graphic account of his kidnapping into slavery at the age of 11, and describes being held captive along the West African coast for seven months before was subsequently sold to British slavers, who shipped him to Barbados and then took him to Virginia.Childhood and Transatlantic Slavery
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Evolution has such a preponderance of evidence on its side, that really the burden of disproof is on you.Artemis

    That remark sounds like word-salad rhetoric from someone from the liberal arts.

    Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not. Understanding this effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda, says psychologist Tom Stafford. 'Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth', is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists something like this known as the 'illusion of truth' effect.How liars create the ‘illusion of truth’

    It is not about "preponderance of evidence" or any "burden of disproof". I really do not care if you repeat all of that 100 times or more. It is about experimentally testing the LUCA and speciation hypothesis, which has not been done, because that is currently not possible.

    It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings.[1][2][3]Wikipedia on the scientific method
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    You seem to be saying that Muslims have never really accepted that slavery is immoral. They've just been going along with it because their European dominators saw things that way. Once Europe is gone, they'll go back to slave trading.frank

    This is possible but not necessarily sure. Still, I would not dismiss it as impossible either. ISIS actually did exactly that with the Yazidi followers, justifying it by making use of an old Ottoman firman that called for that. The opinions in the Islamic world are very divided on that episode.

    So the first slaves were sex-slaves? Interesting speculation. Is there any evidence for it?frank

    A major source of slaves had been Roman military expansion during the Republic. During the Pax Romana of the early Roman Empire (1st–2nd centuries AD), emphasis was placed on maintaining stability, and the lack of new territorial conquests dried up this supply line of human trafficking. Many captives were either brought back as war booty or sold to traders,[9] and ancient sources cite anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of such slaves captured in each war. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was extraordinarily low: seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females). Julius Caesar once sold the entire population of a conquered region in Gaul, no fewer than 53,000 people, to slave dealers on the spot.Wikipedia on slavery in ancient Rome

    Historically, slavery is clearly related to war.

    Adult males are not particularly easy to manage as slaves. In fact, they could even be seriously dangerous. So, it is clear to me that the more interesting captives must have been women and children. The average recorded age at death also suggests that. Most older male slaves must have been born in slavery instead. Female slaves would obviously be sexually involved with their masters.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Knowledge is an end in itself.Artemis

    Well, we will have to agree to disagree. Knowledge without any possible application, ever, not even in a deep downstream domain, is in my opinion ultimately worthless.

    In fact, in that case, it is most likely not even knowledge.

    Concerning the LUCA and speciation hypothesis, its justification simply fails the falsificationist requirement. Hence, it is epistemically not even knowledge. You wrote that you find that a minor problem, while I think that this epistemic problem is essential.

    we harnessed evolution in the form of selective breedingArtemis

    Unfortunately, that is not what the problem is about. The LUCA and speciation hypothesis is not about selective breeding. Speciation and selective breeding are simply not the same things.

    Speciation is not a huge, insurmountable problem for the theory of evolutionArtemis

    If it is not a huge, insurmountable problem, then why don't they just carry out the artificial speciation? This whole idea that man-made speciation would be unimportant or just a minor problem to the LUCA hypothesis really sounds like sour grapes.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    Nevertheless it's locked in to a world in which slave trading was ok. That world is gone and thus Islamic law is crippled.frank

    I am absolutely not that sure that that world is permanently gone. It may just be gone for the time being. If the framework that prevents it, collapses, and it surely is collapsing, then slavery will re-emerge with a vengeance. Just look at what is going on in Libya.

    Humanity is based on a non-human technology that we only very partially understand.

    In earlier times, slavery seems to have been the primary way in which males would combat other males with a view on confiscating their females, i.e the biology-wide mating season. Marriage is a civilizing hack to that, which drastically reduces related violence. Therefore, we must be utmost careful when the principle of marriage is falling apart -- skyrocketing divorce rates and collapsing fertility rates -- because the principle of life being undefeatable, quite a few people will still successfully reproduce, but then by other means.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    A working theory can't just be usurped because you're dissatisfied with some very minor evidenciary gaps.Artemis

    Well, concerning "very minor evidenciary gaps", I do not think that the speciation problem would be minor. The problems that Darwin mentioned in Chapter 6 of his book, "Difficulties of the Theory", are not minor either.

    In one way, it does not really matter, because without the possibility to engage in artificial speciation, there are also no human technologies possible based on that principle. Hence, we cannot engineer anything based on that hypothesis, which means that it has no applications. What is even the value of a theoretical idea that cannot possibly have applications somewhere in a downstream discipline? Seriously, if we could make money from any of this, then nobody would be complaining about it, but just be making money with it instead.

    Therefore, I consider the whole idea to be futile. If I were professionally active in biomolecular engineering or a similar field, I would just work with what really works, and for the time being just forget about artificial speciation and the LUCA hypothesis, because there is just no money in it! ;-)
  • What should religion do for us today?
    You haven't explained why it would be necessary though.Artemis

    I actually did.

    All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)[10][11][12] that lived approximately 3.5–3.8 billion years ago. — Wikipedia on LUCA

    Does that non-human technology even support speciation? The only way to provide evidence for such claim consists in triggering such speciation artificially. Otherwise, it is still very possible that this non-human technology does not support speciation at all.

    The only way to demonstrate that a device can cut wood, is to actually cut wood with it.

    Neither have you given me a good or better, evidence-based alternative theory.Artemis

    I haven't given an alternative theory for the incompatible GR + QFT combo either. That does not mean that it would now suddenly be compatible.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Why is evolving an apple out of a fish the kind of proof you need? When clearly it would just take too long and too many resources to do? I mean, you'd be dead before the experiments were concluded.Artemis

    Well, that just means that it cannot be done. That does not mean in any fashion, however, that it is not necessary.

    It's kind of like demanding scientists create a whole new planet with functioning gravity before you accept the reality of gravity.Artemis

    The impossibility to do that, does limit scientists' understanding of gravity.

    The fact that gravity cannot be generated artificially in a laboratory, is a problem in many, many ways.

    It does not mean that gravity does not exist, but it certainly means that there are serious problems with the understanding of its true nature:

    Over the past few centuries, two theoretical frameworks have been developed that, together, most closely resemble a TOE. These two theories upon which all modern physics rests are general relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT).

    Nevertheless, GR and QFT are mutually incompatible – they cannot both be right.
    Wikipedia on the physical ToE

    As I mentioned in an earlier remark, reverse engineering non-human technologies turns out to be, more often than not, a non-trivial problem. If it were possible to artificially generate gravity, my intuition says that the incompatibility between GR and QFT would soon be resolved.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Well, Alcontali is quiet on the question of STEM Nobel prizes by muslim scientists, so let me answer..... drum roll..... the answer is 2 (TWO!).
    And one of them is Ahmediyya, a sect which is recognized by either Sunni or Shia as "muslim".
    Yep, obviously a trememdous love for STEMM in those pious societies!
    Nobeernolife

    Well, no, I just thought that @Artemis objection was more interesting than your disconnected remark about (Barrack Obama's and Aung San Suu Kyi's ridiculous) Nobel prizes. I only have 17 fingers on both my hands, and I was already typing away with them.

    Concerning Nobel prizes, I tend to generally agree with what Nassim Taleb says about them:

    Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes have traded personal attacks, particularly after Taleb's paper with Espen Haug on why nobody used the Black–Scholes–Merton formula. Taleb said that Scholes was responsible for the financial crises of 2008, and suggested that "this guy should be in a retirement home doing Sudoku. His funds have blown up twice. He shouldn't be allowed in Washington to lecture anyone on risk."[4]Wikipedia: Nassim Taleb's biography

    Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman is also being mercilessly vilified in the bitcoin community for making utmost inept remarks about bitcoin. I also consider him to be totally clueless on the subject.

    "Bitcoin Is A Bubble." Krugman said that the cryptocurrency was an obvious bubble. He said its prices were going up because it was “some fancy technological thing that nobody really understands.”Investopedia.com on Paul Krugman

    I use bitcoin every day.

    I have done good and profitable software engineering projects with it.

    If Krugman believes that nobody really understands bitcoin, how comes that the bitcoin software reference implementation works like a charm? Do you hear people complaining about it? I don't. Furthermore, it is just standard C++. A 30-year old programming language. Nothing fancy at all.

    How comes that someone like Krugman calls things that he does not understand "some fancy technological thing" and that he swears that "nobody understands it". Has anybody ever written software of that size and magnitude without understanding what it is?

    So, there is no point in glorifying Nobel prize laureates to me, because I share Nassim Taleb's opinion on Myron Scholes, and I am also convinced that Paul Krugman is totally clueless on the subject of bitcoin. By extension, that Nobel prize means absolutely nothing to me. I do not even want to mention Barrack Obama's and Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel prizes, because that would lead me to making vitriolic remarks.

    I consider the Nobel Prize to be mostly some kind of back patting ceremony between the cultural Marxists in Sweden and Norway and some other questionable libtard figures.

    Furthermore, there is no Nobel Prize for mathematics, which is the field in which I am much more interested, rather than the field of Obama's and Aung's fake "peace" prizes or the congratulations for Scholes' and Krugman's Mickey Mouse economics. It is the Fields medal that is the most prestigious prize for achievements in mathematics. And no, I don't know the religion of the recipients of the Fields medal. I don't keep track of that.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    What exactly about being able to change the attributes of species from generation to generation (as we do when creating new apples) is not convincing to you?Artemis

    Charles Darwin asked the following questions about his own theory in "Difficulties of the Theory":

    Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species.

    Chapter 6 of Darwin's book is entitled "Difficulties of the Theory." In discussing these "difficulties" he noted "Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?" This dilemma can be referred to as the absence or rarity of transitional varieties in habitat space.[7]

    Another dilemma,[8] related to the first one, is the absence or rarity of transitional varieties in time. Darwin pointed out that by the theory of natural selection "innumerable transitional forms must have existed," and wondered "why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth."
    Wikipedia on speciation

    Evolving modified apples out of the original apples seems indeed perfectly possible. I have no problem with the idea that this can be done "by insensibly fine gradations" and we can indeed observe "innumerable transitional forms". Evolving an apple out of a primeval fish seems to be another problem altogether. Darwin's troublesome questions have actually never been answered conclusively, even though new speculations are of course always available. It is obvious that without man-made speciation, the "Difficulties of the Theory" cannot be addressed. In the end, it is about problems likely to be encountered when reverse engineering non-human technology. There is absolutely no guarantee that it will ever be fully understood. I've got nothing against speculative and tentative hypotheses, but I do not see that as anything else than that.
  • Religious discussion is misplaced on a philosophy forum...
    If you are that particular kind of theist and you think all philosophical issues have been clarified by that kind of deity in a particular text.Coben

    The knowledge database of religious advisories keeps growing every day. Look for example just at this one site: https://islamqa.info/en . Every time there is a question, an attempt is made to discover a suitable jurisprudential advisory that syntactically entails from scripture.

    However, saying that all issues have been clarified by the scriptures would be equivalent to saying that all theorems and their justification are discovered already when publishing the axioms of a theory.

    It took 350 years to discover the justification from number theory for Fermat's Last Theorem. So, knowledge discovery is not necessarily an easy thing in a formal system. It could be a lot of hard work.

    Given that so many issues are not resolved by scripture or revelation, there is tremendous room for discussion.Coben

    Indeed, all theorems are not discovered in a theory, merely by publishing its axioms. Another remark to make is that the theory embodied in the scripture is a formal system for morality only. It will not answer other questions. For example, don't ask it to predict the weather.

    Islamic law is consistent and complete in a sense that for every question concerning the morality of human behaviour a theorem can be discovered that syntactically entails from scripture.
  • Omniscience is impossible
    U = a thing about which nothing can be known
    U is possible because there's no contradiction in positing a U. So, it is possible for U to exist in one of the infinitely possible worlds (argument A)
    TheMadFool

    There are ineffable numbers.

    Just look at Richard's paradox. The short of the story is that language expressions are countable, while real numbers are uncountable. Hence, there are real numbers that exist but cannot be expressed in language.

    That obviously says something about the tool of language. It therefore says something about the users of the tool of language, i.e. humanity.

    There exists ineffable knowledge.

    This knowledge is not accessible if you are limited to using the tool of language, but not necessarily so, if you happen not to be subject to that limitation.
  • The Epistemology of Visual Thinking in Mathematics
    The Epistemology of Visual Thinking in MathematicsBanno

    It's a really long article ...

    Visual thinking is undoubtedly a staple in those areas in mathematics, such as geometry, that end up downstream in construction engineering, mechanical engineering, select areas in science, and so on.

    There are entire areas in mathematics, however, where visual thinking would probably only add to the confusion, certainly in computer-science related areas of pure mathematics, where symbol manipulation alone is much more common.

    When recently looking into the bi-interpretability of ZF-∞ and PA, I ran into the concept of arithmetic sets.

    For example: { 1, 3, 7 } can be written arithmetically { x | x=1 or x=3 or x=7 }, and can therefore be represented by the predicate φ(x) := x=1 or x=3 or x=7.

    I do not see how visual thinking with diagrams or images would be helpful in clarifying this concept?

    As far as I am concerned, the only thing that really helps, are good examples, which are almost always lacking. Just look at the Wikipedia page itself: no examples at all. That is why I am still struggling a bit with for example:

    { 1, 8, { 45, 6 }, 9 } could arithmetically be: { x | x=1 or x=8 or x= { y | y=45 or y=6 } or x=9 }

    It may be the correct arithmetic translation of this example of an embedded set expression, but I am not sure, because it could also be wrong. I would only be able to confirm when seeing a similar example elsewhere, but that example is not forthcoming; certainly not by Google searching for it. Instead of showing good examples, they will probably rather come up with a useless diagram or image or so ... ha ah aha! ;-)
  • What should religion do for us today?
    So you accept Western psychological studies only when they suit you?Gregory

    Dunning and Kruger tested the hypotheses of the cognitive bias of illusory superiority on undergraduate students of introductory courses in psychology by examining the students' self-assessments of their intellectual skills in logical reasoning (inductive, deductive, abductive), English grammar, and personal sense of humor. After learning their self-assessment scores, the students were asked to estimate their ranks in the psychology class. The competent students underestimated their class rank, and the incompetent students overestimated theirs, but the incompetent students did not estimate their class rank as higher than the ranks estimated by the competent group. Across four studies, the research indicated that the study participants who scored in the bottom quartile on tests of their sense of humor, knowledge of grammar, and logical reasoning, overestimated their test performance and their abilities; despite test scores that placed them in the 12th percentile, the participants estimated they ranked in the 62nd percentile.[1][9]Wikipedia on the Dunning-Kruger tests

    It looks nicely falsifiable. In my impression, it looks like genuine science. Any reason why it would not be?

    And why are you asking for help to formalize your system on here?Gregory

    I only mention it when it is relevant to the conversation and because I like the idea. I guess that at some point I will run into people who will also be interested in the project. In fact, I have done projects in the past that started like that, through sheer serendipity, and which even made me a ton of money. Especially business opportunities tend to be very serendipitous. It's all about stumbling upon the possibility to do things with real upside potential.

    You never seem to mention interesting projects that you would want to do? You seem to have a different mentality altogether; and not a particularly entrepreneurial one, I guess. Maybe you are rather a wage slave who continuously lives in fear because he only ever faces the downside potential of getting fired by his dictatorial boss? In that case you will indeed need to anxiously hang on to the little you have ...

    You believe in your religion despite the evidence.Gregory

    What evidence? In your liberal-arts bullshit world, there is no evidence of anything. There are only word salads aimed at manipulating even bigger idiots.

    Again, you're a moron.Gregory

    As a "liberal artist", the only fake skill that you have, and that you are known for, is talking shit about other people. Your social class of individuals is rightfully viewed with contempt only.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    It's a theory, actually.Artemis

    Talk is cheap. Show me the code. — Linus' Law

    Talk is cheap. Show me the man-made speciation. — Al-Contali's law
  • What should religion do for us today?

    There is still a very serious difference between:

    This Chihuahua mix and Great Dane show the wide range of dog breed sizes created using artificial selection.Producing dog breeds as an example of natural selection

    versus:

    All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)[10][11][12] that lived approximately 3.5–3.8 billion years ago.[13]Wikipedia on Evolution

    By analysis of the presumed LUCA's offspring groups, the LUCA appears to have been a small, single-celled organism.Wikipedia on LUCA

    Producing different dog breeds is not exactly the same as producing a dog out of a single-celled organism.

    Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species.Wikipedia on speciation

    It has been suggested that laboratory experiments are not conducive to vicariant speciation events (allopatric and peripatric) due to their small population sizes and limited generations.[2] Most estimates from studies of nature indicate that speciation takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years.[3]Wikpedia on laboratory speciation

    Hence, it is obvious that, in terms of falsificationism, something like the LUCA theory cannot be backed by laboratory experiments. Furthermore, it looks like no speciation at all can be carried out in a laboratory. This does not necessarily mean that the LUCA theory, which clearly depends on speciation, would be wrong, but as far as I am concerned, it is merely a hypothesis.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Muslims have no problems whatsoever with STEM fields.alcontali


    STEM is not about dealing with useless verbiage.

    The core question is : What can you do with evolution theory? What applications? Where is the money? Where are the markets?

    Show me one product, service, or technology in general that depends on evolution theory. Furthermore, in a falsificationist sense, show me even just one experimental test to be carried out in a laboratory in which we would be able to successfully evolve one species out of another.

    Just one example country, Pakistan, to give you an indication of the interest in STEM fields amongst Muslims:

    List of engineering universities in Pakistan

    Islamabad
    Abasyn University, Peshawar, Islamabad Campus[1]
    Air University, Islamabad[2]
    Bahria University, Islamabad (Main Campus)[3]
    Sir Syed CASE Institute of Technology Islamabad[4]
    COMSATS University Islamabad (Main Campus)[5]
    Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science & Technology, Islamabad (Main Campus)[6]
    Hamdard Institute of Engineering and Technology, Islamabad Campus (Hamdard University, Karachi)
    Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad[7]
    National University of Sciences and Technology (Pakistan), Islamabad
    International Islamic University, Islamabad
    Islamic International Engineering College, Islamabad (Riphah International University, Islamabad)[8]
    Iqra University, Islamabad Campus (Iqra University, Karachi)
    Capital University of Science & Technology, Islamabad
    National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad (Main Campus)[9]
    National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad (Main Campus)
    Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Islamabad[10]
    Grafton College, Islamabad[11]

    Punjab
    COMSATS University Islamabad (Sahiwal Campus)[12]
    Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Technology, Multan[13]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Rasul[14]
    Army Public College of Management Sciences, Rawalpindi (University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila)[15]
    Dr. A. Q. Khan Institute of Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Rawalpindi [16]
    COMSATS University Islamabad (Lahore Campus)[17]
    Sharif College of Engineering and Technology, Lahore Affiliated with UET Lahore[18]
    COMSATS University Islamabad (Wah Campus)[19]
    National University of Sciences and Technology (Pakistan), College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Rawalpindi Campus[20]
    HITEC University, Taxila Cantonment[21]
    Information Technology University (Lahore)[22]
    Institute of Advanced Materials, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan
    Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore[23]
    National University of Sciences and Technology (Pakistan), Military College of Signals, Rawalpindi Campus
    National Textile University, Faisalabad
    National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad, (Lahore Campus)[24]
    NFC Institute of Engineering and Fertilizer Research, Faisalabad (University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore)[25]
    NFC Institute of Engineering and Technology, Multan)[26]
    Swedish College of Engineering and Technology Affiliated with UET-Lahore, Rahim Yar Khan[27]
    Swedish College of Engineering And Technology affiliated with UET-Taxila, Wah Cantt[28]
    Rachna College of Engineering and Technology, Gujranwala (University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore)[29]
    School of Engineering, University of Management and Technology, Lahore
    University of Central Punjab, Lahore[30]
    University of Lahore, Lahore (Main Campus)[31]
    University College of Engineering and Technology, Multan (Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan)[32]
    Bahauddin Zakariya University College of Textile Engineering, Multan (Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan)[33]
    University College of Engineering and Technology, Bahawalpur (Islamia University, Bahawalpur)[34]
    University of Agriculture, Faisalabad[35]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila (Main Campus)[36]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila (Chakwal Campus)[37]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore
    University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad
    University of Gujrat, Gujrat[38]
    University of Wah, Wah Cantonment[39]
    Muhammad Nawaz Sharif University of Engineering and Technology, Multan
    University College of Engineering Sciences & Technology, Lahore Leads University
    University College of Engineering & Technology, University of Sargodha
    Khawaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Rahim Yar Khan[40]
    Quaid-e-Azam College of Engineering and Technology, Sahiwal[41]
    University of South Asia, Lahore[42]
    Namal Institute, Mianwali[43]
    Government College University, Lahore[44]
    Government College University, Faisalabad[45]
    Imperial College of Business Studies, Lahore
    GIFT University, Gujranwala[46]
    Lahore College for Women University, Lahore[47]
    University of the Punjab, Lahore[48]

    Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
    CECOS University of Information Technology and Emerging Sciences, Peshawar[49]
    National University of Sciences and Technology (Pakistan), College of Aeronautical Engineering, Risalpur Campus[50]
    COMSATS University Islamabad (Abbottabad Campus)[51]
    City University of Science and Information Technology, Peshawar
    Gandhara Institute of Science and Technology, PGS Engineering College (University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar)[52]
    Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - Swabi[53]
    IQRA National University, Peshawar (Formerly Iqra University, Karachi (Peshawar Campus)[54]
    National University of Sciences and Technology (Pakistan), Military College of Engineering (Pakistan), Risalpur Campus[55]
    National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad (Peshawar Campus)[56]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar (Main Campus)[57]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar (Jalozai Campus)[58]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar (Bannu Campus)[59]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar (Abbottabad Campus)[60]
    University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar (Kohat Campus)[61]
    Peshawar College of Engineering, Peshawar (University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar)[62]
    Sarhad University of Science and Information Technology, Peshawar
    Abasyn University, Peshawar (Main Campus)[63]
    Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan
    University of Engineering and Technology, Mardan[64]

    Sindh
    Muhammad Ali Jinnah University, Karachi[65]
    Habib University, Karachi[66]
    Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, Karachi
    Bahria University, Islamabad (Karachi Campus)[67]
    Dawood University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi
    Hamdard Institute of Engineering & Technology, Karachi (Hamdard University, Karachi)[68]
    Iqra University, Karachi (Main Campus)[69]
    Indus University, Karachi (Formerly Indus Institute of Higher Education, Karachi)
    DHA Suffa University, Karachi
    Institute of Business Management, Karachi
    Institute of Industrial Electronics Engineering (Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), Karachi (NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi)[70]
    Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro[71]
    Mehran University College of Engineering and Technology, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Campus, Khairpur Mirs (Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro)
    National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad (Karachi Campus)[72]
    NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi[73]
    National University of Sciences and Technology (Pakistan), Pakistan Navy Engineering College, Karachi[74]
    Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology (PAF-KIET), Karachi[75]
    Plastics Technology Center, Karachi (Constituent College of National Textile University, Faisalabad)[76]
    Quaid-e-Awam University of Engineering, Science and Technology, Nawabshah[77]
    Quaid-e-Awam University College of Engineering, Science and Technology, Larkana (Quaid-e-Awam University of Engineering, Science and Technology, Nawabshah)
    Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi[78]
    Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam[79]
    Synthetic Fibre Development and Application Center, Karachi (Constituent College of National Textile University, Faisalabad)
    Sukkur IBA University, Sukkur
    Usman Institute of Technology, Karachi (NED University, Karachi)[80]
    University of Karachi, Karachi[81]
    Barrett Hodgson University, Karachi[82]
    Nazeer Hussain University, Karachi[83]

    Balochistan
    Balochistan University of Engineering and Technology, Khuzdar[84]
    Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences, Quetta (Takatu Campus)[85]

    Azad Jammu and Kashmir
    Mirpur University of Science and Technology, Mirpur, Azad Kashmir[86]
    University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir[87]
    List of engineering universities in Pakistan

    Again, you simply don't know what you are talking about.

    Worse, in line with the Dunning-Kruger effect, you do not even know that you do not know. That leads you to believe that you know it all, while in reality, you know fuck all.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    After all, you can't even prove there is a God? You tried, you failed. Your only argument was "infinite regress is impossible", which I refute above in this threadGregory

    Proving God from what axioms?
    I am not interested in any of that.

    I am only interested in religious law as a formal system.

    I find the most interesting project in this realm to be the mechanical verification of the syntactic entailments from scripture that justify religious advisories. What proof assistant would be the most suitable: Coq or Isabelle? My intuition says that Coq is the way to go, but I am certainly open to suggestions.

    Anything to say about Coq versus Isabelle?

    If you want to discuss bullshit, however, you will have to do that with someone else.

    As modern science get's more nominalistic, it breaks the spine of Islamic law, which can't handle all the questions that arise in our age.Gregory

    STEM has universal appeal. You will find Chinese, Brazilian, Pakistani, and Namibian engineers working together on a common project. Muslims have no problems whatsoever with STEM fields. Your liberal-arts nonsense, however, is widely despised outside the West. As matter of fact, it is also widely despised within the West.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    I do not know what you are waffling about about, and I suspect neither are you.Nobeernolife

    I was just saying that you do not seem to have any understanding of epistemology.

    You accused me of not knowing islamic scripture and I pointed out I indeed read it.Nobeernolife

    You misunderstand the term "to know". Remembering trivia from skimming through long bouts of text has nothing to do with the epistemic meaning of the verb "to know". Again, you "know" nothing about Islamic scriptures, if only, because you do not even understand the epistemic meaning of the term "to know", let alone, what the religion of Islam is all about.

    Then you declared only islamic scholare are are able to interpret islamic scriptures (something that you denied earlier).Nobeernolife

    Read up on the very, very basics of epistemology.

    You do not seem to be capable of distinguishing between the act of discovering new knowledge and verifying that this new knowledge is indeed knowledge. I have even pointed out to you the "P vs NP" question, but you do not seem to understand it ... at all.

    Let is just say that II sure as hell would not want to rely on a nuclear power plant designed by someone with your, err, logical thinking abolity.Nobeernolife

    Too late.

    I have been involved in a project in which I wrote software for the quality control of nuclear fuel rods. I have also been involved in a project writing software related to the revision and scheduling of repairs on a steam cracker.

    If any of these industrial installations fall apart, it is too late to annoy me with that matter, because in the meanwhile I moved on to lots of other gigs until finally cashing out from my last startup.

    Of course, I could ask you how much you have been able to invoice your customers for your logical thinking ability, but I won't, because I am not as arrogant as you are. Still, have you ever been paid even once for your logical thinking ability?
  • What should religion do for us today?
    ....and every time I have quoted an islamic scholar, you said you don´t know them and anyway in islam there is no scholarly authority. Go figure.Nobeernolife

    You have a very poor epistemic understanding of what the term "knowledge" means. That is the source of your confusion. The underlying reason for that is that your stint in the liberal arts has totally confused you about what this term is all about. There is technically no knowledge in the liberal arts, because none of its beliefs can be justified.

    So, let me repeat all over again.

    We use specialized practitioners to discover a solution in a particular field. We only know that their solution truly is the solution because the justifying paperwork that they supply is verifiable. So, we verify the justification, preferably, even mechanically.

    Hence, while it is the specialist's job to discover a solution and produce justifying paperwork for it, it is the user's own responsibility to verify that paperwork.

    If the user fails to verify the justifying paperwork, then this user is just an idiot, who is asking to be manipulated and deceived. In other words, if you blindly trust a specialized practitioner, you are better off not even using his services, because in that case, you have no "purchasing ability".

    For example, not everybody can commission repair work on a nuclear plant. The corporate purchasing or sourcing officer who places the order for the repair work does not need to be able to carry out the repairs by himself, but he will still need to be able to verify the proposals made by specialized contractors, and choose the best solution, as well as verifying the delivery of the repairs.

    In other words, the ability to buy specialized services also requires some knowledge; not necessarily the knowledge to produce these services, but certainly the knowledge to pick the right service provider and to verify his delivery.

    Seriously, your lack of common sense is astonishing.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    he alim and ulema are not a "I'm better" aristocratics?Gregory

    No, just like a doctor, an alim is not necessarily an "I'm better" aristocrat.

    The job of a doctor is typically to figure out from your flailing story about "feeling unwell, having pain here and there" what exactly is going on, if figuring that out, is uberhaupt possible.

    So, the doctor proceeds with his "theorem discovery" activity by for example commissioning a stool lab test for the presence of H. pylori bacteria, from which he can then justify his opinion that this infection is the reason for your stomach ache.

    His belief is justified from the paperwork produced by the laboratory.
    You do not need to believe what he says, merely because he is a doctor.
    That would be the wrong approach.

    No, you may believe what he says, because his opinion is backed by justifying paperwork.

    The fact that he is a doctor dramatically increases the likelihood that he will correctly translate your flailing story into an opinion that can be backed by justifying paperwork. That is why you chose to ask him and not, for example, an electrician, for a medical opinion.

    As long as a practitioner, who specializes in a particular field, can produce justifying paperwork for his conclusion -- preferably mechanically verifiable paperwork -- it makes sense for customers to ask such specialized practitioner for his opinion.

    It is all based on the idea that the discovery of the solution is harder than verifying that such purported solution truly is the solution. It all goes back to the "P vs NP Problem":

    If it is easy to check that a solution to a problem is correct, is it also easy to solve the problem? This is the essence of the P vs NP question. Typical of the NP problems is that of the Hamiltonian Path Problem: given N cities to visit, how can one do this without visiting a city twice? If you give me a solution, I can easily check that it is correct. But I cannot so easily find a solution.Third millenium prize. One-million dollar prize for a proof why it seems to be like that.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Actually, I have read them all, plus plenty of interpretations by leading clerics (which you admitted to being completely ignorant of).Nobeernolife

    In Islam, the ulama (/ˈuːləˌmɑː/; Arabic: علماء‎ ʿUlamāʾ, singular عالِم ʿĀlim, "scholar", literally "the learned ones",[1] also spelled ulema; feminine: alimah [singular] and uluma [plural])[2] are the guardians, transmitters and interpreters of religious knowledge in Islam, including Islamic doctrine and law.[2]

    By longstanding tradition, ulama are educated in religious institutions (madrasas). The Quran and sunnah (authentic hadith), are the scriptural sources of traditional Islamic law.[3]
    Wikipedia on the Ulema

    You have not duly trained as an alim and therefore you are not a member of the ulema. You have no credibility whatsoever in the field of interpreting or applying the Islamic scriptures. Again, you are clearly ignorant and incompetent on the subject, and your views are also annoyingly arrogant.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    but most true hermaphrodites who are strippers or more are from the OrientGregory

    While Iran has outlawed homosexuality, Iranian Shi'a thinkers such as Ayatollah Khomeini have allowed for transgender people to change their sex so that they can enter heterosexual relationships. This position has been confirmed by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and is also supported by many other Iranian clerics.

    Iran carries out more sex change operations than any other nation in the world except for Thailand. It is regarded as a cure for homosexuality, which is punishable by death under Iranian law. The government even provides up to half the cost for those needing financial assistance and a sex change is recognized on the birth certificate.[161]
    Wikipedia on transgenders in Islam

    The Shia position on the matter is currently much more accepting of transgenderism than the Sunni one, where there is currently no clear "ijma" (consensus) and where legal opinions are much more divided. But then again, I am not a religious scholar and I am not the right person to ask for a religious advisory on the matter.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Islamic scriptures are a wildly incoherent collection of oral transmissions.Nobeernolife

    You know absolutely nothing about the Islamic scriptures.
    You think you know, but you don't.
    Welcome to the Dunning-Kruger effect running loose again:

    In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.[1]Wikipedia on the Dunning-Kruger effect

    What you have said, is again a prominent example of liberal-arts ignorance and arrogance. Those degrees are worthless, simply because that way of thinking is worthless.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Religious ideology is not a "serious STEM field".Nobeernolife

    I talk about religious law. Religion has other areas than just its law, for example, the origin of religious law.

    Religious law is a formal system of morality that rests on system-wide premises, i.e. its scriptures. From these system-wide premises, we can syntactically derive theorems. It is possible to mechanically verify these syntactic entailments.

    This is an example of a theorem encoded in the formal language of the Coq proof assistant:

    assert Syllogism {
      all Socrates: univ, Man, Mortal: set univ |
          -- every man is mortal
          Man in Mortal
          -- Socrates is a man
          and (Socrates in Man)
          -- implies Socrates is mortal
          implies Socrates in Mortal
      }
    check Syllogism
    

    I am very interested in doing a project that consists in encoding the scriptural system-wide premises of Islamic law in the formal language of the Coq proof assistant.

    Next, it should be possible to also encode the curated knowledge database of religious advisories. At that point, the curated knowledge database of religious advisory scripts will be mechanically verifiable.

    That will create the field of religious script programming, i.e. the activity of re-encoding religious advisories supplied in natural-language into the formal language of the Coq proof assistant with a view on carrying out mechanical verification.

    That will then be complete evidence for the fact that religious law is a STEM field.

    In fact, we knew this already because all systems of formal reasoning from first principles, i.e. all axiomatic disciplines, are fundamentally STEM fields.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Well, if you want to base your argument not on any statements by clerics but solely on the literal contents of the KoranNobeernolife

    That is not how it works either.

    I base my argument in religious law solely on statements that syntactically entail from scripture (Quran+Sunnah).

    These statements tend to be provided by religious scholars. In theory, everybody could provide them, but in practice the provider will, more often than not, need rigorous training in religious law as well as experience in order to discover such statements. Hence, religious scholars play an important role, but not exactly the role you think.

    In other words, you have presented a false dichotomy, based on a poor and even incorrect understanding of the epistemology of religious law, and of even epistemology in general.

    It would amount to saying: "In set theory (ZFC) you can base your argument on what mathematicians say or solely on the literal contents of Zermelo and Fränckel's publications on the matter." That would be your false dichotomy applied to mathematics.

    It reflects your completely false belief that as soon as someone gets a degree in mathematics, he can say whatever he likes about it, because his expert opinion would be sufficient to back any of his claims in mathematics. It may work like that in the liberal arts, but it does not work like that in any serious STEM field. It also does not work like that in religious law.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    You have expressed very consistently the need for a formal set of rules that are inspired by a transcendental source outside the system itself.EricH

    Most generally, merely "a source outside the system itself". Once you say "transcendental", you are already outside the system itself. What does "transcendental" even mean within a formal system?

    Are you saying that the only thing keeping you from performing such acts is the moral rules of your religion?EricH

    There is no system to explain this. You may instinctively sense that it is wrong to do any of that, but that is where the explanation actually stops. Again, what does "to instinctive sense" even mean within a formal system?

    We are talking about systems for which we want to mechanically verify the justification for its theorems. A machine does not instinctively sense. If we go down that route, we will never be able to achieve that goal. In that case, such project will remain stuck in its starting block.

    We are aware of a lot more than we can justify. It requires discipline not to make use of that awareness or even assume its existence when programming machines, because they simply do not have that awareness.

    Can you acknowledge that you do not need a transcendental source to recognize that such actions are morally wrong?EricH

    From within a formal system we know nothing about the reason why its basic rules are the way they are. If you want a computer to help you verifying the justification of a religious advisory, you cannot use any of that. You will have to stick to mechanical symbol manipulation only.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Just out of curiosity - and in an effort to understand you better - do you consider yourself Sunni, Shiite, other?EricH

    I don't really do denominations.
    I am probably ghair-madhhabi.

    It is also beyond me why Ali would be the "friend" of Allah, as the Shia profess. I would need to read a much better explanation for that, because for the time being, I just don't geddit ...