Limit and Mind | Know the Times

Data Scientist exploring where probability meets Providence. Writing on Christian apologetics, AI, and why order in the universe isn't accidental.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

> Show me the evidence

> Sure, that's a reasonable request. Here are the eyewitness testimonies to Jesus's life, death, and Resurection

> That's not evidence

> Ok, how about the myriad of archeological findings that support the historical Biblical account?

> That's not evidence

> Alright, let's use science. The Big Bang and Fine tuning show that a Creator is more likely than not

> That's not evidence

> Ok, perhaps a philosophical argument will do the trick. Contingency, MOA, Moral argument, and the Kalam.

> That's not evidence

> Ok, it's hard to see what you'll accept as evidence at this point. I'm starting to think you don't actually want the evidence.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@LatFilosof @TheDrewHaas

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

My latest post in the series on probability and God, where I discuss Chaos (that sweet brute) and why we need to reject it a priori to keep the intelligibility of the world.

And… why rejecting it affirms a principle that points to God.

If you’ve ever been curious about how the two concepts relate, this is for you.

https://t.co/RFiXnNV5Me

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

He's a Die Hard enjoyer, which makes me like him even more: https://t.co/OEKobPQiui

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

As I build systems with AI, I continue to discover things that have been around for a long time...but it feels like I'm discovering something new.

Take formal methods like SMT solvers and TLA+. These probably aren't even in the toolkit of most software engineers, let alone Data Scientists like me, but as I'm building out a backend analytics system for a product, I'm finding these tools invaluable for ensuring the system behaves as I expect it to.

Basically, you have the code and then on the side, you have a state machine model (TLA+) of the code. The model is a declarative, logical simulation of what your process does...and allows you to specify what should always be true and set tests for specific conditions that you want to eventually materialize (or never materialize)

It's like some weird, strangely understandable hybrid of SQL and any programming language that has list comprehensions, with ascii art operators. Quirky, just like Leslie Lamport, its inventor.

When you've created the spec, and put in enough conditions that catch both errors of commission and omission, you can run it through a model checker and find program states that should not be reachable, which constitutes errors in your design you likely would not have caught were you just using unit testing and static typing.

For most things, it's always good to zoom out and get a broader perspective. Formal methods help you do that. Even if I'm late to the game, these tools are going to become a staple in my work.

Here's a picture of Lamport mogging on what appears to be the California coast.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

"I don’t see how a brute eternal universe that happens to be intelligible can be a plausible explanation. It becomes a worldview filler/patcher to me"

Exactly, it's an arbitrary patch. Basically a philosophical shoulder shrug.

The more sophisticated atheist will posit a necessarily existing "something besides God" that shares similarity with God only in its necessity, and argue that this is more parsimonious and hence the better explanation. While this is lightyears better than a brute world, whether eternal or finite in the past, I don't yet see how we would establish its necessity enough to distinguish it from all this other stuff that's like it and we know is contingent.

RE: Joe Schmid... I'm not a heavy modal logic user, but I've seen others who are claim that the RMOA doesn't really achieve its goals (perhaps @PrayPuffPlay could weigh in here if he's not too busy commenting on the Bengals with a cigar in hand)

Side note: I think people mix up the idea of eternality and necessity too much. They correlate perhaps, but are very distinct concepts that don't entail each other symmetrically.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@hthieblot Geocities - active for almost the exact timeframe you mentioned

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

Look forward to reading your article, but let me reply to what you've already laid out here first.

I'm glad we've found a point of agreement: we have to assume regularity for science to work at all. The sticking point for me is still the justification gap. If this assumption is necessary for any coherent reasoning, then treating it as a mere pragmatic habit with no deeper metaphysical ground leaves the foundations of intelligibility still unexplained.

Pruss makes this point in his paper on PSR and probability [section 3, “Globalizing”]. In short, even a local or restricted PSR is too weak for the very probabilistic problems that got us here. For example, you can have a universe with a finite past but no earliest moment, where each local state is explained by an earlier one, but the whole infinite chain remains brute and unexplained. That makes it impossible to assign any non-arbitrary probability to our actual Big Bang history over crazy alternatives like Russell’s five-minutes ago hypothesis or a single brain in a truncated light-cone. Simplicity arguments don’t rescue us either. So without a global PSR that rules out brute facts at the cosmic scale, we can’t do the local, probabilistic reasoning we both want to do.

Doesn’t that leave science resting on an ungrounded assumption after all? Perhaps you would reply yes, and you're ok with that, but if so, my next question would be what non-arbitrary reason would you give for stopping the chain of reason just prior to making metaphysical commitments to required explanations?

https://t.co/JCOw1DISNE

[Paul Snively @JustDeezGuy]

“If religion is a system of thought requiring belief in unprovable propositions, then thanks to Gödel, we know mathematics is the only religion that can prove it is one.” — John D. Barrow

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@LatFilosof It’s exactly that ambiguity that forces us to assume a priori that it is not, given that our current world (and any other possible world) could be chaotic and we wouldn’t know by opening our window and looking out.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@Tsar_Martyr Sky daddy

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@IABIBFY "Show me the evidence'

"Ok, here's the evidence"

"That's not evidence"

Every time.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

When atheists claim they have “no burden of proof” yet spend hours tearing down theistic arguments, you’re dealing with someone who was one-shotted by Reddit and lives in an echo chamber of their own making.

They pretend they make no claim about God’s existence, but their actions leave zero doubt.

If I say I have “no commitment” to whether it will rain today… yet I spend all day debunking every meteorologist who predicts rain and calling their models pseudoscience… would you still buy my agnosticism?

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@AWanderingFlame Incorrect. The position is not unfalsifiable.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

This is better art than a majority of what makes it into the great art museums of the world.

[Rheyso @Resorcinolworks]

I still think about this.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@larryrudd1984

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

Had this discussion with a boomer relative while out at dinner recently.

I pointed out to him that conditions now are vastly different than when he was coming up in the world.

> College was affordable and basically guaranteed you a job. Now you have to take on non-dischargeable debt at inflated prices to obtain a piece of paper when you largely get trained for the job on the job.
> He didn't have to compete with foreigners who will do his same job for half the price. America is a plutocracy, and the plutocrats import infinity foreigners on purpose to undercut America wages.
> Housing affordability was better when he was buying into the market than it is now (when you factor in payment/income, down payment required, and homeownership rates at age 30).
> He didn't (as a white male) have the entire propaganda apparatus pinning all the worlds ills to his demographic > He didn't have to compete with the entirety of social media for a mate.
> Boomers captured the tail end of the time when wages tracked productivity, a definite advantage compared to today.
> He lived in a society where mutual trust still existed and Christianity was in a much stronger position in the zeitgeist than it is today.

By almost every metric that matters, he had it easier.

But the lazy youngster narrative allows him an escape hatch to smooth his ego when he realizes that he's basically failed at life.

Note: I'm not advocating for a generational war... you should honor your older relatives. Sometimes the way you love them is by reminding them of the truth, gently.

[KangusBangus @KangusB3]

No boomer has ever applied to 500 jobs and gotten 5 emails back and 2 interviews and no employment.

They do not understand the world that we live in. They cannot understand it, that would shatter their world view. They reflexively call you lazy to protect their view of reality.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@larryrudd1984 Ok, now I'm super interested in how you use AI professionally. I'm not sure if the 1986 computer would have a GUI, how did you interact with it?

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

Plenty: The contingency argument using the PSR established dialectically from first principles - a priori reasoning, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the contingency argument, my own personal experience, the reliability of the Bible, evidence from science like fine tuning and the BGV theorem, and the fact that your arguments against God all presuppose implicitly a world where God exists....all of this on a substrate where theism is the default over human history and culture.

What evidence do you have that God does not exist?

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

@IABIBFY You're just making assertions that I don't understand. Until you can back up your claims, I remain unconvinced.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

You're spot on, people need to learn how to use AI well, and that skillset is basically the same as learning to use any other tool well.

I don't know why being a boomer makes you unqualified to comment. I'm attacking a specific mindset that I find in boomers who don't seem to understand that the world has fundamentally changed from the world they grew up in. Eye contact and a firm handshake isn't going to get you the job. But growing your skills will increase your chances, and despite the fact that things are harder now by almost every metric, you can still move forward in a positive way.

[Limit and Mind | Know the Times @limitandmind]

Joel gets it and for that, I salute him.

How can a debate proceed when one side won't honor the rules?

In practice, entering a debate over a binary outcome while pretending like you're not advocating for one side is extremely disingenuous, and it's obvious what you're doing to anyone who isn't terminally on Reddit.

I'm trying to think of reasons why atheists are so adamant about this when the majority of their best thinkers aren't...

> Energy minimization? - They already spend a majority of their online time trying to debunk God claims, whether broadly theistic or specific to a religion, so this doesn't explain it.
> Wanting to feel special? - Perhaps, since their view is a very small minority worldwide, they could need to feel special in any way they can...and epistemic privilege would be a vehicle for this.
> Bluffing? It could be they feel these non-compressible word games obfuscate the truth and waste opponents time. Zerg tactics, used when you have nothing else. Easy to engage like this when you're angry at something that doesn't exist.
> Don't understand the game, coupled with huge confirmation bias? The most likely explanation

[David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz @JoelKatz]

I'm an atheist and I do not agree with this at all. It's one of the things that most annoys me about my fellow atheists.

If a 9/11 truther said that trutherism is not a belief and that truthers just don't believe that the towers collapsed because of a terrorist attack, we'd see this as transparent bad faith.

If an Obama birther said that birtherism is not a belief and that birthers just don't believe that Obama was born in the United States, we'd see this as transparent bad faith.

Atheists call themselves "atheists" because they reject a claim that theists accept. They do this because they have specific identifiable beliefs that lead them to reject that claim, just as birthers and truthers do. And they self-describe as "atheists" not because of the absence of anything but because of the presence of those beliefs, again just as birthers and truthers do.