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You clearly missed the paragraph where I very explicitly talked about the time variant differentiable middle ground? That’s surprising, it’s the majority of the

You clearly missed the paragraph where I very explicitly talked about the time variant differentiable middle ground? That’s surprising, it’s the majority of the content. Regardless, I’m not talking about functions describing the universal state, I’m talking one layer up from that, those that describe how that state changes, including any instantaneous events. Does the cat instantaneously die at any given second with the same probability, or does something intervene in the one second it does that did not exist in any of the others?

gjm11 2y ago
I didn't miss the paragraph, but it seemed (and still seems) fundamentally confused to me. [EDITED to add:] I do agree that when I said "X and Y are clearly not the same thing" I should have added something along the lines of "I see that after treating them as the same thing you say that technically they're different but hardly anyone embraces just one of them, but I don't think the paragraph where you talk about that makes much sense". Sorry about that. In any case, it's rather a side issue; "nondifferentiable things obviously don't imply a god who specially designed you" was the more important point, and one your response doesn't address at all. Why would there be a "time variant differentiable middle ground" but not a "time invariant nondifferentiable middle ground"? Why would differentiability imply no God? (You think a god could intervene in the universe but not in a differentiable way??) For that matter, why would nondifferentiability imply a God? (Maybe nondifferentiable things happen that are just random noise.) Why would having "time-variant" phenomena stop you using science to extrapolate to the past or future? A time-varying law can be expressed as a time-invariant law about time-varying functions. So I suppose when you say "time-variant" you mean something like "varying with time in a way that cannot be described scientifically. But the real-work here is in the "cannot be described scientifically" bit, not the "varying with time" bit. If you had time-invariant behaviour that was beyond scientific description, that would block grandiose scientific ambitions too. I think that when you say "non-differentiability" you mean "divine intervention", and when you say "time-variant" you mean "fundamentally inaccessible to science", but you know that if you say what you actually mean then people will be all "science demonstrably works really well" and "claims of divine intervention keep not checking out when investigated carefully" and "evidence for gods is really weak" and so on, so you've picked these more modest-sounding mathematics-looking terms to use instead. Top tip: if you're going to do that, it gives the game away a bit if in the very next paragraph you start saying ridiculous things like "if you take things to be differentiable then you don't get the warm fuzzies of a God who specially designed you", and people will notice.
- explaininjs 2y ago
  > people will notice What does this mean? People who don’t know what they’re talking about will get their feathers all ruffled and start rambling about missing the case of nondifferentiable constants? I guess I should have expected as much. But that is, indeed, my point: evolutionists get stuck against the wall just the same as the rest of the religions the GP mentioned.
  - gjm11 2y ago
    Er, no. People who do know what they are talking about will notice that you are trying to pretend that a simple and relatively modest mathematical/physical thing (the world might behave in nondifferentiable, time-varying ways) is equivalent to, or straightforwardly entails, an absurdly different thing (the existence of a god who designed us). (And also that you're trying the "blind them with science" manoeuvre on an audience full of people who actually know some science. And also that you're using words in ways that have nothing to do with how everyone else uses them.
    - explaininjs 2y ago
      Go on then, explain this nondifferentiable constant case I was missing.
      - gjm11 2y ago
        I'm not sure why you're focusing on that which was a minor aside amidst a bunch of more substantial things that you've ignored. OK, I guess I know why you're focusing on it. Anyway: Your account of things has "evolutionism" meaning (axiomatic) disbelief in (1) time-varying physical laws and (2) nondifferentiable natural phenomena. (I'll repeat that this is not in fact what "evolutionism" means, but we'll bracket that for now.) You have, of course, not been precise about what you mean by those terms; if it turns out that what follows makes some wrong guess then I invite you to be more precise about your meaning rather than merely complaining that I guessed wrong about things you didn't deign to make explicit. But: Consider the notion of "wavefunction collapse" in quantum physics. This may or may not be a real thing that happens (e.g., in the Everett "many worlds" interpretation it isn't), but many physicists have treated it as a real thing and there's no particular inconsistency in doing so. This is a nondifferentiable phenomenon. Discontinuous, even. The state of the world changes abruptly from one thing to another substantially different thing. Do you need to believe in time-varying laws, in your sense (according to which such belief can rightly be termed "creationism"), in order to accept a version of quantum physics with instantaneous wavefunction collapse? It sure doesn't look like it to me. More broadly: "nondifferentiable" and "time-varying" are just completely separate things; so far as I can tell, there is nothing that would make one of them enforce or prevent the other. Again, maybe you're using those terms in idiosyncratic senses that have little to do with what I think they mean; in that case, maybe it turns out that there is no "nondifferentiable constant case"; but in that case, you owe us an explanation of the meanings you're giving those terms. I guess I need to address one specific thing you might be trying to do. (I hope you aren't, because it would be nonsense.) It is, of course, true that no mathematical function can be both (1) constant and (2) nondifferentiable. But that has nothing to do with the question here, despite your use of the phrase "nondifferentiable constant case"; you have made it clear elsewhere in the discussion that when you say things like "time-varying" or "constant" you are talking about the laws, not the specific functions they describe. (And of course literally no one believes that the functions by which we describe the physical world are all constant functions.)

gjm11 2y ago

I didn't miss the paragraph, but it seemed (and still seems) fundamentally confused to me. [EDITED to add:] I do agree that when I said "X and Y are clearly not the same thing" I should have added something along the lines of "I see that after treating them as the same thing you say that technically they're different but hardly anyone embraces just one of them, but I don't think the paragraph where you talk about that makes much sense". Sorry about that. In any case, it's rather a side issue; "nondifferentiable things obviously don't imply a god who specially designed you" was the more important point, and one your response doesn't address at all. Why would there be a "time variant differentiable middle ground" but not a "time invariant nondifferentiable middle ground"? Why would differentiability imply no God? (You think a god could intervene in the universe but not in a differentiable way??) For that matter, why would nondifferentiability imply a God? (Maybe nondifferentiable things happen that are just random noise.) Why would having "time-variant" phenomena stop you using science to extrapolate to the past or future? A time-varying law can be expressed as a time-invariant law about time-varying functions. So I suppose when you say "time-variant" you mean something like "varying with time in a way that cannot be described scientifically. But the real-work here is in the "cannot be described scientifically" bit, not the "varying with time" bit. If you had time-invariant behaviour that was beyond scientific description, that would block grandiose scientific ambitions too. I think that when you say "non-differentiability" you mean "divine intervention", and when you say "time-variant" you mean "fundamentally inaccessible to science", but you know that if you say what you actually mean then people will be all "science demonstrably works really well" and "claims of divine intervention keep not checking out when investigated carefully" and "evidence for gods is really weak" and so on, so you've picked these more modest-sounding mathematics-looking terms to use instead. Top tip: if you're going to do that, it gives the game away a bit if in the very next paragraph you start saying ridiculous things like "if you take things to be differentiable then you don't get the warm fuzzies of a God who specially designed you", and people will notice.

explaininjs 2y ago
> people will notice What does this mean? People who don’t know what they’re talking about will get their feathers all ruffled and start rambling about missing the case of nondifferentiable constants? I guess I should have expected as much. But that is, indeed, my point: evolutionists get stuck against the wall just the same as the rest of the religions the GP mentioned.
- gjm11 2y ago
  Er, no. People who do know what they are talking about will notice that you are trying to pretend that a simple and relatively modest mathematical/physical thing (the world might behave in nondifferentiable, time-varying ways) is equivalent to, or straightforwardly entails, an absurdly different thing (the existence of a god who designed us). (And also that you're trying the "blind them with science" manoeuvre on an audience full of people who actually know some science. And also that you're using words in ways that have nothing to do with how everyone else uses them.
  - explaininjs 2y ago
    Go on then, explain this nondifferentiable constant case I was missing.
    - gjm11 2y ago
      I'm not sure why you're focusing on that which was a minor aside amidst a bunch of more substantial things that you've ignored. OK, I guess I know why you're focusing on it. Anyway: Your account of things has "evolutionism" meaning (axiomatic) disbelief in (1) time-varying physical laws and (2) nondifferentiable natural phenomena. (I'll repeat that this is not in fact what "evolutionism" means, but we'll bracket that for now.) You have, of course, not been precise about what you mean by those terms; if it turns out that what follows makes some wrong guess then I invite you to be more precise about your meaning rather than merely complaining that I guessed wrong about things you didn't deign to make explicit. But: Consider the notion of "wavefunction collapse" in quantum physics. This may or may not be a real thing that happens (e.g., in the Everett "many worlds" interpretation it isn't), but many physicists have treated it as a real thing and there's no particular inconsistency in doing so. This is a nondifferentiable phenomenon. Discontinuous, even. The state of the world changes abruptly from one thing to another substantially different thing. Do you need to believe in time-varying laws, in your sense (according to which such belief can rightly be termed "creationism"), in order to accept a version of quantum physics with instantaneous wavefunction collapse? It sure doesn't look like it to me. More broadly: "nondifferentiable" and "time-varying" are just completely separate things; so far as I can tell, there is nothing that would make one of them enforce or prevent the other. Again, maybe you're using those terms in idiosyncratic senses that have little to do with what I think they mean; in that case, maybe it turns out that there is no "nondifferentiable constant case"; but in that case, you owe us an explanation of the meanings you're giving those terms. I guess I need to address one specific thing you might be trying to do. (I hope you aren't, because it would be nonsense.) It is, of course, true that no mathematical function can be both (1) constant and (2) nondifferentiable. But that has nothing to do with the question here, despite your use of the phrase "nondifferentiable constant case"; you have made it clear elsewhere in the discussion that when you say things like "time-varying" or "constant" you are talking about the laws, not the specific functions they describe. (And of course literally no one believes that the functions by which we describe the physical world are all constant functions.)