yguy

Craig mentioned QM, which is of course not based on probability alone. What I've said is that to the extent it IS based on probability, it is suspect.

MAY not?

Fine, as long as it is recognized that probability is a compensation for the lack of knowledge about how the coin will act. In theory, if we flipped the coin with a mechanical device, we could know the force applied to the coin, and thus be able to predict how it lands with, say, 99% accuracy, if anyone cared enough to do it; so in this particular case our ignorance is somewhat willful.

Principia

No. The application of probabilistic concepts is a matter of convenience, whose justification are both mathematically and empirically derivable.

We model a coin flip as a probabilistic system because most of the time we do not flip it with a fine-tuned mechanical system.

Doubting Didymus

You are suggesting that with full knowledge of the forces involved, we could predict atomic motion with complete accuracy.

In fact, I believe that there are events at the quantum level that can not be predicted at all, and appear to occur with total randomness, meaning that we can never predict movements with 100% accuracy, but only speak of them as having a certain probability. Physics isn't my thing, though. Discussion of that point should be taken to science and skepticism, where I would be interested to see the discussion myself.

Principia

BTW, if you, yguy, want to rail against inappropriate applications of probabilitiy theory, you are barking up the wrong tree. Go take it up with the economists and lawmakers. To them, you, and your likely behavior, are merely one probabilistic sample out of an assumed distribution. I'd wager that biologists have a much better grasp of the underlying mechanisms behind genetic mutations than economists have of individual preferences.

Kimpatsu

DD is right that, according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the more accurately we know the position of a particle, the less we know its spin, and vice-versa. But, also as DD says, that's a discussion for another forum.

Principia

Inconsequential, especially given how much lack of knowledge yguy displays himself. (BTW, I love how you set yourself up with that fruit fly.)

Science is about reducing areas in which we have an absence of knowledge -- it makes no claims ever to having complete knowledge. In between those extremes, most of the civilized world that I know seems content to work toward the latter, slowly and surely. It is the Creationists and IDiots that want to maintain a status quo of ignorance.

As I mentioned above, a probabilistic description is oftentimes a matter of convenience in modeling a system. But, to know that an event occurs at a given rate is to have some, albeit incomplete, knowledge about the system. If someone only knows that something happens 50% of the time, it is nonsensical to say he knows nothing about the system. If anything, he also knows that it neither happens all the time, nor that it never happens at all.

yguy

Looky here, pal...I don't know if you can get that 99.9 percentile intellect of yours around this...but it's not the lack of knowledge in the scientific community that I have a problem with. It is the degree to which lack of knowledge is UNacknowledged.

You think you could maybe do me the courtesy of arguing against something I actually said?

Principia

Gee, yguy, what are you demanding? That everytime a scientific article is published, everytime a professor speaks in lecture, everytime a textbook is cracked open, that they all put up a disclaimer about all the things we don't know?

Tell you what, yguy. Tell us where you acknowledged your own ignorance. I want to see that statement at the end of everyone of your posts.

Principia

Hmm... I had a look at your post count: 425. Your profile says that you were registered in April 2003. Let's say that you were posting here everyday of the approximately 20 days that has elapsed in this month. That's about 20 posts a day. Now, help me out, yguy. In which of those posts did you have the courtesy of taking the time to think about what you had to say? Because, you know, I might have been too optimistic about responding only to what I thought were your more coherent posts.

yguy

How stupid do you think I am? I'm not demanding a damned thing, since nobody cares what I think anyway. I'm merely pointing out what I see as an underlying flaw in the underpinnings of the modern scientific mindset.

Short term memory loss?