Thank you. I also did some more research into it and it seems reduction ad absurdum can be used as a valid form of criticizing or deconstructing an argument or premise, but care must be taken that it actually addresses the premise and doesn't introduce a red herring, an argument from adverse consequences or an appeal to ridicule. So, whether this makes it the "workhorse of philosophy" (as Dennett claims) remains an open question to my mind. Appreciate your reply.
"Heaven is a great expression of God's generosity towards us" Yes, imagine an eternity of blissful existence knowing that some of your friends and relatives are burning forever and ever. Meanwhile you, knowing this distasteful fact, will also exist forever and ever, never forgetting. You can almost hear the screams from the clouds edge. Ain't Heaven a hoot? What's that you might want to say? Your flavor of deity removes memories? Of relatives? What if it's Mom, or Dad? Implant memories?
Once you are in heaven you understand the true nature of sin and so don't feel bad for those who put themselves in hell by choosing to sin. What a silly comment
@@PT0B no on questions about money and taxes and minimum wage etc. You want a $5 minimum wage because it will give workers more money? Well why stop at ten? Why not make the minimum wage $1 million and then everyone will be rich!
The falling rocks example was simply Aristotle's Principal of Non-Contradiction. While that basic logic is a major underpinning of Reductio ad Absurdum, I feel like that alone really doesn't highlight what an argument "Reduced to Absurdity" is. Perhaps a slightly more ridiculous hypothetical could be: Someone says that a butterfly can never hurt someone.... and you attempt to prove them wrong using the plot of Butterfly Effect.
He is basically saying that when the two are tied together, they are acting upon each other. A will drag B along with it, supposedly making B go faster, but B is also going to slow A down. So, what he is saying is that if objects do fall at speeds based on weight, than A alone would fall faster than AB, because B is slowing down A.
Sometimes the initial reductio ad absurdum happens to be a great discovery. The theory of general relativity had a lot of weird implications, which was valid criticism on Einsteins paper. But then we found out that all of them happened to be correct, so everybody was like: "ah, okay then..."
I think he means that it is a fundamental Thinking Tool that can be used in reasoning but sometimes it is used incorrectly, leading us to think that the idea at hand requires something absurd to be true, so that it must be false, when maybe the causation is not absurd, or maybe the causation does not necessarily follow.
I think he's saying that in addition to the Earth pulling on the lighter object, the heavier object would also pull the Earth towards it. So, there is an equal and opposite force acting on both the object and the Earth, but the objects we're talking about are so light that they don't effect gravity that much. However, if you had an object that was the same mass as the Earth, the total mass of the entire system would double and therefore the acceleration due to gravity would as well.
All philosophy is speculation. In science this is sometimes called hypothesizing. However, when an hypothesis is demonstrated by experiment to be true, then unless it is disproven by later investigation, the hypothesis is called a theory.
There's a lot fields in philosophy. A great deal of philosophy is speculative, but that's more true the further back in history you go. If you take the time to read a lot of the major philosophers within the last five centuries, you find that its various fields became much more methodical, and scientific. In fact, there are basically no philosophers among the major names between that period in which philosophy was their only pursuit. Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, to name a few, were all brilliant mathematicians. Hegel is the forefather of sociology and historiography. Hume was an important contributor to the development of modern science and political theory. Bertrand Russell's work in logic has had major significance in advancing computer science (he basically corrected and replaced Aristotelian logic). If you read the analytic philosophers of the 20th century and today, they're all scientist, mathematicians, linguists, and psychologists on top of their philosophical pursuits. Philosophy's more of a way of framing how to construct your ideas and test the basic logic of your views. It's also a way of gauging what might really lie behind your motivations. It's developed a lot since the days of Plato, or the poor reasoning of Christian Theologians during the medieval era.
Philosophy is not pure speculation. If you read beyond the classics than you would know that. An important cornerstone in all modern writing of philosophy is logical reasoning. Try writing a philosophy paper without deductive or inductive reasoning and see what mark this gets you... it is actually funny that you assumed that "all philosophy is speculation" (hypothesis) without going out of your way to empirically check up on your claim to confirm or deny it. See the comment above and you have a lot of examples of "X was a philosopher" and "X was using logic" thereby disproving your claim (or should I say: making your stipulative definition of philosophy rather controversial). I would agree with you that "some philosophy is speculation", then again so is all science, as each science relies on axioms (unproven/unprovable hypotheses) or worse, the basic hypotheses for the scientific field in question aren't even agreed upon. Also side note: A hypothesis is a single assumption about cause and effect, i.e. "If someone eats something, they will experience happy feelings" is a hypothesis. A theory is a set of (hopefully) non-contradictory hypotheses. The eating-hypothesis could for example be part of - and framed in - evolutionary theory, or a psychological theory, or evolutionary psychology for that matter...
Actually, Philosophy is more concrete and closer to any sort of objective "truth" than science. Science, as Hume explained, has a problem of induction, and commits the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent, or assuming that because phenomenon 'P' occurs, and phenomenon 'Q' occurs right after, that 'P' caused 'Q' to occur, which is an incorrect assumption and is not logically valid, therefore the the final truth or conclusion of any sort of argument (hypothesis or experiment) in this structure cannot be guaranteed to propose the real truth. Philosophy speculates often, but only to comprehend these sort of matters.
Not only that, but early philosophers believe that you can understanding physical systems, for all causes and effects can be logically inferred. Hume pointed out the error in this reasoning, however: there is no property of event A that will suggest event B. The whole problem with the subjectivist approach is that they believed that every thing that happens happens logically. Best represented by Leibniz in his statement: '[this is] the best of all possible worlds'.
Though I don't think the concept was explained all that well in the video, I'd add that it is very important to be able to tell when the concept does and doesn't apply. Like with the statement, "if you see a crime, you ought to report it". Applying the concept would result in, "you ought to report any violation of the law no matter how minimal", which is not very practical, especially in considering all the diverted time from crime that is serious.
I appreciate your patience. I am not that smart, so I'm not sure I have any sense or ability "to see beyond" what's in front of me. I have two questions: - What key piece of evidence was Darwin missing? - What exactly is it at the nano scale debunks Einstein. Could you mention some phenomena I can look into? I prefer peer-reviewed sources if possible. - Lastly, what is it about fractals that defy Einstein? Also, what in particular about Einstein's research is being contradicted. Thank you.
I would tend to agree that questions of ontology are frivolous to a large extent. Questions with a more human focus are a far better application of the philosopher's time and talents than questions of the external world. However, scientists (physicists especially) often end up engaged in talk about philosophical issues without realizing it. They're still interested in questions that cannot be answered with their method. There will always be a periphery where science cannot offer answers.
Object 1 has mass M1 and takes time T1 to impact the Earth when released from a stationary position at altitude D. Object 2 has mass M2 and takes time T2 to impact the Earth when released from a stationary position at altitude D. If M2 > M1, then T2 < T1 due to Object 2 accelerating the Earth towards itself more than Object 1 accelerating the Earth towards itself. This effect will be non-negligible for very large M2. IDK if that explains it better, but it explains it more precisely.
The Golden Ratio isn't a theory of anything, it's a ratio. It occurs throughout nature because it provides the most efficiency in the growth of an evolving system. Everything in nature tends to follow the path of least resistance, and when it comes to patterns and growth, the mathematical "path of least resistance" (most efficiency) happens to be the Fibonacci Sequence /Golden Ratio. So it's expected to pop up all over the universe, but that doesn't mean it can solely explain anything about it.
Its a pretty clear example to me. 1. If you take a heavy object that falls fast and tie to a light object which falls slow, the light object should act as a parachute that slows the speed of the heavy object's fall. 2. But then if you weigh both objects you see that the heavy object tied to a light object is slightly heavier than the heavy object along, and therefore should fall faster. Here you have two opposite conclusions from one premise, so the premise must be false.
The point is that the variable is in a 'null' state. One can not determine the state of the variable (alive, dead, exists, or not exists) until it is observed either directly or indirectly. Once it is observed, it has an established state at that moment in time. However, the observation itself plays a part in the equation which is the trippy part ;)
Me neither. Sometimes things that are "certain" aren't true. Schopenhauer used the an expression that was something like: "as impossible as flying above the atmosphere". Which was a valid expression when he wrote it, because nobody has thought about rockets as away to overcome that impossibility. Same thing with GR; ideas about black holes and the big bang weren't thought out yet. Bare in mind that the theory was published in 1916; nobody could measure the bending of light by gravity.
lol @ the commercial i got before the video. "This is about the best steel you can get, tank steel". Images of a tank getting cut up. a guy shouting: "This is your tank, and we now shred it into bits". And you see how they re-forge pieces of tank into hammers. Hammers made from re-forged tanks now available at hardware-store-chain XY.
Some said how can you catch the air by hand and one said wait until the air become pure so this way you can catch the air. It is the rain drop of water.
If you want to break the parameters of the situation, anything could make them fall at different rates. If a more massive object is hollowed out with a large vacuum, it would float and never hit the ground. While not explicitly stated, it is implied that the objects are of equal size and have uniform density.
Assume big mass M falls faster than small mass m ==> M dangling below m should fall slower than M by itself because m holds M back. But M connected to m has mass m+M>M so it should fall faster than M. Hence the contradiction: m+M cannot fall both faster and slower than M at the same time.
Some said the seed are like star. for normal plant it grows but for star it gives litgh and but to eplode it can multiply just like a broken glass but only the Lucky one can survive to light it self again.
Yes, exactly. Reductio Ad Absurdum isn't reduction to the silly, it's reduction to the impossible. It's logically possible for someone to run as fast as superman, but not logically possible for objects of different weights to fall at different speeds because of their weight. If a philosopher isn't making that differentiation then she isn't doing her job. At the same time scientists shouldn't be lumping the philosophers who are bad at their job in with the rest.
The essential idea of reductio ad absurdum, is not so much showing that something has absurd results, which Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, and later quantum physics, all had, but instead, to show that an absurd contradiction with reality can be deduced from the statement. In that way, all of Einstein's ideas were perfectly valid, since even if they had absurd results, they were consistent with reality.
Democracy isn't terrible. We don't live in a democracy, we live in a democratic republic. A direct democracy would be fine if we were willing to go back to state by state liberty. We have different laws in different states because different states are supposed to house different kinds of people. Instead of having a "Conservative" and "Liberal" state designation, we are supposed to have states which are neither, or both, but they make their own decisions based on what the people vote for.
It almost sounds like it was through Reductio ad Absurdum that Einstein was able to come up with Special Relativity. He took Newtonian physics to its logical extremes (the speed of light) and came to the conclusion that the (then) current physics framework wouldn't work at this speed. Can't we say that it was precisely because of this exaggeration of classical physics that he was able to point out its inaccuracy, thus ushering in modern physics?
A parachute does make the person fall slower... and the weight combined is heavier. But this is to do with air resistance. In other words there are other factors that go in to the equation other than just weight. :-)
The "reductio" is the alleged contradiction between the stones falling both faster by the influence of the heavier one and slower by the influence of the slighter one. I think his example does show the rhetoric use of "reductio ad absurdum", but inefficiently; it does not stand or would not stand during a debate, simply because of f=ma. That's why it's confusing, because it ultimately makes no sense.
Nah I understand it now, another user explained it. I think it was my attention span and I forgot that the object moving slower would also be pulling back... I've always had this problem, but I always figure it out and never forget.
The problem with Galileo's argument is that even though his conclusion is correct, the method used to reach that argument is flawed. Suppose that one object WERE to fall faster than the other. Their falling speeds would either be added together (the same way that pressure increases as forces is applied to a smaller area), or they would average out (as with objects of different densities sinking in a dense fluid).
If you dropped both at the same time, the less massive object would benefit from the more massive one pulling the Earth. Their "fall" times would be identical. If you do them sequentially, the "fall" time of the more massive object will be less than for the less massive object. It's all about having a mass large enough for the movement of the Earth to be significant enough to observe. A mass comparable to a planetoid would noticeably accelerate the Earth towards it.
They don't confuse the term, it is a separate term that most people use compared to the one that philosophers use. Atheism isn't about believing for certain that there can't be a God, it's about believing that someone needs to stand up to the irrational beliefs of the opposing side. Almost all rational atheists are agnostic in philosophical terms, but when people are trying to enact laws that impose their beliefs on others, then it becomes more than just a theoretical issue.
Yeah, but if the main motiviation/reason for writing the book was money, it says something about the objectivity of the book. Writing a book driven by pation and writing abook driven by greed... seem to be 2 different things to me. I do not say this is here the case, but I felt the need to seperate the 2 arguments.
The mainstream view is that they indeed are separate things, and because of this, one can be an agnostic atheist. This is because agnosticism deals with knowledge (in this case "I don't know"), and atheism deals with belief (here "I don't believe"). Agnosticism does not deal with the truth of a statement (as you seem to think in "it can't be known), it just deals with YOUR knowledge around a subject. Atheism is of course only a statement of non-belief, not one of knowledge.
Kudos for the politeness and patience you show to this guy, but I'm afraid it's no use. I've seen lots of asinine comments here on YT, but his top everything. Now he's even more convinced he's right, because of all the downvotes he gets. He's deluded beyond repair.
Inductive arguments can be made to look like this too - any set of natural numbers has a minimal element (that is the Axiom of Induction) and then inductive proofs work by saying - "if this isn't true then the set of counterexamples has a minimal element" and then deducing a contradiction from this. Note that P(k-1)=>P(k) exactly says that k can't be a *minimal* counterexample :)
Just like a mother that cannot do a thing to hurt or stop its own child that are full of anger and chaos it simply hope that one day it would learn to calm it self.
Reductio ad Absurdum is a way of using your opponents argumentative premises to bring about a contradiction or absurdity, thus disproving the argument. That's my understanding anyway.
arch22, your point about parachutes misses a big point. parachutes, under the same conditions would fall at the same speed, and the principle indeed does apply to any and all objects. The conditions for that scenario was this: in absence of air resistance. But you were talking about air resistance. The equations and physics of air resistance is completely different from the equations governing acceleration of a body under the influence of gravity. So your statement that the line of reasoning applies to parachutes is true, as it would be with any object, so long as we're talking about under air-resistance-free conditions. It does apply to any object, and it is all consistent. What you did was validly switch the object, but picked one that would lead the reader to infer that the scenario now applies to air-resistance, when the original stipulation limited the uniform acceleration of falling objects to air-resistance-free conditions.
One person says that a dead person has no used for grammar or wealth when death comes kocking into his door. Thats why in war a dentist can be given authority as a doctor because its easy they just cut legs and arms.
This seems like describing Schrodinger's cat, arguing that the cat exists in the box or does not exist in the box, instead of lives or is dead, and then supporting the notion that the cat can both exist and not exist at the same time (keep in mind our box has been sealed with no exit for said cat). I fail to see how an argument of whether something is present or is not present has a variable factor subjective to perspective. Clearly, if any part of the subject is present, then it is present.
Reductio ad absurdum is a common form of argument, but it's hardly "the workhorse of philosophic argumentation". At best it's one workhorse for the 'rejection' of a single claim made or being proposed.
This is the only confusing thing I've heard Dennett talk about. Was the Reductio the heavy objects falling faster? Or was the reductio the argument that they don't? :S
Well intended meaning is different from observed meaning. The subjective nature of quotations that are extremely vague and devoid of practical methods of discerning accuracy aren't effective methods of expressing a point.
Not sure you know this, but the word Theory has different meanings depending on the context. In everyday usage, the words Theory, Hypothesis, and Guess are somewhat synonymous. In Science, however, the word Theory most often means a concept that is supported overwhelmingly by evidence to the point where it is considered to be a fact. Of course, the extremely controversial (and utterly unproven) String Theory is a popular example of something that is not well-accepted at all.
All objects have a gravitational pull no matter how insignificant. He is arguing that an object that is more massive has a greater gravitational pull thus affecting the earth in a minutely greater way. If both objects are dropped simultaneously, then the pull from both objects would be in the same direction so there would be no difference in their fall times; however, if they were dropped at separate times, then the more massive object would pull the earth more. Either way it's inconsequential.
It was a bit more complex than that. i.e. Einstein had to assert some sort of force, out of fear that his theory would be rejected otherwise. (Because it would have contradicted some basic ideas in physics.) He wanted to retract it, once the theory was more or less accepted. But later on it turned out, that using this mystical force (now known as the cosmological constant) many strange phenomena were explainable. He asserted the right force the wrong way for the wrong reasons.
Mathematics is, in a sense, just applied philosophy. Logicians, who work on the logical foundations of mathematics, are often thought of as a hybrid of philosophy and mathematics. In some sense philosophy wins the "battle of purity" in the sciences.
I'm not doubting the fact we are made of atoms. I am acknowledging that empiricism produces less certainty than arithmetic because arithmetic is built through logical systems we create just so it works. It was a criticism of your comparing 2+2=4 to scientific facts.
Some peope say that all thing are based on liquid and one person said that liquid dont die but being seperated by time and chaos because water is infinit. so one thinks that total/super nova explotion would only sett fri/seperation the water as science said strerilized thats why liquid is clean.
"I'm flying to LA in the morning." Looks like I, as a person, will fly. If you argue that the person on the plane doesn't fly, can't you also say that only the wings and engines fly, and the fuselage of the plane doesn't? :-)
Just...want to point out: When you throw around sweeping, broad statements with zero justification (i.e., "albert was wrong...nano levels prove such"), people are inclined to think you're a nutter. That's just how it works. You'll get more traction if you present, in brief, any kind of logical justification. The advice holds doubly true if you are challenging concepts supposedly established for a century by empirical evidence.
I probably won't make it any clearer than the video. 2 objects of different weight are attached to each other. If heavy things fall faster than light, the lighter one is slower, and should slow down the heavier. But the 2 objects together will be heavier than the heavy one alone, so should actually fall faster. This would mean it goes both slower and faster - this is absurd, so the premise (heavy things fall faster) must be wrong.
I just read an article that cites a study of scientists that the % of atheists is unchanged over 100 years and that, while prevalence is much higher than in the general populace, most still are believers of some kind.
I get that but people have a tenancy to put all there hopes in one answer. Rather than a multiple of things happening simultaneously. So they look for mass or some other reason to be the leading factor rather than trying to equate multiple things happening together... like a piece of music.
The application of primer field theory to the world is necessarily empirical in nature as is everything scientific in nature. A good first step for it to gain credibility would be for La Point to seek peer review.
Reductio as Absurdum isn't hard to grasp... but honestly I need a detailed explanation to learn stuff. I actually am a bit confused on his rock example. Why would the rock both go faster and slower according to the premise?
If p_1,...,p_n is any finite list of primes then (p_1p_2...p_n)+1 cannot be divisible by any of the p_i because then 1 would be so divisible and you have an obvious contradiction if you're willing to accept that any natural number has a prime factorisation. (I believe!) Euclid missed this bit but it's not difficult so maybe he just omitted it. You can prove this by contradiction as well! (Hint - look at a minimal counterexample to the assertion.)
Some said what are the tounge made out of and one said its water this way it detect what chemestry the planet are made of can sorted out by the gravity of a planet that is why the Liquid water seperate it self by explotion, preasure,gravity,heat and movement.
The problem with dismissing broad generalizations is that those broad generalizations should work decently for the sufficiently educated with a quick over view of what you mean by it if needed where as the insufficiently educated, who are the majority, would require several years of being (re-)educated for them to understand what you are talking about and to some degree it's worthless to care about how they take it.
I confess this is the first I've heard of Schrodinger's cat, but you've piked my interest. Please, elaborate further, specifically your last sentence, I like where your mind goes.
It seems he has not even published a paper to be peer reviewed, so who exactly is pushing him out? His peers, if he is positing new physics, are physicists. If there were ever a label for "I'm a crank," it's the claim "there's a conspiracy against me!"
I'm aware of the significance. I'm also aware of the Primer Fields idea. It's interesting, but you have to consider that just about anyone can devise a picture of how the universe works that seems to make perfect sense intuitively. (Dozens have in the past.) But until an idea is supported mathematically and experimentally, it can't even be regarded as a "theory". I'm not saying don't explore new ideas. Just be careful who you listen to, and don't be so quick to dismiss Einstein's work.
I don't think I use Reductio ad Absurdum's very often in everyday life. In fact I can't remember that last time I used it (except on youtube of course)
Your term "narrow minded tunnel-vision" is a tautology because "narrow minded" and "tunnel vision" mean the same thing. It's not a big criticism and doesn't undermine your point, I just enjoy spotting tautologies so I thought I'd mention it :)
Yes, laser light does travel faster than lightning. You would receive far faster and more comprehensive answers to questions like this one if you just typed relevant search terms into google.
You missed the point of my comment. A more massive object will pull and accelerate the Earth towards it more than a less massive object would. The net effect is that a more massive object will "fall" faster than a less massive object. But for this effect to be observed, the objects can't be dropped simultaneously and the more massive object has to have mass comparable to planetoid.
I'm assuming you've read a novel before? Analogy is an incredible way to express a point. I made my point. If it went over your head, then think about it more. You seem quite capable.
This is the second philosopher that I have listened to on the Internet, and both have talked about debating. Is anyone who studies debating techniques to some extent a philosopher?
No, you misunderstand my previous post. A tied together with B should fall faster as the weight increases. This is not basic physics, this is the "example" that Dennett gave. What I fail to understand is his point, as to why any "philosopher" making such a claim would be stupid enough to think that the object then will fall faster, and at the same time also slower(?). What talks and talks and never gets to the point? Daniel Dennett.
As for unemployment, I'm no expert on communism. But thing with RBE is that people are more encouraged to study science and technology and there are so many different subjects to keep everyone happy and interested. People can deal with more theoretical parts of physics, engineering, animals, agriculture, exploration, entertainment, arts or whatever. And there are smart systems to prevent people from just leeching as well. This character limit is kind of annoying so just look at Jacque's website
It just raises more questions : Does a jetpack qualify as 'flying by yourself' ? :-) Does 'nobody' include only humans ( not birds ) , and would superman be qualified as human ? So many questions, so little time :-)
Heavier objects do "fall" faster, in that they will hit the ground sooner. A heavier object will pull the Earth towards it harder than a lighter object.
Surely if you could say the lighter object acts as a drag on the heavier slowing it down, then it's equally valid to maintain the heavier would drag on the lighter thus speeding it up, so cancelling the effect. Why didn't Galileo mention this or put it this way? Did it take Newton with his third law?
agreed. science is rather simple. we generate 'knowledge' by characterizing the likelihood of hypotheses, and prune theories so that predictions and utility of a theory increase. apart from informing our understanding of nature, and areas such as medicine, engineering and technology, science is limited. all good scientists know that. i am afraid that the wider, scientifically-illiterate public does not understand this, and therefore is misguided in their approach to the enterprise of science.
Well, there's clear difference between effective and uneffective analogies. Good work though, putting all the focus and attention on the individuals ability to comprehend something instead of putting it on yourself. How about you ask yourself how clearly and how accurate does this analogy represent the situation. Instead of performing fallacies by essentially stating, "if you don't understand it, you're not thinking hard enough" rather than if it doesn't make sense, it's not understood.
Thank you. I also did some more research into it and it seems reduction ad absurdum can be used as a valid form of criticizing or deconstructing an argument or premise, but care must be taken that it actually addresses the premise and doesn't introduce a red herring, an argument from adverse consequences or an appeal to ridicule. So, whether this makes it the "workhorse of philosophy" (as Dennett claims) remains an open question to my mind.
Appreciate your reply.
"Heaven is a great expression of God's generosity towards us"
Yes, imagine an eternity of blissful existence knowing that some of your friends and relatives are burning forever and ever. Meanwhile you, knowing this distasteful fact, will also exist forever and ever, never forgetting. You can almost hear the screams from the clouds edge. Ain't Heaven a hoot?
What's that you might want to say? Your flavor of deity removes memories? Of relatives? What if it's Mom, or Dad? Implant memories?
change your name epicgamer of something cause i cant take u seriously
Lesson in argument: write clearly. Remove all those abortive questions and ask one: "ain't heaven a hoot?" for example.
Once you are in heaven you understand the true nature of sin and so don't feel bad for those who put themselves in hell by choosing to sin. What a silly comment
@@notmyproblemhall Oh cool so just fuck everyone else I guess? Shit man religion is so insanely stupid it boggles my mind it still goes on
@@0ihatetrolls01 yea kinda? You have free will, you chose to sin on your own accord, yes? Reap what you sow.
Milton Friedman used to use Reductio ad Absurdum arguments all the time.
On himself?
@@PT0B no on questions about money and taxes and minimum wage etc. You want a $5 minimum wage because it will give workers more money? Well why stop at ten? Why not make the minimum wage $1 million and then everyone will be rich!
You actually got it exactly right - that's the absurd part of the reductio ad absurdum argument.
Thanks for the clarification. However the demonstrative example that Dennett gave was lacking.
"Nobody can fly that fast!"
Man knows something we don't.😂
The falling rocks example was simply Aristotle's Principal of Non-Contradiction. While that basic logic is a major underpinning of Reductio ad Absurdum, I feel like that alone really doesn't highlight what an argument "Reduced to Absurdity" is. Perhaps a slightly more ridiculous hypothetical could be: Someone says that a butterfly can never hurt someone.... and you attempt to prove them wrong using the plot of Butterfly Effect.
He is basically saying that when the two are tied together, they are acting upon each other. A will drag B along with it, supposedly making B go faster, but B is also going to slow A down. So, what he is saying is that if objects do fall at speeds based on weight, than A alone would fall faster than AB, because B is slowing down A.
Sometimes the initial reductio ad absurdum happens to be a great discovery.
The theory of general relativity had a lot of weird implications, which was valid criticism on Einsteins paper. But then we found out that all of them happened to be correct, so everybody was like: "ah, okay then..."
That’s cool
I think he means that it is a fundamental Thinking Tool that can be used in reasoning but sometimes it is used incorrectly, leading us to think that the idea at hand requires something absurd to be true, so that it must be false, when maybe the causation is not absurd, or maybe the causation does not necessarily follow.
I think he's saying that in addition to the Earth pulling on the lighter object, the heavier object would also pull the Earth towards it.
So, there is an equal and opposite force acting on both the object and the Earth, but the objects we're talking about are so light that they don't effect gravity that much.
However, if you had an object that was the same mass as the Earth, the total mass of the entire system would double and therefore the acceleration due to gravity would as well.
All philosophy is speculation. In science this is sometimes called hypothesizing. However, when an hypothesis is demonstrated by experiment to be true, then unless it is disproven by later investigation, the hypothesis is called a theory.
There's a lot fields in philosophy. A great deal of philosophy is speculative, but that's more true the further back in history you go. If you take the time to read a lot of the major philosophers within the last five centuries, you find that its various fields became much more methodical, and scientific. In fact, there are basically no philosophers among the major names between that period in which philosophy was their only pursuit. Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, to name a few, were all brilliant mathematicians. Hegel is the forefather of sociology and historiography. Hume was an important contributor to the development of modern science and political theory. Bertrand Russell's work in logic has had major significance in advancing computer science (he basically corrected and replaced Aristotelian logic).
If you read the analytic philosophers of the 20th century and today, they're all scientist, mathematicians, linguists, and psychologists on top of their philosophical pursuits. Philosophy's more of a way of framing how to construct your ideas and test the basic logic of your views. It's also a way of gauging what might really lie behind your motivations. It's developed a lot since the days of Plato, or the poor reasoning of Christian Theologians during the medieval era.
Philosophy is not pure speculation. If you read beyond the classics than you would know that. An important cornerstone in all modern writing of philosophy is logical reasoning. Try writing a philosophy paper without deductive or inductive reasoning and see what mark this gets you...
it is actually funny that you assumed that "all philosophy is speculation" (hypothesis) without going out of your way to empirically check up on your claim to confirm or deny it. See the comment above and you have a lot of examples of "X was a philosopher" and "X was using logic" thereby disproving your claim (or should I say: making your stipulative definition of philosophy rather controversial). I would agree with you that "some philosophy is speculation", then again so is all science, as each science relies on axioms (unproven/unprovable hypotheses) or worse, the basic hypotheses for the scientific field in question aren't even agreed upon.
Also side note: A hypothesis is a single assumption about cause and effect, i.e. "If someone eats something, they will experience happy feelings" is a hypothesis. A theory is a set of (hopefully) non-contradictory hypotheses. The eating-hypothesis could for example be part of - and framed in - evolutionary theory, or a psychological theory, or evolutionary psychology for that matter...
Actually, Philosophy is more concrete and closer to any sort of objective "truth" than science. Science, as Hume explained, has a problem of induction, and commits the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent, or assuming that because phenomenon 'P' occurs, and phenomenon 'Q' occurs right after, that 'P' caused 'Q' to occur, which is an incorrect assumption and is not logically valid, therefore the the final truth or conclusion of any sort of argument (hypothesis or experiment) in this structure cannot be guaranteed to propose the real truth. Philosophy speculates often, but only to comprehend these sort of matters.
@@Joneshing >implying sartre and derrida are taken seriously by mainstream philosophers
Not only that, but early philosophers believe that you can understanding physical systems, for all causes and effects can be logically inferred. Hume pointed out the error in this reasoning, however: there is no property of event A that will suggest event B. The whole problem with the subjectivist approach is that they believed that every thing that happens happens logically. Best represented by Leibniz in his statement: '[this is] the best of all possible worlds'.
Though I don't think the concept was explained all that well in the video, I'd add that it is very important to be able to tell when the concept does and doesn't apply. Like with the statement, "if you see a crime, you ought to report it". Applying the concept would result in, "you ought to report any violation of the law no matter how minimal", which is not very practical, especially in considering all the diverted time from crime that is serious.
I appreciate your patience.
I am not that smart, so I'm not sure I have any sense or ability "to see beyond" what's in front of me. I have two questions:
- What key piece of evidence was Darwin missing?
- What exactly is it at the nano scale debunks Einstein. Could you mention some phenomena I can look into? I prefer peer-reviewed sources if possible.
- Lastly, what is it about fractals that defy Einstein? Also, what in particular about Einstein's research is being contradicted.
Thank you.
I would tend to agree that questions of ontology are frivolous to a large extent. Questions with a more human focus are a far better application of the philosopher's time and talents than questions of the external world. However, scientists (physicists especially) often end up engaged in talk about philosophical issues without realizing it. They're still interested in questions that cannot be answered with their method. There will always be a periphery where science cannot offer answers.
Object 1 has mass M1 and takes time T1 to impact the Earth when released from a stationary position at altitude D.
Object 2 has mass M2 and takes time T2 to impact the Earth when released from a stationary position at altitude D.
If M2 > M1, then T2 < T1 due to Object 2 accelerating the Earth towards itself more than Object 1 accelerating the Earth towards itself. This effect will be non-negligible for very large M2.
IDK if that explains it better, but it explains it more precisely.
The Golden Ratio isn't a theory of anything, it's a ratio. It occurs throughout nature because it provides the most efficiency in the growth of an evolving system. Everything in nature tends to follow the path of least resistance, and when it comes to patterns and growth, the mathematical "path of least resistance" (most efficiency) happens to be the Fibonacci Sequence /Golden Ratio.
So it's expected to pop up all over the universe, but that doesn't mean it can solely explain anything about it.
Its a pretty clear example to me.
1. If you take a heavy object that falls fast and tie to a light object which falls slow, the light object should act as a parachute that slows the speed of the heavy object's fall.
2. But then if you weigh both objects you see that the heavy object tied to a light object is slightly heavier than the heavy object along, and therefore should fall faster.
Here you have two opposite conclusions from one premise, so the premise must be false.
The point is that the variable is in a 'null' state. One can not determine the state of the variable (alive, dead, exists, or not exists) until it is observed either directly or indirectly. Once it is observed, it has an established state at that moment in time. However, the observation itself plays a part in the equation which is the trippy part ;)
Me neither. Sometimes things that are "certain" aren't true.
Schopenhauer used the an expression that was something like: "as impossible as flying above the atmosphere". Which was a valid expression when he wrote it, because nobody has thought about rockets as away to overcome that impossibility.
Same thing with GR; ideas about black holes and the big bang weren't thought out yet.
Bare in mind that the theory was published in 1916; nobody could measure the bending of light by gravity.
lol @ the commercial i got before the video. "This is about the best steel you can get, tank steel". Images of a tank getting cut up. a guy shouting: "This is your tank, and we now shred it into bits". And you see how they re-forge pieces of tank into hammers.
Hammers made from re-forged tanks now available at hardware-store-chain XY.
Some said how can you catch the air by hand and one said wait until the air become pure so this way you can catch the air. It is the rain drop of water.
One thing about the A tied to B concept:
A tied to B might be heavier, but all objects fall at the same rate.
If you want to break the parameters of the situation, anything could make them fall at different rates. If a more massive object is hollowed out with a large vacuum, it would float and never hit the ground.
While not explicitly stated, it is implied that the objects are of equal size and have uniform density.
Assume big mass M falls faster than small mass m ==> M dangling below m should fall slower than M by itself because m holds M back. But M connected to m has mass m+M>M so it should fall faster than M. Hence the contradiction: m+M cannot fall both faster and slower than M at the same time.
Some said the seed are like star. for normal plant it grows but for star it gives litgh and but to eplode it can multiply just like a broken glass but only the Lucky one can survive to light it self again.
Yes, exactly. Reductio Ad Absurdum isn't reduction to the silly, it's reduction to the impossible. It's logically possible for someone to run as fast as superman, but not logically possible for objects of different weights to fall at different speeds because of their weight. If a philosopher isn't making that differentiation then she isn't doing her job. At the same time scientists shouldn't be lumping the philosophers who are bad at their job in with the rest.
The essential idea of reductio ad absurdum, is not so much showing that something has absurd results, which Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, and later quantum physics, all had, but instead, to show that an absurd contradiction with reality can be deduced from the statement. In that way, all of Einstein's ideas were perfectly valid, since even if they had absurd results, they were consistent with reality.
Democracy isn't terrible. We don't live in a democracy, we live in a democratic republic. A direct democracy would be fine if we were willing to go back to state by state liberty. We have different laws in different states because different states are supposed to house different kinds of people. Instead of having a "Conservative" and "Liberal" state designation, we are supposed to have states which are neither, or both, but they make their own decisions based on what the people vote for.
It almost sounds like it was through Reductio ad Absurdum that Einstein was able to come up with Special Relativity. He took Newtonian physics to its logical extremes (the speed of light) and came to the conclusion that the (then) current physics framework wouldn't work at this speed.
Can't we say that it was precisely because of this exaggeration of classical physics that he was able to point out its inaccuracy, thus ushering in modern physics?
A parachute does make the person fall slower... and the weight combined is heavier. But this is to do with air resistance.
In other words there are other factors that go in to the equation other than just weight. :-)
The "reductio" is the alleged contradiction between the stones falling both faster by the influence of the heavier one and slower by the influence of the slighter one. I think his example does show the rhetoric use of "reductio ad absurdum", but inefficiently; it does not stand or would not stand during a debate, simply because of f=ma. That's why it's confusing, because it ultimately makes no sense.
Moral of this video? Galileo was a G who could explain challenging concepts to a child 450 years ago.
His book was well worth the read.
Which book?
He was explaining it. I don't know why people think he was arguing it.
He mentioned friction, which is the force behind air resistance.
Nah I understand it now, another user explained it. I think it was my attention span and I forgot that the object moving slower would also be pulling back... I've always had this problem, but I always figure it out and never forget.
The problem with Galileo's argument is that even though his conclusion is correct, the method used to reach that argument is flawed. Suppose that one object WERE to fall faster than the other. Their falling speeds would either be added together (the same way that pressure increases as forces is applied to a smaller area), or they would average out (as with objects of different densities sinking in a dense fluid).
Hit the I'm feeling lucky button on youtube and end up on a BigThink Video? Fuck yeah.
If you dropped both at the same time, the less massive object would benefit from the more massive one pulling the Earth. Their "fall" times would be identical.
If you do them sequentially, the "fall" time of the more massive object will be less than for the less massive object.
It's all about having a mass large enough for the movement of the Earth to be significant enough to observe. A mass comparable to a planetoid would noticeably accelerate the Earth towards it.
They don't confuse the term, it is a separate term that most people use compared to the one that philosophers use. Atheism isn't about believing for certain that there can't be a God, it's about believing that someone needs to stand up to the irrational beliefs of the opposing side. Almost all rational atheists are agnostic in philosophical terms, but when people are trying to enact laws that impose their beliefs on others, then it becomes more than just a theoretical issue.
The first telescopes were used to observe ships coming over the horizon. People would then divide up into groups and think about it. - never mind
About time he did a vid on big think- this is long over due.
Yeah, but if the main motiviation/reason for writing the book was money, it says something about the objectivity of the book.
Writing a book driven by pation and writing abook driven by greed... seem to be 2 different things to me.
I do not say this is here the case, but I felt the need to seperate the 2 arguments.
The mainstream view is that they indeed are separate things, and because of this, one can be an agnostic atheist. This is because agnosticism deals with knowledge (in this case "I don't know"), and atheism deals with belief (here "I don't believe"). Agnosticism does not deal with the truth of a statement (as you seem to think in "it can't be known), it just deals with YOUR knowledge around a subject. Atheism is of course only a statement of non-belief, not one of knowledge.
Kudos for the politeness and patience you show to this guy, but I'm afraid it's no use. I've seen lots of asinine comments here on YT, but his top everything. Now he's even more convinced he's right, because of all the downvotes he gets. He's deluded beyond repair.
Inductive arguments can be made to look like this too - any set of natural numbers has a minimal element (that is the Axiom of Induction) and then inductive proofs work by saying - "if this isn't true then the set of counterexamples has a minimal element" and then deducing a contradiction from this. Note that P(k-1)=>P(k) exactly says that k can't be a *minimal* counterexample :)
Just like a mother that cannot do a thing to hurt or stop its own child that are full of anger and chaos it simply hope that one day it would learn to calm it self.
Reductio ad Absurdum is a way of using your opponents argumentative premises to bring about a contradiction or absurdity, thus disproving the argument. That's my understanding anyway.
arch22, your point about parachutes misses a big point.
parachutes, under the same conditions would fall at the same speed, and the principle indeed does apply to any and all objects. The conditions for that scenario was this: in absence of air resistance.
But you were talking about air resistance. The equations and physics of air resistance is completely different from the equations governing acceleration of a body under the influence of gravity.
So your statement that the line of reasoning applies to parachutes is true, as it would be with any object, so long as we're talking about under air-resistance-free conditions. It does apply to any object, and it is all consistent.
What you did was validly switch the object, but picked one that would lead the reader to infer that the scenario now applies to air-resistance, when the original stipulation limited the uniform acceleration of falling objects to air-resistance-free conditions.
Cool. Daniel Dennett is one of my favorite writers. :)
One person says that a dead person has no used for grammar or wealth when death comes kocking into his door. Thats why in war a dentist can be given authority as a doctor because its easy they just cut legs and arms.
So like Proof by Contradiction?
This seems like describing Schrodinger's cat, arguing that the cat exists in the box or does not exist in the box, instead of lives or is dead, and then supporting the notion that the cat can both exist and not exist at the same time (keep in mind our box has been sealed with no exit for said cat). I fail to see how an argument of whether something is present or is not present has a variable factor subjective to perspective. Clearly, if any part of the subject is present, then it is present.
Reductio ad absurdum is a common form of argument, but it's hardly "the workhorse of philosophic argumentation". At best it's one workhorse for the 'rejection' of a single claim made or being proposed.
Also, thanks for the link. A well-informed and critical analysis of the electric universe theory, which should be the final word about it.
Nicely articulated by Dennet. I had not heard of the Galileo proof.
This is the only confusing thing I've heard Dennett talk about. Was the Reductio the heavy objects falling faster? Or was the reductio the argument that they don't? :S
Well intended meaning is different from observed meaning. The subjective nature of quotations that are extremely vague and devoid of practical methods of discerning accuracy aren't effective methods of expressing a point.
Not sure you know this, but the word Theory has different meanings depending on the context. In everyday usage, the words Theory, Hypothesis, and Guess are somewhat synonymous.
In Science, however, the word Theory most often means a concept that is supported overwhelmingly by evidence to the point where it is considered to be a fact. Of course, the extremely controversial (and utterly unproven) String Theory is a popular example of something that is not well-accepted at all.
All objects have a gravitational pull no matter how insignificant. He is arguing that an object that is more massive has a greater gravitational pull thus affecting the earth in a minutely greater way. If both objects are dropped simultaneously, then the pull from both objects would be in the same direction so there would be no difference in their fall times; however, if they were dropped at separate times, then the more massive object would pull the earth more. Either way it's inconsequential.
It was a bit more complex than that. i.e. Einstein had to assert some sort of force, out of fear that his theory would be rejected otherwise. (Because it would have contradicted some basic ideas in physics.) He wanted to retract it, once the theory was more or less accepted. But later on it turned out, that using this mystical force (now known as the cosmological constant) many strange phenomena were explainable. He asserted the right force the wrong way for the wrong reasons.
Mathematics is, in a sense, just applied philosophy. Logicians, who work on the logical foundations of mathematics, are often thought of as a hybrid of philosophy and mathematics. In some sense philosophy wins the "battle of purity" in the sciences.
I'm not doubting the fact we are made of atoms. I am acknowledging that empiricism produces less certainty than arithmetic because arithmetic is built through logical systems we create just so it works. It was a criticism of your comparing 2+2=4 to scientific facts.
Some peope say that all thing are based on liquid and one person said that liquid dont die but being seperated by time and chaos because water is infinit. so one thinks that total/super nova explotion would only sett fri/seperation the water as science said strerilized thats why liquid is clean.
"I'm flying to LA in the morning." Looks like I, as a person, will fly. If you argue that the person on the plane doesn't fly, can't you also say that only the wings and engines fly, and the fuselage of the plane doesn't? :-)
Just...want to point out:
When you throw around sweeping, broad statements with zero justification (i.e., "albert was wrong...nano levels prove such"), people are inclined to think you're a nutter. That's just how it works.
You'll get more traction if you present, in brief, any kind of logical justification.
The advice holds doubly true if you are challenging concepts supposedly established for a century by empirical evidence.
I probably won't make it any clearer than the video. 2 objects of different weight are attached to each other. If heavy things fall faster than light, the lighter one is slower, and should slow down the heavier. But the 2 objects together will be heavier than the heavy one alone, so should actually fall faster. This would mean it goes both slower and faster - this is absurd, so the premise (heavy things fall faster) must be wrong.
I just read an article that cites a study of scientists that the % of atheists is unchanged over 100 years and that, while prevalence is much higher than in the general populace, most still are believers of some kind.
I get that but people have a tenancy to put all there hopes in one answer. Rather than a multiple of things happening simultaneously. So they look for mass or some other reason to be the leading factor rather than trying to equate multiple things happening together... like a piece of music.
The application of primer field theory to the world is necessarily empirical in nature as is everything scientific in nature. A good first step for it to gain credibility would be for La Point to seek peer review.
Reductio as Absurdum isn't hard to grasp... but honestly I need a detailed explanation to learn stuff. I actually am a bit confused on his rock example.
Why would the rock both go faster and slower according to the premise?
If p_1,...,p_n is any finite list of primes then (p_1p_2...p_n)+1 cannot be divisible by any of the p_i because then 1 would be so divisible and you have an obvious contradiction if you're willing to accept that any natural number has a prime factorisation. (I believe!) Euclid missed this bit but it's not difficult so maybe he just omitted it. You can prove this by contradiction as well! (Hint - look at a minimal counterexample to the assertion.)
Some said what are the tounge made out of and one said its water this way it detect what chemestry the planet are made of can sorted out by the gravity of a planet that is why the Liquid water seperate it self by explotion, preasure,gravity,heat and movement.
The problem with dismissing broad generalizations is that those broad generalizations should work decently for the sufficiently educated with a quick over view of what you mean by it if needed where as the insufficiently educated, who are the majority, would require several years of being (re-)educated for them to understand what you are talking about and to some degree it's worthless to care about how they take it.
I confess this is the first I've heard of Schrodinger's cat, but you've piked my interest. Please, elaborate further, specifically your last sentence, I like where your mind goes.
It seems he has not even published a paper to be peer reviewed, so who exactly is pushing him out? His peers, if he is positing new physics, are physicists. If there were ever a label for "I'm a crank," it's the claim "there's a conspiracy against me!"
OMG IS DARWIN! I KNEW IT HE STILL ALIVE!!!
What does "experience a greater gravitational force" mean?
Isn't Gravity a constant?
I'm aware of the significance. I'm also aware of the Primer Fields idea. It's interesting, but you have to consider that just about anyone can devise a picture of how the universe works that seems to make perfect sense intuitively. (Dozens have in the past.) But until an idea is supported mathematically and experimentally, it can't even be regarded as a "theory".
I'm not saying don't explore new ideas. Just be careful who you listen to, and don't be so quick to dismiss Einstein's work.
I don't think I use Reductio ad Absurdum's very often in everyday life. In fact I can't remember that last time I used it (except on youtube of course)
Woah, you guys got DD! Very nice!
Your term "narrow minded tunnel-vision" is a tautology because "narrow minded" and "tunnel vision" mean the same thing.
It's not a big criticism and doesn't undermine your point, I just enjoy spotting tautologies so I thought I'd mention it :)
Yes, laser light does travel faster than lightning. You would receive far faster and more comprehensive answers to questions like this one if you just typed relevant search terms into google.
You missed the point of my comment. A more massive object will pull and accelerate the Earth towards it more than a less massive object would. The net effect is that a more massive object will "fall" faster than a less massive object. But for this effect to be observed, the objects can't be dropped simultaneously and the more massive object has to have mass comparable to planetoid.
I'm assuming you've read a novel before? Analogy is an incredible way to express a point. I made my point. If it went over your head, then think about it more. You seem quite capable.
This is the second philosopher that I have listened to on the Internet, and both have talked about debating. Is anyone who studies debating techniques to some extent a philosopher?
No, you misunderstand my previous post. A tied together with B should fall faster as the weight increases. This is not basic physics, this is the "example" that Dennett gave. What I fail to understand is his point, as to why any "philosopher" making such a claim would be stupid enough to think that the object then will fall faster, and at the same time also slower(?). What talks and talks and never gets to the point? Daniel Dennett.
well, if you see at the ent of the video, he was still talking, i think 'bigthink' has cut Dennett's argument in half.
As for unemployment, I'm no expert on communism. But thing with RBE is that people are more encouraged to study science and technology and there are so many different subjects to keep everyone happy and interested. People can deal with more theoretical parts of physics, engineering, animals, agriculture, exploration, entertainment, arts or whatever. And there are smart systems to prevent people from just leeching as well.
This character limit is kind of annoying so just look at Jacque's website
It just raises more questions :
Does a jetpack qualify as 'flying by yourself' ? :-)
Does 'nobody' include only humans ( not birds ) , and would superman be qualified as human ?
So many questions, so little time :-)
Heavier objects do "fall" faster, in that they will hit the ground sooner. A heavier object will pull the Earth towards it harder than a lighter object.
You are correct, sir. Yes, he's an outstanding charlatan. More power to him, I suppose.
Surely if you could say the lighter object acts as a drag on the heavier slowing it down, then it's equally valid to maintain the heavier would drag on the lighter thus speeding it up, so cancelling the effect. Why didn't Galileo mention this or put it this way? Did it take Newton with his third law?
Stefan Molyneux.
One philosopher who is so extremely in tune with his emotions and introspection.
I hope you have changed your mind since this comment 8 years ago
more daniel dennett.
agreed. science is rather simple. we generate 'knowledge' by characterizing the likelihood of hypotheses, and prune theories so that predictions and utility of a theory increase. apart from informing our understanding of nature, and areas such as medicine, engineering and technology, science is limited. all good scientists know that. i am afraid that the wider, scientifically-illiterate public does not understand this, and therefore is misguided in their approach to the enterprise of science.
Well, there's clear difference between effective and uneffective analogies. Good work though, putting all the focus and attention on the individuals ability to comprehend something instead of putting it on yourself. How about you ask yourself how clearly and how accurate does this analogy represent the situation. Instead of performing fallacies by essentially stating, "if you don't understand it, you're not thinking hard enough" rather than if it doesn't make sense, it's not understood.
Some people said that tornado are like one huge washing machine.