How do you prove that Earth is older than 10,000 years?
backreaction.blogspot.com
backreaction.blogspot.com
Thanks for the Thursdayism link. Didn't know idea had been monikered. I first saw this as a young lad in Russell - the shilling shocker iirc. Or perhaps,...
Much like the matrix, if something is powerful enough to fool all of your senses, including your memory how do you even detect it?
At the end of the day I don't think it matters very much. If our reality is an elaborate trick or not science allows us to predict and manipulate the physical world in ways that improve our existence. So it's worth perusing and using as a tool but there are somethings you'll never know for sure.
If the Almighty spawns worlds like Minecraft, and controls the sliders of time and physics, it's not clear how we Steves can ever figure out how our world was really spawned -- apart from direct intervention.
For someone making philosophical arguments the author sure seems ignorant on what philosophy already has to say about such things.
It's very subtle, but this is not the same as the Creationist myth prevalent in the U.S.
The Creationist myth looks more like this:
1. The believer appeals to authority by claiming that the Earth is 10,000 years old because that's what is written in the source of all truth-- the Bible.
2. A scientist asks for clarification by generously filling in the missing steps with the most obvious and logically sound interpretation she can muster-- namely, that this means God must have created the Earth "with all fossil records in place and carbon-14 well into decaying."
3. The believer answers, "Yes."
I know the author isn't claiming that her thought experiment is the same as the religious myth. But since millions of Americans actually believe the Creationist myth, I think it's important to keep in mind that it is practiced much less as a foray into the epistemology of science and much more like a simple phishing expedition.
"Prove that x didnt happen" is impossible.
Now, if he said to prove that the earth IS only 10,000 years old, that would be at least something to shoot for, but changes the whole scope of the article...
EDIT - obviously in the context of last-thursdayism being used in the article, this doesn't work...
Genesis reads that God created the heavens and the earth in 'six defined periods of time'. It's unfortunate that the original translators back in the 1600s used the word 'day', and even more unfortunate that so many cling so strongly to what was probably a single person's translation.
Yeah, so unfortunate. And then, every Sunday at Bible study, a new teacher will give a different interpretation of the same word.
The argument fundamentally stems from the Protestant belief in "Sola Scripture": that all Christian doctrine and belief derives from scripture. Since many protestants prefer a literal interpretation of scripture, they insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 for consistency.
You can see this backed up if you watch any of the material from Answers in Genesis, as I watched at my church from elementary school onward.
You can also see this reinforced by the fact that young earth creationism literally did not exist as a phenomenon in the early church, or the medieval church, or in modern Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Many early church fathers (and before that, Jewish scholars) long wondered whether Genesis 1 recorded literal history, or if it was a literary story. In particular, they took note of the chronology and found it strange that God created day and night (the first day) before he created the sun (the fourth day).
The strongest argument against literal interpretation, I'm, is that the literary structure of Genesis 1 is so clear: God performance three acts of separation (day from night, waters above from waters below, and waters below from themselves with land) followed by three acts of decoration, where he decorates the previously separated things: sun and moon and stars in the sky, birds in the air and fish in water, and then land animals and man.
Or buy them a seat on that flat-earth rocket.
From rocks that are expected to show a specific age of months for their formation and showing millions of years instead, to chemical processes that form crude oil in weeks.
Even the assumption that if the earth is only 10k years then the fossils would have to have been laid down at the start is only an assumption.
There are scientists who are highly trained who believe in a young earth, just as there are contemporaries of them who believe in an old earth.
There are no final arguments that will prove either way. Simply because all we can do is based our estimates on what we believe the evidence says, which in turn is based on the underlying assumptions we make about the evidence.
I have seen such conflicting evidence about how to determine the age of things long past and things today that it has become a subject where opinion is the guiding principle for most people because we just don't know how to properly interpret the evidence. One day we might and may then get a handle on how to age things properly.
As it stands, the entire subject is a storm in a teacup. We have much more important things to concern ourselves with than how old the earth is.
And that's not even mentioning the assumption that the Judeo-Christian God would be the one that created the universe to begin with. Maybe the universe is a simulation created by some Lovecraftian entity whose nature and purpose are alien beyond our grasp, and human life is just a rounding error. Who knows?
I don't know how old the earth is. For me it is not a thing of great importance. There are many other things that matter more to me. I have a belief of its age and I can argue the matter in various ways. But it's not important.
The use or misuse of technology, the use or misuse of medical processes, the care of people, the building of strong personalities to withstand the trials and problems of today - these are more important. When belief becomes dogma, then we have real problems on our hands. Entire avenues are then closed off and any benefits that could have been found are lost to us.
Finally, God doesn't trick us, we do. We are, in all essentials, ignorant and foolhardy. The inconsistencies come about because we believe things had to have happened in a specific way. The arguments around string theory or the idea of a multiverse vs a universe are simple examples of this.
The raised disputes regarding what we are seeing cosmologically are another area. Climate change being predominantly human caused or is a natural process is another area in which disputes have arisen and dogma reigns. In my region of the world, we have an ongoing dispute over a thing called "Safe Schools program", which is predicated on the belief that the only significant bullying that occurs in schools is related to gender identity. No other form of bullying is of any significance.
There are so many things that people have opinions on and believe that their opinion is the only one that matters. We have forgotten how to investigate and we do not allow those whose opinions are different to undertake their own investigation.
Sometime next year, I want to investigate a specific range of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine designs. I have been formulating the test regime to do this investigation. I have a specific belief as to what I will find. But until the experimental evidence is created, that will only be a belief.
I know of a number of other groups around the world who are doing similar kinds of investigations, though they are using or have been using alternative designs. Some interesting results have already been obtained both positive and negative.
When doing this kind of investigation, one must consider the various assumption one operating under and verify that they are potentially valid. This applies to every area of investigation.
Usefulness is not a sound way to ground your epistemology. The creationist can rightly claim that their 10k year theory is useful in explaining fossils because the complexity of initial conditions is "evidence of the greatness of God". Since the creationist wants to believe, the theory is useful.
I don't think the author really believes anything different than Popper. I think Popper would say that the 10k theory is worse because it is much harder to falsify in principle. That is, there are fewer hypothetical experiments that could falsify it. The author seems like he would agree with that explanation.
And how come you assume that even if said person indeed has the XX chromosomes (to be nominally classified as a "woman"), that they also self-identify as a woman and prefer the adjective "she" over "he" or some other?
See how far this rabbit hole goes?
It's easy why they assumed the author is male: they don't care who the author is, and didn't read their name on the blog. I read the first 6-7 paragraphs of the post and didn't bother to read the name either. And even if I had, "Sabine" as a name doesn't tell me anything about the gender (not a name we have in my country, nor a very well know one, like Mary or Helen or something that everybody would guess). Heck, there are Spanish men called "Maria".
Had I made a comment I might have used either "they" or assumed it's a man, mostly because statically for things posted at HN, it would be true.
Some fun links:
"Lightning makes new isotopes" http://www.nature.com/news/lightning-makes-new-isotopes-1.23...
"P-values--abused but not abandoned" (includes some nice background on p-values for those of us for whom the concept is a little fuzzy) http://sciencenordic.com/p-values-abused-not-abandoned
A cute video of Feynman answering the question of whether you're seeing an object, or only the light from an object, when looking at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo
A single-molecule magnet: https://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119...
...and all that's just in the last 24 hours. She's got a fantastic Twitter feed for the science-interested.
It is not about it being "100% woman" but about "male" being the default. I think it is telling that the assumption seems to be physics -> male. If this would have been about social issues or fashion, maybe the people would have checked before assuming male gender?
I don't say it does not happen to me too, but if it happens, I think it is good to raise awareness.
Hmm, I managed to miss the picture too!
>It is not about it being "100% woman" but about "male" being the default
Is it the default because of bias though, or just because it's just more common -- and people tend to assume based on frequency?
As humans, are we so ignorant to think that we are the apex of intelligence? That we could never be like the house, ignorant of how insignificant we are?
Or is it /s to the point that I perhaps failed to explicitly explain the relevance of my comment to the parent comment? If so, I apologize. The parent comment said "The mechanics of an omnipotent being are infinitely more complex than evolution" and the point of the house analogy was to argue that it's based on viewpoint. The house may think that the mechanics of the human are infinitely more complex (i.e. the wiring of the house barely compares to a handful of neurons from the human), but from the perspective of the human there is nothing complex about the interaction. For the house to be self-bootstrapping from just soup would be curious and highly unlikely from their POV.
As a human our reasoning ability is influenced by our viewpoint (and that's not to say any one viewpoint is right or wrong), so we should always play devils advocate with the razor.