Yes, the beauty of nature is, there is no magic. Everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it.
Nature is >99% magic and though some tiny slices of human friendly interfaces of reality are replicable much more is chaos, weird emergence, fields, probabilities and stuff so bizarre to our mammalian logic that we might as well call it magic, god, the simulation or just bleeding edge physics as the whole field is getting weirder and weirder.
The whole notion of natures beauty stemming from some replicable, controllable and "no magic" scenario is a very "homo sapiens" desire for order and control.
We know close to nothing, and therein lies the beauty in my eyes.
people are talking about timing attacks on state updates in the universe, hopefully we can exploit it
If the universe did happen to be a simulation (as opposed to just naturally holographic), I imagine exploiting it might be the only way to conclusively prove so. As an actual simulation, there would be a risk of someone and/or something observing it. If intelligence in our universe tends to eventually discover exploits and if the observers aren't fond of simulation errors, we might have ourselves an unexpected answer to the Fermi paradox.
But we don't live at those levels. That low-level unpredictability usually is statistically predictable at the macro level where we live. "Coloric" doesn't exist, but it is a perfectly usable concept. There is no need to actually measure the position and velocity of every molecule of gas an a balloon to understand its temperature.
So, to us, the world is 99% magic at the extremes, but <1% where we actually live; we can understand this regime fairly well.
Sure, but it's precisely because everything is governend by laws that you can't make it how you want. It's perfectly possible that consciousness is a specific property of organic brains rather than digital computers. I can understand the laws that govern the properties of the Golden Gate Bridge, doesn't mean I can build it out of jello.
That was precisely the misunderstood point of Searle's Chinese room by the way, that a digital algorithmic computer can emulate the work that a human mind can do even the point of being indistinguishable from it, but need not understand any of it (i.e. being conscious of it) while doing so. Or put differently that manipulation of syntax and semantics are completely orthogonal.
That's in fact very relevant in LLMs. An LLM can talk about how strawberries taste as if it was conscious, but by definition it can't genuinely have experienced it.
Chinese room is a good example of begging the question, since the postulate that "understanding" is somehow distinct from observable behavior of the system implies the outcome. But from a materialist perspective, Chinese room, considered as a whole, does understand what it does. The fact that the man inside of it does not is simply irrelevant to the question.
Searle does address this point even in the original paper. That argument doesn't hold water because you can imagine taking the whole room and putting it in your head and then you still don't understand Chinese. Or put differently if you're a Mandarin speaker and we two sit in a room and I use you to secretly translate, you understand the meaning of what is being said, I don't and it doesn't mean anything to say we "as a system do".
The point is that even though we can "as a system" behave as if we speak Mandarin, there's a difference between you and me. You understand what you're talking about, and I just hear gibberish. Searle is a die-hard materialist by the way, nothing of that violates materialism. What he isn't is a functionalist. What he is teasing out in the thought experiment is that a system that produces the same output as nother system does not need to be equivalent on the inside.
The reason why we have to speak of the room and the person inside as a system is because the real magic is in the instructions. The fact that they are performed by a self-aware human is completely irrelevant to the setup and is only there to confuse the matter.
In your other example with two people, viewing them as a system doesn't make much sense because one of those people is redundant - you can leave just the person who speaks Mandarin, and that is sufficient for the whole to function. So they alone are "the system". And it also operates based on instructions, except that those instructions are stored in the person's head and executed by low-level processes in the brain.
Searle believes that consciousness cannot be simulated as a digital computation, period. Given that any other physical process can be, this requires a belief that consciousness is somehow magically different from any other physical process in some unspecified way (that appears to be conjured out of thin air solely to make this one argument, at that). That is not materialism.
Granted, but we can easily create a more clear example that addresses both of your objections, right? Say in the room is a colorblind person with a machine that detects properties of color.
If someone now asks you questions about colored objects you can answer them, but I assume you grant that neither the colorblind person, nor the machine, nor the two as a system have conscious experiences of color vision as you have. The conscious experience has nothing to do with function. Every physical property you can describe without necessary experiencing any of it.
And I don't think your assertion about Searle's belief is correct. (or at least I don't believe that). If you fully simulated a physical brain, down to the atom, I think the experience in the simulation is probably equivalent to the experience outside. But if you merely model outward functions of conscious agents, behavior that is, there's no reason at all to assume all those systems must be conscious or have experiences.
It really depends on the setup. If the system is primed with knowledge of what color various things are (so e.g. it can say that grass is green because it is in the knowledge base), then, no, it does not experience color vision. It's just regurgitating facts.
On the other hand, if you actually have some kind of sensor that is capable of perceiving color, and you provide the output of that sensor to the colorblind person inside the room, who interprets the signals (say, represented as numbers) according to the rules, and those rules result in the system as a whole being able to say things like "apple is red" when presented with a red apple, then yes, I would in fact argue that the system does consciously experience color vision.
> And I don't think your assertion about Searle's belief is correct.
Searle claimed that computers "merely" use syntactic rules to manipulate symbol strings, but have no "understanding" of semantics, and that Chinese room demonstrates that this is not sufficient for consciousness. This was not just about correctly modelling outward functions, though - quite obviously, the room has a lot going on inside, and of course you can model neural nets without physically simulating neurons, either. Quite frankly Searle's attempt to make some kind of qualitative distinction between biology and computation is nonsensical, because it's the same physics all the way down, and it is all representable as computation.
You also said: "If reality changes science will adapt". If this is not essentially a claim that science ~"understands reality", then what is it claiming?
Esoteric arguments portraying an ineffable, unobservable stream of will that never interacts with reality is not observable by definition; since it doesn't interact with reality, it can be safely ignored. Roko's basilisk be damned!
But no, it's because there's no proof. If we had evidence that something mystical was happening then it would be a huge breakthrough and it would eventually become science.
Furthermore, do you think there's something about becoming a scientist that converts Scientist Humans into perfectly rational beings?
I'm not sure why you feel the need to bring divinity into this. The universe is not purely a automaton not because of some purported unobservable god, but simply because all experiments indicate that we cannot predict the behavior of the basic building blocks of the universe.
Are the adaptations both flawless and adequate to meet the claim? How would such a thing be tested to confirm truth?
Science can change sure, but it cannot predict the unpredictable. You're not wrong to say science adapts but to say that quantum uncertainty hasn't caused the metaphysics of science (or at least some scientists) to change, is intellectual dishonesty.
You sample from it 100 times and get the number 3000 every time.
What can you say about the machine? Did it follow a normal distribution? Really?
How much was your statement about normal distributions able to predict what happened?
What does it mean for something to follow a law? The word law comes from a legal background for rules in human society. If society makes a law, can that law be broken following a normal distribution?
> I wouldn't bet against classical laws due to quantum interaction.
In my daily life I do not. However, given that the inner workings of the human brain are not explicable in our current understanding of physics, I don't need to 'bet against classical laws' there. We already know that something is going on.
> Can you name any specific physicists who should change their outlook?
There are several competing outlooks in physics right now. One is the 'shut up and calculate' approach which admits there are unknowable, unobservable, unmeasurable 'systems' (for lack of a better word) and all we can do is make colloquial statistical claims about them. Another is that the universe is always predictable and quantum choice is due to the branching of the universe into many observable worlds (although they never explain why my conscious experience only follows one path... one is forced to conclude they believe some quantum process is in play). Another is that quantum physics is just completely wrong (unlikely). Another is that consciousness (which is undefined) is a crucial feature to quantum mechanics and is necessary to cause collapse of the wave function. There's pilot wave theory which requires there to be an unseeable aether (and again, admits no way to measure the aether, so I'm not sure that exists).
There's a whole list of spiritual beliefs about quantum mechanics here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...
Depending on your belief in what takes place (and it's really truly a belief, and in some systems, it's going to stay that way), take your pick of scientists who should change their outlook.
> How should they be doing experiments differently due to your point?
They shouldn't. Most physicists do good work explaining the way the world works, but they also admit that there are unknowable, unobservable, unmeasurable systems that govern it. The comment I replied to claimed otherwise.
>try to keep focus on just what we observe
That's all science is though – making observations. Writing hypothesis and making experiments are etc. are just a means to creating things to observe. I'm curious, what did you observe that you felt was not bounded by some static law of nature?
I was thinking photons which, when passed through a diffraction grating one at a time will cause an interference pattern on average but whose individual course is -- as far as we know -- unpredictable.
This flies in the face of the idea that the universe is perfectly predictable.
> The very machine you are posting your comment from can only be manufactured because the laws of physics don't change, and these machines and their manufacturing process operate on the atomic level
Indeed.. an axiomatic religious belief that has incredible amounts of evidence and that has proven very useful, but for the reason I mentioned above, certainly could not be the case. We shouldn't confuse the laws of statistics either certainty, even if the law of large numbers usually works.
> Similarly, do you have an example of a well defined experiment that would not produce the same result consistently?
I mean there are hundreds of them at this point. Passing single electrons or photons or buckeyballs through diffraction gratings (humans too!, we think). The stern Gerlach experiment. I can go on. Determining the individual spin states of entangled pairs of particles.
> Lastly, if someone did produce an experiment that did not produce consistent results, that is, an experiment performed twice with all variables staying the same, but the result of the experiment being different, then the theory that all well defined experiments are reproducible would be wrong
Well like I said we have lots of experiments whose results are different and who we cannot predict (some of which the math says we can never know), and yet, at the macro level we do science anyway because of our religious belief that it usually is okay.
For someone who purports to defend science, I'm shocked at the level of ignorance yet arrogance in this comment.
Now reading your post, you seem to actually agree with most current scientific understanding. You don't actually seems to be saying that the laws of physics will change, Ask any physicist if some classical interaction will certainly happen the way it should. They will not say that it will happen with 100% certainty but rather that it is extremely likely that it will happen that way.
>an axiomatic religious belief that has incredible amounts of evidence
ie. not axiomatic.
>and yet, at the macro level we do science anyway because of our religious belief that it usually is okay.
I'm confused by what you are saying here. You agree that we can understand quantum interactions within "the laws of statistics" even if we can't know them for certain. So why would we change what we do on the classical level based on that? You can just add "extreme likelihood of following this equation" to every classical equation. How would you do science differently?
Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant?
It seems like what you really might mean is "due to quantum level interactions, an inorganic object that reproduces the same classical effects of the brain will not have consciousness." Is that correct?
> Everyone admits to being unable to predict individual quantum interactions.
No.. not everyone, including you, before this comment. You asked for experiments that do not produce the same results, and I gave you several examples. That in and of itself refuted your initial arguments.
> My point is that above the quantum level these interactions don't have much of an effect.
Really depends what you're talking about, it's not true that every macro interaction has no phenomenon that relies on quantum mechanics. In other words, classical physics cannot explain several macro phenomenon.
> The reason that I didn't assume you were talking about these interactions is because you seemed to be rejecting scientific observations altogether.
That's your assumption not mine. If I were you, I'd think about why I made it.
> everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it.
> Your response didn't read at all like you were talking about quantum interactions because you could have just said that. In fact it is usually common in such threads to reply "but what about quantum interactions?" to such comments. The way I read "a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality" was that you disagreed that the equations in physics textbooks will change at some point. The reason I thought that was the context was "Everything is governed by laws" so I thought you were saying that the laws are not unchanging.
In other words, you are upset when I pointed out that science itself relies on unprovable assumptions. Again, that is not my problem to resolve. The inner tension between the aspect of science where we discover laws and the reality of the universe, which is that it seemingly randomly chooses what to do, is a tension for you to resolve, not me. But the belief that all things obey laws is a religious one. It is is an unprovable one, and when such interactions were discovered caused a major metaphysical problem for scientists, which you completely gloss over.
> Now reading your post, you seem to actually agree with most current scientific understanding. You don't actually seems to be saying that the laws of physics will change, Ask any physicist if some classical interaction will certainly happen the way it should. They will not say that it will happen with 100% certainty but rather that it is extremely likely that it will happen that way.
The 'current scientific understanding' that not every scientist shares. In response to the knowledge that the universe is not predictable, some scientists have simply accepted that and have relaxed their initial claim (which is, again, a religious one) that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty. That's one resolution. Some claim yet more esoteric ones, for example, that we live in a simulation (again, a religious belief). Some claim that the universe branches(again a religious belief, since it's unprovable). The only claim here that does not rely in some unseen reality is the first, which, again, is a major departure from what science was.
> I'm confused by what you are saying here. You agree that we can understand quantum interactions within "the laws of statistics" even if we can't know them for certain
Sure, in a colloquial sense, we can understand them. At no point did I refute this point, but accepting it is an implicit rejection of the comment I replied to that everything follows laws. A better restatement might be that 'as far as we know, many things seem to follow predictable patterns at sufficiently high levels of complexity', which is a very different statement.
> Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant?
I'm not sure, but either way, this question is not on me to answer, because the person I responded to was the one claiming that conscious is physically explainable using the now-disproven idea that the universe is predictable at every level. Certainly, again, based on what we just said, brains might be using some unknown laws of physics, given that neurons do indeed operate at the molecular/atomic level (individual enzymes and neurotransmitters... who knows).
Finally,
> The way I read "a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality" was that you disagreed that the equations in physics textbooks will change at some point.
You have no possible way of knowing whether they will or won't. In fact, some things become easier to explain about our own universe if they did indeed change, but I digress, because -- again -- no one has any clue. The belief that physics won't change is a prime example of a religious belief in science. The belief in a firm un-changing reality governed by principle un-changing laws. It's telling that this is a common aspect of divinity in the monotheistic religions that birthed science. More specifically, in the Christian West's view, this is the 'immutability' of God. I would argue from a humanist perspective that this belief in God's constancy (as opposed to the fickleness of nature spirits) is what gave birth to Western science.
Now that I've defended myself, I'm going to say a few words about this interaction. Firstly, you admit (thank you) that you made a few assumptions based on my framing of the commenter's belief system. I have noticed that many science-minded people get upset when you point out that science also comes with a set of beliefs that are tacitly accepted as true without any proof. I'm not sure why this is the case, since it seems most human endeavors ultimately do, but the response to this, instead of curiosity, was -- from my perspective -- wild accusations of not believing in science. To the contrary... I believe in science -- a lot. It's proven incredibly useful, and also, I do believe the universe follows laws, even if we can't see it. But I just admit it's a belief and move on with my life instead of being zealous about it.
It's interesting how you deny that classical equations really hold true yet you will comment on what I actually believe.
>You asked for experiments that do not produce the same results, and I gave you several examples.
What I really meant was experiments that do not follow the laws we have so far discovered about nature. In the classical realm, that means experiments that do not produce the same results. In the quantum world, it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough). Nobody had mentioned quantum randomness at that point so there was no need to mention it. And if you can run an experiment that produces an unexpected histogram in some quantum field, yes, you will get a Nobel prize. I think that I could have worded it better to include quantum effects, but it still was clear in my opinion that I was talking about the rules we have discovered so far not changing, as I said at the end "what did you observe that you felt was not bounded by some static law of nature?" It is clear in this question that I am talking about the laws being static, not that every individual particle's movement can be predicted absolutely, even though that is essentially true in the classical world, which was what I was referring to in when I said experiments produce the same results.
>it's not true that every macro interaction has no phenomenon that relies on quantum mechanics
Ok. But there is no classical effect where quantum randomness is observed.
>That's your assumption not mine. If I were you, I'd think about why I made it.
I made that assumption because you called science a religion (which I still disagree about). Most people that call science a religion do not believe in science at all. For example there are a lot of people that do not believe in germ theory or believe that the earth is flat. These are generally the people that called science a religion. Being that you didn't make your point very clearly, that is what it sounded like you were saying, given the context.
>In other words, you are upset when I pointed out that science itself relies on unprovable assumptions
I just didn't understand the point you are making. In fact, I am still unclear on whether you believe that the laws of physics are static or not. It seems your main point now is that you cannot definitely determine future events because of quantum randomness. But that all future events can be definitely determined is not something science relies upon. "The belief that all things obey laws" is not something that science relies upon, given "law" is defined as an algorithm whose inputs are any material conditions and outputs are exact location of that material at some given time step. This is not what was meant by "Everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it." We are not talking about the movements of individual particles here.
>Sure, in a colloquial sense, we can understand them [...] but accepting it is an implicit rejection of the comment I replied to that everything follows laws
But that was said in a colloquial sense. We can use the probability distributions we find in nature to build things. And when our histogram looks more like a straight line than a curve we can safely rely on it. Also, I don't know were you got your definition of the word "law" but "the second law of thermodynamics," for example, is a probability, and we call that a law. Technically I could leave a cup of hot water out in a cold room and it would get even hotter, it just isn't statistically probable. And we call that observed probability the second law of thermodynamics. If someone said "I will use the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow to inform my decision of buying sunscreen" would you tell him that he should really say "as far as we know, many things, including the sun, seem to follow predictable patterns at sufficiently high levels of complexity leading me to buy sunscreen?"
>[some scientists now claim] that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty.
Please cite one physics journal where this claim is made. No physicist will say that quantum randomness cannot possibly have an effect on the macro scale. The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room.
>The only claim here that does not rely in some unseen reality is the first, which, again, is a major departure from what science was.
Ok, and? Your claim was that it was axiomatic. If scientists have departed from this idea, it was not axiomatic or religious. Scientists also parted from Newtonian gravity. What point are you making here.
>> Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant? >I'm not sure, but either way, this question is not on me to answer "science itself relies on unprovable assumptions" "science is ultimately a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality"
>brains might be using some unknown laws of physics, given that neurons do indeed operate at the molecular/atomic level (individual enzymes and neurotransmitters... who knows).
This is completely false. The brain does not operate at the atomic level. It actually operates at a level above the atomic level. It is a bit higher than that of modern day computer processors, which have a gate size of about 45 nm. It is also clear that it is the neurons that cause the brains activity, and conceptually neurons have no reliance on any atomic effects at all. (Similar to how logic gates have no reliance on atomic effects, and can be carried out by hand, just very slowly).
>You have no possible way of knowing whether they will or won't
What point are you making here? The world could end do to physics expiring right after finish reading my comment. That is true but a useless statement. Nobody disagrees with this point they just don't preface all their statements like "in event that the laws of physics don't drastically change tomorrow, do you want to get something to eat?"
>The belief that physics won't change is a prime example of a religious belief in science
Science doesn't say that physics won't change. Science doesn't say anything. All science does is give us observations. It's not like science pops out of a microscope after you do an experiment and says "now you have discovered my next lesson, right that down in the textbook of science." You cannot definitely accept anything as true the way you describe. You cannot even definitely accept that what you see is real. For example the quantum randomness that you see might not be real. You can't actually make a single positive statement beyond the rules of thought (which are axiomatic, or religious as you would say).
>It's telling that this is a common aspect of divinity in the monotheistic religions that birthed science.
What about the Romans' complete lack of scientific advancement? What about Greek science and Babylonian mathematics? The Scientific revolution was started by Christian Universities beginning to use Greek works (for example that of Aristotle and Eudoxus).
>you made a few assumptions based on my framing of the commenter's belief system
Yes, but you could have made your point much more clear.
>I have noticed that many science-minded people get upset when you point out that science also comes with a set of beliefs that are tacitly accepted as true without any proof
Are you referring to ZFC? Or the three rules of thought? Or Occam's Razor?
>wild accusations of not believing in science [...] I believe in science -- a lot
There is no such thing as believing in science
>I do believe the universe follows laws
That is a belief. That makes you "religious" in your terms. Yet you said we should "take an irreligious look at things." An irreligious look at things, under your definition, would be to make zero positive statements.
Oh I see so you deny the idea that carrying out the same quantum experiment could result in a very unlikely outcome.
> Ok. But there is no classical effect where quantum randomness is observed.
c
> I made that assumption because you called science a religion (which I still disagree about).
I did not. I said science is based on religious beliefs about the underlying nature of reality. Namely that it is constant and follows laws.
> We can use the probability distributions we find in nature to build things
Are we talking engineering or science?
> The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room.
Then how are you getting your histograms to always match?
> Ok, and? Your claim was that it was axiomatic. If scientists have departed from this idea, it was not axiomatic or religious. Scientists also parted from Newtonian gravity. What point are you making here.
Well science originally was a belief that the universe was like an automaton, following predictable laws deterministically. Today that is not the case, which means that the universe does not observe deterministic laws, which is what the comment I replied to insinuated. You seem to have correctly given up on this, but still express a belief
> This is completely false. The brain does not operate at the atomic level.
It really depends on what you mean by 'operates'. Potassium/Sodium ions are fundamental to brain workings.
> Nobody disagrees with this point they just don't preface all their statements like "in event that the laws of physics don't drastically change tomorrow, do you want to get something to eat?"
You literally said the laws of physics don't change.
> All science does is give us observations
Right, and from those observations, they do not deny the possibility that the universe follows laws. However, you constantly make the positive statement that the universe does follow laws. Again, a religious statement. I have not made any inconsistent statement. I have said I believe, as you do, that the universe follows laws, but I am honest in that that's religious.
> Yes, but you could have made your point much more clear.
But if I did that you would still be thinking your scientific belief system is based on reason, instead of religious.
> Are you referring to ZFC? Or the three rules of thought? Or Occam's Razor?
I mainly meant the belief that the universe follows laws at all.
> An irreligious look at things, under your definition, would be to make zero positive statements.
That's correct. Positive statements require a belief system that will inevitably contain axiomatic laws. These laws are religious in nature. Even if they have no reference to the divine, they are taken on faith. A common one today is a belief in an immutable universe.
No. Did you read what you quoted? Specifically "(assuming n is large enough)". I am talking about the aggregate result of multiple experiments. Perhaps " if you can run an experiment that produces an unexpected histogram" should say "run a set of experiments" or something like that. Although this should be clear because you cannot make a histogram with one sample.
>c
?
>I did not. I said science is based on religious beliefs about the underlying nature of reality. Namely that it is constant and follows laws.
You said "science is ultimately a religious enterprise." Its hard to read that any other way. But even giving you the benefit of the doubt, it just shows why I took issue with your initial comment. What you have said here vs. the initial comment is drastically different, even if you really meant the same thing (which I am not fully convinced of).
>Well science originally was a belief that the universe was like an automaton, following predictable laws deterministically.
What do you mean by "science was a belief?" That was a conclusion many early physicists made, but that doesn't say anything about science itself. It is not either accurate to say that science is a belief that there is quantum randomness. That is a scientific theory or you can perhaps call it a scientific belief, but that belief is not science itslef.
>which is what the comment I replied to insinuated.
It didn't. It is referring to effective determinism, ie. that classical phenomena are very weakly affect by quantum randomness, such that we can rely on it to replicate those effects.
>You seem to have correctly given up on this, but still express a belief
I never held this position and have tried to explain that to you twice already: 'You can just add "extreme likelihood of following this equation" to every classical equation.'
'What I really meant was experiments that do not follow the laws we have so far discovered about nature. In the classical realm, that means experiments that do not produce the same results. In the quantum world, it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough). Nobody had mentioned quantum randomness at that point so there was no need to mention it. '
>It really depends on what you mean by 'operates'. Potassium/Sodium ions are fundamental to brain workings.
It doesn't. Sodium potassium gates are well understood and do not rely on quantum randomness.
>You literally said the laws of physics don't change.
That is because I am operating withing the world of positive statements beyond axioms. Within your proposed world of however I would clarify that my promise to go to get something to eat is only in the event that the laws of physics don't change (which we can accept as possible since we cannot accept anything as true at all within your world. In fact I suppose even that statement allowed for to much as it implied that I think the laws of physics currently exist at all for that to change).
>However, you constantly make the positive statement that the universe does follow laws. Again, a religious statement.
It is not a certain statement, just a likely one.
>But if I did that you would still be thinking your scientific belief system is based on reason, instead of religious.
Under your definition of religious, reason and religion are not mutually exclusive. I actually challenge you to define reason here.
>That's correct. Positive statements require a belief system that will inevitably contain axiomatic laws.
But you said that we "take an irreligious look at things and try to keep focus on just what we observe." Yet that itself requires a positive statement that my observations are real. And if we take an irreligious look at things under your definition then we will arrive at zero conclusions.
Reminder to my point from above: "Please cite one physics journal where this claim [that scientists now claim that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty] is made. No physicist will say that quantum randomness cannot possibly have an effect on the macro scale. The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room."
If you believe this assumption, you're believing a statement on faith and faith alone. I agree with you. I absolutely believe stuff will work the same tomorrow as yesterday at some level of abstraction.
> science should be able to detect that, too
Hmm... it might. It might not. For example, if 'god' (for lack of a better term) decided to make all spin states that he was going to make spin up instead be spin down from here on out, we would actually have no idea, despite those two 'states' of the universe certainly being different.