What you MUST believe

Author: 3RU7AL

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So you believe in unfalsifiable theories 
No, I accept they are unfalsifiable and as such, may or may not be true pending further data.

I only "believe" in TAUTOLOGY.

For example, "cause and effect" is demonstrable.

Inductively (don't forget Humorous Hume), we can reason that "if cause and effect" is presumed to apply to all possible phenomena, then determinism is true.

TAUTOLOGICALLY "cause and effect" either applies to all phenomena or it does not (applies to some but not all).

Can you or anyone else prove that any particular phenomena has no cause and thus violates "cause and effect"?

Well, some people will point to the unpredictability of the quantum flux as possible evidence of non-causal phenomena.

However, it is currently impossible to know or demonstrate if the unpredictability of the quantum flux is evidence of non-causal phenomena.

Unpredictability itself is only evidence of lack of data (appeal to ignorance).

HOwever, we can compare unfalsifiable claims and logically deduce the ramifications.

For example,

"Cause and effect" may only apply to some things and not other things.  

Any phenomena that is non-causal would necessarily be indistinguishable from random. 

A mix of causal and non-causal phenomena is unfalsifiable (in-determinism), but also TAUTOLOGICALLY accounts for all possible options and does not conflict with scientific data and is parsimonious.

The concept of in-determinism is superior to determinism because it accounts for all possible variables (TAUTOLOGY).

Although multiple, competing hypotheses may be technically unfalsifiable, they can still be compared based on logical coherence and TAUTOLOGICAL comprehensiveness.
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Everything may be completely determined.

It would be impossible to know this without knowing absolutely everything.

It's better to work with what we got. If our decisions are determined, that doesn't really effect our experience. In our experience, we have choice.

We don't really know how it all works. If everything is determined, we don't know how it is done. We can make decisions. Somehow, it has been determined that we can make decisions. If even our decisions are ultimately determined, us believing or disbelieving this doesn't really change what is.

The Orthodox Church teaches synergism, which is that there is a collaboration between God's grace and person's will. The fact of the matter is, it is this understanding that heals sickness.
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@3RU7AL
Unpredictability itself is only evidence of lack of data (appeal to ignorance).
That may not be so in the quantum realm.   Confession time:  I don't really understand Bell's theorem  but AFAICT it does show that the unpredictabiity of quantum phenomena is not due to lack of data.


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@keithprosser
Unpredictability itself is only evidence of lack of data (appeal to ignorance).
That may not be so in the quantum realm.   Confession time:  I don't really understand Bell's theorem  but AFAICT it does show that the unpredictabiity of quantum phenomena is not due to lack of data.

"Though it still leaves the door open for non-local hidden variables."

This ends up being a pretty large, aircraft-hangar-sized open door.

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@3RU7AL
"Non-local" means invoking faster-than-light information transfer... i.e. instant action-at-a-distance.
Is that preferable to randomness?  Dunno.  Not my field!
   

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@keithprosser
"Non-local" means invoking faster-than-light information transfer... i.e. instant action-at-a-distance.
Is that preferable to randomness?  Dunno.  Not my field!
So called "spooky-action-at-a-distance" is generally accepted as scientific fact.

"The team split a single photon between two laboratories and tested whether the choice of measurement in one caused a change in the local quantum state in the other laboratory; using a homodyne detector with six different settings, they were able to quantitatively verify the waveform collapse and the entanglement of the split single photon -- the strongest proof yet of single-particle quantum entanglement."



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@3RU7AL
All I know:

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@keithprosser
Thanks for the link, but they never even mention the possibility of "quantum randomness" being the product of "hidden variables".