From: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Subject: Re: Non-sequitor, but interesting (was: A criticism)
Reply-To: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 18:29:18 GMT


In article <34810@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, moroney@ramblr.enet.dec.com writes:
> >If CO attaches itself to the hemoglobin instead of oxygen, why don't
> >we all die of suffocation while driving on the highway?
> 
> Because there isn't enough CO.  And the process is not irreversable.
> Carbon  monoxide  attaches  itself  to hemoglobin better than oxygen
> attaches to hemoglobin, and is less likely to be let  go,  but  it's
> not bound there forever.  If you analyzed your blood while breathing
> a (non-fatal) air mix with some CO, your hemoglobin will be carrying
> a certain amount of CO and a certain amount of O2. The CO-hemoglobin
> will just be useless, if you have enough O2 in your blood, you'll be
> OK.
>
> Also,  the  body  might  possibly be capable of destroying CO-ruined
> hemoglobin, if not overwhelmed.

No need; CO is a rather reactive compound.  When it bumps into  things
like oxygen or water, it has a way of combining with them. The results
tend to be unstable themselves,  and  they  get  involved  in  further
reactions.   But  in  general,  CO  in  our atmosphere has a half-life
measured in minutes (rather than seconds or hours).  Even if  attached
to hemoglobin, it would tend to react with various molecules that bash
into it, and cease being CO.



Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Distribution: world
Followup-To: 
From: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Reply-To: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Subject: Yet Another Confusion of types of laws
Keywords: 
In article <BMq29I.Dpr@world.std.com>, rhs@world.std.com (Richard H Schwartz) writes:
|> choy@skorpio.Usask.CA writes:
|> >Suppose the universe is bound by physical laws. 
|> 
|> I can agree with this.  
|> 
|> >All of us are forced to act according to these laws. 

No, you're not. You are making one of the basic logical fallacies that
is (at least used to be ;-) taught in any good intro to logic.

You are also falling prey to one of the better illustrations  of  what
is known in linguistic circles as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", to the
effect that your thoughts are strongly constrained by  your  language.
In  this case, your language uses a single word for two different (but
related) concepts, and you are treating them as the same concept.

The English word "law" has two radically  different  meanings.   Let's
replace it with two words:

    g-law:  [Government Law] How things should behave.
 
    n-law:  [Natural Law]    How things actually behave.
 
The  distinction  between  these  can  be  seen  by  asking the simple
question:  What happens if we observe a violation of a "law"?

For g-laws, what happens is that the perpetrator, if caught, is (tried
and) punished.

For  n-laws,  what  happens is that the law is modified to include the
new behavior that has been observed.

Thus, if you are caught committing a robbery, the  government  doesn't
say  "Well,  I  guess  there isn't really a law against robbery; let's
strike it from the books."  It punishes you.

On the other hand, at the turn of the century, physicists had an n-law
that stated that matter is always conserved.  It has been verified (at
Hiroshima, for example)  that  matter  can  indeed  be  destroyed  and
replaced with what we call "energy". The people that demonstrated this
weren't punished for their violation of the  law  of  Conservation  of
Matter,  and  neither were any of their bombs.  Instead, the n-law was
modified to include energy in its scope of what is conserved.

With  the  above  definitions,  we can rephrase the initial quote with
either of:

N:  Suppose the universe is bound by n-laws.
G:  Suppose the universe is bound by g-laws.

The proposal N is silly on its face. An n-law doesn't "bind" anything.
Things  in  the  universe don't obey n-laws; they do whatever they do,
and the n-laws describe the resulting behavior after the fact.

The proposal G isn't silly on its face; its problem is that  there  is
so  far no actual evidence that the universe in bound by g-laws.  It's
fairly obvious that governments can't order the universe around.  They
have  tried,  of  course,  but generally the results haven't been very
satisfactory.  For instance, would a government  punish  a  storm  for
dropping  an  illegal  amount of precipitation?  Would they imprison a
meteorite that injured some person or property?   Would  they  fine  a
volcano for destroying a village?

There is a theological application of this linguistic  confusion  that
has  long  been  one  of my favorite lapses of logic.  It replaces the
government (which claims to rule only a small piece of  the  universe)
with God (which supposedly governs the entire universe), and goes:

   We observer that the universe obeys laws; if there are laws,  there
   must be a lawmaker; we call that lawmaker "God".

This argument works only in languages that use a single word for  both
kinds  of  "law".  For languages which use different words for the two
concepts, the argument comes out as:

   We  observer  that  the universe obeys n-laws; if there are g-laws,
   there must be a g-lawmaker; we call that g-lawmaker "God".

There is no apparent logic to such an "argument" in this language.  It
is  not  true  that the universe "obeys" n-laws.  The English phrasing
obscures the fact  that  n-laws  aren't  really  obeyed;  they  merely
describe  whatever the universe does.  If you could find evidence that
the universe obeyed some g-laws, then there  might  be  some  sort  of
validy to the rest of this argument, but of course you can't find such
evidence. When you examine the universe, you find it "obeying" n-laws,
not g-laws.

To demonstrate a g-law at work in the universe, you would  first  have
to  show that the g-lawmaker has decreed a new law, and then you would
show that the universe's behavior has changed  (or  the  universe  has
been  duly punished for a violation).  Nobody has yet done this, to my
knowledge.

Anyway, unless you guys clean up your language (;-), you stand  little
chance of making sense of this sort of issue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demando al Esperantistoj:  ^Cu la E-a lingvo havas ^ci tiun problemon?
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa,alt.folklore.science
Distribution: world
Followup-To: 
From: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Reply-To: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

In article <BMq29I.Dpr@world.std.com>, rhs@world.std.com (Richard H Schwartz) writes:
|> choy@skorpio.Usask.CA writes:
|> >Suppose the universe is bound by physical laws. 
|> 
|> I can agree with this.  
|> 
|> >All of us are forced to act according to these laws. 

No, you're not. You are making one of the basic logical fallacies that
is (at least used to be ;-) taught in any good intro to logic.

You are also falling prey to one of the better illustrations  of  what
is known in linguistic circles as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", to the
effect that your thoughts are strongly constrained by  your  language.
In  this case, your language uses a single word for two different (but
related) concepts, and you are treating them as the same concept.

The English word "law" has two radically  different  meanings.   Let's
replace it with two words:

    g-law:  [Government Law] How things should behave.
 
    n-law:  [Natural Law]    How things actually behave.
 
The  distinction  between  these  can  be  seen  by  asking the simple
question:  What happens if we observe a violation of a "law"?

For g-laws, what happens is that the perpetrator, if caught, is (tried
and) punished.

For  n-laws,  what  happens is that the law is modified to include the
new behavior that has been observed.

Thus, if you are caught committing a robbery, the  government  doesn't
say  "Well,  I  guess  there isn't really a law against robbery; let's
strike it from the books."  It punishes you.

On the other hand, at the turn of the century, physicists had an n-law
that stated that matter is always conserved.  It has been verified (at
Hiroshima, for example)  that  matter  can  indeed  be  destroyed  and
replaced with what we call "energy". The people that demonstrated this
weren't punished for their violation of the  law  of  Conservation  of
Matter,  and  neither were any of their bombs.  Instead, the n-law was
modified to include energy in its scope of what is conserved.

With  the  above  definitions,  we can rephrase the initial quote with
either of:

N:  Suppose the universe is bound by n-laws.
G:  Suppose the universe is bound by g-laws.

The proposal N is silly on its face. An n-law doesn't "bind" anything.
Things  in  the  universe don't obey n-laws; they do whatever they do,
and the n-laws describe the resulting behavior after the fact.

The proposal G isn't silly on its face; its problem is that  there  is
so  far no actual evidence that the universe in bound by g-laws.  It's
fairly obvious that governments can't order the universe around.  They
have  tried,  of  course,  but generally the results haven't been very
satisfactory.  For instance, would a government  punish  a  storm  for
dropping  an  illegal  amount of precipitation?  Would they imprison a
meteorite that injured some person or property?   Would  they  fine  a
volcano for destroying a village?

There is a theological application of this linguistic  confusion  that
has  long  been  one  of my favorite lapses of logic.  It replaces the
government (which claims to rule only a small piece of  the  universe)
with God (which supposedly governs the entire universe), and goes:

   We observer that the universe obeys laws; if there are laws,  there
   must be a lawmaker; we call that lawmaker "God".

This argument works only in languages that use a single word for  both
kinds  of  "law".  For languages which use different words for the two
concepts, the argument comes out as:

   We  observer  that  the universe obeys n-laws; if there are g-laws,
   there must be a g-lawmaker; we call that g-lawmaker "God".

There is no apparent logic to such an "argument" in this language.  It
is  not  true  that the universe "obeys" n-laws.  The English phrasing
obscures the fact  that  n-laws  aren't  really  obeyed;  they  merely
describe  whatever the universe does.  If you could find evidence that
the universe obeyed some g-laws, then there  might  be  some  sort  of
validy to the rest of this argument, but of course you can't find such
evidence. When you examine the universe, you find it "obeying" n-laws,
not g-laws.

To demonstrate a g-law at work in the universe, you would  first  have
to  show that the g-lawmaker has decreed a new law, and then you would
show that the universe's behavior has changed  (or  the  universe  has
been  duly punished for a violation).  Nobody has yet done this, to my
knowledge.

Anyway, unless you guys clean up your language (;-), you stand  little
chance of making sense of this sort of issue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demando al Esperantistoj:  ^Cu la E-a lingvo havas ^ci tiun problemon?
----------------------------------------------------------------------