From: choy@skorpio.Usask.CA (I am a terminator.)
Subject: Re: Re: Non-sequitor, but interesting (was: A criticism)
Reply-To: choy@skorpio.Usask.CA (I am a terminator.)
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 01:24:40 GMT


Good. The discussion is going.


jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers) writes in reply

|> 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.



We can say that the activity of the universe as it is is the n-law
that binds the universe. This could be a big law that lists every
event in the universe according to the order in which the events
occur--just suppose. But we think universal laws are simpler than
this, and that there are more laws (or just one tiny law :-).

If the universe does what it does, it is not physically impossible
to step outside someday in North America and see the Sahara Desert.
Also it is not physically impossible that people are running around
like programmed robots, whose activities are so diverse that they
appear intelligent.



> 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?