Gemli explains...

[Marcus]

It may be that the argument can be improved. Can we articulate just what the relevant difference between angels and unstable particles is, and why detection difficulty is more problematic an issue for angels than for particles?

Great point.

After reading pg's excellent comment re the Higgs field, I did a little additional reading and was quite fascinated to find that 1964 was a banner year for at least two of the three items I compared in my "one of these things is not like the others" scenario.

"Both the field and the boson are named after physicist Peter Higgs, who in 1964, along with five other scientists in three teams, proposed the Higgs mechanism, a way for some particles to acquire mass."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

Also in 1964:

"James Randi first instituted his own challenge in 1964, after a parapsychologist challenged him during a live radio panel discussion to ‘put [his] money where [his] mouth is’; Randi offered $US1,000 of his own money to anyone who could offer scientific proof of the paranormal."
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/arti ... -challenge

And just to be fair, a 1964 Pecan Wood Round Coffee Table for Drexel, from the Meridian Collection designed by John Van Koert:



https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=ht ... E9Hf-uxBfM

(I will concede pg's point that, in 1964 at least, the odd one out was the coffee table. Van Koert had ventured where Randi and Higgs had not yet gone.)

But, back to pg's point, "can we articulate just what the relevant difference between angels and unstable particles is, and why detection difficulty is more problematic an issue for angels than for particles?"

One suggestion comes directly from the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge guidelines, which state that the contest "...was only open to paranormal claims that were ‘amenable to scientific testing’ – purely religious or spiritual claims were not accepted ‘because they are, for the most part, untestable’.

So, testability is presented as a possible criterion (which Rivendale also just noted).

Access to a large hadron collider might also be a fairly large hurdle, but I think we can get around that by relying on documented testing results. Maybe DCP will go along with us if we call the CERN scientists "witnesses."

[Marcus]

Given the name of this thread, I figured I owe it to him to quote a bit more of his words on the topic, if only to get his positions clear:

Claims of a theological nature are irrational, in that they are not proportional or consistent with our understanding of the real world. Stories of gods and angels are not rational because these "beings" cannot be demonstrated to exist, and appear to be ideas that arose from attributing supernatural powers to human-like avatars. These avatars were convenient explanations for things that affected mortal humans, like floods, diseases poor crops, bountiful crops, and most importantly, death.

To avoid death, people will do just about anything, including inventing the fiction that we somehow live forever after we die. That's nonsense, of course. Simian apes with larger brains may have the ability to imagine eternal life, but life is a process that is exhibited by a collection of biological components that ultimately fail and decay. Living one's life in an attempt to avoid its inevitable termination is ironic at best, and a terrible waste at worst.

http://disq.us/p/2xybkso

And this one explaining his position:

gemli
DanielPeterson
2 days ago
Note to readers: There is no way to falsify theological claims, even if they are false. That's because belief does not depend on the truth of the claim, but on what a willing believer will believe. That's why there are so many religions that all disagree on key points with each other, but still have believers who think they know the True truth.
http://disq.us/p/2xy08sd

The proprietor seems to be having an off-day, but I'm sure they will pick this conversation back up at another time.

...gemli: "Simian apes with larger brains"

Such as yourself, right?...
http://disq.us/p/2xybzel

[Res Ipsa]

I also find Ockham's Razor a good rule of thumb guideline, if I'm simply curious about which of two theories to entertain.

Entertaining a theory isn't usually a once-and-for-all decision to believe that it's true, anyway. It's usually just a decision to invest a bit more in seeing how well the theory works, as opposed to deciding that the theory is too unlikely to have enough truth in it for it to be worth any more of my time. Decisions like that are kind of micro-transactions of belief. They do involve committing resources based on a positive judgement of likelihood. They just don't involve all that many resources, and don't require such a high likelihood. When the stakes aren't that high, anyway, then even an unreliable guideline like Ockham's Razor can be worth applying.

The Razor just isn't something one should expect to use to convince anyone else of anything. If they believe differently, they probably also count multiplied entities differently.

I completely agree with that last bit. The form I apply to the question of existence is a rubric I use for myself. I've never thought that the razor was a great tool for persuading others. It usually just means the arguments devolve into a dispute about what the razor is and how to use it.

With some kinds of things, like tables, it's easy to become reliably convinced that they exist. Even with those kinds of things, though, it may be much harder to learn what they really are. No amount of banging one's shin on a coffee table is going to reveal the atomic structure of the table's glass top. In fact there are ways to confirm that atomic structure just as thoroughly as one can confirm that the glass is hard on shins, but these confirmations of atomic structure are a lot harder to do than shin banging. And they probably involve more faith in abstract principles, like the principle that the chunks of glass in the lab are going to be typical of all the glass in the world.

I use my application of the razor to the threshold question of existence. I'm not suggesting that, having established that my coffee table exists, we shouldn't inquire into the nature of its existence. For that, I would apply ordinary standards of evidence -- except when it comes to proposing the existence of other entities to understand the nature of its existence. Then I would go back to my version of the razor.

I don't think that "faith" is the proper word for concluding, say, after dropping my pen and watching it fall down to the floor 10,000 times, that it's reasonable to conclude it will fall down to the floor the next time I drop it.

The Higgs field is more pervasive than coffee tables. It's everywhere, and it's responsible for the mass of all matter we know. It's nonetheless really hard to confirm that it exists. You need a giant particle accelerator to smash things together hard enough to make a tiny and quickly vanishing splash in the Higgs field—and you need decades of particle physics to discern that tiny splash against the background of all the other crazy stuff that happens in those particle collisions.

I think an the existence of an entity can pass my threshold test in more than one way. My coffee table is an example of one way -- essentially near irrefutable evidence that it exists. The other is some good reason to believe that some entity must exist to explain the world around us. Some good reason is not limited to scientific evidence. The inability of the standard model to explain how particles get mass was, in my opinion, a good reason to believe that an entity exists that performs that function. In other words, the evidence of a gap that can't be explained without some kind of entity can be a good reason to conclude that an entity exists that fills that gap. Confirmation that the Higgs boson and its associated field was the entity was simply discovery of the nature of the entity that there was good reason to believe must exist.

I would say the same about "dark matter." There is good reason to conclude that dark matter must exist because of its gravitational effects. Discovering its exact nature may be extremely difficult. But that's a different issue than the threshold question of whether an entity exists.

If you only ever believe things that can easily be confirmed, you probably won't exactly be wrong about anything, but you'll live in a simplified, low-bandwidth world that may be self-consistent as far as it goes but that is far from the whole story. That doesn't mean that entertaining all possible fantasies is a good strategy, but I think it does mean that it pays to have a certain amount of epistemological risk tolerance, to be prepared to entertain possibilities to a certain extent in case they lead to discoveries.

I don't think my threshold test applies only to things that can be easily confirmed. It was reasonable to conclude that some entity existed that conferred mass to particles before confirmation that the entity was the theorized Higgs Boson and field. it also doesn't place a limit on entertaining possibilities. Like any evidence based conclusion, changes in evidence can change the conclusion.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Is that what happens when you cross the Rubricon?

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

Regardless of what people actually believe or not, if the arguments they make against belief in angels would also apply against belief in Higgs bosons, then they should find better arguments against angels.

I don't believe in the angel, either. I still just feel that if you're going to bother arguing with people about their beliefs then you ought to do a proper job of it and make honest arguments. It's easy to say that angels which can only be seen after intense spiritual effort and preparation can't be real, because real things like coffee tables don't require any such effort to notice, but is anyone really prepared to live by that standard, of rejecting anything harder to confirm than a table?

If not, then I don't think one should be making that argument, no matter how silly it seems that these witnesses strained for hours to convince themselves that they'd seen an angel with golden plates. The fact that it's hard to see something isn't a proof that it isn't really there. If I really had to say which thing was most unlike the others, out of an angel, a Higgs boson, and a table, I honestly might have to say the table. Higgs bosons only ever exist in a pretty tenuous sense. They're not just like angels, but they're even more unlike tables, I think.

It may be that the argument can be improved. Can we articulate just what the relevant difference between angels and unstable particles is, and why detection difficulty is more problematic an issue for angels than for particles?

Your description of my position is a straw man. I described in my last post how I would apply my personal test for the threshold question of existence. Now, what are the good reasons to believe that angels must exist. Those good reasons can include overwhelming evidence or reasons that we cannot explain the world around us unless angels exist. Nowhere did I say or imply that people should reject the existence of anything harder to confirm than a table. I chose my coffee table as an easy example to contrast with God. That doesn't imply that existence is somehow limited to the equivalent of my coffee table. As I explained, my concept of "some good reason" is quite broad.

Tenuous or not, we both agree that Higgs Bosons and their associated fields exist. Everything that does not exist meets your criteria of "difficult to confirm." That seems like a poor test of what exists and what doesn't.

[Marcus]

Is that what happens when you cross the Rubricon?

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

It's true that nonexistent things are difficult to confirm, and at some point it only makes sense to decide that something is so hard to confirm that even if it does exist, it is just too hard to see and life is too short to worry about it.

At the same time I can't help thinking of all the generations of people for whom really important real things fell into that category. We are most likely among them; I may well not see any clear identification of dark matter in my lifetime. As Marcus points out, the detector that ultimately saw (convincing but indirect signs of) Higgs bosons was only a promise for decades. It was unimagined for all of history before that.

I'm trying to work out a heuristic guideline, either an expansion or a peer to Ockham's Razor, which would say what kinds of currently hard-to-test propositions might be better than others. I don't believe in angels who deal in golden plates, but at the moment I don't seem to have a good club with which to smack people who do believe in them.

I don't especially want such a club. I'm happy to just shrug and say that I don't agree but they can be them. I do kind of feel that I'm more reasonable than they are, but I'm not confident that I can explain just how.

Suppose it takes some kind of great spiritual capacity to perceive that kind of angel. Suppose it takes decades to grow in faith or worthiness, or something, in order to develop that gift. How is that so different from the need, in 1970, to build a much bigger accelerator?

[Moksha]

I think Gemli would not mix the imaginings of religion with the imaginings of science.

[Res Ipsa]

It's true that nonexistent things are difficult to confirm, and at some point it only makes sense to decide that something is so hard to confirm that even if it does exist, it is just too hard to see and life is too short to worry about it.

At the same time I can't help thinking of all the generations of people for whom really important real things fell into that category. We are most likely among them; I may well not see any clear identification of dark matter in my lifetime. As Marcus points out, the detector that ultimately saw (convincing but indirect signs of) Higgs bosons was only a promise for decades. It was unimagined for all of history before that.

I'm trying to work out a heuristic guideline, either an expansion or a peer to Ockham's Razor, which would say what kinds of currently hard-to-test propositions might be better than others. I don't believe in angels who deal in golden plates, but at the moment I don't seem to have a good club with which to smack people who do believe in them.

I don't especially want such a club. I'm happy to just shrug and say that I don't agree but they can be them. I do kind of feel that I'm more reasonable than they are, but I'm not confident that I can explain just how.

Suppose it takes some kind of great spiritual capacity to perceive that kind of angel. Suppose it takes decades to grow in faith or worthiness, or something, in order to develop that gift. How is that so different from the need, in 1970, to build a much bigger accelerator?

One can invent a near-infinite number of perhapses to explain ever single one of the near-infinite number of imagined but nonexistent things the mind can create. One possible approach would be that, if one needs to invent perhapses to support the existence of entity, the odds against that entity existing, as opposed to being imaginary, are overwhelming. I've already explained mine: there was good reason to believe in 1970 that some entity must exist to explain how particles get their mass. What good reason is there to believe that angels must exist? Or that some entity must exist to explain anecdotal reports of angels?

[Marcus]

It's true that nonexistent things are difficult to confirm, and at some point it only makes sense to decide that something is so hard to confirm that even if it does exist, it is just too hard to see and life is too short to worry about it.

At the same time I can't help thinking of all the generations of people for whom really important real things fell into that category. We are most likely among them; I may well not see any clear identification of dark matter in my lifetime. As Marcus points out, the detector that ultimately saw (convincing but indirect signs of) Higgs bosons was only a promise for decades. It was unimagined for all of history before that.

I'm trying to work out a heuristic guideline, either an expansion or a peer to Ockham's Razor, which would say what kinds of currently hard-to-test propositions might be better than others. I don't believe in angels who deal in golden plates, but at the moment I don't seem to have a good club with which to smack people who do believe in them.

Not that it needs to be a club, I agree with you on that, but there has been a great deal of effort expended, unsuccessfully, on proving certain supernatural propositions. Not that that is definitive either, as many legitimate propositions have taken a very long time to become legitimate, as you noted also.

I like your idea of developing a heuristic, if only for the effectiveness to efficiency (in terms of time expended) ratio involved. I used to teach my econ students that, even though close to perfect information may exist about prices in one's area, the amount of time it takes to acquire such information almost always justifies the use of your personal heuristic, or rule of thumb, that tells you that Costco has better prices on bulk goods, but that the cooperative market at Hunt's Point has a far better quality of fresh seafood and every possible produce from around the world, competitively priced (especially if you get there early enough in the morning).

Suppose it takes some kind of great spiritual capacity to perceive that kind of angel. Suppose it takes decades to grow in faith or worthiness, or something, in order to develop that gift. How is that so different from the need, in 1970, to build a much bigger accelerator?

I would argue it is slightly different given the results. We regularly see developments in science, but in my opinion, nothing much has changed in the supernatural scene for as long as people have been talking about them. In fact, increased ability to measure and document, as well as the full sharing of information has eroded the level of acceptable developments on the supernatural scene considerably.

The heuristic that comes out of that history would argue one area has potential for the development of a different level of knowledge, the other likely doesn't.