Anatomy of a Fact-4
Zoe
on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
Just for a refresher:
A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
Knowledge is a collection of facts.
Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
create something new.
I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
creation.
The raw material used: sand. A stick.
A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
Facts:
1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at right
angles to the first straight line.
3. A third straight line, one inch in length, is drawn at right
angles to the second straight line.
4. A fourth straight line, one inch in length, is drawn at right
angles to the third straight line, connecting to the first straight
line, and forming a square.
5. A two-inch straight line is drawn, connected to the bottom right
angle of the square, tilted at a 10-degree angle.
6. A second two-inch straight line is drawn parallel to the first
two-inch straight line, and it is connected to the top right angle of
the square.
7. A one-inch straight line is drawn to connect the open end of the
two parallel 2-inch lines, thus forming a rectangle.
8. A straight line is drawn connected to the top left right-angle of
the square, tilted at a 45-degree angle.
9. A straight line is drawn at right angles to this tilted
45-degree-angle line, connecting to the top right angle of the square,
forming a triangle.
10. A straight line, two inches long, is drawn parallel to the
rectangle's two 2-inch straight lines, and is connected to the top of
the triangle.
11. A one-inch straight line is drawn parallel to the right side of
the triangle, connecting the third parallel two-inch line to the
second two-inch line that forms the top of the first rectangle. A
"roof" is born.
12. A 3/4-inch line is drawn inside the square, touching the base of
the square.
13. A second 3/4-inch line is drawn parallel to the first 3/4-inch
line, and 1/2 inch apart from it.
14. A 1/2-inch line is drawn connecting the two parallel 3/4-inch
lines. A "door" is created.
15. A 1/4-inch line is drawn inside the bottom rectangle, 1/2 inch
from the left side of the rectangle.
16. A second 1/4-inch line is drawn parallel to the first 1/4-inch
line, 1/4 inch apart from it.
17. A 1/4-inch line connects the bottom of the two parallel 1/4-inch
lines.
18. A 1/4-inch line connects the top of the two parallel 1/4-inch
lines. You have a "window."
19. Another 1/4-inch line is drawn inside the bottom rectangle, 1/2
inch from the right side of the first window.
20. A second 1/4-inch line is drawn parallel to this second new
1/4-inch line, 1/4 inch apart from it.
21. A 1/4-inch line connects the bottom of the two parallel 1/4-inch
lines.
22. A 1/4-inch line connects the top of the two parallel 1/4-inch
lines. You have a second "window."
23. A 3/4-inch line is drawn in the middle of the top rectangle (the
roof) intersecting the top line of the roof.
24. A second 3/4-inch line is drawn parallel to the first 3/4-inch
line intersecting the top of the roof.
25. A 1/2-inch line connects the top of the two parallel 3/4-inch
lines, thus representing a chimney.
Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the sand.
If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
the sand.
The Second Law of Intelligence says: The level of organization or
order within a system is directly proportional to the level of
appplied intelligence.
How has the Second Law of Intelligence been validated? The increasing
number of facts has created an increasing network organized into,
eventually, a representation of a house.
The creation that starts at fact 1 is not organized or ordered because
there is nothing else within its context. But at fact 25, you have an
interrelated network of facts. Each fact equals a single unit of
knowledge that builds on each other.
Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
reflected in the sand-drawn house. All 25 facts together is 25/25 or
the whole body of applied knowledge reflected in the sand-drawn house.
Therefore, the level of organization or order in this particular item
is directly proportional to the level of applied intelligence.
My next task would be to lay out the facts as measured in the first
law of intelligence, (re chaos or disorder) and this would include the
manipulation of facts so as to block entropy. But first I will wait
to see if there are any valid objections to the above tedious display
of factual knowledge. No need to overwhelm myself.
John Drayton
news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5l...@4ax.com...
> Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>
> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>
> Just for a refresher:
>
> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> create something new.
>
> I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
> far...except for the fact.
All of the definitions appear reasonable at first glance,
although I haven't thought about them deeply, or tried
to apply them - except for the first. So I'd tentatively
accept them as propositions, and see how they
worked (or didn't, as the case may be). A number of
other posters have produced what seems to me to be
quite valid objections to definition 3, but I'm just going
to stick with "fact" here.
I'm not a professional scientist (or even an ameteur), so
I won't make a comment on how sciencec is practiced,
but I design software for a living, and some good design
practices I've learnt over the years seem relevant.
Any good design I've come up with has often been
preceeded by a number of designs that didn't work very
well. At the very least, some aspects of the design that
at first seemed like a good idea just didn't work, as they
were conceptually flawed. I've producecd better designs
quicker by letting go of flawed ideas - gritting my teeth
and hitting the delete key. My crappiest, least effective
work has often (at least partly) resulted from defending
an idea that I've invested a lot of time and effort in, and
rather than throw away that work, have persevered with
it. These days I try to view the production and discarding
of designs that don't work as a necessary part of the
process of finding a good design. This makes hitting the
delete key a little easier :)
"Fact" as a measure of knowledge seems like a good idea
which is just not working, and should be abandoned.
A valiant attempt, and productive if we can learn something
from it.
But it seems to me that there's no progress towards showing
that a fact can be a useful unit of knowledge, on two counts:
1. The number of "facts" used to describe the same thing
deepends on the context of the explanation.
2. The information content of each fact has not been shown
to be the same.
Rather than go through the entire 25 facts below, I'll just have
a look at the first one.
> So....let's dismantle the following creation.
>
> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>
> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>
> Facts:
>
> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
This single fact consists of a number of facts, implicit and
explicit:
- what a "line" is
- what "straight" means
- what an "inch" is
- what "drawing" means
- what "sand" is
- what you need to do with the stick to produce the line
- how thick the line can be
- just how "straight" a straight line needs to be
If the context of this explanation is that you are talking to
a person who understands all these things, then the fact
as it stands is quite adequate I would think.
<snip 24 other facts>
> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the sand.
> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
> the sand.
Only if they also know all the other facts necessary for the
reproduction of the house - that is if the *context* of your
explanation is: a person who understands these other
necessary facts are implicit. in the instructions.
In *another* context (eg someone who knows what a square
is), the number of required facts for *the same task* could be
more or less.
So which set of facts should we count?
<snip some more>
And as to each fact containing the same amount of knowledge,
you seem to be *asserting* that they do here, but you haven't
actually shown it:
> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
> reflected in the sand-drawn house.
--
John Drayton
Neil W Rickert
>Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
>on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
>single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
>single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>Just for a refresher:
>A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
>Knowledge is a collection of facts.
I'm one of those annoying people who doesn't agree that knowledge is
a collection of facts. The thing is, that if you put a bunch of
facts in the trash can, the trash can still does not have any
knowledge.
I take knowledge to be the set of abilities needed to collect and to
use facts. The trash can doesn't have that. And a physicist has
that ability with respect to facts of physics, while most people
don't.
>Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
>create something new.
That might be a good definition of knowledge, but I wouldn't consider
it a good definition of intelligence.
People have been working on AI for around 50 years. Questions as to
what is knowledge, what is intelligence, etc, have turned out to
be quite tricky.
>I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
>far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
>creation.
>The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
Let's stop there for a moment. Let's suppose that you drew the picture.
And maybe you want to say that the picture contains some facts. I could
agree with that.
But lets change the story. Let's suppose that you did not draw the
picture. Rather, there was a wind storm, and the sand that was blowing
around just happened to settle in the right way to form a picture of
a house.
Is it really a picture? Does it still contain facts? Or is it necessary
that the picture be formed by somebody who knows what the picture is
a picture of, instead of it being formed by random wind motions?
These are tricky questions. I'm inclined to think that measuring
knowledge is very difficult, perhaps impossible.
Hmm. Here are some more problems for you.
1+1=2. That's a fact, and I'm sure that you know it.
2+1=3. That's also a fact.
123456789+1=123456790. That's another fact that you know.
I think it will turn out that you know infinitely many such facts.
Does that make you infinitely knowledgable?
R. Baldwin
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>
> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>
> Just for a refresher:
>
> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
I disagree with your characterization of knowledge, Zoe, and I posted links
to several sources explaining why. You can, of course, define it however you
like, but if you want to be consistent with other users of the word, it
makes sense to pay attention to the common usage.
Knowledge generally implies the synthesis of data into a higher level of
understanding.
> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> create something new.
I disagree with this also. Intelligence allows us to integrate all our
sensory input and grasp complex situations. This is more than simple
application of facts.
>
> I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
> far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
> creation.
>
> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>
> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>
> Facts:
>
> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
This is actually three facts, (a) configuration is a straight line segment,
(b) length is 1 inch, (c) medium is sand. But you didn't specify how wide
the line is, or whether the ends are square or rounded.
>
> 2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at right
> angles to the first straight line.
The is three more facts, (a) configuration is a straight line segment, (b)
length is 1 inch, (c) orientation is 90 degrees from datum line. It is
missing several other facts, however: (d) x-distance along the first line
from the zero point at which this new segment starts, (e) y-distance from
the zero point at which this segment starts (presumably zero, but you didn't
say so), and (f) direction for the end point y-value (positive or negative).
I won't belabor the point, I'm sure you get the idea.
[snip]
> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the sand.
> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
> the sand.
Well, no, they won't, becaused you left out a few key details. And it takes
more than 25 facts.
>
> The Second Law of Intelligence says: The level of organization or
> order within a system is directly proportional to the level of
> appplied intelligence.
>
> How has the Second Law of Intelligence been validated? The increasing
> number of facts has created an increasing network organized into,
> eventually, a representation of a house.
How has this validated your "law"? You already defined intelligence in terms
of quantity of facts, so all you've done is confirm that your definition is
what you said it was.
>
> The creation that starts at fact 1 is not organized or ordered because
> there is nothing else within its context. But at fact 25, you have an
> interrelated network of facts. Each fact equals a single unit of
> knowledge that builds on each other.
>
> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
> reflected in the sand-drawn house. All 25 facts together is 25/25 or
> the whole body of applied knowledge reflected in the sand-drawn house.
> Therefore, the level of organization or order in this particular item
> is directly proportional to the level of applied intelligence.
Again, this is circular logic. You are only reconfirming the definition you
started with. It does not relate to the IQ of the person who drew the lines,
or any other meaningful view of intelligence.
>
> My next task would be to lay out the facts as measured in the first
> law of intelligence, (re chaos or disorder) and this would include the
> manipulation of facts so as to block entropy. But first I will wait
> to see if there are any valid objections to the above tedious display
> of factual knowledge. No need to overwhelm myself.
>
Well, you haven't overwhelmed anyone else.
R. Baldwin
news:1IAhe.6399$Y12.1420@trnddc09...
> "Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5l...@4ax.com...
>> Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
>> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>>
>> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
>> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
>> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>>
>> Just for a refresher:
>>
>> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
>> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
>
> I disagree with your characterization of knowledge, Zoe, and I posted
> links to several sources explaining why. You can, of course, define it
> however you like, but if you want to be consistent with other users of the
> word, it makes sense to pay attention to the common usage.
[Sorry, I meant to write I *previously* posted links... Late night after
much physical labor.]
[snip]
josephus
I see a difficulty with the assertions you make. You seem to confuse
the assertion of a statement about some knowledge and descriptions of a
process. Backing away from the details and looking at the knowledge
impeded in your statements. There is context knowledge surrounding each
action. The action is a consequence of this knowledge.
You are indicating knowlege, but the knoledge of how and why to make
each action is knowledge. This diffuse knowledge is the part that you
cannot quantify and it is the knowledge you are discussing.
perhaps if you were to look at logical systems.
An assertion is taken to be assumed true.
The various actions and counter actions around this assertion constitute
a logical system.
here is an assertion
Treebeard is a real creature
This is a statement for or against the premise,
We may argue that Treebear is a character in a book.
This is another statement for or against the premise
"is a real ' phrase signifies something different than deterministic
existence. It may be a symbolic statement of truth.
thus { a conclusion)
Treebeard may be true in the sense that as an ideal statement of a
creature.
These statements are not UNREASONABLE, but they may be questioned by
other points of view. These assertions could be embedded in a block of
text. They would still be as valid or invalid in that text. Persons
with a creationist agenda will frequently make logical assertions like
this one and assume that their logic is the only valid logic and
knowledge available.
Your logic follows these rules. But you dont seem to understand.
josephus
Deadrat
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>
> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>
What I was really looking for was a more abstract approach.
I'd say you need a function K that maps any system S into the
non-negative integers. Think of the result of K(S) to be
the number of facts that it takes to understand the system.
I'll give two properties of K. Tell me if they make sense to you.
1. K(S) = 0 <=> S is impossible
The knowledge function is zero for and only for systems that
don't exist. K(Unicorn) = 0. K(decimal equal to pi)=0.
2. max(K(A),K(B)) <= K(A+B) <= K(A)+K(B)
The knowledge function of a system combining two pieces is
at least the knowledge of the more complicated piece and at
most the sum of the knowledge of the two pieces.
You have at least two challenges here. The first is to argue that
the knowledge of any system is finite. That is, if you want to
find K(S), you decompose S=S1+S2+...+Sn and calculate
K(S1+S2+...+Sn), so you decompose S1 into S11+S12+S13+...
and S2 into S21+S22+S23+..., and so on and then calculate
K(S11+S12+S13+...+S21+S22+S23+...+....), so you further
decompose, but you get the idea.
This is nontrivial and cannot be accomplished by appeal to
examples.
The second challenge is to show that rule 2 actually holds.
Remember that I gave you four statements ZF1, ZF2, ZF3,
and ZF4, simple statements that I said (and I assumed you
agreed) each had a K of 1. That is
max(K(ZF1), K(ZF2), K(ZF3), K(ZF4)) = 1
But putting the four statements together gave a contradiction,
an impossibility, so
K(ZF1+ZF2+ZF3+ZF4) = 0
That's a seeming violation of rule 2.
> Just for a refresher:
>
> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
I'd say this is rule 2.
> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> create something new.
We'll see.
>
<snipart>
Dave...@aol.com
> Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>
> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
Single facts, within certain contexts, can be atomized.
HOWEVER, the necessary subdivision of facts for atomization in
mathematical contexts is far beyond the expertise of most people
(incl. you). Proving 1+1=2 takes many, many, many pages.
Geometry also is a fairly involved subject.
> Just for a refresher:
>
> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> create something new.
>
> I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
> far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
> creation.
>
> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>
> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>
> Facts:
>
> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
I don't raise any further objections than have already been raised,
as to the assumptions required to draw the line. (Such as: what is
a line, what is one inch, what is straight, how you draw the line,
etc.)
> 2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at right
> angles to the first straight line.
This statement is ambiguous, and requires synthesis from later
"facts" to prevent from putting the line in the wrong place.
Thus, it _must_ be subdivided. (And angles need to be defined
as well.)
For example, drawing the second line, such that it bisects the
first line (in addition to being at right angles to it) satisifes
this "fact", however, does not result in a "properly" completed
product.
> 3. A third straight line, one inch in length, is drawn at right
> angles to the second straight line.
See objections to #2.
> 4. A fourth straight line, one inch in length, is drawn at right
> angles to the third straight line, connecting to the first straight
> line, and forming a square.
What is a "square"? And see objections to #2.
> 5. A two-inch straight line is drawn, connected to the bottom right
> angle of the square, tilted at a 10-degree angle.
Most certainly ambiguous. What is the 10-degree angle relative to?
At what point along the new line is connected to the angle? What
point of the angle is the line connected to?
If you're going to pursue geometric constructions, you would be well
advised to learn the terminology and notation.
And these ambiguities are not a case of mere misunderstanding.
You are claiming your "facts" are not context-dependent, and as
such, they must contain NO ambiguity. Otherwise, more facts are
required to prevent the ambiguity, and thus, they are not an atomic
fact. It's the same objection, time and time again, that has been
raised. Statements that are recognized as factual, usually can
be subdivided into at least an enormous (if not infinite) quantity
of substatements.
*More ambiguous statements snipped*
> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the
sand.
> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn
in
> the sand.
Nope. Your "facts" are too ambiguous, such that synthesis is required
between facts in order to "correctly" create things, without having
to redo prior steps.
So, obviously, either your set of "facts" is incorrect, or is
insufficient to the task.
And each "fact" could (and in some cases, needed to) be subdivided
into smaller statements. You still have failed to provide a means
of consistently and accurately subdividing facts such that anybody
can examine them and come up with the same results.
> The Second Law of Intelligence says: The level of organization or
> order within a system is directly proportional to the level of
> appplied intelligence.
>
> How has the Second Law of Intelligence been validated? The
increasing
> number of facts has created an increasing network organized into,
> eventually, a representation of a house.
>
> The creation that starts at fact 1 is not organized or ordered
because
> there is nothing else within its context. But at fact 25, you have
an
> interrelated network of facts. Each fact equals a single unit of
> knowledge that builds on each other.
>
> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
> reflected in the sand-drawn house.
No, it isn't. Even going with the first 4 statements, statements #2
& #3 require statement #4 to be worth anything to the finished product.
Otherwise, they may be placed improperly.
> All 25 facts together is 25/25 or the whole body of applied knowledge
> reflected in the sand-drawn house. Therefore, the level of
organization
> or order in this particular item is directly proportional to the
level
> of applied intelligence.
Since your 25 "facts" require extra knowledge that you either a) do
not mention, or b) require synthesizing from other facts in the
set, your set is incomplete, and thus any propositions requiring
said completeness are, on their face, false.
> My next task would be to lay out the facts as measured in the first
> law of intelligence, (re chaos or disorder) and this would include
the
> manipulation of facts so as to block entropy. But first I will wait
> to see if there are any valid objections to the above tedious display
> of factual knowledge. No need to overwhelm myself.
It can (and must) be further subdivided to be internally consistent.
And, as noted previously, your First & Second "Laws of Intelligence"
are identical (or at least the definitions you gave are identical).
Thus, your next task would also be identical.
SortingItOut
John Drayton
news:4286c85f$0$10305$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> "Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5l...@4ax.com...
> > Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
> > on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
> >
> > Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> > single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> > single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
> >
> > Just for a refresher:
> >
> > A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> > Knowledge is a collection of facts.
> > Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> > create something new.
<snip what eems to be a repeat>
Was this post just a summary of your thoughts to date Zoe?
There doesn't seem to be anything new here: I can't see any
of the problems resolved, or even addressed.
It just seems like you're trying the same thing (listing all
atomic facts) for a different scenario.
The result is the same:
- a set of facts that are clearly not atomic.
- no methodolology to determine if facts are atomic
- no means of comparing the amount of knowledge
in a fact (and hence determing that knowledge
content is the same for each fact).
Do you feel like you are getting any further? Do you
think that people are raising legitimate problems here?
I'd have to congratulate you for effort and perseverance,
but it is still a failure. It seems you are in quite august
company in failing though (according to our resident
philosophers), so I wouldn't feel particularly bad about
that.
--
John Drayton
Harlequin
4ax.com:
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
Knowledge also includes theories, ideas, concepts, etc.
And must importantly of all, as others have already stated,
knowledge includes understanding.
--
Anti-spam: replace "usenet@sdc." with "harlequin2@"
"Scam artists all use the 'debate ploy': perpetual-motion-machine
inventors, magnet therapists, UFO conspiracy theorists, all of them.
They win just by being on the same platform."
- Bob Park
Ian H Spedding
>
> Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>
> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>
> Just for a refresher:
>
> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> create something new.
>
> I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
> far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
> creation.
>
> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>
> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>
> Facts:
[...]
Knowledge of what constitutes a house is a fact or, rather, a very
large collection of facts.
Knowledge of how to represent a three-dimensional object on a
two-dimensional surface so that it can be recognised by an observer is
also a large body of facts.
Knowledge of the minimum number of lines needed to draw a recognisable
house is a collection of facts.
All the knowledge listed above is an essential prerequisite - part of
the raw material if you like - for the drawing of a house in the sand.
Without it you would have sand and a stick but no drawing of a house.
Ian
--
Ian H Spedding
SortingItOut
Zoe wrote:
> Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
>
> Deadrat wanted a unit of measure for knowledge. I proffered him a
> single fact as that unit of measure. There were objections that a
> single fact cannot be recognized. I think it can. So here goes.
>
> Just for a refresher:
>
> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
> create something new.
>
> I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
> far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
> creation.
[I don't know what happened with my previous post, but here's another
try.]
There's something nagging at me that I'm having trouble getting
straight in my own mind, but if you'll bear with me...
Let's say I come up with a set of instructions for building a wing for
an airplane. The list may be longer than yours below, but conceptually
it's the same thing. But it seems like there would be a huge body of
knowledge missing from my list, and that would be all the knowledge
that went into developing the design for that wing. All of the
wind-tunnel testing, the materials testing, the development of more
efficient manufacturing techniques, etc. There's a lot of knowledge in
that wing that would be very difficult to see.
If one goal of the theory is to be able to determine the amount of
intelligence that an object "contains", then it seems virtually
impossible to do this. How can we possibly reverse engineer any
complex object and determine from the object itself how much knowledge
went into it? Another example: If I manufacture a diamond that looks
identical to a natural one, yet my man-made diamond required a large
amount of knowledge to manufacture, then how can we possibly determine
that from the diamond itself?
[end]
Zoe
<bitbu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5l...@4ax.com...
snip>
>But it seems to me that there's no progress towards showing
>that a fact can be a useful unit of knowledge, on two counts:
>1. The number of "facts" used to describe the same thing
> deepends on the context of the explanation.
I don't follow you on this one. Clarify.
>2. The information content of each fact has not been shown
> to be the same.
a one-inch straight line is a one-inch straight line in any context.
That never changes, does it?
>Rather than go through the entire 25 facts below, I'll just have
>a look at the first one.
>
>> So....let's dismantle the following creation.
>>
>> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>>
>> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>>
>> Facts:
>>
>> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
>
>This single fact consists of a number of facts, implicit and
>explicit:
> - what a "line" is
> - what "straight" means
> - what an "inch" is
> - what "drawing" means
> - what "sand" is
> - what you need to do with the stick to produce the line
> - how thick the line can be
> - just how "straight" a straight line needs to be
>
>If the context of this explanation is that you are talking to
>a person who understands all these things, then the fact
>as it stands is quite adequate I would think.
thank you for the concession. The posters on this forum are known to
be intelligent, so I took it for granted that I wouldn't have to
reduce it any further. Surely everyone knows what a line is.
><snip 24 other facts>
>
>> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the sand.
>> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
>> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
>> the sand.
>
>Only if they also know all the other facts necessary for the
>reproduction of the house - that is if the *context* of your
>explanation is: a person who understands these other
>necessary facts are implicit. in the instructions.
the context of my explanation is that I am talking to educated
posters.
>In *another* context (eg someone who knows what a square
>is), the number of required facts for *the same task* could be
>more or less.
>
>So which set of facts should we count?
you count the fact that is commonly recognized. I didn't want to
insult your intelligence by going even this basic, but I know that if
I took it for granted that you knew what a square was, that you would
instantly break it down to lines, so I saved you that step. Do you
need further reduction, then, in an admission that you don't
understand what a straight line is?
I mean, if it can be agreed that a square, rectangle, triangle are all
basic facts, then the facts could have been summarized more
succinctly. And to do so would not have changed the law that level of
organization is directly proportional to applied knowledge.
>
><snip some more>
>
>And as to each fact containing the same amount of knowledge,
>you seem to be *asserting* that they do here, but you haven't
>actually shown it:
I don't know how else to say that a one-inch straight line is always a
one-inch straight line, no matter where you find it or how that fact
is expressed. It could be phrased "a line that is straight and one
inch long"; or "a straight one-inch long line"; or a line that
measures one inch and is straight." Why is it not apparent that this
is always the same fact?
Zoe
<ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
snip>
>I'm one of those annoying people who doesn't agree that knowledge is
>a collection of facts. The thing is, that if you put a bunch of
>facts in the trash can, the trash can still does not have any
>knowledge.
and if you put many volumes of factual material in a library setting,
the library is still not a source of knowledge? Does the trash can
make the factual material that you throw into it not knowledge, but
the library becomes known as the place to go to obtain knowledge?
>I take knowledge to be the set of abilities needed to collect and to
>use facts. The trash can doesn't have that. And a physicist has
>that ability with respect to facts of physics, while most people
>don't.
>
>>Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
>>create something new.
>
>That might be a good definition of knowledge, but I wouldn't consider
>it a good definition of intelligence.
okay. That's your right to think so.
snip>
>
>>I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
>>far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
>>creation.
>
>>The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>
>>A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>
>Let's stop there for a moment. Let's suppose that you drew the picture.
>And maybe you want to say that the picture contains some facts. I could
>agree with that.
>
>But lets change the story. Let's suppose that you did not draw the
>picture. Rather, there was a wind storm, and the sand that was blowing
>around just happened to settle in the right way to form a picture of
>a house.
>
>Is it really a picture? Does it still contain facts? Or is it necessary
>that the picture be formed by somebody who knows what the picture is
>a picture of, instead of it being formed by random wind motions?
>
no, it is not necessary that the picture be formed by a human. But
the data is derived through observation. No wind has ever been
observed to draw a perfectly aligned picture in the sand. But it has
been observed that such dimensioned drawings are done by intelligence
all the time. So until another source is observed, we have to
conclude that only intelligence can create a drawing of a house in the
sand. It can then safely be said that such a creation can be used as
a sample in the universe of creations to see if there are consistent
hallmarks that come with intelligent creation.
>These are tricky questions. I'm inclined to think that measuring
>knowledge is very difficult, perhaps impossible.
you mean, like hang up your lab coat and go home?
>
>Hmm. Here are some more problems for you.
>
>1+1=2. That's a fact, and I'm sure that you know it.
>2+1=3. That's also a fact.
both of these are the same fact, just worded differently.
>123456789+1=123456790. That's another fact that you know.
yes, and wherever you see that combination or any variation of that
combination that adds up to the same number, it is still the same
fact.
>I think it will turn out that you know infinitely many such facts.
>Does that make you infinitely knowledgable?
I don't think humans know infinitely many facts. We are not
infinitely knowledgeable.
Deadrat
It depends on whether you concede the existence of infinite sets.
If you don't, then I'll say that given any number N, human beings
know more than N facts.
1/1 > 0
1/2 > 0
...
1/N > 0
1/(N+1) > 0
There that's N+1 facts.
Deadrat
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
yoohoo, Josephus, back over here please. Come on back over.
I'm talking only about recognizing the steps used in the creation of
an item. Do you or do you not agree that you should be able to
recognize a one-inch straight line, no matter in what context of
creation you find it? I am not talking philosophy here, you know, but
concrete examples of how created items are made via intelligence.
>Your logic follows these rules. But you dont seem to understand.
I submit that it is YOU who does not understand what I am saying.
Zoe
<res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
snip>
zoe wrote:
>> A fact is a datum, a single piece of knowledge.
>> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
>
>I disagree with your characterization of knowledge, Zoe, and I posted links
>to several sources explaining why. You can, of course, define it however you
>like, but if you want to be consistent with other users of the word, it
>makes sense to pay attention to the common usage.
>
>Knowledge generally implies the synthesis of data into a higher level of
>understanding.
which says the same thing I just said, I think. I guess you want me
to say it in those exact words. If so, then I do accept your
definition of knowledge and proffer that it is the same meaning as
mine.
The synthesis of data requires more than one fact. The collection of
these facts would be what we call a store of knowledge. Yes, I think
we are saying the same thing, and so I will agree with you. I accept
that knowledge is data (a collection of facts) that have been
synthesized into a higher level of understanding.
>
>> Intelligence is mental ability to apply facts to a situation or to
>> create something new.
>
>I disagree with this also. Intelligence allows us to integrate all our
>sensory input and grasp complex situations. This is more than simple
>application of facts.
you won't be able to apply facts if you don't know how to integrate
all sensory input or grasp complex situations. When you can apply
facts through an ability to integrate sensory input and grasp complex
situations (or "apply" them) then intelligence is being demonstrated.
I agree with you.
>> I don't think there has been disagreement with these definitions so
>> far...except for the fact. So....let's dismantle the following
>> creation.
>>
>> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>>
>> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>>
>> Facts:
>>
>> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
>
>This is actually three facts, (a) configuration is a straight line segment,
>(b) length is 1 inch, (c) medium is sand. But you didn't specify how wide
>the line is, or whether the ends are square or rounded.
okay, so you think you recognize three facts in that one. I'll count
them, if you want. If, for every one of my facts, you are able to
demonstrate that they are really three facts, then at the end I would
have 75 facts, and it still wouldn't invalidate the fact that 1/75th
of the knowledge produces 1/75th of a creation, and when you get to
75/75th or the whole knowledge reflected in the creation, that each
1/75th of the whole has added to the growing complexity directly
proportional to each step of applied knowledge.
>
>>
>> 2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at right
>> angles to the first straight line.
>
>The is three more facts, (a) configuration is a straight line segment, (b)
>length is 1 inch, (c) orientation is 90 degrees from datum line. It is
>missing several other facts, however: (d) x-distance along the first line
>from the zero point at which this new segment starts, (e) y-distance from
>the zero point at which this segment starts (presumably zero, but you didn't
>say so), and (f) direction for the end point y-value (positive or negative).
>
>I won't belabor the point, I'm sure you get the idea.
I get the idea that you want to disagree just to disagree. I hope
that is not the case. I shouldn't have to break it down to this
simple a level for scientists. Whether you get three facts out of one
or 100 facts out of one, the increase in organization is directly
proportional to each additional fact.
>
>[snip]
>
>> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the sand.
>> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
>> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
>> the sand.
>
>Well, no, they won't, becaused you left out a few key details. And it takes
>more than 25 facts.
I promise you that if you follow the 25 steps I gave, you will most
definitely be able to produce the same representation of a house that
was drawn in the sand. If you don't, it would be because I left out
some factual detail, and I would have to go back and include that
fact.
>
>>
>> The Second Law of Intelligence says: The level of organization or
>> order within a system is directly proportional to the level of
>> appplied intelligence.
>>
>> How has the Second Law of Intelligence been validated? The increasing
>> number of facts has created an increasing network organized into,
>> eventually, a representation of a house.
>
>How has this validated your "law"? You already defined intelligence in terms
>of quantity of facts, so all you've done is confirm that your definition is
>what you said it was.
no, no, no -- you didn't read my definition then. I defined
intelligence in terms of mental ability to apply facts to a situation
or to make something new.
>
>>
>> The creation that starts at fact 1 is not organized or ordered because
>> there is nothing else within its context. But at fact 25, you have an
>> interrelated network of facts. Each fact equals a single unit of
>> knowledge that builds on each other.
>>
>> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
>> reflected in the sand-drawn house. All 25 facts together is 25/25 or
>> the whole body of applied knowledge reflected in the sand-drawn house.
>> Therefore, the level of organization or order in this particular item
>> is directly proportional to the level of applied intelligence.
>
>Again, this is circular logic. You are only reconfirming the definition you
>started with. It does not relate to the IQ of the person who drew the lines,
>or any other meaningful view of intelligence.
so, tell me, then, who would you consider to be more intelligent, the
person who has a head full of knowledge but never applies it to
real-life situations, or the one who can weave his knowledge into
solutions or creations?
>> My next task would be to lay out the facts as measured in the first
>> law of intelligence, (re chaos or disorder) and this would include the
>> manipulation of facts so as to block entropy. But first I will wait
>> to see if there are any valid objections to the above tedious display
>> of factual knowledge. No need to overwhelm myself.
>>
>
>Well, you haven't overwhelmed anyone else.
that is why I said "overwhelm myself." I wouldn't presume to
overwhelm you.
Zoe
snip>
snip>
oh, dear, you're dazzling me again, Deadrat, with your knowledge of
math. But can you just answer a simple question with a simple yes or
no?
Are you able to recognize a single one-inch straight line, no matter
where you find it in the creation of various items? If you can, then
you are recognizing a single fact.
You asked for an example of a single fact. I gave it. Now, can we
move on?
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
>
>Single facts, within certain contexts, can be atomized.
>HOWEVER, the necessary subdivision of facts for atomization in
>mathematical contexts is far beyond the expertise of most people
>(incl. you). Proving 1+1=2 takes many, many, many pages.
>Geometry also is a fairly involved subject.
in other words, it's too hard, it's too involved, it can't be done.
Give up and do something else?
snip>
>> Facts:
>>
>> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
>
>I don't raise any further objections than have already been raised,
>as to the assumptions required to draw the line. (Such as: what is
>a line, what is one inch, what is straight, how you draw the line,
>etc.)
I really didn't think I was talking to uneducated people on this
forum.
>> 2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at right
>> angles to the first straight line.
>
>This statement is ambiguous, and requires synthesis from later
>"facts" to prevent from putting the line in the wrong place.
>Thus, it _must_ be subdivided. (And angles need to be defined
>as well.)
>
>For example, drawing the second line, such that it bisects the
>first line (in addition to being at right angles to it) satisifes
>this "fact", however, does not result in a "properly" completed
>product.
that's the point. The product is not properly completed until all
facts are in place.
snip>
>> 5. A two-inch straight line is drawn, connected to the bottom right
>> angle of the square, tilted at a 10-degree angle.
>
>Most certainly ambiguous. What is the 10-degree angle relative to?
it is relative to the bottom right angle of the square. Which I
already stated.
>At what point along the new line is connected to the angle?
okay, so make the fact more accurate then: "its left end is connected
to the conjunction of the bottom right angle of the square."
> What
>point of the angle is the line connected to?
at the junction of the right angle. That would make the fact more
complete. And while we're at it, I would add that the ten-degree
angle is tilted upwards not downwards. Doesn't change the single fact
I am describing though.
>If you're going to pursue geometric constructions, you would be well
>advised to learn the terminology and notation.
yes, sir. I'm sorry that you don't follow my simple instructions.
>And these ambiguities are not a case of mere misunderstanding.
>You are claiming your "facts" are not context-dependent,
no, I said that facts are context dependent if you need to count them.
They are not context dependent if you simply want to draw, say, a
single straight one-inch line and leave it floating there. You
recognize that it is a single straight one-inch line, but it has no
context that would allow you to count it as a fact in steps of
creation.
> and as
>such, they must contain NO ambiguity.
what's ambiguous about a single, one-inch straight line?
snip>
>So, obviously, either your set of "facts" is incorrect, or is
>insufficient to the task.
if you can follow my set of facts and reproduce a similar depiction of
a house, then my facts have been sufficient to the task.
snip>
>> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
>> reflected in the sand-drawn house.
>
>No, it isn't. Even going with the first 4 statements, statements #2
>& #3 require statement #4 to be worth anything to the finished product.
>Otherwise, they may be placed improperly.
now you get my point. The facts build on each other so that the
organization of the facts is directly proportional to the applied
knowledge. Without fact 4, for instance, facts 2 and 3 aren't much of
a picture.
>Since your 25 "facts" require extra knowledge that you either a) do
>not mention, or b) require synthesizing from other facts in the
>set, your set is incomplete, and thus any propositions requiring
>said completeness are, on their face, false.
I would have to respectfully disagree. If you can follow my
instructions and create a similar house, then my facts are sufficient
and complete.
snip>
Zoe
<ian.sp...@homecall.co.uk> wrote:
snip>
>Knowledge of what constitutes a house is a fact or, rather, a very
>large collection of facts.
>
>Knowledge of how to represent a three-dimensional object on a
>two-dimensional surface so that it can be recognised by an observer is
>also a large body of facts.
>
>Knowledge of the minimum number of lines needed to draw a recognisable
>house is a collection of facts.
>
>All the knowledge listed above is an essential prerequisite - part of
>the raw material if you like - for the drawing of a house in the sand.
>Without it you would have sand and a stick but no drawing of a house.
and the drawing of a house is a result of the intelligent application
of facts, right?
Zoe
wrote:
>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5lumrfiuei49n74ou36@
>4ax.com:
>
>> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
>
>
>Knowledge also includes theories, ideas, concepts, etc.
yes... and? All theories, ideas, concepts, etc., if they are valid,
will consist of a collection of facts.
>
>And must importantly of all, as others have already stated,
>knowledge includes understanding.
for a fact to be stated accurately and truly reflect reality, it has
to be stated so it is understood. So if knowledge consists of facts
that have been understood, then, yes, I agree with you, knowledge
includes understanding.
But can you address the point of this thread, please? Can a fact be
recognized as a single fact by a community of educated people?
Would you recognize a one-inch straight line, wherever you found it,
Harlequin?
Mark VandeWettering
> Looks like my creation theory will have to continue simmering merrily
> on the back burner until this fact business is cleared up.
It's not simmering. The stove is off and its beginning to grow a thick
matte coating of green fur.
I can't imagine a more pointless, useless, or futile presentation.
> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
> the sand.
>
> The Second Law of Intelligence says: The level of organization or
> order within a system is directly proportional to the level of
> appplied intelligence.
>
> How has the Second Law of Intelligence been validated? The increasing
> number of facts has created an increasing network organized into,
> eventually, a representation of a house.
>
> The creation that starts at fact 1 is not organized or ordered because
> there is nothing else within its context. But at fact 25, you have an
> interrelated network of facts. Each fact equals a single unit of
> knowledge that builds on each other.
>
> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
> reflected in the sand-drawn house. All 25 facts together is 25/25 or
> the whole body of applied knowledge reflected in the sand-drawn house.
> Therefore, the level of organization or order in this particular item
> is directly proportional to the level of applied intelligence.
Just to pick one small nit in a veritable locust swarm of nits, why
are all the "facts" of equal importance?
> My next task would be to lay out the facts as measured in the first
> law of intelligence, (re chaos or disorder) and this would include the
> manipulation of facts so as to block entropy. But first I will wait
> to see if there are any valid objections to the above tedious display
> of factual knowledge. No need to overwhelm myself.
Mark
Deadrat
oh, dear, you're flattering me again, Zoe.
> Are you able to recognize a single one-inch straight line, no matter
> where you find it in the creation of various items?
Maybe. Define line. And don't draw me one.
> If you can, then you are recognizing a single fact.
Seems intuitively obvious, doesn't it? Just common sense.
But that's not the way science works. Because common sense
is often wrong. And anyway one person's common sense is
another's absurdity. That's why people are asking you for
definitions that don't involve intuitive examples.
>
> You asked for an example of a single fact. I gave it. Now, can we
> move on?
>
I'll take that as a no to investigating the knowledge function.
That's OK. I'm still willing to grant you your logical atomism.
Deadrat
Neil W Rickert
>On Sun, 15 May 2005 04:17:15 +0000 (UTC), Neil W Rickert
><ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>I'm one of those annoying people who doesn't agree that knowledge is
>>a collection of facts. The thing is, that if you put a bunch of
>>facts in the trash can, the trash can still does not have any
>>knowledge.
>and if you put many volumes of factual material in a library setting,
>the library is still not a source of knowledge?
That's right. It's a source of information, not a source of
knowledge.
>the library is still not a source of knowledge? Does the trash can
>make the factual material that you throw into it not knowledge, but
>the library becomes known as the place to go to obtain knowledge?
I can obtain knowledge from the library. But I cannot obtain it
merely by memorizing facts recorded there. I have to work at it, and
develop an understanding of what I am studying. There is a lot more
to knowledge that mere facts.
>>>The raw material used: sand. A stick.
>>>A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
>>Let's stop there for a moment. Let's suppose that you drew the picture.
>>And maybe you want to say that the picture contains some facts. I could
>>agree with that.
>>But lets change the story. Let's suppose that you did not draw the
>>picture. Rather, there was a wind storm, and the sand that was blowing
>>around just happened to settle in the right way to form a picture of
>>a house.
>>Is it really a picture? Does it still contain facts? Or is it necessary
>>that the picture be formed by somebody who knows what the picture is
>>a picture of, instead of it being formed by random wind motions?
>no, it is not necessary that the picture be formed by a human. But
>the data is derived through observation.
We talk about the man in the moon. Yet the moon did not observe
people in order to engrave those features that look a little like a
face.
> No wind has ever been
>observed to draw a perfectly aligned picture in the sand.
I am suggesting that the knowledge isn't in the picture. It is in
the ability to make the picture, and in the ability to be able to use
or understand the picture.
[snip]
>>These are tricky questions. I'm inclined to think that measuring
>>knowledge is very difficult, perhaps impossible.
>you mean, like hang up your lab coat and go home?
At least study the literature.
I appreciate that you are trying to come up with a scientific theory
of creation. But I doubt that such a *scientific* theory is
possible. Generally, a scientific theory comes out of attempts to
measure. At first measurement can be difficult. But as ways of
measurement develop, that can lead to a viable scientific theory.
As an educator, I do try to assess the knowledge of students. That's
one of the reasons we give exams. But I don't measure knowledge as a
number of facts. My exams tend to test the ability of students to
solve problems, or to give good explanations.
>>Hmm. Here are some more problems for you.
>>1+1=2. That's a fact, and I'm sure that you know it.
>>2+1=3. That's also a fact.
>both of these are the same fact, just worded differently.
>>123456789+1=123456790. That's another fact that you know.
>yes, and wherever you see that combination or any variation of that
>combination that adds up to the same number, it is still the same
>fact.
Most people take these to be distinct facts.
>>I think it will turn out that you know infinitely many such facts.
>>Does that make you infinitely knowledgable?
>I don't think humans know infinitely many facts. We are not
>infinitely knowledgeable.
Philosophers study this sort of thing under the heading
"epistemology", and quite a few of them conclude that we do indeed
know infinitely many facts. They admit that this presents a
challenge to their theories.
R. Baldwin
> On Sun, 15 May 2005 05:00:45 GMT, "R. Baldwin"
> <res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
>
I'm not simply being argumentative, Zoe. I've been trying for several days
to get across that facts are singular only at a much lower level than you
have
been contemplating. If that is finally getting across, great.
As others have pointed out, there are a few other details needed (basic
geometrical defintions), but for large datasets that doesn't wiggle the
needle much.
And you're welcome to define organization in terms of how many facts you
have; though you will probably have long arguments with others over exactly
how many facts you do have. Personally, I think you risk overlooking a great
many of critical interactions between facts, but you can make definitions as
you see fit.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the sand.
>>> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
>>> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is drawn in
>>> the sand.
>>
>>Well, no, they won't, becaused you left out a few key details. And it
>>takes
>>more than 25 facts.
>
> I promise you that if you follow the 25 steps I gave, you will most
> definitely be able to produce the same representation of a house that
> was drawn in the sand. If you don't, it would be because I left out
> some factual detail, and I would have to go back and include that
> fact.
Yes, you did leave out factual details.
>>
>>>
>>> The Second Law of Intelligence says: The level of organization or
>>> order within a system is directly proportional to the level of
>>> appplied intelligence.
>>>
>>> How has the Second Law of Intelligence been validated? The increasing
>>> number of facts has created an increasing network organized into,
>>> eventually, a representation of a house.
>>
>>How has this validated your "law"? You already defined intelligence in
>>terms
>>of quantity of facts, so all you've done is confirm that your definition
>>is
>>what you said it was.
>
> no, no, no -- you didn't read my definition then. I defined
> intelligence in terms of mental ability to apply facts to a situation
> or to make something new.
Okay, that is probably a reasonable definition, but it still doesn't
validate your "law." You haven't demonstrated a directly proportional
relationship at all. If it were directly proportional, every example you
could cite would have a number representing organization proportional to a
number representing applied intelligence by the same universal constant K.
Have you calculated that constant? If so, what is it? Can you show the data?
Have you done regression analysis to confirm the slope is K? If so, what is
the variance?
I should note that totaling up the number of steps in a set of instructions
tells you nothing about the number of choices that were required to develop
the instructions. The application of intelligence lies in those choices, not
the number of instructions in the final product. And as I've said before,
simpler, more elegant designs take more applied intelligence than
complicated ones which do the same thing.
>>
>>>
>>> The creation that starts at fact 1 is not organized or ordered because
>>> there is nothing else within its context. But at fact 25, you have an
>>> interrelated network of facts. Each fact equals a single unit of
>>> knowledge that builds on each other.
>>>
>>> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
>>> reflected in the sand-drawn house. All 25 facts together is 25/25 or
>>> the whole body of applied knowledge reflected in the sand-drawn house.
>>> Therefore, the level of organization or order in this particular item
>>> is directly proportional to the level of applied intelligence.
>>
>>Again, this is circular logic. You are only reconfirming the definition
>>you
>>started with. It does not relate to the IQ of the person who drew the
>>lines,
>>or any other meaningful view of intelligence.
>
> so, tell me, then, who would you consider to be more intelligent, the
> person who has a head full of knowledge but never applies it to
> real-life situations, or the one who can weave his knowledge into
> solutions or creations?
Either one might be. I've known quite a few bright people who are unable to
apply their knowledge to real problems. It doesn't make them any less
bright, but they do lack a certain skill set. Being able to apply knowledge
has much to do with time management, judgement, interpersonal skills, and a
willingness to take risks. The engineers I've known with these skills were
better at their jobs than the ones without, regardless of intelligence.
Steven J.
> On Sun, 15 May 2005 06:22:08 GMT, "Deadrat" <no...@none.non> wrote:
>
>
>
> oh, dear, you're dazzling me again, Deadrat, with your knowledge of
> math. But can you just answer a simple question with a simple yes or
> no?
>
> Are you able to recognize a single one-inch straight line, no matter
> where you find it in the creation of various items? If you can, then
> you are recognizing a single fact.
>
sense of noting that it is there and has a certain shape, color and
location. I can "recognize" a set of lines as a Chinese (or maybe
Japanese -- I can read neither language) character, without recognizing its
meaning. I can "recognize" (in the sense of knowing the usual meanings of
those words) a few words in a text in a language I read poorly, without
being able to figure out how they contribute to the (indecipherable, to me)
meaning of the text as a whole.
Depending on the amount of background knowledge one has, a one-inch land can
represent or convey varying degrees of knowledge.
>
> You asked for an example of a single fact. I gave it. Now, can we
> move on?
>
-- Steven J.
John Drayton
> On Sun, 15 May 2005 13:58:15 +1000, "John Drayton"
> <bitbu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >"Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5l...@4ax.com...
>
> snip>
>
> >But it seems to me that there's no progress towards showing
> >that a fact can be a useful unit of knowledge, on two counts:
> >1. The number of "facts" used to describe the same thing
> > deepends on the context of the explanation.
>
> I don't follow you on this one. Clarify.
The context consists of at least:
- your target audience
- the purpose of the explanation
If your target audience was a 7 year old child, and
the purpose was to entertain them at the beach, you
could just have one "how" fact:
1. Draw a house in the sand.
If your target audience was 3 years old, you would
need more information about what a straight line was
etc.
If your target audience was a 20 year old who left
school early, and you were trying to demonstrate
some elementary geometry, your explanation would
differ again.
Compare this to a unit of measurement of length:
Ask me how high I am, and I will give you a numeric
answer in those units: 70 inches. That answer will
*not* be different if a different person asks the
question. That answer will *not* be different if
you ask the question for different reasons.
Contrast this with your proposed unit of meaurement
of knowledge. For a specific task that you are
measuring, the number of facts will differ depending
on the person you are giving the answer to, and the
reason they are asking the question.
> >2. The information content of each fact has not been shown
> > to be the same.
>
> a one-inch straight line is a one-inch straight line in any context.
> That never changes, does it?
I mean information content of *different* facts.
Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
you justify this? If your answer if no, then the
facts are like those proverbial pieces of string:
just counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
amount of knowledge.
Note that it's not enough to just say that each is
one fact, and therefore contains the same amount of
knowledge. That's just a claim. I'm asking you to
justify that claim.
Two *different* people who are six feet high have the
same quantity of the attribute "height". We can verify
this by measuring both people with the same device
(say a tape measure).
Do two *different* facts have the same amount of
knowledge? How do you propose to verify this.
> >Rather than go through the entire 25 facts below, I'll just have
> >a look at the first one.
> >
> >> So....let's dismantle the following creation.
> >>
> >> The raw material used: sand. A stick.
> >>
> >> A simple picture of a house is drawn in the sand.
> >>
> >> Facts:
> >>
> >> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
> >
> >This single fact consists of a number of facts, implicit and
> >explicit:
> > - what a "line" is
> > - what "straight" means
> > - what an "inch" is
> > - what "drawing" means
> > - what "sand" is
> > - what you need to do with the stick to produce the line
> > - how thick the line can be
> > - just how "straight" a straight line needs to be
> >
> >If the context of this explanation is that you are talking to
> >a person who understands all these things, then the fact
> >as it stands is quite adequate I would think.
>
> thank you for the concession. The posters on this forum are known to
> be intelligent, so I took it for granted that I wouldn't have to
> reduce it any further. Surely everyone knows what a line is.
But you have been claiming that the "how" facts can
stand alone. Now you appear to be conceding that they
*do* require a context: there is a set of knowledge
that you are presuming, based upon who you think you
are describing the task to, and why you are describing
the task.
> ><snip 24 other facts>
> >
> >> Okay, 25 facts reflected in the creation of a house drawn in the
sand.
> >> If anyone follows these facts exactly as they have been described,
> >> they will be able to reproduce a replica of the house that is
drawn in
> >> the sand.
> >
> >Only if they also know all the other facts necessary for the
> >reproduction of the house - that is if the *context* of your
> >explanation is: a person who understands these other
> >necessary facts are implicit. in the instructions.
>
> the context of my explanation is that I am talking to educated
> posters.
So the unit of measurement *is* context sensitive.
That is, the number of measured units (facts) depends
on who you are describing the task to.
Can you name me any other unit of measurement which
behaves like this?
> >In *another* context (eg someone who knows what a square
> >is), the number of required facts for *the same task* could be
> >more or less.
> >
> >So which set of facts should we count?
>
> you count the fact that is commonly recognized.
Commonly recognised by whom?
Why don't we have to count the inches that are
commonly recognised when we are measuring length.
We just count inches.
> I didn't want to
> insult your intelligence by going even this basic, but I know that if
> I took it for granted that you knew what a square was, that you would
> instantly break it down to lines, so I saved you that step. Do you
> need further reduction, then, in an admission that you don't
> understand what a straight line is?
I understand what "draw a house in the sand" means.
So for me, one fact would suffice.
This has nothing to do with insulting anyone's
intelligence. It's about determining if this is an
*independant*, *objective* measure.
> I mean, if it can be agreed that a square, rectangle, triangle are
all
> basic facts, then the facts could have been summarized more
> succinctly. And to do so would not have changed the law that level
of
> organization is directly proportional to applied knowledge.
> >
> ><snip some more>
> >
> >And as to each fact containing the same amount of knowledge,
> >you seem to be *asserting* that they do here, but you haven't
> >actually shown it:
>
> I don't know how else to say that a one-inch straight line is always
a
> one-inch straight line, no matter where you find it or how that fact
> is expressed. It could be phrased "a line that is straight and one
> inch long"; or "a straight one-inch long line"; or a line that
> measures one inch and is straight." Why is it not apparent that this
> is always the same fact?
I'm talking about comparing different facts, as explained
above. Different objects can be compared for length, as
"1 inch" represents the same amount of length no matter what
you are measuring.
Additionally, it's certainly not apparent that it's an
*atomic* fact. That is, that it can't be divided into a
set of simpler facts.
--
John Drayton
josephus
I live with an artist and she clearly knows a line only means what you
intend it to mean. Ask Nancy to draw a house and she will do
something so different that you may think of Nancy as a camera with a
pencil. And she can draw that way all the time. Clearly a line means
something much different to Nancy.
Nancy has told me the knowledge behind a drawing or painting is so vast
as to not be comprehensible to a non artistic person like me. This has
a bearing on the simplicity and the meaning of your line. It will not
be the component of the drawn house. Only if you cannot draw. I can
draw a little so I have some understanding.
your line is not useful. a line drawn will never be straight. A one
inch line means different things in a drawing. Perspective matters.
Nancy says there are no 2 dimensional objects in the real world. In
these terms you lines and your 'house' are not useful or even relative.
In terms of a fact. You cannot isolate facts but you can assert them.
Because you cannot assert an infinite set in the terms you use. you will
find many objections because you are not defining objects correctly.
you must understand which statements are asserted.
you can say positive or negative things in support of the asserted
statements.
You cannot speak of anything not in your asserted subject and statements.
If these structures are properly formulated you can embed them in
paragraphs of text. The logic will remain valid or invalid in that text.
Hopefully you will take some effort to assert a rational system.
Hopefully you will make true logical statements.
josephus
Eric Rowley
<snip>
> >> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
> >I don't raise any further objections than have already been
> >raised, as to the assumptions required to draw the line. (Such
> >as: what is a line, what is one inch, what is straight, how you
> >draw the line, etc.)
> I really didn't think I was talking to uneducated people on this
> forum.
Zoe, you have claimed (and I haven't seen you retract) that you
can measure knowledge by counting facts.
Don't you see that in that context it is important to know that
you have _all_ the facts listed?
Otherwise you are mismeasuring the amount of knowledge.
You can't just leave out facts that are needed for understanding
just because "educated people" already know them.
> >> 2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at
> >> right angles to the first straight line.
> >This statement is ambiguous, and requires synthesis from later
> >"facts" to prevent from putting the line in the wrong place.
> >Thus, it _must_ be subdivided. (And angles need to be defined
> >as well.)
> >For example, drawing the second line, such that it bisects the
> >first line (in addition to being at right angles to it)
> >satisifes >this "fact", however, does not result in a
> >"properly" completed product.
> that's the point. The product is not properly completed until
> all facts are in place.
So how do you know when you have listed all the facts?
> snip>
> >> 5. A two-inch straight line is drawn, connected to the bottom
> >>right angle of the square, tilted at a 10-degree angle.
> >Most certainly ambiguous. What is the 10-degree angle relative
> to?
> it is relative to the bottom right angle of the square. Which I
> already stated.
That's not enough information, tilted 10 degrees from what
exactly? From the horizontal?
> >At what point along the new line is connected to the angle?
> okay, so make the fact more accurate then: "its left end is
> connected to the conjunction of the bottom right angle of the
> square."
> > What
> >point of the angle is the line connected to?
> at the junction of the right angle. That would make the fact
more
> complete. And while we're at it, I would add that the ten-degree
> angle is tilted upwards not downwards. Doesn't change the single
> fact I am describing though.
How can it be a single fact if you have to keep adding facts to
describe it properly?
> >If you're going to pursue geometric constructions, you would be
> >well advised to learn the terminology and notation.
> yes, sir. I'm sorry that you don't follow my simple
> instructions.
He didn't say he couldn't follow them, he said they don't capture
the full range of knowledge embodied in your drawing.
> >And these ambiguities are not a case of mere misunderstanding.
> >You are claiming your "facts" are not context-dependent,
> no, I said that facts are context dependent if you need to count
> them. They are not context dependent if you simply want to draw,
> say, a single straight one-inch line and leave it floating
there.
> You recognize that it is a single straight one-inch line, but it
> has no context that would allow you to count it as a fact in
> steps of creation.
Why not?
How does its factualness change if you were drawing a sailboat
instead of a house? Or if you were just drawing a single line?
> > and as
> >such, they must contain NO ambiguity.
> what's ambiguous about a single, one-inch straight line?
Depth, width, angle of sides, color, dampness and grainsize of the
sand.
Unless you choose your sand and stick carefully your 1/4"
window won't be recognizable.
> snip>
> >So, obviously, either your set of "facts" is incorrect, or is
> >insufficient to the task.
> if you can follow my set of facts and reproduce a similar
> depiction of a house, then my facts have been sufficient to the
> task.
But not sufficient to measuring the "knowledge content" of the
drawing.
So how many "fact units" is your picture worth?
1 (a picture of a house), 4 (Two walls, roof and window), 25, 75?
<snip>
Eric
Eric Rowley
Not if by "single fact" you mean one that is worth exactly one
unit of knowledge, each one worth the same as the next.
> Would you recognize a one-inch straight line, wherever you found
> it, Harlequin?
Would you?
Suppose you came across a one-inch straight line that I had
"drawn" in the sand with a bulldozer, I bet you would think
it was an eight-foot line one-inch wide.
Or suppose a pointillist painter used your drawing as a basis
for a painting, you come into the room, see the painting across
the room and immediately recognize your drawing so you go over
to get a closer look whereupon the nice straight lines disolve
into a disordered mess of colored dots. Are the lines there or
not?
Or look at http://www.berro.com/illusions/stlines.gif and
http://www.berro.com/illusions/Lines.gif
and tell me if you see any straight lines.
Do you see any diagonal lines in
http://www.berro.com/illusions/0305.gif ?
Eric
John Drayton
> From: Zoe <muz...@aol.com>:
<snip>
I hope you don't think Eric is being needlessly
pedantic, or is just being argumentative, Zoe.
Remember that "common sense" just doesn't work
for science. You need precise and unambiguous
definitions.
Eric's example further illustrate that your example
assumes a certain amount of knowledge on the part of
the person who is doing the drawing. That is, it is
assuming a certain context.
Dave...@aol.com
> snip>
> >
> >Single facts, within certain contexts, can be atomized.
> >HOWEVER, the necessary subdivision of facts for atomization in
> >mathematical contexts is far beyond the expertise of most people
> >(incl. you). Proving 1+1=2 takes many, many, many pages.
> >Geometry also is a fairly involved subject.
> in other words, it's too hard, it's too involved, it can't be done.
> Give up and do something else?
In all honesty, I think you're tilting at windmills going down this
particular tack.
If you can come up with something that is not fraught with
ambiguity, you may have something interesting. I'd stay away
from mathematical contexts, though.
> snip>
>
> >> Facts:
> >>
> >> 1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
> >
> >I don't raise any further objections than have already been raised,
> >as to the assumptions required to draw the line. (Such as: what is
> >a line, what is one inch, what is straight, how you draw the line,
> >etc.)
> I really didn't think I was talking to uneducated people on this
> forum.
However, the other facts are relevant to the context, something
which is vitally necessary for consistent results, if you're going
to be counting facts.
Otherwise, two people will end up with vastly different results
for the number of facts involved, thus making the measurement
completely useless. A measurement is worthless if two people
using the same unit of measurement can end up with different
answers (assuming identical environments for measuring) for
the quantity being measured.
If I'm programming a robot, the code somewhere is going to have
to have instructions on how to draw the line, and thus how to
draw the line is indeed relevant if we're counting instructions.
> >> 2. A second straight line, one inch in length is drawn at right
> >> angles to the first straight line.
> >
> >This statement is ambiguous, and requires synthesis from later
> >"facts" to prevent from putting the line in the wrong place.
> >Thus, it _must_ be subdivided. (And angles need to be defined
> >as well.)
> >
> >For example, drawing the second line, such that it bisects the
> >first line (in addition to being at right angles to it) satisifes
> >this "fact", however, does not result in a "properly" completed
> >product.
> that's the point. The product is not properly completed until all
> facts are in place.
It's not whether or not the product is complete. Given your
(ambiguous) statement, the line can be placed in the wrong place,
which would prevent proper completion of the product. Either your
fact is incomplete (and thus can be subdivided once it is complete,
thus changing the numbers), or the fact is incorrect, or both.
As I said previously, the second line can bisect the first line.
This satisifies the demands created by the instruction, however,
it will create problems further down the line. More information is
required (and thus this "fact" can be subdivided) if we are to
end up with a useful product. In fact, there are an infinite
number of lines that will satisfy the terms set by the current
version of statement #2, but only two (at most) enable proper
completion of the product.
And I'm not even going into 3-dimensional figures, or non-Euclidean
geometries, which would further complicate things.
> snip>
> >> 5. A two-inch straight line is drawn, connected to the bottom
right
> >> angle of the square, tilted at a 10-degree angle.
> >
> >Most certainly ambiguous. What is the 10-degree angle relative to?
> it is relative to the bottom right angle of the square. Which I
> already stated.
That's not very helpful. You are still being ambiguous.
Take, for example, 3 points. (-1,0), (0,0), and (1,0). A, B, and
C, respectively. Segments are drawn betwen points A & B, and B & C,
thus forming the right angle I think you are referring to.
Assuming that one of the sides of your 10-degree angle is part
of the AB or BC segments, the other leg of the angle can be in
one of 4 configurations, depending on whether the vertex of the
new angle is at 0,0 or along the AB or BC segments.
This doesn't count the cases where one the legs is (0,0) <-> (0,-1)
or (0,0) <-> (1,0).
Eight different configurations, all which satisfy the conditions
set forth, but only one of which is valid.
> >At what point along the new line is connected to the angle?
> okay, so make the fact more accurate then: "its left end is
connected
> to the conjunction of the bottom right angle of the square."
That's still not very helpful. Angles don't have left ends.
> > What
> >point of the angle is the line connected to?
> at the junction of the right angle. That would make the fact more
> complete. And while we're at it, I would add that the ten-degree
> angle is tilted upwards not downwards. Doesn't change the single
fact
> I am describing though.
Actually, it does. The 10-degree angle could have been pointed upward,
and still satisified your initial statement. It removes 2 of the
possible eight (that I've determined) configurations for that angle
that would satisfy the requests of the statement.
> >If you're going to pursue geometric constructions, you would be well
> >advised to learn the terminology and notation.
> yes, sir. I'm sorry that you don't follow my simple instructions.
Your facts are ambiguous. If you're going to describe things in
a mathematical context, you must be non-ambiguous, or you can
be very easily misunderstood, or you leave holes in your statements.
> >And these ambiguities are not a case of mere misunderstanding.
> >You are claiming your "facts" are not context-dependent,
> no, I said that facts are context dependent if you need to count
them.
However, then the number of facts change depending on the context,
thus making "number of facts" a not particularly useful measurement
of knowledge.
Even for the same end-product, you can still end up with a widely
varying number of facts depending on how you're describing it.
> They are not context dependent if you simply want to draw, say, a
> single straight one-inch line and leave it floating there. You
> recognize that it is a single straight one-inch line, but it has no
> context that would allow you to count it as a fact in steps of
> creation.
> > and as
> >such, they must contain NO ambiguity.
> what's ambiguous about a single, one-inch straight line?
Assuming the material the line is constructed of is irrelevant,
there is nothing ambiguous about a single, one-inch straight
line, assuming you've defined where the two endpoints are.
Where the ambiguity starts to result is when you start connecting
them, since you have insufficiently detailed how (and where) the
lines are connected to each other.
> snip>
>
> >So, obviously, either your set of "facts" is incorrect, or is
> >insufficient to the task.
> if you can follow my set of facts and reproduce a similar depiction
of
> a house, then my facts have been sufficient to the task.
As I've noted previously, there are places to put the line drawn
by #2 that satisfy the request for #2, but do not allow production
of the depiction you describe.
> >> Any one of the 25 facts is 1/25th of the applied intelligence
> >> reflected in the sand-drawn house.
> >
> >No, it isn't. Even going with the first 4 statements, statements #2
> >& #3 require statement #4 to be worth anything to the finished
product.
> >Otherwise, they may be placed improperly.
> now you get my point. The facts build on each other so that the
> organization of the facts is directly proportional to the applied
> knowledge. Without fact 4, for instance, facts 2 and 3 aren't much
of
> a picture.
Even starting with the first 4, facts 2 & 3 are absolutely worthless
(assuming your end-product is a square) without the statement of fact
4, since there are an infinite number of ways the lines for 2 & 3
can be drawn (that satisfy statements 2 & 3) that also prevent
statement
#4 from being drawable.
> >Since your 25 "facts" require extra knowledge that you either a) do
> >not mention, or b) require synthesizing from other facts in the
> >set, your set is incomplete, and thus any propositions requiring
> >said completeness are, on their face, false.
> I would have to respectfully disagree. If you can follow my
> instructions and create a similar house, then my facts are sufficient
> and complete.
Since your facts are ambiguous, one can create a similar house
following
your instructions. One can also create something entirely different,
also following your instructions, so your instructions are not
complete.
Bob Pease
It would be easier to recognize a DRAWING of a one-inch Straight line
(segment) .
RJ Pease
Andrew Arensburger
> I should note that totaling up the number of steps in a set of instructions
> tells you nothing about the number of choices that were required to develop
> the instructions. The application of intelligence lies in those choices, not
> the number of instructions in the final product. And as I've said before,
> simpler, more elegant designs take more applied intelligence than
> complicated ones which do the same thing.
Case in point: the Heimlich Maneuver is brilliant not because
it's as effective as it is, but because it is easy to explain and
requires no tools.
--
Andrew Arensburger, Systems guy University of Maryland
arensb.no-...@umd.edu Office of Information Technology
Crime doesn't pay... does that mean my job is a crime?
Frank F. Smith
Well, now. That depends on the context, as lots of people have been
telling you.
Suppose you show me your drawing (in the sand with a stick, on a piece
of paper with a pencil, whatever) and assert, "This is a one-inch
straight line." My task, then, is to determine if that assertion is
factual. (That's how I recognize it as a one-inch straight line,
right? Or if you prefer, when I see the drawing I form a hypothesis:
"This is a one-inch straight line" and proceed to test the
hypothesis.)
I _could_ start by being pedantic. I _could_ point out that a line has
neither finite length nor non-zero width, but your drawn object has
both. (It even has a non-zero height!) So whatever it is, it _isn't_ a
one-inch line.
But I won't be pedantic -- at least, not that much. I will instead
focus on what appears to be the important aspects of your assertion/my
hypothesis: one-inch long, and straight.
Oh dear. Welcome to the real world. The line is not exactly one-inch
long, nor is it exactly straight. It's pretty close, though. Is it
close enough that I can consider the claims about its length and
straightness close enough to true? That depends on the context. Maybe
it's closer to 1.1 inches than 1 inch long. Pretty good for drawing in
sand with a stick, pretty bad for CAD. Whether the drawing represents
a one-inch line segment to adequate accuracy and precision depends on
the context.
So, whether or not I recognize that the drawing represents a one-inch
line segment depends on the context of the drawing. Whether or not the
assertion "This is a one-inch line segment" is *factual* or not
depends on the context. (Unless youi'd prefer to conclude that the
assertion is always false.)
So, I cannot assess whether your "simple fact" about the drawing is
even a fact or not without a context.
And I have not even started on the question of whether the statement
represents a "single [potential] fact", or if that is even a
meaningful question. Frankly, trying to use "fact count" as a unit of
measure seems to me to be a fairly pointless exercise.
--
Frank F. Smith
frankf at zoom hyphen dsl dot com
Harlequin
news:i33g81dbcrq5q6fpg...@4ax.com:
> On Sun, 15 May 2005 13:13:22 GMT, Harlequin <use...@sdc.cox.net>
> wrote:
>
>>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5lumrfiuei49n74ou36@
>>4ax.com:
>>
>>> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
>>
>>
>>Knowledge also includes theories, ideas, concepts, etc.
>
> yes... and? All theories, ideas, concepts, etc., if they are valid,
> will consist of a collection of facts.
I really am not going to accept the idea that an idea is a
collection of facts regardless of its truth. If you
want to use that then I am going ask that you show it.
Also a bit of confusion alert: "valid" does not mean that
something is true. In deductive arguments, valid merely
means that the reasoning is correct: given the truth of
the assumptions the premise will be true. Even if the
the assumptions are completely false, something can be
completely valid.
>>And must importantly of all, as others have already stated,
>>knowledge includes understanding.
>
> for a fact to be stated accurately and truly reflect reality, it has
> to be stated so it is understood. So if knowledge consists of facts
> that have been understood, then, yes, I agree with you, knowledge
> includes understanding.
Be careful here. It is easy to rattle off facts without real
understanding.
> But can you address the point of this thread, please? Can a fact be
> recognized as a single fact by a community of educated people?
Without some kind of super technical and super precise definition of
fact then debate of what a "single fact" is would be something that
would be hard to get agreeement. But if one did have that very tight
definition of fact then stuff that most everyone would think of as
a "fact" would probably slip through.
I think that whatever you are planning for this attempt at finding
singular facts, that you are barking up the wrong tree. Why should
it matter to anyone who not merely engaged in abstract philosophy
whether something is classified as one fact or a hundred?
> Would you recognize a one-inch straight line, wherever you found it,
> Harlequin?
Well with something to measure the distance and to verify that
it is straight. (Plus a quick verification that we both mean
the same thing by straight line.)
--
Anti-spam: replace "usenet@sdc." with "harlequin2@"
"Scam artists all use the 'debate ploy': perpetual-motion-machine
inventors, magnet therapists, UFO conspiracy theorists, all of them.
They win just by being on the same platform."
- Bob Park
Ian H Spedding
Yes, although many more facts than you listed.
Ian
--
Ian H Spedding
Zoe
John wrote:
>> >But it seems to me that there's no progress towards showing
>> >that a fact can be a useful unit of knowledge, on two counts:
>> >1. The number of "facts" used to describe the same thing
>> > deepends on the context of the explanation.
>>
>> I don't follow you on this one. Clarify.
>
>The context consists of at least:
>- your target audience
no, the context consists only of the created item.
>- the purpose of the explanation
the purpose is to enumerate the steps taken in making a certain
creation.
>If your target audience was a 7 year old child, and
>the purpose was to entertain them at the beach, you
>could just have one "how" fact:
>
>1. Draw a house in the sand.
this does not enumerate the steps taken in drawing the house.
>If your target audience was 3 years old, you would
>need more information about what a straight line was
>etc.
so after you have educated the child about what a straight line is,
and what a ruler is, and how it is used, you can next begin to tell
him the steps in this particular creation. You tell him/her that the
first step in the drawing of a house (let's make it on paper) is to
draw a straight line one inch in length.
>
>If your target audience was a 20 year old who left
>school early, and you were trying to demonstrate
>some elementary geometry, your explanation would
>differ again.
the steps should be the same, regardless of the audience. You might
bundle some steps because the audience already knows the steps
involved in the bundle, but bundling them does not mean the facts
aren't still there.
>Compare this to a unit of measurement of length:
>Ask me how high I am, and I will give you a numeric
>answer in those units: 70 inches. That answer will
>*not* be different if a different person asks the
>question. That answer will *not* be different if
>you ask the question for different reasons.
>
>Contrast this with your proposed unit of meaurement
>of knowledge. For a specific task that you are
>measuring, the number of facts will differ depending
>on the person you are giving the answer to, and the
>reason they are asking the question.
the number of facts should remain the same, regardless of the
audience.
>> >2. The information content of each fact has not been shown
>> > to be the same.
>>
>> a one-inch straight line is a one-inch straight line in any context.
>> That never changes, does it?
>
>I mean information content of *different* facts.
>
>Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
>fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
>you justify this?
the answer is yes. I justify it because each fact represents a single
step in the creation of an item or system or program. What is being
counted is the steps. Factual steps.
It's like saying 1X plus 1X = 2 X where X represents any datum. The
number "1" refers to the step. The "X" refers to the fact, whatever
that fact might be. The value of the X is in the number one, not in
the X itself.
In any other math problem, X is allowed to be anything, and as long as
you're adding X's, it will work. Let X be marbles, for instance. It
doesn't matter if you're adding a blue marble and a red marble, as
long as they're marbles, you can add them. Same with facts. It
doesn't matter if the facts are "red" or "blue" or "green," as long as
they are facts, you can add them.
> If your answer if no, then the
>facts are like those proverbial pieces of string:
>just counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
the answer is "no."
>
>10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
>not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
>amount of knowledge.
it's not about a lot or small knowledge. It is about determining what
steps were taken in the building of an item. The facts have to be
accurately described so that you don't have half a "red marble" and
three-quarters of a "blue marble." If a construction step is
adequately described, then you have a factual explanation of a single
step in the creation of an item. And you can count all single facts.
>
>Note that it's not enough to just say that each is
>one fact, and therefore contains the same amount of
>knowledge. That's just a claim. I'm asking you to
>justify that claim.
I am not saying that each fact contains the same amount of knowledge.
Each fact is a single datum of a step taken in the creation of an
item. This is the context within which the counting can take place.
You don't place a value on the content of the datum, but on the
datum's ability to describe a single step in the creation of an item,
system, or program. The claim is justified as long as the steps in
construction are explained accurately so that someone else can repeat
them. A marble is a marble, whether it be blue, red, green, or
whether it be large or small in size. One marble added to a second
marble = two marbles. One fact added to a second fact = two facts.
And so on...
>Two *different* people who are six feet high have the
>same quantity of the attribute "height". We can verify
>this by measuring both people with the same device
>(say a tape measure).
the measure for creation is all available knowledge. The individual
units of this "knowledge ruler" is the datum. If it takes four steps
to draw a square, then you have four data.
>Do two *different* facts have the same amount of
>knowledge? How do you propose to verify this.
in the context of a created item and understanding how it was made,
we're not weighing knowledge. We're counting steps. Each step, if
accurately described, would be the equivalent of a single fact in the
creation of that item.
snip>
>> >If the context of this explanation is that you are talking to
>> >a person who understands all these things, then the fact
>> >as it stands is quite adequate I would think.
>>
>> thank you for the concession. The posters on this forum are known to
>> be intelligent, so I took it for granted that I wouldn't have to
>> reduce it any further. Surely everyone knows what a line is.
>
>But you have been claiming that the "how" facts can
>stand alone.
what I meant (if I didn't state it clearly) is that the fact of a
"one-inch straight line" can stand by itself, but carries no meaning
until it is found within a context. In this case, it is found within
the context of a creation. Only within this context can the "how"
facts be counted.
> Now you appear to be conceding that they
>*do* require a context: there is a set of knowledge
>that you are presuming, based upon who you think you
>are describing the task to, and why you are describing
>the task.
no, again, the context is not who my target audience is. The context
is strictly in describing the creation of an item, system, or program.
If the steps are accurately described and reduced to their simplest
terms, then it doesn't matter the target audience. Anyone can come
along and recreate the item. If the person is uneducated, then he
educates himself before trying to follow the instructions on how to
make the item.
snip>
>> the context of my explanation is that I am talking to educated
>> posters.
>
>So the unit of measurement *is* context sensitive.
I stated that incorrectly. Thanks for forcing me to be more rigorous.
The context is always the creation of an item. The audience is not
the context.
>That is, the number of measured units (facts) depends
>on who you are describing the task to.
no, I'll restate. The number of measured units (facts) depends on
which creation is being investigated.
If it is phrased that a square was connected to a rectangle in
such-and-such a manner, it does not change the count. It is just
stated more succinctly. The creation of a square still consists of
four facts -- four straight, one-inch lines, connected in a certain
way. Or if you want to break that down further, you would simply have
more sub-parts of the single main fact, that a one-inch straight line
is drawn.
>
>Can you name me any other unit of measurement which
>behaves like this?
knowledge is the rule of measurement for creations. In the context of
creations, knowledge comes in the form of instructions, a series of
single steps towards the construction of the item.
>
>> >In *another* context (eg someone who knows what a square
>> >is), the number of required facts for *the same task* could be
>> >more or less.
>> >
>> >So which set of facts should we count?
>>
>> you count the fact that is commonly recognized.
>
>Commonly recognised by whom?
by the educated.
>Why don't we have to count the inches that are
>commonly recognised when we are measuring length.
>We just count inches.
I'm not sure what you mean by "we don't have to count the inches," and
in the next breath you say, "we just count inches.
>
>> I didn't want to
>> insult your intelligence by going even this basic, but I know that if
>> I took it for granted that you knew what a square was, that you would
>> instantly break it down to lines, so I saved you that step. Do you
>> need further reduction, then, in an admission that you don't
>> understand what a straight line is?
>
>I understand what "draw a house in the sand" means.
>So for me, one fact would suffice.
"draw a house" is not a single fact. If you are trying to explain how
to draw a house, you would have to break it down for someone who
didn't know how to draw. You would have to give each step so they
could follow you. Those steps are the facts.
>
>This has nothing to do with insulting anyone's
>intelligence. It's about determining if this is an
>*independant*, *objective* measure.
if you can describe to me how to make something you have created, and
I am able to follow your steps, then your explanation has been very
objective indeed.
snip>
Zoe
snip>
zoe wrote:
>> Are you able to recognize a single one-inch straight line, no matter
>> where you find it in the creation of various items?
>
>Maybe. Define line. And don't draw me one.
a line is a very thin, thread-like mark. That is the definition. If
you don't know what "thin" means, then take a piece of thread and
stretch it taut, and you have an example of what "thin" is. If you
don't know what "thread" is, then some education is in order.
>> If you can, then you are recognizing a single fact.
>
>Seems intuitively obvious, doesn't it? Just common sense.
>But that's not the way science works. Because common sense
>is often wrong. And anyway one person's common sense is
>another's absurdity.
no comment.
> That's why people are asking you for
>definitions that don't involve intuitive examples.
"intuitive" is not necessarily wrong. If you intuitively know that a
car is more complex than a cardboard box, then you just might turn out
to be correct about that conclusion if you were to analyze why you
intuitively know this.
snip>
Zoe
<res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
snip>
>I should note that totaling up the number of steps in a set of instructions
>tells you nothing about the number of choices that were required to develop
>the instructions. The application of intelligence lies in those choices, not
>the number of instructions in the final product. And as I've said before,
>simpler, more elegant designs take more applied intelligence than
>complicated ones which do the same thing.
if you understand the steps that were taken, then you understand how
intelligence approached the construction. You don't need to know that
the creator thought of three different subjects for an oil painting
before settling on a still life scene. Nor do you have to know that
the creator brooded deeply over what size canvas to use before
choosing an 18x24 canvas. All that is necessary is for you to look at
the final choices, copy the steps, and if you were able to analyze the
painting accurately, and figure out all the steps, then you would have
a total number of factual steps that, when built on each other,
produced the creation.
I would question that a simpler, more elegant design takes less
factual steps than a more complicated design. Often, when a design
looks simple, it is because more factual steps went into simplifying
the design.
snip>
>> so, tell me, then, who would you consider to be more intelligent, the
>> person who has a head full of knowledge but never applies it to
>> real-life situations, or the one who can weave his knowledge into
>> solutions or creations?
>
>Either one might be. I've known quite a few bright people who are unable to
>apply their knowledge to real problems. It doesn't make them any less
>bright, but they do lack a certain skill set.
okay, but in any event, I am not tryingn to measure intelligence in
all people. I am measuring intelligence as seen in the creations of
those who create. If some lack a certain skill set, this is not a
commentary on their intelligence. Their skills lie elsewhere. But
those who have the skill of creation will leave behind their creations
so that we can determine how they made them.
> Being able to apply knowledge
>has much to do with time management, judgement, interpersonal skills, and a
>willingness to take risks. The engineers I've known with these skills were
>better at their jobs than the ones without, regardless of intelligence.
I am not saying that if you don't create something you are not
intelligent. I am saying that a person can have a wealth of knowledge
and not be able to create certain things. It is the created things
that I am interested in, not in measuring intelligence in all minds.
How do created things reflect the intelligence of their creator?
snip>
Zoe
wrote:
>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in
>news:i33g81dbcrq5q6fpg...@4ax.com:
>
>> On Sun, 15 May 2005 13:13:22 GMT, Harlequin <use...@sdc.cox.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5lumrfiuei49n74ou36@
>>>4ax.com:
>>>
>>>> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
>>>
>>>
>>>Knowledge also includes theories, ideas, concepts, etc.
>>
>> yes... and? All theories, ideas, concepts, etc., if they are valid,
>> will consist of a collection of facts.
>
>
>I really am not going to accept the idea that an idea is a
>collection of facts regardless of its truth. If you
>want to use that then I am going ask that you show it.
read the above again. I have not said "regardless of its truth."
>
>Also a bit of confusion alert: "valid" does not mean that
>something is true.
"valid" according to the dictionary means "well-grounded on principles
or evidence; able to withstand criticism or objection." That's the
best you can expect in science.
> In deductive arguments, valid merely
>means that the reasoning is correct: given the truth of
>the assumptions the premise will be true. Even if the
>the assumptions are completely false, something can be
>completely valid.
is that why the isochron appears to be valid, even though its premise
is false? (Just to mention one area.)
>
>>>And must importantly of all, as others have already stated,
>>>knowledge includes understanding.
>>
>> for a fact to be stated accurately and truly reflect reality, it has
>> to be stated so it is understood. So if knowledge consists of facts
>> that have been understood, then, yes, I agree with you, knowledge
>> includes understanding.
>
>Be careful here. It is easy to rattle off facts without real
>understanding.
well, I have agreed with you. Are you saying that I don't understand
what you said? Or that YOU didn't understand what you said?
>> But can you address the point of this thread, please? Can a fact be
>> recognized as a single fact by a community of educated people?
>
>Without some kind of super technical and super precise definition of
>fact then debate of what a "single fact" is would be something that
>would be hard to get agreeement. But if one did have that very tight
>definition of fact then stuff that most everyone would think of as
>a "fact" would probably slip through.
so what about taxonomy and cladistics? Not a very tight field, and
yet evolutionists base their ideas of speciations on these arbitrary
classifications.
snip>
R. Baldwin
> On Mon, 16 May 2005 04:32:20 GMT, "R. Baldwin"
> <res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
>
> snip>
>
>>I should note that totaling up the number of steps in a set of
>>instructions
>>tells you nothing about the number of choices that were required to
>>develop
>>the instructions. The application of intelligence lies in those choices,
>>not
>>the number of instructions in the final product. And as I've said before,
>>simpler, more elegant designs take more applied intelligence than
>>complicated ones which do the same thing.
>
> if you understand the steps that were taken, then you understand how
> intelligence approached the construction. You don't need to know that
> the creator thought of three different subjects for an oil painting
> before settling on a still life scene. Nor do you have to know that
> the creator brooded deeply over what size canvas to use before
> choosing an 18x24 canvas. All that is necessary is for you to look at
> the final choices, copy the steps, and if you were able to analyze the
> painting accurately, and figure out all the steps, then you would have
> a total number of factual steps that, when built on each other,
> produced the creation.
>
Zoe, I've worked in design for over two decades. I've reverse-engineered
products, designed products, and transferred designs from another company to
mine. I am intimately familiar with the processes of design, and you are
dead wrong about equating production steps to intelligence. The steps to
make a a product are trivial compared to the decisions made in producing all
the necessary intellectual property.
You *do* need to know the decisions behind a design, because designs change
over time as laws and regulations change, materials go obsolete, new
materials become available, and new methods of processing become learned.
These changes introduce risk into the product, and knowledge of the design
choices is critical in reducing that risk.
Also, it is in the choices where the real intellectual investment is made.
The instructions for production are a rather trivial outcome of the design
process.
> I would question that a simpler, more elegant design takes less
> factual steps than a more complicated design. Often, when a design
> looks simple, it is because more factual steps went into simplifying
> the design.
Yes, this was precisely my point, and it runs counter to your proposed laws,
since you exclude the facts that went into simplying the design from your
fact count.
>
> snip>
>
>>> so, tell me, then, who would you consider to be more intelligent, the
>>> person who has a head full of knowledge but never applies it to
>>> real-life situations, or the one who can weave his knowledge into
>>> solutions or creations?
>>
>>Either one might be. I've known quite a few bright people who are unable
>>to
>>apply their knowledge to real problems. It doesn't make them any less
>>bright, but they do lack a certain skill set.
>
> okay, but in any event, I am not tryingn to measure intelligence in
> all people. I am measuring intelligence as seen in the creations of
> those who create. If some lack a certain skill set, this is not a
> commentary on their intelligence. Their skills lie elsewhere. But
> those who have the skill of creation will leave behind their creations
> so that we can determine how they made them.
And you are measuring the wrong thing. The number of steps needed to make
something does not correlate to the intelligence of the designer.
>
>> Being able to apply knowledge
>>has much to do with time management, judgement, interpersonal skills, and
>>a
>>willingness to take risks. The engineers I've known with these skills were
>>better at their jobs than the ones without, regardless of intelligence.
>
> I am not saying that if you don't create something you are not
> intelligent. I am saying that a person can have a wealth of knowledge
> and not be able to create certain things. It is the created things
> that I am interested in, not in measuring intelligence in all minds.
> How do created things reflect the intelligence of their creator?
>
Good question. If you can come up with some metric on designed objects that
actually does correlate to the IQ of the designer, you might have something.
I can promise you that the number of steps needed to produce the design will
not be that metric.
Harlequin
news:elfl81p7oauorvmlb...@4ax.com:
> On Tue, 17 May 2005 03:55:56 GMT, Harlequin <use...@sdc.cox.net>
> wrote:
>
>>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in
>>news:i33g81dbcrq5q6fpg...@4ax.com:
>>
>>> On Sun, 15 May 2005 13:13:22 GMT, Harlequin <use...@sdc.cox.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in
>>>>news:iccd8150ekd9ajc5lumrfiuei49n74ou36@ 4ax.com:
>>>>
>>>>> Knowledge is a collection of facts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Knowledge also includes theories, ideas, concepts, etc.
>>>
>>> yes... and? All theories, ideas, concepts, etc., if they are valid,
>>> will consist of a collection of facts.
>>
>>
>>I really am not going to accept the idea that an idea is a
>>collection of facts regardless of its truth. If you
>>want to use that then I am going ask that you show it.
> read the above again. I have not said "regardless of its truth."
Not a good phrasing on my part. How about: I simply am not
going to accept the idea that an idea is simply a collection
of facts.
>>Also a bit of confusion alert: "valid" does not mean that
>>something is true.
>
> "valid" according to the dictionary means "well-grounded on principles
> or evidence; able to withstand criticism or objection." That's the
> best you can expect in science.
>
>> In deductive arguments, valid merely
>>means that the reasoning is correct: given the truth of
>>the assumptions the premise will be true. Even if the
>>the assumptions are completely false, something can be
>>completely valid.
>
> is that why the isochron appears to be valid, even though its premise
> is false? (Just to mention one area.)
Still going on on isochrons! The premises of isochrons in the
end comes down to simple high-school chemistry and have been
shown to be correct via measurements.
>>>>And must importantly of all, as others have already stated,
>>>>knowledge includes understanding.
>>>
>>> for a fact to be stated accurately and truly reflect reality, it has
>>> to be stated so it is understood. So if knowledge consists of facts
>>> that have been understood, then, yes, I agree with you, knowledge
>>> includes understanding.
>>
>>Be careful here. It is easy to rattle off facts without real
>>understanding.
>
> well, I have agreed with you. Are you saying that I don't understand
> what you said? Or that YOU didn't understand what you said?
>
>>> But can you address the point of this thread, please? Can a fact be
>>> recognized as a single fact by a community of educated people?
>>
>>Without some kind of super technical and super precise definition of
>>fact then debate of what a "single fact" is would be something that
>>would be hard to get agreeement. But if one did have that very tight
>>definition of fact then stuff that most everyone would think of as
>>a "fact" would probably slip through.
>
> so what about taxonomy and cladistics? Not a very tight field, and
> yet evolutionists base their ideas of speciations on these arbitrary
> classifications.
Your classifications of "facts" are completely arbitary at least
until you give us some kind of method that can decide what a single
fact is.
Taxonomy actually is a very tight field. There are some arbitary
things in it, but that vast majority of it is NOT arbitary. What is
arbitary is things like should a taxa be given a rank of family or
subfamily. (And that is not a problem in cladistics for obvious
reasons if you know what cladistics means.) You also have uncertanly
caused by limited data, etc. However 99.999999% of
possible classifications cannot be true. Bats are not birds, for
example. See the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution article by
Dr. Theobald in the T.O. Archive.
Deadrat
> snip>
>
> John wrote:
>
<snip>
> >Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
> >fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
> >you justify this?
>
> the answer is yes. I justify it because each fact represents a single
> step in the creation of an item or system or program. What is being
> counted is the steps. Factual steps.
>
> It's like saying 1X plus 1X = 2 X where X represents any datum. The
> number "1" refers to the step. The "X" refers to the fact, whatever
> that fact might be. The value of the X is in the number one, not in
> the X itself.
>
> In any other math problem, X is allowed to be anything, and as long as
> you're adding X's, it will work. Let X be marbles, for instance. It
> doesn't matter if you're adding a blue marble and a red marble, as
> long as they're marbles, you can add them. Same with facts. It
> doesn't matter if the facts are "red" or "blue" or "green," as long as
> they are facts, you can add them.
>
First of all, can you prove 1+1=2? I'm not being facetious. How many
facts do you think it takes?
Your voyage of pure reason or intuition (i.e., without either mathematics or
empirical
evidence) will simply take you in circles. Consider the following examples:
1. Add a quart of water to a quart of alcohol. How many quarts do you get?
2. Add a one ohm resistor in parallel to another one ohm resistor. How many
ohms does the circuit have?
3. Call the number of integers Aleph-null (more exactly, Aleph-null is the
cardinality of the integers). Aleph-null + Aleph-null = Aleph-null.
4. Start at 11:00 AM. Add one hour and then another hour. You get
1:00 PM, not 13:00 A.M. If you think this isn't a fair example because I
used 11, consider that this is merely an example of modular arithmetic. In
arithmetic modulo 2, 1+1=0.
5. Suppose you're traveling at some known speed, call it 1 Zoe per hour, and
you have a gun that at rest propels bullets at 1 Zoe per hour. You fire the
gun
in the direction of your travel. Will the bullet's speed be 2 Zoe per
hour?
6. I still like my ZF example, in which four simple facts, each of unit 1,
adds
to a contradiction, i.e., 1+1+1+1 = 0. Why don't you like this one?
7. Consider a set of polarizing filters, each of which reduces the amount of
light that goes through it. You can set up two filters in sequence to block
all
light. It looks like each filter takes out half the light:
1 -1/2 + -1/2 = 0.
1 represents the light source, each -1/2 represents the action of a filter
(This is the same as 1+1 = 2. Just add 1+1 to each side thus:
1 + (1-1/2) + (1-1/2) = 0 + 1 + 1.
The lefthand side is 1 + 1/2 + 1/2 = 1+1
The righthand side is 2.)
Add a third filter, and you get some light where there was none. That's
gonna screw up that arithmetic.
If you're not going to define your terms mathematically, and you're not
going to rely on real-world examples, is it any wonder that you're going
around in circles?
Deadrat
<snip>
Deadrat
This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state what
premises in isochron dating are false?
> >>>And must importantly of all, as others have already stated,
> >>>knowledge includes understanding.
> >>
> >> for a fact to be stated accurately and truly reflect reality, it has
> >> to be stated so it is understood. So if knowledge consists of facts
> >> that have been understood, then, yes, I agree with you, knowledge
> >> includes understanding.
> >
> >Be careful here. It is easy to rattle off facts without real
> >understanding.
>
> well, I have agreed with you. Are you saying that I don't understand
> what you said? Or that YOU didn't understand what you said?
>
> >> But can you address the point of this thread, please? Can a fact be
> >> recognized as a single fact by a community of educated people?
> >
> >Without some kind of super technical and super precise definition of
> >fact then debate of what a "single fact" is would be something that
> >would be hard to get agreeement. But if one did have that very tight
> >definition of fact then stuff that most everyone would think of as
> >a "fact" would probably slip through.
>
> so what about taxonomy and cladistics? Not a very tight field, and
> yet evolutionists base their ideas of speciations on these arbitrary
> classifications.
>
I think you have some misconceptions here. Creationists, the ones with the
rigid and arbitrary classifications ("kinds") have a system with no
predictive
value whatsoever.
"Evolutionists" (or as they are known in the real world, biologists)
understand
that the lines between species are, exactly as they expect, blurry.
Biologists do
not base their ideas of speciation on these classifications. The base the
classifications on their ideas of speciation.
Deadrat
> snip>
>
R. Baldwin
> On Mon, 16 May 2005 03:50:41 GMT, "Deadrat" <no...@none.non> wrote:
>
> snip>
>
> zoe wrote:
>
>>> Are you able to recognize a single one-inch straight line, no matter
>>> where you find it in the creation of various items?
>>
>>Maybe. Define line. And don't draw me one.
>
> a line is a very thin, thread-like mark. That is the definition. If
> you don't know what "thin" means, then take a piece of thread and
> stretch it taut, and you have an example of what "thin" is. If you
> don't know what "thread" is, then some education is in order.
Actually, Zoe, in mathematics a line is a 1-dimensional object (straight,
with zero width and zero height), of infinite length in both directions (in
ordinary Euclidean geometry, anyway). If it is infinite in only one
direction it is a ray, and if the length is finite, it is a segment.
What you call a line is actually a three-dimensional coil of finite length
(look at your thread closely).
>
>>> If you can, then you are recognizing a single fact.
>>
>>Seems intuitively obvious, doesn't it? Just common sense.
>>But that's not the way science works. Because common sense
>>is often wrong. And anyway one person's common sense is
>>another's absurdity.
>
> no comment.
>
>> That's why people are asking you for
>>definitions that don't involve intuitive examples.
>
> "intuitive" is not necessarily wrong. If you intuitively know that a
> car is more complex than a cardboard box, then you just might turn out
> to be correct about that conclusion if you were to analyze why you
> intuitively know this.
Zoe, a trivial example does not demonstrate the validity of a proposition.
Eric Rowley
> On Mon, 16 May 2005 04:32:20 GMT, "R. Baldwin"
> <res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
> snip>
> >I should note that totaling up the number of steps in a set of
> >instructions tells you nothing about the number of choices that
> >were required to develop the instructions. The application of
> >intelligence lies in those choices, not the number of
> >instructions in the final product. And as I've said before,
> >simpler, more elegant designs take more applied intelligence
> >than complicated ones which do the same thing.
> if you understand the steps that were taken, then you understand
> how intelligence approached the construction. You don't need to
> know that the creator thought of three different subjects for an
> oil painting before settling on a still life scene. Nor do you
> have to know that the creator brooded deeply over what size
> canvas to use before choosing an 18x24 canvas.
But that _is_ how the intelligence approached the construction!
If you ignore that then you are concentrating on the production of
the item and ignoring the design.
It seems to me that the design stage is where intelligence plays
the greatest role, after the item has been designed the production
can be done by a machine with little or no intelligence.
> All that is
> necessary is for you to look at the final choices, copy the
> steps, and if you were able to analyze the painting accurately,
> and figure out all the steps,
But you can never do that precisely so...
> then you would have a total number
> of factual steps that, when built on each other,
> produced the creation.
... you'll have to settle for a number of steps that _could_
have produced the creation (if it is a creation).
> I would question that a simpler, more elegant design takes less
> factual steps than a more complicated design. Often, when a
> design looks simple, it is because more factual steps went into
> simplifying the design.
Yes but you are expressly ignoring those steps and looking only
at the final design.
> snip>
> >> so, tell me, then, who would you consider to be more
> >>intelligent, the person who has a head full of knowledge but
> >>never applies it to real-life situations, or the one who can
> >>weave his knowledge into >> solutions or creations?
> >Either one might be. I've known quite a few bright people who
> >are unable to apply their knowledge to real problems. It
> >doesn't make them any less bright, but they do lack a certain
> >skill set.
> okay, but in any event, I am not tryingn to measure intelligence
> in all people. I am measuring intelligence as seen in the
> creations of those who create.
I don't think you can do that, one designer might find an optimal
design through the application of a great deal of intelligence
while others using much less intelligence (or none whatsoever)
might find the same design through trial and error, perhaps over
generations of craftsmen (or millions of years of evolution)
slowly refining the design.
> If some lack a certain skill set,
> this is not a commentary on their intelligence. Their skills lie
> elsewhere. But those who have the skill of creation will leave
> behind their creations so that we can determine how they made
> them.
How they _could_have_been_ made!
<snip>
Eric
Eric Rowley
> snip>
> John wrote:
> >> >But it seems to me that there's no progress towards showing
> >> >that a fact can be a useful unit of knowledge, on two
> >> >counts:
> >> >1. The number of "facts" used to describe the same thing
> >> > deepends on the context of the explanation.
> >> I don't follow you on this one. Clarify.
> >The context consists of at least:
> >- your target audience
> no, the context consists only of the created item.
> >- the purpose of the explanation
> the purpose is to enumerate the steps taken in making a certain
> creation.
Why?
What exactly do you propose to do with that number once you get it?
> >If your target audience was a 7 year old child, and >the
purpose
> was to entertain them at the beach, you
> >could just have one "how" fact: >
> >1. Draw a house in the sand.
> this does not enumerate the steps taken in drawing the house.
No but it is a step in drawing a village.
> >If your target audience was 3 years old, you would need more
> >information about what a straight line was etc.
> so after you have educated the child about what a straight line
> is, and what a ruler is, and how it is used, you can next begin
> to tell him the steps in this particular creation. You tell
> him/her that the first step in the drawing of a house (let's
> make it on paper) is to draw a straight line one inch in length.
But that doesn't enumerate the steps taken in drawing the line.
Where do we stop?
> >If your target audience was a 20 year old who left
> >school early, and you were trying to demonstrate some
> >elementary geometry, your explanation would differ again.
> the steps should be the same, regardless of the audience. You
> might bundle some steps because the audience already knows the
> steps involved in the bundle, but bundling them does not mean
> the facts aren't still there.
But it does make it very hard to know exactly haw many facts
are involved, not that I understand why it is important to know
that.
> >Compare this to a unit of measurement of length:
> >Ask me how high I am, and I will give you a numeric answer in
> >those units: 70 inches. That answer will *not* be different if
> >a different person asks the 秀uestion. That answer will *not* be
> >different if you ask the question for different reasons.
> >Contrast this with your proposed unit of meaurement
> >of knowledge. For a specific task that you are measuring, the
> >number of facts will differ depending on the person you are
> >giving the answer to, and the
> >reason they are asking the question.
> the number of facts should remain the same, regardless of the
> audience.
But different people will disagree on exactly how many facts
there are.
> >> >2. The information content of each fact has not been shown
> >> > to be the same.
> >> a one-inch straight line is a one-inch straight line in any
> >> context. That never changes, does it?
> >I mean information content of *different* facts.
> >Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
> >fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
> >you justify this?
> the answer is yes.
But down below you say "no"?
> I justify it because each fact represents a
> single step in the creation of an item or system or program.
> What is being counted is the steps. Factual steps.
But how do you know that you are counting facts and not "sub facts"
or "bundles of facts".
And what difference does it make?
> It's like saying 1X plus 1X = 2 X where X represents any datum.
> The number "1" refers to the step. The "X" refers to the fact,
> whatever that fact might be. The value of the X is in the number
> one, not in the X itself.
Then you should think of another way of expressing it,
in mathematics the value is in both the "x" and the "1", if x is
zero then 1x is zero, if x is 198 then 1x is 198.
> In any other math problem, X is allowed to be anything,
Yes, but only one thing at a time!
> and as
> long as you're adding X's, it will work. Let X be marbles, for
> instance. It doesn't matter if you're adding a blue marble and a
> red marble, as long as they're marbles, you can add them. Same
> with facts. It doesn't matter if the facts are "red" or "blue"
> or "green," as long as they are facts, you can add them.
Ok, lets say that your drawing represents 25 "fact units" even
if the list contains 4 "fact bundles" or 75 "sub facts", what
does that number (25) tell you?
> > If your answer if no, then the
> >facts are like those proverbial pieces of string: just
> >counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
> the answer is "no."
Er, Zoe?
This is still the same question that you answered yes to up above,
so what _is_ your answer?
> >10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
> >not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
> >amount of knowledge.
> it's not about a lot or small knowledge. It is about determining
> what steps were taken in the building of an item. The facts have
> to be accurately described so that you don't have half a "red
> marble" and three-quarters of a "blue marble." If a construction
> step is adequately described, then you have a factual explanation
> of a single step in the creation of an item. And you can count
> all single facts.
And what does that tell you?
Even if you _could_ know that you had the correct number.
> >Note that it's not enough to just say that each is one fact,
> >and therefore contains the same amount of knowledge. That's
> >a just claim. I'm asking you to justify that claim.
> I am not saying that each fact contains the same amount of
> knowledge. Each fact is a single datum of a step taken in the
> creation of an item.
Therefore each step/datum/fact can represent a different amount of
knowledge/information/intelligence/applied knowledge, so what good
does simply counting steps/data/facts do you?
<snip>
> >I understand what "draw a house in the sand" means.
> >So for me, one fact would suffice.
> "draw a house" is not a single fact. If you are trying to
> explain how to draw a house, you would have to break it down
> for someone who didn't know how to draw. You would have to give
> each step so they could follow you.
You're being inconsistant, somewhere towards the top of this post
you say that someone who can't understand drawing should be
educated to a level where they can understand it.
So how do we know what the proper level of education is?
> Those steps are the facts.
> >This has nothing to do with insulting anyone's
> >intelligence. It's about determining if this is an
> >*independant*, *objective* measure.
> if you can describe to me how to make something you have
> created, and I am able to follow your steps, then your
> explanation has been very objective indeed.
It's not about the explaination, it's about deciding how many
steps to break it up into.
If his list contains 75 "sub facts" rather than your 25
"unit facts" then you can still understand it but his divisions
would (according to you) be wrong.
Same thing for a list of 4 "fact bundles" that you are educated
enough to follow.
Eric
John Drayton
left things out, but it's starting to become rather sprawling
and hiding the major points I think.
Also it's late and I'm tired, so this might be a little disjoint sorry.
"Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:i3cl81912c9lej552...@4ax.com...
> snip>
>
> John wrote:
>
> >> >But it seems to me that there's no progress towards showing
> >> >that a fact can be a useful unit of knowledge, on two counts:
> >> >1. The number of "facts" used to describe the same thing
> >> > deepends on the context of the explanation.
> >>
> >> I don't follow you on this one. Clarify.
> >
> >The context consists of at least:
> >- your target audience
<snip a whole bunch of stuff>
Rather than answer piecemeal, I''l try to summarize. Correct
me if you disagree.
The pupose of enumerating these creation facts is to be able to
measure the total amount of knowledge involved in this
particular creation. I.e. for the house drawing example, the aim
is to measure the amount of knowledge required to perform
this task.
Is this not what you were trying to do?
So, to measure the total amount of knowledge required for the
task, you would have to specify all the knowledge required, and
then measure it.
The first problem is that you have *not* specified all the knowledge
required. What you have attempted to do is to specify the
*additional* amount of knowledge required for someone who
already has an *assumed* amount of knowledge.
That is, you *assume* that the person following the instructions
is an educated person with a specific society. So clearly, you
have not measured the total amount of knowledge required for
the task, because you are *not* measuring this assumed existing
base of knowledge.
> >Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
> >fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
> >you justify this?
>
> the answer is yes.
You seem to contradict this below, so I'm not sure what you really think
> I justify it because each fact represents a single
> step in the creation of an item or system or program. What is being
> counted is the steps. Factual steps.
So you are counting the number of steps. I agrre you can count
the steps you have enumerated. This is still not a useful measure
of knowledge unless you can demonstrate that each step contains
the same amount of knowledge.
> It's like saying 1X plus 1X = 2 X where X represents any datum. The
> number "1" refers to the step. The "X" refers to the fact, whatever
> that fact might be.
This is only valid where X always represents the same thing.
If X = "a fact", then sure 1 X + 1 X = 2 X.
I.e. 1 fact + 1 fact = 2 facts. This is simply counting. I quite
happy to say that we can count things, including facts or steps.
But see below.
> The value of the X is in the number one, not in the X itself.
I can't make sense of this statement, sorry.
> In any other math problem, X is allowed to be anything, and as long as
> you're adding X's, it will work. Let X be marbles, for instance. It
> doesn't matter if you're adding a blue marble and a red marble, as
> long as they're marbles, you can add them. Same with facts. It
> doesn't matter if the facts are "red" or "blue" or "green," as long as
> they are facts, you can add them.
Sure. 1 marble + 1 marble = 2 marbles. Totally agree.
A problem arises however when you say: a marble has mass, so
if I count the marbles, I have measured the mass. This will only
be true if each marble has the same mass. You have to *show*
that this is the case for "marble" to be a useful measure of mass.
This is analogous to what you are doing. You are saying that facts
contain knowledge, therefore if I count the facts, I have measured
the amount of knowledge. I'm asking you to demonstrrate that
each fact does have the same amount of knowledge. You haven't
done that.
> > If your answer if no, then the
> >facts are like those proverbial pieces of string:
> >just counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
>
> the answer is "no."
> >
> >10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
> >not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
> >amount of knowledge.
>
> it's not about a lot or small knowledge. It is about determining what
> steps were taken in the building of an item. The facts have to be
> accurately described so that you don't have half a "red marble" and
> three-quarters of a "blue marble." If a construction step is
> adequately described, then you have a factual explanation of a single
> step in the creation of an item. And you can count all single facts.
Sure, you can count the facts, or steps. Then you will
have a count of the number of steps. But does each fact
contain the same *quantity* of knowledge as each other fact?
You haven't shown that this is so.
> >Note that it's not enough to just say that each is
> >one fact, and therefore contains the same amount of
> >knowledge. That's just a claim. I'm asking you to
> >justify that claim.
>
> I am not saying that each fact contains the same amount of knowledge.
Then how can counting the facts be a measure of knowlege?
If you have marbles that have different masses, counting the
marbles is not a measure of mass.
<snip a whole bunch more>
Back to the issue of context:
> >> >So which set of facts should we count?
> >>
> >> you count the fact that is commonly recognized.
> >
> >Commonly recognised by whom?
>
> by the educated.
>
> >Why don't we have to count the inches that are
> >commonly recognised when we are measuring length.
> >We just count inches.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "we don't have to count the inches," and
> in the next breath you say, "we just count inches.
Let me rephrase: we don't count the "inches commonly recognised
by educated people", we just count "inches". An inch is an inch,
without the need for this qualification.
The "facts" you are enumerating in attempting to measure knowledge
*do* require this qualification: facts commonly recognised by the
educated. Lets avoid for the moment the problems of identifying
and *quantifying* what "educated people" means.
In fact you have specified *too much* for an educated person.
For most people educated in a western country, *one* fact
would be enough: draw a house in the sand.
Why did you go to the extra detail?
How did you decide how much extra detail was enough?
Why not stop at:
1. draw walls
2. draw chimney
3. draw door.
<snip more>
> if you can describe to me how to make something you have created, and
> I am able to follow your steps, then your explanation has been very
> objective indeed.
I don't agree: the steps have been targetted towards a specific
person (or type of person).
--
John Drayton
Ernest Major
<muz...@aol.com> writes
>
>a line is a very thin, thread-like mark. That is the definition. If
>you don't know what "thin" means, then take a piece of thread and
>stretch it taut, and you have an example of what "thin" is. If you
>don't know what "thread" is, then some education is in order.
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Dave...@aol.com
> >If your target audience was a 20 year old who left
> >school early, and you were trying to demonstrate
> >some elementary geometry, your explanation would
> >differ again.
> the steps should be the same, regardless of the audience. You might
> bundle some steps because the audience already knows the steps
> involved in the bundle, but bundling them does not mean the facts
> aren't still there.
How do you communicate this to others, such that anyone can end
up with the same result?
While you might think 2+2=4 (or 1+1=2) is a single fact, you are
simply assuming that there is nothing to bundle.
However, anybody with a bachelor's degree (or higher) in mathematics
would be quite willing to tell you that you are incorrect, that
there are many, many, many facts involved in that simple computation.
This bundling isn't a problem if you're not trying to decompose the
computation, and most every day uses don't need to deconstruct how
arithmetic works. Just like one does not need to know the fine
details of how an internal combustion engine works in order to drive
the family car.
But if you're counting the individual steps necessary, you must
decompose everything if you wish to have a consistent result, no
matter who is looking at it.
> >Compare this to a unit of measurement of length:
> >Ask me how high I am, and I will give you a numeric
> >answer in those units: 70 inches. That answer will
> >*not* be different if a different person asks the
> >question. That answer will *not* be different if
> >you ask the question for different reasons.
> >
> >Contrast this with your proposed unit of meaurement
> >of knowledge. For a specific task that you are
> >measuring, the number of facts will differ depending
> >on the person you are giving the answer to, and the
> >reason they are asking the question.
> the number of facts should remain the same, regardless of the
> audience.
Then you _must_ decompose everything into indivisible pieces,
which was the point made back in prior threads.
If I ask you how many (indivisible) facts are involved in 2+2=4,
you'd probably give me the answer of 1.
If you ask a math professor how many indivisible facts are involved
in 2+2=4, you'll get a very large number, at least two orders of
magnitude different from your answer.
> >> >2. The information content of each fact has not been shown
> >> > to be the same.
> >> a one-inch straight line is a one-inch straight line in any
context.
> >> That never changes, does it?
> >I mean information content of *different* facts.
> >
> >Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
> >fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
> >you justify this?
> the answer is yes. I justify it because each fact represents a
single
> step in the creation of an item or system or program. What is being
> counted is the steps. Factual steps.
Here's two different approaches for the same thing, which would have
different numbers of facts, according to your metric.
1) 2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O.
Or:
1) Fill a vessel with 2 liters of hydrogen, at some pressure X.
2) Add to the vessel 1 liter of oxygen, at the same pressure X.
3) Remove the resultant water from the vessel.
Both produce water.
And how do the following statements compare in factual content?
1) Electrons have a negative charge.
2) Electrons have a charge.
> It's like saying 1X plus 1X = 2 X where X represents any datum. The
You really don't want to open that can of worms. Trust me.
> number "1" refers to the step. The "X" refers to the fact, whatever
> that fact might be. The value of the X is in the number one, not in
> the X itself.
You're not making sense.
> In any other math problem, X is allowed to be anything, and as long
as
> you're adding X's, it will work. Let X be marbles, for instance. It
> doesn't matter if you're adding a blue marble and a red marble, as
> long as they're marbles, you can add them. Same with facts. It
> doesn't matter if the facts are "red" or "blue" or "green," as long
as
> they are facts, you can add them.
No, not really.
How can you combine "Boron has an atomic number of 5" with "A triangle
has three angles, totalling 180 degrees?" (The latter is not true in
all circumstances, but we won't delve into that yet.)
> > If your answer if no, then the
> >facts are like those proverbial pieces of string:
> >just counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
> the answer is "no."
Make up your mind. You just said counting them is a measure of
knowlege.
> >10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
> >not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
> >amount of knowledge.
> it's not about a lot or small knowledge. It is about determining
what
> steps were taken in the building of an item. The facts have to be
> accurately described so that you don't have half a "red marble" and
I think you are referring to precision, not accuracy.
I can describe a square in one step.
A filled square is all points (inclusively) within the region bounded
by the x-axis, the y-axis, and the equations x = a, and y = a,
where a <> 0. (This doesn't describe all filled squares, but the
region described is indeed a square.)
And for a non-filled square:
A non-filled square is defined by the line segments necessary to
enclose a region defined by two sets of parallel lines, with the
angle of intersection being 90 degrees, and the distance between
the two lines of each set of parallel lines is the same for both
sets.
How do you compare this with your four steps?
Same end-product, different number of steps. Which demonstrates
more intelligence?
> >> >If the context of this explanation is that you are talking to
> >> >a person who understands all these things, then the fact
> >> >as it stands is quite adequate I would think.
> >> thank you for the concession. The posters on this forum are known
to
> >> be intelligent, so I took it for granted that I wouldn't have to
> >> reduce it any further. Surely everyone knows what a line is.
You can't take it for granted unless your context becomes specific
for an audience. If you are claiming that your facts are audience
independent, then your facts should be atomic and not be divisible
further.
> >But you have been claiming that the "how" facts can
> >stand alone.
> what I meant (if I didn't state it clearly) is that the fact of a
> "one-inch straight line" can stand by itself, but carries no meaning
> until it is found within a context. In this case, it is found within
> the context of a creation. Only within this context can the "how"
> facts be counted.
Unless you know what one, an inch, straightness, and a line are, your
fact is worthless.
> > Now you appear to be conceding that they
> >*do* require a context: there is a set of knowledge
> >that you are presuming, based upon who you think you
> >are describing the task to, and why you are describing
> >the task.
> no, again, the context is not who my target audience is. The context
> is strictly in describing the creation of an item, system, or
program.
> If the steps are accurately described and reduced to their simplest
> terms, then it doesn't matter the target audience. Anyone can come
> along and recreate the item. If the person is uneducated, then he
> educates himself before trying to follow the instructions on how to
> make the item.
Then you are hiding facts, and your counting is audience-specific,
since facts are contained in the education of the uneducated person
trying to follow the directions, and those steps must be included
if the measurement is to have any sort of accuracy and consistency.
> snip>
>
> >> the context of my explanation is that I am talking to educated
> >> posters.
> >So the unit of measurement *is* context sensitive.
> I stated that incorrectly. Thanks for forcing me to be more
rigorous.
>
> The context is always the creation of an item. The audience is not
> the context.
Then your facts should not be dependent on who your audience is.
But as you've demonstrated, you are assuming your audience is
sufficiently educated.
> >That is, the number of measured units (facts) depends
> >on who you are describing the task to.
> no, I'll restate. The number of measured units (facts) depends on
> which creation is being investigated.
How many facts does 2+2=4 contain?
> If it is phrased that a square was connected to a rectangle in
> such-and-such a manner, it does not change the count. It is just
> stated more succinctly. The creation of a square still consists of
> four facts -- four straight, one-inch lines, connected in a certain
> way. Or if you want to break that down further, you would simply
have
> more sub-parts of the single main fact, that a one-inch straight line
> is drawn.
I say a square is one fact. (Admittedly, it can be broken down, but
your measurement of a square as four facts can also be further broken
down.)
Either you can bundle facts, or you can't. If you can, then you have
no degree of consistency, and thus "facts" are a worthless unit of
measurement, since bundling is largely arbitrary.
If you can't bundle facts, then you have to sufficiently decompose
facts, usually far beyond most people's capability to understand,
or otherwise arrive at the same result. And this is assuming all
facts can be sufficiently decomposed, something which appears to
be in doubt.
> >Can you name me any other unit of measurement which
> >behaves like this?
> knowledge is the rule of measurement for creations. In the context
of
> creations, knowledge comes in the form of instructions, a series of
> single steps towards the construction of the item.
You didn't answer the question. What other unit of measurement in
common use behaves like the rules of knowledge you are attempting
to describe?
> >> >In *another* context (eg someone who knows what a square
> >> >is), the number of required facts for *the same task* could be
> >> >more or less.
> >> >
> >> >So which set of facts should we count?
> >>
> >> you count the fact that is commonly recognized.
> >Commonly recognised by whom?
> by the educated.
That's not very helpful. I imagine that a PhD in biology has an
entirely different set of "what is a fact" than a PhD in mechanical
engineering, who would have another different set from the PhD in
mathematics.
How do you consider something commonly recognized? Even arithmetic
isn't commonly recognized, and educated people can represent things
in different ways. You use 4 statements to represent a square,
I do it in one.
*snip*
> >> I didn't want to
> >> insult your intelligence by going even this basic, but I know that
if
> >> I took it for granted that you knew what a square was, that you
would
> >> instantly break it down to lines, so I saved you that step. Do
you
> >> need further reduction, then, in an admission that you don't
> >> understand what a straight line is?
> >
> >I understand what "draw a house in the sand" means.
> >So for me, one fact would suffice.
> "draw a house" is not a single fact. If you are trying to explain
how
> to draw a house, you would have to break it down for someone who
> didn't know how to draw. You would have to give each step so they
> could follow you. Those steps are the facts.
Then your facts _are_ audience sensitive, and thus counting them is
not useful for measuring them. Even something as simple as drawing
a line takes multiple steps, but you appear to be treating it as
one step.
> >This has nothing to do with insulting anyone's
> >intelligence. It's about determining if this is an
> >*independant*, *objective* measure.
> if you can describe to me how to make something you have created, and
> I am able to follow your steps, then your explanation has been very
> objective indeed.
No, it isn't. Independent and objective would imply that any entity
can produce the same product using the method you describe, without
any translation or additional information.
Even something as simple as drawing a line encompasses many many
steps to successfully do.
Jon Fleming
>On Mon, 16 May 2005 03:50:41 GMT, "Deadrat" <no...@none.non> wrote:
>
>snip>
>
>zoe wrote:
>
>>> Are you able to recognize a single one-inch straight line, no matter
>>> where you find it in the creation of various items?
>>
>>Maybe. Define line. And don't draw me one.
>
>a line is a very thin, thread-like mark. That is the definition. If
>you don't know what "thin" means, then take a piece of thread and
>stretch it taut, and you have an example of what "thin" is. If you
>don't know what "thread" is, then some education is in order.
Ah, you_ are beginning to understand! You know that you _still_
haven't come up with enough facts to define "line"! Yes, indeed, some
"education" is in order. In this case "education" is listing all the
facts required to understand what line is. Keep going, maybe in a
few centuries you'll have a complete list.
Computer scientists tried your approach already. Except for a few
special situations, it doesn't work.
Jon Fleming
You do _not_ want to go down that road. After nigh-on two years of
intense arguing and discussion and instruction, we finally got Zoe to
admit:
1. Five divided by zero is not five.
2. Given a set of measurements that can be made today,
geochronologists can derive an age that is correct if the premises (I
don't like the "untested" connotation of "assumptions) are met.
It is apparent, though Zoe will disagree with some of this:
1. Zoe is an old-Earth-young-life creationist, so she knows that all
dating of formations above fossils is wrong.
2. Zoe is incapable of saying which of a few premises of radioisotope
dating is (or are) always not met.
3. Zoe is incapable of coming up with a mechanism by which the ages
could all be wrong.
4. Zoe is capable of producing some spectacularly incorrect "graphs"
and "equations" and what-not to try to cast doubt on the method.
6. There is no hoop through which Zoe will not jump, there is no
level of improbability she will not postulate as certain,there is no
hypothetical mechanism she will not accept as real, if allows her to
avoid examining her preconceptions.
7. There is no written matter that Zoe cannot misunderstand and
insist interminably that her misunderstanding is Gospel.
8. Zoe projects that kind of behavior on all scientists and/or
denizens of t.o.
<snip>
Zoe
<bitbu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
snip>
>Rather than answer piecemeal, I''l try to summarize. Correct
>me if you disagree.
>
>The pupose of enumerating these creation facts is to be able to
>measure the total amount of knowledge involved in this
>particular creation. I.e. for the house drawing example, the aim
>is to measure the amount of knowledge required to perform
>this task.
>
>Is this not what you were trying to do?
as an aside, yes. Thanks to Deadrat. But the main focus is to show
that intelligence has consistent identifying characteristics that are
reflected in its created works. The main identifying characteristic
is that created items will always reflect a network of facts that
build on each other in the kind of organization that is never found in
uncreated things.
Uncreated things, for the present purpose of studying known mind-made
things, would be the raw materials that, by themselves, lie around
doing nothing new, but through intelligent manipulation, they come
together to make something new out of them.
The fact counting seems to have become necessary in order to compare
one system to another to determine the level of intelligence involved.
Maybe I'll leave the comparison of systems alone for now and return to
my main objective, which is to hopefully demonstrate that a consistent
characteristic of mind-made objects is the organization of facts
directly proportional to the level of intelligence.
Can this be done without the humbug of the "one fact" objections? I
don't know.
>
>So, to measure the total amount of knowledge required for the
>task, you would have to specify all the knowledge required, and
>then measure it.
why all knowledge? When you use a ruler, you don't use a ruler that
is the length of all possible lengths. You use a 12-inch ruler or a
36-inch tape measure, or a 72-inch measuring tape. Knowledge consists
of facts. The facts are the units of knowledge. The problem so far
is determining what constitutes a single fact, not how to specify all
knowledge.
>
>The first problem is that you have *not* specified all the knowledge
>required. What you have attempted to do is to specify the
>*additional* amount of knowledge required for someone who
>already has an *assumed* amount of knowledge.
>
>That is, you *assume* that the person following the instructions
>is an educated person with a specific society. So clearly, you
>have not measured the total amount of knowledge required for
>the task, because you are *not* measuring this assumed existing
>base of knowledge.
yes, I am assuming that I am stating my theory to persons who are
educated within a specific society -- western. And not to babies in
their cribs. A certain amount of basic education is taken for
granted. If I had to present it in Chinese, I would have to use
different symbols and terms.
There is no assumed existing base of knowledge. We only have a
dismantling of a creation and counting of the steps it took to make
the creation. I think this is doable.
>
>> >Does fact 1have the same amount of knowledge as
>> >fact 2? As fact 3? If your answer is yes, how do
>> >you justify this?
>>
>> the answer is yes.
>
>You seem to contradict this below, so I'm not sure what you really think
below, I meant no, the answer is not "no." I was disagreeing with
the statement by saying no. Too many negatives and it got confusing.
>
>> I justify it because each fact represents a single
>> step in the creation of an item or system or program. What is being
>> counted is the steps. Factual steps.
>
>So you are counting the number of steps. I agrre you can count
>the steps you have enumerated. This is still not a useful measure
>of knowledge unless you can demonstrate that each step contains
>the same amount of knowledge.
the goal is not to count knowledge, but facts. If you have one fact,
then you have one single datum of knowledge. The weight of a one-inch
straight line is not in the "one-inch" or the straightness of the
line. The weight is in the factual step that is executed to be built
upon in a creation.
If it were a two-inch straight line, this does not make knowledge
within that fact more in quantity or value than the one-inch straight
line fact. If the house had been drawn a little bigger, so that
instead of a one-inch straight line, you start with a two-inch
straight line, the knowledge content does not change just because you
are now using two inches instead of one. The knowledge remains the
same; i.e., the first step in the drawing of the house consists of a
single fact: draw a two-inch (or one-inch) straight line.
>
>> It's like saying 1X plus 1X = 2 X where X represents any datum. The
>> number "1" refers to the step. The "X" refers to the fact, whatever
>> that fact might be.
>
>This is only valid where X always represents the same thing.
>If X = "a fact", then sure 1 X + 1 X = 2 X.
>I.e. 1 fact + 1 fact = 2 facts. This is simply counting. I quite
>happy to say that we can count things, including facts or steps.
>But see below.
well, it seems that you're saying that you can't count facts because
it is impossible to recognize a single fact. What, then? Are you
mentally starting your count from fact two when you say something like
"those are a lot of facts"?
Either you can count facts or you can't. You just said that "we can
count things, including facts or steps.? If you think you can count
facts, you have to be able to recognize a single fact in order to be
able to start your count.
>
>> The value of the X is in the number one, not in the X itself.
>
>I can't make sense of this statement, sorry.
you are trying to make the VALUE of X be the thing that is counted.
But it is the number "1" that is counted, not the X. The X only
identifies what you are counting.
>
>> In any other math problem, X is allowed to be anything, and as long as
>> you're adding X's, it will work. Let X be marbles, for instance. It
>> doesn't matter if you're adding a blue marble and a red marble, as
>> long as they're marbles, you can add them. Same with facts. It
>> doesn't matter if the facts are "red" or "blue" or "green," as long as
>> they are facts, you can add them.
>
>Sure. 1 marble + 1 marble = 2 marbles. Totally agree.
>
>A problem arises however when you say: a marble has mass, so
>if I count the marbles, I have measured the mass. This will only
>be true if each marble has the same mass. You have to *show*
>that this is the case for "marble" to be a useful measure of mass.
a marble is a marble, regardless of if it is large or small, red,
blue, or green. If you're counting mass, then that's a different
problem. You would say 1marble mass + 1 marble mass = 2 marble mass.
The answer will be in mass content. Mass does not have to look the
same in order to be counted. It just needs to be the same
thing--mass.
>
>This is analogous to what you are doing. You are saying that facts
>contain knowledge, therefore if I count the facts, I have measured
>the amount of knowledge. I'm asking you to demonstrrate that
>each fact does have the same amount of knowledge. You haven't
>done that.
if you count marble mass, you have measured the amount of mass in the
marbles. If you count marbles, regardless of mass, then you have
measured the quantity of marbles.
If I were counting factual knowledge, then I would be measuring the
amount of factual knowledge. If I count facts, regardless of what
knowledge the fact describes, then I have measured the quantity of
facts, not the knowledge.
The thing is to agree as to what is a single fact. Not based on the
kind of knowledge expressed in the fact, but based on if the fact can
be considered a single complete step in the creation of an item.
>
>> > If your answer if no, then the
>> >facts are like those proverbial pieces of string:
>> >just counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
>>
>> the answer is "no."
>> >
>> >10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
>> >not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
>> >amount of knowledge.
>>
>> it's not about a lot or small knowledge. It is about determining what
>> steps were taken in the building of an item. The facts have to be
>> accurately described so that you don't have half a "red marble" and
>> three-quarters of a "blue marble." If a construction step is
>> adequately described, then you have a factual explanation of a single
>> step in the creation of an item. And you can count all single facts.
>
>Sure, you can count the facts, or steps. Then you will
>have a count of the number of steps. But does each fact
>contain the same *quantity* of knowledge as each other fact?
>You haven't shown that this is so.
I'm not counting quantity of knowledge within a single fact. E=mc2
has a lot more knowledge than "glue two cardboard ends." But it is
just as single a fact as is glued cardboard is a fact.
>
>> >Note that it's not enough to just say that each is
>> >one fact, and therefore contains the same amount of
>> >knowledge. That's just a claim. I'm asking you to
>> >justify that claim.
>>
>> I am not saying that each fact contains the same amount of knowledge.
>
>Then how can counting the facts be a measure of knowlege?
>If you have marbles that have different masses, counting the
>marbles is not a measure of mass.
Just as I am not counting mass of marbles, but marbles, so I am not
counting knowledge, but facts within a creation; counting organization
of facts as a measure of knowledge. Deadrat successfully got me off
on a tangent as to unit of measure.
The level of order or organization in a system is directly
proportional to the level of intelligence. That is what is being
counted. Low level of organization, less intelligence needed to put
the item together. High level of organization, more intelligence
needed. No organization, no intelligence evident.
snip>
>
>Let me rephrase: we don't count the "inches commonly recognised
>by educated people", we just count "inches". An inch is an inch,
>without the need for this qualification.
there was a time when it had to be agreed that an inch is what we
recognize as an inch today. In ancient times, a cubit was the
distance from a man's elbow to his middle finger. That eventually had
to be qualified. An inch is an arbitrary, agreed-upon divide.
>
>The "facts" you are enumerating in attempting to measure knowledge
no, no, no, not to measure knowledge, but to measure level of
organization in a directly proportional relationship to intelligence.
>*do* require this qualification: facts commonly recognised by the
>educated. Lets avoid for the moment the problems of identifying
>and *quantifying* what "educated people" means.
>
>In fact you have specified *too much* for an educated person.
>For most people educated in a western country, *one* fact
>would be enough: draw a house in the sand.
"draw a house in the sand" does not tell you what steps were taken to
draw the house.
>
>Why did you go to the extra detail?
because I want to see what steps were taken in drawing the house. How
did the person use his mental ability to organize lines to draw a
house.
>
>How did you decide how much extra detail was enough?
if, by following my instructions, the same house can be reproduced,
then you have sufficiently detailed the steps. If you can't, then you
have not sufficiently detailed the steps.
>
>Why not stop at:
>1. draw walls
>2. draw chimney
>3. draw door.
because you can break down "draw walls" into steps. Where do you put
the walls? How high must they be? Are the walls upright or
slanting? "Draw walls" has more facts within that instruction if you
are going to accurately reproduce the drawn house.
>
><snip more>
>
>> if you can describe to me how to make something you have created, and
>> I am able to follow your steps, then your explanation has been very
>> objective indeed.
>
>I don't agree: the steps have been targetted towards a specific
>person (or type of person).
any person who can learn English and become educated as to the common
tools of the language should be able to reproduce the house. That is
the only audience I am targeting right now.
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
>While you might think 2+2=4 (or 1+1=2) is a single fact, you are
>simply assuming that there is nothing to bundle.
>
>However, anybody with a bachelor's degree (or higher) in mathematics
>would be quite willing to tell you that you are incorrect, that
>there are many, many, many facts involved in that simple computation.
isn't this getting kind of ridiculous now? Sure you can philosophize
anything into the ground and prove a point. But the fact remains
(maybe I should say "the facts" remain) that we are able to count
single items every day without feeling the necessity of showing that a
single thing should not and cannot be counted because it is too
complex.
It's like saying that you can't add 2 cars + 2 cars because cars are
so complex that they really consist of many different parts which, of
themselves cannot be added together because they differ from each
other. So, therefore, don't even try to add such a thing as cars.
If you can recognize a car, then you can count cars. If you can
recognize a fact, you can count facts.
If this weren't an argument about creation, I am betting that there
would be no problem in recognizing a fact, regardless of the content
of the fact.
snip rest because I would really like to get back on track with my
beleaguered creation theory.>
Zoe
snip>
>> is that why the isochron appears to be valid, even though its premise
>> is false? (Just to mention one area.)
>
>This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state what
>premises in isochron dating are false?
one false premise, in my opinion, is that the isochron is based on
100% magma mixing. The beginning ratio of D to Di product is assumed
to be from a homogenous mix so you can start your isochron plot from
0. But to get the kind of thorough mix that would start the isochron
off at zero, you would have to have the kind of movement of the earth
that would blend the mix thoroughly -- violent and prolonged shaking,
for starters. The premise that magma can sit quietly for billions of
years and eventually the products will become thoroughly mixed, flies
in the face of what is seen of what it takes to homogenize. Magma is
not a gas, so why should the mixing of gas particles be used as an
example of how magma becomes homogenized?
That is one premise that I consider to be in question. If you want
the rest of it, you can do a google on "isochron, zoe," and wear
yourself out.
snip>
Harlequin
news:o5gq81hijajlqo209...@4ax.com:
That "assumption" can very easily be tested. It has been
tested. All you have to do is get historic samples and
plot isochron graphs.
Your chemically misinformed talk is always trumpted by evidence.
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
deadrat asked:
>>This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state what
>>premises in isochron dating are false?
>You do _not_ want to go down that road. After nigh-on two years of
>intense arguing and discussion and instruction, we finally got Zoe to
>admit:
>
>1. Five divided by zero is not five.
I still maintain that it depends on how the question is asked. If the
question is "What happens to five if you divide it up zero times?"
The answer will be five, because nothing has happened to five. It
remains itself.
Of course, I finally agreed that I could not use the same symbols used
for standard math, since the question already understood in
5/0=indefinite is: "How many times can five be divided by zero?" In
my question, I proffer a back slash in the equation as an indication
that a different question is being asked. So 5\0=5. Welcome to the
world of zoemath.
>2. Given a set of measurements that can be made today,
>geochronologists can derive an age that is correct if the premises (I
>don't like the "untested" connotation of "assumptions) are met.
and I maintained that the premises were not just unmet; they were
false. The earth is not an osterizer that blends magma to a
homogenous mix that can be used in isochron calculations.
>It is apparent, though Zoe will disagree with some of this:
>
>1. Zoe is an old-Earth-young-life creationist, so she knows that all
>dating of formations above fossils is wrong.
I don't know about "knows." I just think that there are other ways of
looking at the same data and coming to a different but reasonable
interpretation.
>2. Zoe is incapable of saying which of a few premises of radioisotope
>dating is (or are) always not met.
read the isochron threads to see if Jon is correct on this point.
>3. Zoe is incapable of coming up with a mechanism by which the ages
>could all be wrong.
didn't get that far -- notice how long it took on the isochron thread?
Finally wore me out. Just like how I'm getting bogged down now in
what is a fact so that I can't move on to a mechanism for creation
theory.
>4. Zoe is capable of producing some spectacularly incorrect "graphs"
>and "equations" and what-not to try to cast doubt on the method.
let each decide for themselves, if they feel up to wading through two
years worth of argument.
>6. There is no hoop through which Zoe will not jump, there is no
>level of improbability she will not postulate as certain,there is no
>hypothetical mechanism she will not accept as real, if allows her to
>avoid examining her preconceptions.
>
>7. There is no written matter that Zoe cannot misunderstand and
>insist interminably that her misunderstanding is Gospel.
>
>8. Zoe projects that kind of behavior on all scientists and/or
>denizens of t.o.
nice to see you, Jon, btw.
apieceo...@hotmail.com
apieceo...@hotmail.com
Zoe wrote:
<snip>
> deadrat asked:
<snip>
> >You do _not_ want to go down that road. After nigh-on two years of
> >intense arguing and discussion and instruction, we finally got Zoe
to
> >admit:
> >
> >1. Five divided by zero is not five.
>
> I still maintain that it depends on how the question is asked. If
the
> question is "What happens to five if you divide it up zero times?"
> The answer will be five, because nothing has happened to five. It
> remains itself.
>
> Of course, I finally agreed that I could not use the same symbols
used
> for standard math, since the question already understood in
> 5/0=indefinite is: "How many times can five be divided by zero?" In
> my question, I proffer a back slash in the equation as an indication
> that a different question is being asked. So 5\0=5. Welcome to the
> world of zoemath.
<snip>
... to which I reply with the challenge:
5 \ 0.5 = ?
Harlequin
news:6mgq819qhhgq0mrro...@4ax.com:
> On 18 May 2005 18:45:02 -0500, Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com>
> wrote:
>
> snip>
>
> deadrat asked:
>
>>>This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state
>>>what premises in isochron dating are false?
>
>>You do _not_ want to go down that road. After nigh-on two years of
>>intense arguing and discussion and instruction, we finally got Zoe to
>>admit:
>>
>>1. Five divided by zero is not five.
>
> I still maintain that it depends on how the question is asked. If the
> question is "What happens to five if you divide it up zero times?"
> The answer will be five, because nothing has happened to five. It
> remains itself.
And you are still wrong. You still seem to to think that the
definition of division is arbitary. In the end it does not matter
whether or to phrase some "question" for division or not.
In real math, division is not defined by how many times one can divide
something. That is simply a useful way to explain it to
grade school students. In mathematics division is defined as
the inverse of multiplication. If you know what multiplication is,
then what division is automatic. In the math of the isochron, it
is _very_ clear that the inverse of multiplication is involved.
> Of course, I finally agreed that I could not use the same symbols used
> for standard math, since the question already understood in
> 5/0=indefinite is: "How many times can five be divided by zero?" In
> my question, I proffer a back slash in the equation as an indication
> that a different question is being asked. So 5\0=5. Welcome to the
> world of zoemath.
I have yet to see you get any reason for defining your "\" operation
besides as a way to avoid admitting that you were wrong. Anyone can
define endless operations. The real question is what use is any
operation you define. What possible practical or mathematical use can
"\" be put to? If you can't give a good answer to that beyond defining
it for the sake of defining it then you are simply blowing hot air.
>>2. Given a set of measurements that can be made today,
>>geochronologists can derive an age that is correct if the premises (I
>>don't like the "untested" connotation of "assumptions) are met.
>
> and I maintained that the premises were not just unmet; they were
> false. The earth is not an osterizer that blends magma to a
> homogenous mix that can be used in isochron calculations.
I should have mentioned that in my previous post: isochron dating
simply does NOT assume that. The entire Earth does need to be
homogenous. Only the lava which the samples came from. And furthermore
the only thing that needs to be homogenous is the D/Di.
As I said before, that is very easy to test and it has been tested.
No amount of rationalizations will change this Zoe: your claim
is completely falsified:
1) If lava was not homogenous, no isochron will form whatsoever expect
for _extremely_ unlikley chance events.
2) New lava can be tested and it really does give an isochron with
a horizontal line. That is all the isochron need in respect to
initial composion of samples.
--
Jeff Rosenberg
>On 18 May 2005 15:29:04 -0700, "Dave...@aol.com" <Dave...@aol.com>
>wrote:
>
>snip>
>
>>While you might think 2+2=4 (or 1+1=2) is a single fact, you are
>>simply assuming that there is nothing to bundle.
>>
>>However, anybody with a bachelor's degree (or higher) in mathematics
>>would be quite willing to tell you that you are incorrect, that
>>there are many, many, many facts involved in that simple computation.
>
>isn't this getting kind of ridiculous now? Sure you can philosophize
>anything into the ground and prove a point. But the fact remains
>(maybe I should say "the facts" remain) that we are able to count
>single items every day without feeling the necessity of showing that a
It is quite in doubt whether this is a "fact" or not.
>single thing should not and cannot be counted because it is too
>complex.
"Too complex" really misses the point. "Decomposable" and/or
"dependent" are the problems; even a little bit of such "complexity"
would be too much.
>
>It's like saying that you can't add 2 cars + 2 cars because cars are
>so complex that they really consist of many different parts which, of
>themselves cannot be added together because they differ from each
>other. So, therefore, don't even try to add such a thing as cars.
Well, if cars were facts - or, more to the point, if facts were cars -
then this analogy might be helpful.
As it is, this reasoning displays what I would call the "fallacy of
the concretized abstraction" - the notion that, if you can create any
abstract notion or category, and throw a word on it, then you have
some kind of "real thing" that has existence. I am not enough of a
Platonist to go along with that; even Plato would, I suspect, object
to it in this case. Just because there is a word, "fact," doesn't
mean you can add facts, or, for that matter, do anything else specific
to them. And as for being able to recognize them, that isn't the
point, either - although I would contend it is entirely unclear we can
do that (in an agreed way), if by "fact" we mean "true fact."
Regardless of that point, however, the problem is that we cannot - in
most cases - recognize that something is a SINGLE fact, in any
unambiguous sense, simply because the notion of fact is recursive.
That is, the definition of what constitutes a fact includes various
kinds of propositions that involve the composition or relation of
other facts. To think that by relabeling such a composition as a
single fact we somehow reduce the "quantity" of knowledge involved,
compared to what we have if we account for the component facts
individually, throws away all pretense that we are measuring anything
significant. In particular, it is not a quantity that different
observers will be able to agree on the value of, and it is not a
quantity that will obey any kind of "conservation" principle.
Advances in the quantification of phenomena inherently depend on those
two properties. The very ability to quantify the notion of "mass" (in
the modern sense) as the "quantity of matter" was only possible when
its conservation was assumed and "F=ma" allowed for a consistent basis
of measurement.
>
>If you can recognize a car, then you can count cars. If you can
>recognize a fact, you can count facts.
As for the example of cars, it misses the point completely. We can
count cars because the components of cars are not other cars.
However, if we were trying to count "manufactured objects," we would
have a LOT more trouble: a car is manufactured, but so are all of its
components, many of which contain manufactured objects as
subcomponents, in turn (and often for several layers down).
>
>If this weren't an argument about creation, I am betting that there
>would be no problem in recognizing a fact, regardless of the content
>of the fact.
Note that none of these fundamental objections have anything to do
with the specific topic under consideration. There is also the fact
that equating "quantity of knowledge" to a counting of facts (even if
that would be feasible) is itself, as I believe has been mentioned
previously in this thread, subject to quite a bit of debate. It is
somewhat like equating "quantity of transportation" to "number of
vehicles" - sounds helpful, but it just leaves out too much.
Jeff
apieceo...@hotmail.com
Come to think of it, let's start simpler:
2 \ 1 = ?
I presume 2 \ 1 = 1 (since you're dividing 2 up once; presumably in
half)
so
2 \ 1 = 1
and we all know 4\2 = 2\1, right? ;)
2 \ 1 = 1
4 \ 2 = 1.33~
1 = 1.33~?
Hmm.
josephus
Zoe wrote:
actually, yes there would. You do not use facts in a reasonable way.
You try to itemize them. You can list them but not count them the way
you want. I have given you ways to asset facts. You do not use them.
Deadrat has given you ways to assert facts . You do not use them.
As far as I know you cannot make a creationist theory. It is not
possible. You do not truly understand. Your assumptions are false.
look at the definition of science. it is the explanation and
documentation of discrete, reproducible data. The TOE, evolution is
just that an explanation of all the data and its characteristics. It
allows us to organize the data. There is no place in this description
for supernatural activities. Not GOD, Not ghosts, Not PSI Not telepathy
not psychic Healing, Only demonstrable, reproducible assertions and
data. anything you assert will be checked by someone you do not know.
The only way to be accepted is to be reproducible.
for this reason I believe you cannot make a creationist theory.
josephus
Deadrat
> On Wed, 18 May 2005 06:12:04 GMT, "Deadrat" <no...@none.non> wrote:
>
> snip>
>
> >> is that why the isochron appears to be valid, even though its premise
> >> is false? (Just to mention one area.)
> >
> >This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state what
> >premises in isochron dating are false?
>
> one false premise, in my opinion, is that the isochron is based on
> 100% magma mixing. The beginning ratio of D to Di product is assumed
> to be from a homogenous mix so you can start your isochron plot from
> 0. But to get the kind of thorough mix that would start the isochron
> off at zero, you would have to have the kind of movement of the earth
> that would blend the mix thoroughly -- violent and prolonged shaking,
> for starters. The premise that magma can sit quietly for billions of
> years and eventually the products will become thoroughly mixed, flies
> in the face of what is seen of what it takes to homogenize. Magma is
> not a gas, so why should the mixing of gas particles be used as an
> example of how magma becomes homogenized?
>
Oh, how unfortunate. Magma is a hot fluid. I doubt that shaking is
required to make samples homogenous. Do you understand the
circulation of matter in hot fluids? Someone who is as shy about
mathematics as you are probably hasn't studied the differential
equations necessary to understand this subject. Without the
DiffE, how do you come to be so assured?
Deadrat
Deadrat
> On 18 May 2005 18:45:02 -0500, Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com>
> wrote:
>
> snip>
>
> deadrat asked:
>
> >>This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state what
> >>premises in isochron dating are false?
>
> >You do _not_ want to go down that road. After nigh-on two years of
> >intense arguing and discussion and instruction, we finally got Zoe to
> >admit:
> >
> >1. Five divided by zero is not five.
>
> I still maintain that it depends on how the question is asked. If the
> question is "What happens to five if you divide it up zero times?"
> The answer will be five, because nothing has happened to five. It
> remains itself.
>
> Of course, I finally agreed that I could not use the same symbols used
> for standard math, since the question already understood in
> 5/0=indefinite is: "How many times can five be divided by zero?" In
> my question, I proffer a back slash in the equation as an indication
> that a different question is being asked. So 5\0=5. Welcome to the
> world of zoemath.
>
Is it necessary in zoemath to give definitions of your operators? In actual
math, operators are related to the mathematical structures of the sets on
which they operate. Does this happen in zoemath?
Deadrat
<snip>
Deadrat
> It's like saying that you can't add 2 cars + 2 cars because cars are
> so complex that they really consist of many different parts which, of
> themselves cannot be added together because they differ from each
> other. So, therefore, don't even try to add such a thing as cars.
>
We're all pretty sure we can count cars. You want to count facts.
Fine. But facts aren't cars, and it won't do to have a blithe assurance
that because you can count the former, you can count the latter.
I gave you seven examples of times when 1+1 doesn't equal 2.
> If you can recognize a car, then you can count cars. If you can
> recognize a fact, you can count facts.
>
> If this weren't an argument about creation, I am betting that there
> would be no problem in recognizing a fact, regardless of the content
> of the fact.
This simply isn't true. Some very sharp minds have wrestled
unsuccessfully with this topic. Wittgenstein, for one. Have you
read any of the philosophers who wrote about this? If not, why
not?
Deadrat
>
> snip rest because I would really like to get back on track with my
> beleaguered creation theory.>
>
Consider, please, the following story:
Two students enroll in an electronic circuits class, let's call them
Alice and Andrew. The professor tells them the class project
is to design and build a device that recognizes a single spoken
English word. They have all semester and access to as much
computer time for testing and simulations as they want, but at
the end of the semester, every student has to actually build a
device. They each have access to whatever parts they want,
and they all have access to the same computing facilities.
They will be graded on how well the device works and
how well the device is designed -- how elegant it is, how few
extraneous parts it has, how much power it uses, and so on.
For purposes of this exercise, we don't have to know much about
the components. Presumably, there's an input circuit that converts
sound to electricity, and circuits that perform various logic functions,
which circuits can be wired together (i.e., outputs from one to the
input of another), and an output circuit that can signal on or off, to
indicate, respectively, whether the word spoken is the magic one or
not.
Alice is a crack designer and superb electrical engineering student.
She understands intuitively how to wire up circuits to meet the
requirements, and she gets busy writing a design, testing it, and
refining it.
Andrew actually wants to be chef. If only his father would understand ....
He's hopeless. For the first few weeks, he tries his best, but his devices
don't seem to work very well. He figures that he not up to Alice's
standard,
so he comes up with an alternative. He'll take one of his partially
completed
works and just make random changes. He'll evaluate each change, and if
it works better than the previous model, he'll keep the change; if it
doesn't
work as well, he'll discard it. He isn't clever enough to think through the
effect of any of the changes, so he just comes up with some simple rules
that he'll always follow. These rules tell him how to take the current
version of his project and modify it for evaluation. Notice the rules don't
have anything to do with voice recognition and processing.
At the end of the semester, Alice and Andrew turn in their projects.
These are created objects -- we know the creators -- and since
Alice is a star pupil, we know her device works. Now, given your
understanding of facts and their relationship to design, could you tell
me
1. How well do you think that Andrew's device will work?
Better than Alice's? Worse? The same?
2. Whose project uses more facts?
3. Whose device is simpler, more elegant, more energy efficient?
You may pick your own attribute of design here, if you don't like
this list.
4. whether the professor will be able to understand how Andrew's device
works (if it does) or why it fails (if it doesn't work)?
Deadrat
R. Baldwin
news:9Veje.3136$VS6....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...
>
> "Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:ogfq815g1j9qkta52...@4ax.com...
>> On 18 May 2005 15:29:04 -0700, "Dave...@aol.com" <Dave...@aol.com>
>> wrote:
>>
This reminds me of a true story about an RCA engineer, back in the vacuum
tube days, who began removing parts from a television until it didn't work
anymore. The last part removed was then put back. The resulting design was
more reliable than the original one.
jo...@dix.mines.edu
Ok. You have just shown that "fact" is a pretty slippery concept. In
the context of Zoe's imprecise language " 5 divided by 0" is like
asking "how much of a pie do I have if I make 0 cuts". That is
imprecise
because, well, you could say that you have "0 slices" or you have
"a full pie".
In the precise usage of mathematical language we say that
we can factor 5 into two factors m and n such that:
n times m = 5
m = 5/n
but, if n=0, then there exists no value of m such that
0 times m = 5. so division by zero is undefined in arithmetic.
[... snip...]
Each of the other numbered points on this list that I have deleted
are examples of Zoe beginning with her Biblical-literalist derived
metaphysics colouring the notion of "fact". A fact is not so easy
to define.
John Stockwell | jo...@dix.Mines.EDU
Center for Wave Phenomena (The Home of Seismic Un*x)
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, CO 80401 | http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes
voice: (303) 273-3049
Dave...@aol.com
> snip>
> >While you might think 2+2=4 (or 1+1=2) is a single fact, you are
> >simply assuming that there is nothing to bundle.
> >
> >However, anybody with a bachelor's degree (or higher) in mathematics
> >would be quite willing to tell you that you are incorrect, that
> >there are many, many, many facts involved in that simple
computation.
> isn't this getting kind of ridiculous now? Sure you can philosophize
> anything into the ground and prove a point. But the fact remains
> (maybe I should say "the facts" remain) that we are able to count
> single items every day without feeling the necessity of showing that
a
> single thing should not and cannot be counted because it is too
> complex.
Counting a single item is indeed possible and necessary, especially
when said items are tangible.
Counting intangible items is another kettle of fish, if it is even
possible.
> It's like saying that you can't add 2 cars + 2 cars because cars are
> so complex that they really consist of many different parts which, of
> themselves cannot be added together because they differ from each
> other. So, therefore, don't even try to add such a thing as cars.
>
> If you can recognize a car, then you can count cars. If you can
> recognize a fact, you can count facts.
Recognizing a fact is indeed possible.
Recognizing a fact as a single, indivisible fact is not necessarily so.
If you cannot find a formulation that allows a consistent means of
identifying single, indivisible facts, using them as a means of
measurement is completely useless, since some smart-ass will end
up finding dividing them necessary.
Counting cars is quite easy, since cars can't be divided without
rendering them into what is not cars. (Or more accurately, there
is still at most only one car post-division. A car without the
drivers seat is still a car, but the seat is not.) Rendering a
single factual statement into component pieces leaves you with
multiple factual statements.
> If this weren't an argument about creation, I am betting that there
> would be no problem in recognizing a fact, regardless of the content
> of the fact.
No, if you had been paying attention in earlier threads, you would
know that there is discussion (with no resolution in sight) over
dividing facts.
> snip rest because I would really like to get back on track with my
> beleaguered creation theory.>
If you cannot find a _consistent_ means of determining the facts
inherent in an object (which requires indivisibility), then any
hypothesis or theory which requires counting facts will be utterly
useless.
Dave...@aol.com
*snips*
> The fact counting seems to have become necessary in order to compare
> one system to another to determine the level of intelligence
involved.
> Maybe I'll leave the comparison of systems alone for now and return
to
> my main objective, which is to hopefully demonstrate that a
consistent
> characteristic of mind-made objects is the organization of facts
> directly proportional to the level of intelligence.
If you cannot get a consistent definition of fact, then "directly
proportional" has no meaning, since there is no consistent quantity
to be directly proportional to.
> Can this be done without the humbug of the "one fact" objections? I
> don't know.
> >
> >So, to measure the total amount of knowledge required for the
> >task, you would have to specify all the knowledge required, and
> >then measure it.
>
> why all knowledge? When you use a ruler, you don't use a ruler that
> is the length of all possible lengths. You use a 12-inch ruler or a
> 36-inch tape measure, or a 72-inch measuring tape. Knowledge
consists
> of facts. The facts are the units of knowledge. The problem so far
> is determining what constitutes a single fact, not how to specify all
> knowledge.
All knowledge required for the task, not the set of all knowledge.
And if you can specify a consistent definition of a single fact (which
would appear to require indivisibility to have any sort of
consistency),
you can probably (with a great deal of effort) specify all knowledge.
> >The first problem is that you have *not* specified all the knowledge
> >required. What you have attempted to do is to specify the
> >*additional* amount of knowledge required for someone who
> >already has an *assumed* amount of knowledge.
> >
> >That is, you *assume* that the person following the instructions
> >is an educated person with a specific society. So clearly, you
> >have not measured the total amount of knowledge required for
> >the task, because you are *not* measuring this assumed existing
> >base of knowledge.
> yes, I am assuming that I am stating my theory to persons who are
> educated within a specific society -- western. And not to babies in
> their cribs. A certain amount of basic education is taken for
> granted. If I had to present it in Chinese, I would have to use
> different symbols and terms.
>
> There is no assumed existing base of knowledge. We only have a
You just said there _IS_ an assumed existing base of knowledge,
since you are assuming that the audience is educated within a
specific society, is of sufficient age, etc.
> dismantling of a creation and counting of the steps it took to make
> the creation. I think this is doable.
Not until you come up with a method of determining what is a
single (indivisible) step.
*snip*
> >This is only valid where X always represents the same thing.
> >If X = "a fact", then sure 1 X + 1 X = 2 X.
> >I.e. 1 fact + 1 fact = 2 facts. This is simply counting. I quite
> >happy to say that we can count things, including facts or steps.
> >But see below.
>
> well, it seems that you're saying that you can't count facts because
> it is impossible to recognize a single fact. What, then? Are you
> mentally starting your count from fact two when you say something
like
> "those are a lot of facts"?
>
> Either you can count facts or you can't. You just said that "we can
> count things, including facts or steps.? If you think you can count
> facts, you have to be able to recognize a single fact in order to be
> able to start your count.
One person's single fact is another person's bundle of multiple
facts.
Usually, the quantity of facts is either immaterial to a discussion,
or a shared context over what constitutes an atomic fact (within a
very specific shared context) exists.
*snip*
> If I were counting factual knowledge, then I would be measuring the
> amount of factual knowledge. If I count facts, regardless of what
> knowledge the fact describes, then I have measured the quantity of
> facts, not the knowledge.
>
> The thing is to agree as to what is a single fact. Not based on the
> kind of knowledge expressed in the fact, but based on if the fact can
> be considered a single complete step in the creation of an item.
You are measuring the number of factual statements, not the number
of actual facts, since a single factual statement can contain multiple
facts. Even something a simple as a square can be described as one
fact or multiple ones.
> >> > If your answer if no, then the
> >> >facts are like those proverbial pieces of string:
> >> >just counting them is not a measure of knowledge.
> >>
> >> the answer is "no."
> >> >
> >> >10 facts each containing a *lot* of knowledge is
> >> >not the same as 10 facts each containing a *small*
> >> >amount of knowledge.
> >>
> >> it's not about a lot or small knowledge. It is about determining
what
> >> steps were taken in the building of an item. The facts have to be
> >> accurately described so that you don't have half a "red marble"
and
> >> three-quarters of a "blue marble." If a construction step is
> >> adequately described, then you have a factual explanation of a
single
> >> step in the creation of an item. And you can count all single
facts.
> >
> >Sure, you can count the facts, or steps. Then you will
> >have a count of the number of steps. But does each fact
> >contain the same *quantity* of knowledge as each other fact?
> >You haven't shown that this is so.
> I'm not counting quantity of knowledge within a single fact. E=mc2
> has a lot more knowledge than "glue two cardboard ends." But it is
> just as single a fact as is glued cardboard is a fact.
It is a single factual statement. E=mc^2 contains many many many
more facts inside the single statement.
*snip*
> >> >Note that it's not enough to just say that each is
> >> >one fact, and therefore contains the same amount of
> >> >knowledge. That's just a claim. I'm asking you to
> >> >justify that claim.
> >> I am not saying that each fact contains the same amount of
knowledge.
> >Then how can counting the facts be a measure of knowlege?
> >If you have marbles that have different masses, counting the
> >marbles is not a measure of mass.
>
> Just as I am not counting mass of marbles, but marbles, so I am not
> counting knowledge, but facts within a creation; counting
organization
> of facts as a measure of knowledge. Deadrat successfully got me off
> on a tangent as to unit of measure.
If a single factual statement can be subdivided into multiple factual
statements, how does counting the factual statements have any useful
meaning? Someone can divide (or compress) one of the factual
statements,
and thus would have a different number of factual statements than you.
> The level of order or organization in a system is directly
> proportional to the level of intelligence. That is what is being
> counted. Low level of organization, less intelligence needed to put
> the item together. High level of organization, more intelligence
> needed. No organization, no intelligence evident.
You still haven't answered my objection with my messy desk. It is
highly disorganized, however, it does require intelligence for the
cluttered desk to remain a cluttered desk, rather than a mess on
my floor.
> snip>
>
> >Why did you go to the extra detail?
> because I want to see what steps were taken in drawing the house.
How
> did the person use his mental ability to organize lines to draw a
> house.
> >
> >How did you decide how much extra detail was enough?
>
> if, by following my instructions, the same house can be reproduced,
> then you have sufficiently detailed the steps. If you can't, then
you
> have not sufficiently detailed the steps.
Speak for yourself. Your steps were insufficiently detailed, such that
an incorrect construction could be created, while following all
guidelines
laid out in your steps.
> >
> >Why not stop at:
> >1. draw walls
> >2. draw chimney
> >3. draw door.
> because you can break down "draw walls" into steps. Where do you put
> the walls? How high must they be? Are the walls upright or
> slanting? "Draw walls" has more facts within that instruction if you
> are going to accurately reproduce the drawn house.
Your statements on how to draw a house needed more detail in order
to accurately reproduce the house.
> >
> ><snip more>
> >
> >> if you can describe to me how to make something you have created,
and
> >> I am able to follow your steps, then your explanation has been
very
> >> objective indeed.
> >
> >I don't agree: the steps have been targetted towards a specific
> >person (or type of person).
>
> any person who can learn English and become educated as to the common
> tools of the language should be able to reproduce the house. That is
> the only audience I am targeting right now.
Your steps are insufficiently precise.
John Drayton
Apologies if I've snippedd something you feel is important.
> >Rather than answer piecemeal, I''l try to summarize. Correct
> >me if you disagree.
> >
> >The pupose of enumerating these creation facts is to be able to
> >measure the total amount of knowledge involved in this
> >particular creation. I.e. for the house drawing example, the aim
> >is to measure the amount of knowledge required to perform
> >this task.
> >
> >Is this not what you were trying to do?
>
> as an aside, yes. Thanks to Deadrat.
I think Deadrat's point was that your assertions can't be tested
without measurement:
The First Law of Intelligence is that the level of disorder
in a system is inversely proportional to the level of applied
knowledge of facts.
So without being able to make measurements, the theory is
no more than an assertion.
<snip a bit>
> >So, to measure the total amount of knowledge required for the
> >task, you would have to specify all the knowledge required, and
> >then measure it.
>
> why all knowledge?
Not all knowledge. All knowledge *required for the task*
If you don't measure all knowledge *required for the task*,
how can you say you know how much knowledge the task
involves?
<snip>
> yes, I am assuming that I am stating my theory to persons who are
> educated within a specific society -- western. And not to babies in
> their cribs. A certain amount of basic education is taken for
> granted. If I had to present it in Chinese, I would have to use
> different symbols and terms.
>
> There is no assumed existing base of knowledge.
You are assuming an existing base of knowledge that a western
educated person has. That's fine if your aim is simply to tell
that person how to perform the task. But that's not what you
are aiming to do: you are aiming to measuring the knowledge
required to perform a specific task. Not just the *additional*
knowledge required for someone with an existing base of
knowledge.
<snip more>
> >So you are counting the number of steps. I agrre you can count
> >the steps you have enumerated. This is still not a useful measure
> >of knowledge unless you can demonstrate that each step contains
> >the same amount of knowledge.
>
> the goal is not to count knowledge, but facts. If you have one fact,
> then you have one single datum of knowledge.
Perhaps you could explain what you mean by this last sentence.
Do you mean something special by the word "datum"? If not,
this sentence just means "if you have one fact, you have one fact".
Are you alluding to the facts you are trying to count being
indivisable facts?
<snip>
> you are trying to make the VALUE of X be the thing that is counted.
> But it is the number "1" that is counted, not the X. The X only
> identifies what you are counting.
I'm quite happy for you to count X. What I'm saying is that if
each X contains *different* amounts of what you are trying to
measure, then counting X has not acheived anything.
<snip>
> If I were counting factual knowledge, then I would be measuring the
> amount of factual knowledge. If I count facts, regardless of what
> knowledge the fact describes, then I have measured the quantity of
> facts, not the knowledge.
Exactly. And that is what you are doing.
> The thing is to agree as to what is a single fact. Not based on the
> kind of knowledge expressed in the fact, but based on if the fact can
> be considered a single complete step in the creation of an item.
Whether each step is a single complete step is a subjective
judgement: you based your steps on what you believed
would be sufficient for a person with a western education.
In fact, I think you supplied *too many* steps. Why not
just "draw a house in the sand" ? Your reasoning as to why
you felt it was necessary to have more than one step was
that "this does not enumerate the steps taken in drawing the
house" (I disagree, and say that it enumerates a single step,
but let's ignore that for a moment):
How about you describe the steps necessary to draw a one
inch line in the sand. Not as part of drawing a house, just a
one inch line by itself. Following your logic, you can't just say
"draw a one inch line in the sand". You have to enumerate
multiple steps.
After you have enumerated the steps, compare that to the first
step of drawing a house in the sand:
1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
How many steps are there in each enmuration? If they are
different (and surely they must be), and if the number of steps
is a measure of knowledge, then this indicates that different
amounts of knowledge are required for drawing a one inch
line in the sand in each of these cases.
> Just as I am not counting mass of marbles, but marbles, so I am not
> counting knowledge, but facts within a creation; counting organization
> of facts as a measure of knowledge. Deadrat successfully got me off
> on a tangent as to unit of measure.
Why do you think it is a tangent? How can you validate what
you are saying below if you can't measure what you are describing?
> The level of order or organization in a system is directly
> proportional to the level of intelligence. That is what is being
> counted. Low level of organization, less intelligence needed to put
> the item together. High level of organization, more intelligence
> needed. No organization, no intelligence evident.
<snip>
> >The "facts" you are enumerating in attempting to measure knowledge
>
> no, no, no, not to measure knowledge, but to measure level of
> organization in a directly proportional relationship to intelligence.
Now I'm confused. Earlier you said:
The pupose of enumerating these creation facts is to be able
to measure the total amount of knowledge involved in this
particular creation.
--
John Drayton
er...@swva.net
>
(snip description of how to draw a square and a triangle in the sand)
How many facts do you suppose it takes to turn a drawing of a square
with a triangle on top into a picture of a house? In other words, does
the person who says, "Oh, look, a drawing of a square with a triangle
on top." have any facts going on in his brain? Is it more or fewer
facts than the person who says, "Oh, a drawing of a house." ?
Eric Root
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
zoe wrote:
>> dismantling of a creation and counting of the steps it took to make
>> the creation. I think this is doable.
>
>Not until you come up with a method of determining what is a
>single (indivisible) step.
an indivisible step is the step that cannot be described in any less
terms without losing the ability to successfully copy that step.
snip>
>> Either you can count facts or you can't. You just said that "we can
>> count things, including facts or steps.? If you think you can count
>> facts, you have to be able to recognize a single fact in order to be
>> able to start your count.
>
>One person's single fact is another person's bundle of multiple
>facts.
in the context of a dismantled creation, a single fact is reflected in
a single step in the creation. Facts describe reality. Describe the
reality of a step accurately, and you have a fact. The test of the
adequacy of the fact is if the step can be reproduced. If the step
cannot be reproduced, the fact has not been accurately described.
snip>
>> The thing is to agree as to what is a single fact. Not based on the
>> kind of knowledge expressed in the fact, but based on if the fact can
>> be considered a single complete step in the creation of an item.
>
>You are measuring the number of factual statements, not the number
>of actual facts, since a single factual statement can contain multiple
>facts. Even something a simple as a square can be described as one
>fact or multiple ones.
"a square is drawn" would be a bundled fact, with four single facts
implied. To count the steps in drawing a square, you'd have to
unbundle "square" and describe each step. Each step of the four steps
would be an indivisible fact, in the context of the creation of the
square.
snip>
>If a single factual statement can be subdivided into multiple factual
>statements, how does counting the factual statements have any useful
>meaning? Someone can divide (or compress) one of the factual
>statements,
>and thus would have a different number of factual statements than you.
okay, then I challenge you to divide this step: "A horizontal
one-inch straight line was drawn." Each part of your subdivided step
must be sufficient to execute the entire first step in drawing a
house. Remember, the goal here is to adequately and fully describe a
single step in the drawing of a house.
>> The level of order or organization in a system is directly
>> proportional to the level of intelligence. That is what is being
>> counted. Low level of organization, less intelligence needed to put
>> the item together. High level of organization, more intelligence
>> needed. No organization, no intelligence evident.
>
>You still haven't answered my objection with my messy desk. It is
>highly disorganized, however, it does require intelligence for the
>cluttered desk to remain a cluttered desk, rather than a mess on
>my floor.
I submit that it doesn't take intelligence to have a highly
disorganized desk. It take maybe preoccupation with other matters, or
a frenetic lifestyle, or maybe just plain laziness. None of those
indicate any intelligence directed towards the disordering of your
desk. The disorder happens inevitably due to a lack of applied energy
in the direction of ordering it.
snip>
>> if, by following my instructions, the same house can be reproduced,
>> then you have sufficiently detailed the steps. If you can't, then
>you
>> have not sufficiently detailed the steps.
>
>Speak for yourself. Your steps were insufficiently detailed, such that
>an incorrect construction could be created, while following all
>guidelines
>laid out in your steps.
well, it was my first pass at describing the creation. It was not set
in concrete. But if the steps are accurately described, you should be
able to understand how the creation was made, you should be able to
reproduce it....and you should be able to count each step.
snip>
Zoe
<bitbu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
snip>
zoe wrote:
>> the goal is not to count knowledge, but facts. If you have one fact,
>> then you have one single datum of knowledge.
>
>Perhaps you could explain what you mean by this last sentence.
>Do you mean something special by the word "datum"? If not,
>this sentence just means "if you have one fact, you have one fact".
that is exactly what I am saying. If you have one fact, and you
recognize you have one fact, then you have one fact. I'm hoping that
by now you are recognizing a single fact when you see it.
>Are you alluding to the facts you are trying to count being
>indivisable facts?
yes. Indivisible within the context of the steps taken in
constructing a creation.
><snip>
>
>> you are trying to make the VALUE of X be the thing that is counted.
>> But it is the number "1" that is counted, not the X. The X only
>> identifies what you are counting.
>
>I'm quite happy for you to count X. What I'm saying is that if
>each X contains *different* amounts of what you are trying to
>measure, then counting X has not acheived anything.
I am not measuring what's in the X. I am measuring the number of X's.
The X's represent single, indivisible steps taken in the creation of
an item. If the single indivisible step can be summed up in two words
or 200, it doesn't matter. It is a single step. And it is the single
factual steps I am counting, not the value of the knowledge in the
step.
According to the second law of intelligence, if you have four steps in
the creation of an item and 200 steps in the creation of another item,
it is predicted that the level of organization and order (steps taken)
is directly proportional to the applied intelligence. The more steps
that build on each other, the more is there a corresponding increase
in intelligence applied.
>
><snip>
>
>> If I were counting factual knowledge, then I would be measuring the
>> amount of factual knowledge. If I count facts, regardless of what
>> knowledge the fact describes, then I have measured the quantity of
>> facts, not the knowledge.
>
>Exactly. And that is what you are doing.
so do you understand now what I am getting at? The level of
organization is directly proportional to the level of intelligence
(applied facts -- or steps) applied. Knowledge is an integral part of
this process, but it is not what is being counted in order to
correlate order with intelligence. It is the steps that are counted.
Factual steps.
>
>> The thing is to agree as to what is a single fact. Not based on the
>> kind of knowledge expressed in the fact, but based on if the fact can
>> be considered a single complete step in the creation of an item.
>
>Whether each step is a single complete step is a subjective
>judgement: you based your steps on what you believed
>would be sufficient for a person with a western education.
would you prefer that I direct my explanations to some other group? I
am talking to you, you know.
snip>
>How about you describe the steps necessary to draw a one
>inch line in the sand. Not as part of drawing a house, just a
>one inch line by itself. Following your logic, you can't just say
>"draw a one inch line in the sand". You have to enumerate
>multiple steps.
I think that is your challenge to yourself. I say that the statement
"a horizontal one-inch line is drawn" is sufficient for any educated
Westerner to follow. Anything less won't reproduce what has been
drawn. Anything more, and you enter into fact two. You think you can
say this with less information and still get your horizontal one-inch
straight line? Then let me see you do it, please. (Note, less
INFORMATION; not less WORDS.)
>
>After you have enumerated the steps, compare that to the first
>step of drawing a house in the sand:
>
>1. A straight line, one inch in length, is drawn in the sand.
>
>How many steps are there in each enmuration? If they are
>different (and surely they must be), and if the number of steps
>is a measure of knowledge, then this indicates that different
>amounts of knowledge are required for drawing a one inch
>line in the sand in each of these cases.
well, I am waiting for you to divide my statement into more parts that
will do the job successfully. If you can, I will go with yours.
>
>> Just as I am not counting mass of marbles, but marbles, so I am not
>> counting knowledge, but facts within a creation; counting organization
>> of facts as a measure of knowledge. Deadrat successfully got me off
>> on a tangent as to unit of measure.
>
>Why do you think it is a tangent? How can you validate what
>you are saying below if you can't measure what you are describing?
it's a tangent because I wasn't thinking of heading in this direction.
But it's turning out to be a useful tangent, so here I am.
snip>
>
>> >The "facts" you are enumerating in attempting to measure knowledge
>>
>> no, no, no, not to measure knowledge, but to measure level of
>> organization in a directly proportional relationship to intelligence.
>
>Now I'm confused. Earlier you said:
>
> The pupose of enumerating these creation facts is to be able
> to measure the total amount of knowledge involved in this
> particular creation.
okay, then, I am clarifying. Remember, you are getting to see my
messy drawing board on which theory creation is being drawn up. If I
have said what you just said I said, then that statement now has a
heavy scratch mark running through it. I'm trying to make it clearer.
I am not measuring all knowledge, per se, but just the steps
(consisting of factual knowledge) that are taken in creating. If
these steps can be accurately described, I expect to see a direct
correlation between number of steps and level of intelligence applied.
Zoe
<jlr426SKIPALL...@veriGOODzon.net> wrote:
snip>
zoe wrote:
>>It's like saying that you can't add 2 cars + 2 cars because cars are
>>so complex that they really consist of many different parts which, of
>>themselves cannot be added together because they differ from each
>>other. So, therefore, don't even try to add such a thing as cars.
>Well, if cars were facts - or, more to the point, if facts were cars -
>then this analogy might be helpful.
>
>As it is, this reasoning displays what I would call the "fallacy of
>the concretized abstraction" - the notion that, if you can create any
>abstract notion or category, and throw a word on it, then you have
>some kind of "real thing" that has existence. I am not enough of a
>Platonist to go along with that; even Plato would, I suspect, object
>to it in this case.
facts are reflected in reality described. Reality is concrete, isn't
it? You observe reality and describe it as a fact. So when I say
"count facts" I am really saying "count reality" as demonstrated in
each step taken in the construction of a creation.
snip>
>>If you can recognize a car, then you can count cars. If you can
>>recognize a fact, you can count facts.
>
>As for the example of cars, it misses the point completely. We can
>count cars because the components of cars are not other cars.
we count cars because we recognize a complete item. We count facts if
we can recognize a complete fact in the context of creation -- which
is the only context in which I am counting facts.
snip>
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
>actually, yes there would. You do not use facts in a reasonable way.
>You try to itemize them.
Josephus, is it unreasonable to try to itemize the steps taken in the
creation of an item? That is all that I am doing, you know.
> You can list them but not count them the way
>you want.
if I can list them, I can count them. I just want to compare the
number of steps to the level of intelligence. That's all.
snip>
Zoe
snip>
>Consider, please, the following story:
it won't work at all.
>Better than Alice's? Worse? The same?
it won't work at all. Observation of reality says that his method
won't work at all.
>
>2. Whose project uses more facts?
the first. The second just blunders around, hit or miss, hoping to
find a solution. Observation of reality says that this method never
produces anything that works.
>
>3. Whose device is simpler, more elegant, more energy efficient?
>You may pick your own attribute of design here, if you don't like
>this list.
the thought-through project will be simpler, more elegant, more energy
efficient. Luck and chance, for poor Andrew, just will not produce
what the professor asked for.......and he was finally allowed to drop
out of that line of education and be a chef. Thankfully so...we do
need to eat.
>4. whether the professor will be able to understand how Andrew's device
>works (if it does) or why it fails (if it doesn't work)?
the professor will quickly discern that Andrew didn't know how to make
the device work, and he can see why it failed, especially after
looking at Alice's device.
Zoe
<res0...@nozirevBACKWARDS.net> wrote:
snip>
>This reminds me of a true story about an RCA engineer, back in the vacuum
>tube days, who began removing parts from a television until it didn't work
>anymore. The last part removed was then put back. The resulting design was
>more reliable than the original one.
that doesn't answer Deadrat's question, though. His task was to make
a device from scratch. The RCA engineer didn't design anything. He
worked backwards on something that was already designed and improved
it.
shane
ISTM that Edison and the light bulb filament is a real life situation
similar to Andrews method, that worked extremely well.
--
shane
shane
But Deadrat's example specifically said the Andrew's early designs did
work, just not very well, so the point is valid to a certain extent.
--
shane
Zoe
snip>
>> ... to which I reply with the challenge:
>> 5 \ 0.5 = ?
>
ahh, so you want to play in my sandbox.
Let's see...0.5 is in positive territory. It has not yet arrived at
zero, the wonderfully mysterious zero. If I use my new form of
question (reflected in the back slash); i.e., what happens to 5 if it
is divided by 0.5? You get 10 parts of the 5. Answer: 10.
>
>Come to think of it, let's start simpler:
>2 \ 1 = ?
okay. So the question: What happens to 2 if you divide it once? You
get two parts. Answer: 2.
>I presume 2 \ 1 = 1 (since you're dividing 2 up once; presumably in
>half)
>so
>2 \ 1 = 1
nope. The answer is 2. Fie on you.
>and we all know 4\2 = 2\1, right? ;)
>
>2 \ 1 = 1
>4 \ 2 = 1.33~
>1 = 1.33~?
>Hmm.
lol -- a whole new perspective. What's your principle? What question
are you asking?
caveat: the back slash question will take you into a whole new world
of math that is quite likely good for nothing. You will get answers
like
4\2=8 (what happens to four if you divide it twice? Well, if you
divide it once, as in above, you get two parts of the four, each part
containing two. So if you divide it twice, you get two more parts of
each of the first two parts. I.e., if 4\1=2, then 4\2=8. Oh,
wondrous world of numbers to be explored. Bring 'em on.
At this point, you would do well do leap out of my sandbox and scrap
zoemath.
But wait, before you go -- what about zero, which is where all the
brouhaha is.
Using the highest order of logic known to exist, one must approach the
zero in this manner.
What is 5 x 0? The answer, here, too, is five.
What is 0 x 5? The answer now becomes zero.
Why?
If you have five things and you try to multiply them by nothing, you
haven't lost a thing. You still have your five things.
But if you have zero things in hand, and you try to multiply your
emptyhandedness by five, you will still have zero, or nothing.
Why is this math not being taught in schools, pray tell?
Zoe
wrote:
snip>
>> and I maintained that the premises were not just unmet; they were
>> false. The earth is not an osterizer that blends magma to a
>> homogenous mix that can be used in isochron calculations.
>
>I should have mentioned that in my previous post: isochron dating
>simply does NOT assume that. The entire Earth does need to be
>homogenous. Only the lava which the samples came from. And furthermore
>the only thing that needs to be homogenous is the D/Di.
how convenient. Only the lava from which the samples are taken are
homogenous. Why is that?
>As I said before, that is very easy to test and it has been tested.
what is this test, and how has it been tested?
>No amount of rationalizations will change this Zoe: your claim
>is completely falsified:
>
>1) If lava was not homogenous, no isochron will form whatsoever expect
>for _extremely_ unlikley chance events.
the way I see it is, the isochron will work with your numbers as long
as you arbitrarily decide the starting point is 0 for your D/Di. But
what if the previous D/Di is still in formation, with just a small
scatter (which is what we see on the isochron) due to the fact
(facts?) that the lava does not homogenize, even over billions of
years? In my opinion, all the isochron is revealing is old earth, not
time since last solidification.
>
>2) New lava can be tested and it really does give an isochron with
>a horizontal line. That is all the isochron need in respect to
>initial composion of samples.
as I understand it, the zero D/Di is not observed. It is taken for
granted, and the isochron uses this as its starting point. Then the
numbers for the samples are plotted from the zero line, giving an
old-earth age, but interpreted as a young-solidification event.
snip>
Zoe
wrote:
>Zoe <muz...@aol.com> wrote in
>news:o5gq81hijajlqo209...@4ax.com:
>
>> On Wed, 18 May 2005 06:12:04 GMT, "Deadrat" <no...@none.non> wrote:
>>
>> snip>
>>
>>>> is that why the isochron appears to be valid, even though its
>>>> premise is false? (Just to mention one area.)
>>>
>>>This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state
>>>what premises in isochron dating are false?
>>
>> one false premise, in my opinion, is that the isochron is based on
>> 100% magma mixing. The beginning ratio of D to Di product is assumed
>> to be from a homogenous mix so you can start your isochron plot from
>> 0. But to get the kind of thorough mix that would start the isochron
>> off at zero, you would have to have the kind of movement of the earth
>> that would blend the mix thoroughly -- violent and prolonged shaking,
>> for starters. The premise that magma can sit quietly for billions of
>> years and eventually the products will become thoroughly mixed, flies
>> in the face of what is seen of what it takes to homogenize. Magma is
>> not a gas, so why should the mixing of gas particles be used as an
>> example of how magma becomes homogenized?
>>
>> That is one premise that I consider to be in question. If you want
>> the rest of it, you can do a google on "isochron, zoe," and wear
>> yourself out.
>>
>> snip>
>
>That "assumption" can very easily be tested. It has been
>tested. All you have to do is get historic samples and
>plot isochron graphs.
but the historic samples are too recent to be of any use with the
isochron, which relies on long half lives in rubidium and the like.
snip>
Zoe
snip>
zoe wrote:
>> I still maintain that it depends on how the question is asked. If
>the
>> question is "What happens to five if you divide it up zero times?"
>> The answer will be five, because nothing has happened to five. It
>> remains itself.
>>
>> Of course, I finally agreed that I could not use the same symbols
>used
>> for standard math, since the question already understood in
>> 5/0=indefinite is: "How many times can five be divided by zero?" In
>> my question, I proffer a back slash in the equation as an indication
>> that a different question is being asked. So 5\0=5. Welcome to the
>> world of zoemath.
>
>Ok. You have just shown that "fact" is a pretty slippery concept. In
>the context of Zoe's imprecise language " 5 divided by 0" is like
>asking "how much of a pie do I have if I make 0 cuts". That is
>imprecise
>because, well, you could say that you have "0 slices" or you have
>"a full pie".
I see your point. I shall have to refine my thesis.
>In the precise usage of mathematical language we say that
>we can factor 5 into two factors m and n such that:
>n times m = 5
>
>m = 5/n
>
>but, if n=0, then there exists no value of m such that
>0 times m = 5. so division by zero is undefined in arithmetic.
makes sense.
>[... snip...]
>
>Each of the other numbered points on this list that I have deleted
>are examples of Zoe beginning with her Biblical-literalist derived
>metaphysics colouring the notion of "fact". A fact is not so easy
>to define.
oh, come now, John, don't wimp out on me. It may not be so easy to
define, but I submit that it is doable.
Zoe
>
>"Zoe" <muz...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:o5gq81hijajlqo209...@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 18 May 2005 06:12:04 GMT, "Deadrat" <no...@none.non> wrote:
>>
>> snip>
>>
>> >> is that why the isochron appears to be valid, even though its premise
>> >> is false? (Just to mention one area.)
>> >
>> >This is the second time you've posted this. Could you please state what
>> >premises in isochron dating are false?
>>
>> one false premise, in my opinion, is that the isochron is based on
>> 100% magma mixing. The beginning ratio of D to Di product is assumed
>> to be from a homogenous mix so you can start your isochron plot from
>> 0. But to get the kind of thorough mix that would start the isochron
>> off at zero, you would have to have the kind of movement of the earth
>> that would blend the mix thoroughly -- violent and prolonged shaking,
>> for starters. The premise that magma can sit quietly for billions of
>> years and eventually the products will become thoroughly mixed, flies
>> in the face of what is seen of what it takes to homogenize. Magma is
>> not a gas, so why should the mixing of gas particles be used as an
>> example of how magma becomes homogenized?
>>
>
>Oh, how unfortunate. Magma is a hot fluid.
heat doesn't make a difference here, from what I discovered in the
Zoelian Laboratories of my kitchen. I did some experiments on the
stove and the microwave, using dark and white chocolate. And I
discovered, hey, presto, heat alone does not homogenize thicker
materials like chocolate. So why would it homogenize liquid rock?
> I doubt that shaking is
>required to make samples homogenous.
homogenization can be done through high pressure pushing the liquid
through a small opening so as to break up the particles. What
homogenizing equipment is there underground? The magma just sits
there immobile, until it erupts as lava. At that point, it's too late
to start the buildup of new D/Di.
> Do you understand the
>circulation of matter in hot fluids?
magma is not matter in a hot liquid. It is melted rock -- more akin
to chocolate or the ingredients of a marble cake where, in the heat of
an oven, the distinct patterns remain in place; they do not become
homogenized.
>Someone who is as shy about
>mathematics as you are probably hasn't studied the differential
>equations necessary to understand this subject. Without the
>DiffE, how do you come to be so assured?
hey, I am not insisting that anybody should listen to me or follow the
machinations of my mind. I'm just enjoying the mental exercise. How
about you?
R. Baldwin
I was not answering Deadrat's question. It does, however, bear on what makes
an elegant design.
Deadrat
My little story was actually taken from the news. Alice and Andrew
are fictional, but Andrew's method (called a genetic algorithm) was
applied to exactly such a circuit problem, the making of a discriminator
that could take an input and turn it into a 0 or 1 output. The
"genetically"
built circuit worked fine.
I've been trying to warn you that your purely intellectual approach to
science will mislead you. And it has, here, badly.
You're missing a solid abstract grounding, which in science
comes mostly from mathematics. But you won't do any math.
You're also missing concrete experience, which in science comes
mostly from experiment. But you don't do that either.
>
> >Better than Alice's? Worse? The same?
>
> it won't work at all. Observation of reality says that his method
> won't work at all.
No, your *expectations* say that his method won't work. "Observation
of reality," that is, actually building the circuit using "random"
modifications,
worked well.
> >
> >2. Whose project uses more facts?
>
> the first. The second just blunders around, hit or miss, hoping to
> find a solution. Observation of reality says that this method never
> produces anything that works.
I'm guessing that you're right about the first using more "facts."
It's just a guess, since you've really given us nothing but an intuitive
feel for how to enumerate facts. But actual observation finds that
the method produced the desired circuit.
> >
> >3. Whose device is simpler, more elegant, more energy efficient?
> >You may pick your own attribute of design here, if you don't like
> >this list.
>
> the thought-through project will be simpler, more elegant, more energy
> efficient. Luck and chance, for poor Andrew, just will not produce
> what the professor asked for.......and he was finally allowed to drop
> out of that line of education and be a chef. Thankfully so...we do
> need to eat.
In fact, the non-thought-through circuit was more compact than those
produced through typical design methods. We can only hope that
Andrew will be able to pursue his life's ambition to cook, but his method
not only produced a circuit that worked, but one that was in some ways,
better than traditionally designed circuits.
>
> >4. whether the professor will be able to understand how Andrew's device
> >works (if it does) or why it fails (if it doesn't work)?
>
> the professor will quickly discern that Andrew didn't know how to make
> the device work, and he can see why it failed, especially after
> looking at Alice's device.
>
In fact, the person who produced the circuit couldn't explain exactly how
it worked! As I recall, there were four components that didn't seem to
be necessary, but when they were removed, the device stopped working.
When they were replaced, the device resumed working.
There's an important lesson here: human intuition isn't always the best
guide to the world. It's easy to be led astray by purely intellectual
effort. Science puts some bounds on our explanations by demanding
a well-defined mathematical foundation underlying a construction of
actual observations and experiments. The resistance you've seen in
response to your posts comes from your refusal to rigorously define
your terms or to consider the real world.
The result? When you applied your fact-counting method to a real
example, you got the wrong answer.
Does that give you pause?
Deadrat
Dave...@aol.com
> snip>
> zoe wrote:
Even your square can be subdivided into more than four facts.
Most of them people may not be consciously aware of, however, they
are still present, and still necessary for a precise, non-ambiguous
construction.
>
> snip>
>
> >If a single factual statement can be subdivided into multiple
factual
> >statements, how does counting the factual statements have any useful
> >meaning? Someone can divide (or compress) one of the factual
> >statements,
> >and thus would have a different number of factual statements than
you.
> okay, then I challenge you to divide this step: "A horizontal
> one-inch straight line was drawn." Each part of your subdivided step
> must be sufficient to execute the entire first step in drawing a
> house.
Each individual part will _not_ be capable of performing the first
step of drawing the house. The end product of all the steps (or
other factual information) will be your first step of drawing the
house, and each statement will be factual or descriptive.
If you subdivide a car multiple times, you will have multiple pieces
that are not a car. However, properly assembling them all will create
a car, or further enhance the one that is already there. (One can
subdivide a car into multiple pieces, however, at most one of pieces
is a car. A car without a passenger seat is still a car.)
With drawing your house, you have taken one object and subdivided
it into multiple steps for creating it. I am stating that said
steps can be subdivided even further, so merely counting the steps
in the construction of something is not a useful means of measure,
since information can be subdivided further and further.
> Remember, the goal here is to adequately and fully describe a
> single step in the drawing of a house.
1. A second is defined as the time required for 9192631770 periods of
the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two
hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.
2. An inch is defined as the distance traveled by light in
1/11784960000 seconds in a vacuum.
3. The medium of choice shall be capable of being altered in such
a fashion that said alterations are visible to the naked eye,
and said alterations (in absence of further alterations) shall
be visible indefinitely.
4. The instrument of choice for drawing the line shall be capable
of rendering visible constructions in the medium of choice no
less than 1/2000 of an inch across the shortest dimension, and
no more than 1/4 (this may need to be smaller) of an inch.
5. A straight line segment is the shortest distance between two points.
6. Pick two points A and B, such that the straight line segment between
the two that includes both points is one inch in length.
7. Using the instrument of choice (this may need to be subdivided
depending on precisely what said instrument actually is), render
the line between point A & point B visible.
I got seven out of that, and most of those would be open to further
subdivision, even if only two of them are unique to the line in
question, rather than being useful for other steps as well.
And for the next "step" in drawing the house:
1. From point B, find a point C such that the distance between point
A and point C is ~1.414 inches, and the distance between point B
and point C is 1 inch.
2. Using the instrument of choice, render the line between points
B & C visible.
And the next two "steps":
1. From point C, find a point D such that the distance between point
C and point D is one inch, the distance between point A and point
D is one inch, and the distance between point B and point D is
~1.414 inches.
2. Using the instrument of choice, render the line between points
C & D visible.
3. Using the instrument of choice, render the line between points
A & D visible.
We only got a free ride for the final line segment, since we had
already sufficiently defined both endpoints of the segment already.
> >> The level of order or organization in a system is directly
> >> proportional to the level of intelligence. That is what is being
> >> counted. Low level of organization, less intelligence needed to
put
> >> the item together. High level of organization, more intelligence
> >> needed. No organization, no intelligence evident.
> >
> >You still haven't answered my objection with my messy desk. It is
> >highly disorganized, however, it does require intelligence for the
> >cluttered desk to remain a cluttered desk, rather than a mess on
> >my floor.
> I submit that it doesn't take intelligence to have a highly
> disorganized desk. It take maybe preoccupation with other matters,
or
> a frenetic lifestyle, or maybe just plain laziness. None of those
> indicate any intelligence directed towards the disordering of your
> desk. The disorder happens inevitably due to a lack of applied
energy
> in the direction of ordering it.
Failure to exercise intelligence in the disordering of the desk will
result in an unstable system. Intelligence is required to increase
the disorder of the desk while maintaining a stable system.
And a sufficiently motivated monkey can order it. Order is _not_
proportional to intelligence.
> snip>
>
> >> if, by following my instructions, the same house can be
reproduced,
> >> then you have sufficiently detailed the steps. If you can't, then
> >you
> >> have not sufficiently detailed the steps.
> >
> >Speak for yourself. Your steps were insufficiently detailed, such
that
> >an incorrect construction could be created, while following all
> >guidelines
> >laid out in your steps.
>
> well, it was my first pass at describing the creation. It was not
set
> in concrete. But if the steps are accurately described, you should
be
> able to understand how the creation was made, you should be able to
> reproduce it....and you should be able to count each step.
You must work at accurately describing your steps, first.
Dave...@aol.com
Your experiment failed because you used a material that is
not analogous to the one you are attempting to study.
The amount of heat necessary to create a perceptible convection
current in molten chocolate would burn the chocolate, rendering it
not-molten. Organic chemistry rears its ugly head.
No such chemical restriction exists for rock. Rocks are inorganic,
after all, so they can't be turned into various forms of charcoal.
> > I doubt that shaking is
> >required to make samples homogenous.
> homogenization can be done through high pressure pushing the liquid
> through a small opening so as to break up the particles. What
> homogenizing equipment is there underground? The magma just sits
> there immobile, until it erupts as lava. At that point, it's too late
> to start the buildup of new D/Di.
No, magma does not simply sit there. Convection currents (created by
being heated from below) are present in magma below the surface.
> > Do you understand the
> >circulation of matter in hot fluids?
>
> magma is not matter in a hot liquid. It is melted rock -- more akin
> to chocolate or the ingredients of a marble cake where, in the heat
of
> an oven, the distinct patterns remain in place; they do not become
> homogenized.
Given sufficient heat (and the ability to ignore the various organic
chemistry reactions present in both chocolate and marble cake), you
could create convection currents in both. However, the laws of
chemistry
intervene, and since both chocolate and cakes are organic, you end
up with solid charcoal before you can get the convection current
going.
Dave...@aol.com
We can count cars because a single car cannot be subdivided into
multiple,
smaller cars.
Factual statements, on the other hand, can be decomposed into multiple,
smaller, factual statements, that when taken as a whole, describe the
original statement.
Simply counting the number of factual statements (and deeming that the
number of facts) is not useful, because somebody can come along and
(usually) decompose one of your statements into smaller statements,
thus throwing the count off.
Deadrat
You do understand that the earth is spinning, that the molten rock is
under greater pressure, that there are occasional vents where it
surfaces, that there are temperature differentials that give rise to
convection currents in the magma?
>The magma just sits
> there immobile, until it erupts as lava.
Immobile? And you know this, how?
>At that point, it's too late
> to start the buildup of new D/Di.
>
> > Do you understand the
> >circulation of matter in hot fluids?
>
> magma is not matter in a hot liquid. It is melted rock -- more akin
> to chocolate or the ingredients of a marble cake where, in the heat of
> an oven, the distinct patterns remain in place; they do not become
> homogenized.
Sorry. I phrased that badly. Do you understand the circulation
of matter when it is in the form of a hot fluid? That convection
currents are induced by the temperature differentials?
>
> >Someone who is as shy about
> >mathematics as you are probably hasn't studied the differential
> >equations necessary to understand this subject. Without the
> >DiffE, how do you come to be so assured?
>
> hey, I am not insisting that anybody should listen to me or follow the
> machinations of my mind. I'm just enjoying the mental exercise. How
> about you?
The question wasn't "Why are you insisting that people listen to you?"
(From what I've read of your posts, the answer to that question is
that you're not.)
The question was "Without understanding differential equations,
how do you come to be so assured about the conditions of hot fluids?"
When I'm ignorant, I try to temper my certainty. How about you?
Deadrat
>
josephus
you cannot count these facts unless they are properly specified. you
can list anything, but before you can count it, it must be specified.
When you make an assertion, it is tacitly ASSUMED to be true. Because
you can enter that assertion into a logical condition and determine if
it is true or false. But you cannot do this with the 'fact' that you
are assuming like the FIRST LAW OF INTELLIGENCE. I have tried very hard
to figure out what intelligence is, it is very abstract. But I can tell
you that you are not talking about any kind of intelligence. Your
statements do not relate. Your statements about reality are similar.
I actually posted a minor claim about intelligence. I did try to give
some evidence. I know that it was not as strong as I would like. on a
scale from 0 to 10, my post was a 4. your posts are 0 or 1. I do not
mean that as an insult. I mean it as a point about the lack of
information in your posts.
josephus
John Drayton
> On 20 May 2005 10:33:47 -0700, jo...@dix.mines.edu wrote:
>
> snip>
>
> zoe wrote:
>
> >> I still maintain that it depends on how the question is asked. If
> >the
> >> question is "What happens to five if you divide it up zero times?"
> >> The answer will be five, because nothing has happened to five. It
> >> remains itself.
> >>
> >> Of course, I finally agreed that I could not use the same symbols
> >used
> >> for standard math, since the question already understood in
> >> 5/0=indefinite is: "How many times can five be divided by zero?" In
> >> my question, I proffer a back slash in the equation as an indication
> >> that a different question is being asked. So 5\0=5. Welcome to the
> >> world of zoemath.
> >
> >Ok. You have just shown that "fact" is a pretty slippery concept. In
> >the context of Zoe's imprecise language " 5 divided by 0" is like
> >asking "how much of a pie do I have if I make 0 cuts". That is
> >imprecise
> >because, well, you could say that you have "0 slices" or you have
> >"a full pie".
>
> I see your point. I shall have to refine my thesis.
Hmm. And you say in other posts:
2 \ 1 = 2
5 \ 0.5 = 10
So, this means:
What happens to two if you divide it up one time? You still have 2.
So you can dividee something up, and it remains intact??
What happens to two if you divide it up half a time? You have 10.
So you are able divide something up *half* a time?
--
John Drayton
John Drayton
news:zvbke.22$243....@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au...
<snip>
> ISTM that Edison and the light bulb filament is a real life situation
> similar to Andrews method, that worked extremely well.
>
>
>
> --
> shane
Nd he gave us a great quote:
http://www.rockcrawler.com/techreports/raptor/partii/index.asp
" ... a reporter had asked Thomas Edison how he felt about failing
over 900 times to create the light bulb. Mr. Edison replied in saying
that he did not fail over 900 times, he actually discovered over 900
ways that it did not work"
I'm of the opinion that failing and recognising failure is an important
part of the design process.
--
John Drayton
John Drayton
More heavy snipping in this post.
> zoe wrote:
>
> >> the goal is not to count knowledge, but facts. If you have one fact,
> >> then you have one single datum of knowledge.
> >
> >Perhaps you could explain what you mean by this last sentence.
> >Do you mean something special by the word "datum"? If not,
> >this sentence just means "if you have one fact, you have one fact".
>
> that is exactly what I am saying. If you have one fact, and you
> recognize you have one fact, then you have one fact. I'm hoping that
> by now you are recognizing a single fact when you see it.
>
> >Are you alluding to the facts you are trying to count being
> >indivisable facts?
>
> yes. Indivisible within the context of the steps taken in
> constructing a creation.
It's quite apparent that the steps you have given can be divided
(e.g. drawing a line can be divided into smaller facts), but you
have stopped dividing at some point, for some reason. I'm
guessing that the phrase "within the context of the steps taken
in constructing a creation" is the key to why you stopped
dividing the facts into component facts.
Perhaps you can explain what you mean by that phrase, and
how you can objectively determine when to stop dividing.
I still think that this is sufficient:
1. Draw a house in the sand.
Surely any western educated person can understand this?
<snip>
> According to the second law of intelligence, if you have four steps in
> the creation of an item and 200 steps in the creation of another item,
> it is predicted that the level of organization and order (steps taken)
> is directly proportional to the applied intelligence. The more steps
> that build on each other, the more is there a corresponding increase
> in intelligence applied.
> >> If I were counting factual knowledge, then I would be measuring the
> >> amount of factual knowledge. If I count facts, regardless of what
> >> knowledge the fact describes, then I have measured the quantity of
> >> facts, not the knowledge.
> >
> >Exactly. And that is what you are doing.
>
> so do you understand now what I am getting at? The level of
> organization is directly proportional to the level of intelligence
> (applied facts -- or steps) applied. Knowledge is an integral part of
> this process, but it is not what is being counted in order to
> correlate order with intelligence. It is the steps that are counted.
> Factual steps.
So it seems that what you are attempting to measure is:
"Number of steps required for a western person to perform the task"
But your theory talks about "knowledge", "organization" and
"intelligence". You're no closer to showing that "Number of steps
required for a western person to perform the task" is a measure of
any of these.
> >> The thing is to agree as to what is a single fact. Not based on the
> >> kind of knowledge expressed in the fact, but based on if the fact can
> >> be considered a single complete step in the creation of an item.
> >
> >Whether each step is a single complete step is a subjective
> >judgement: you based your steps on what you believed
> >would be sufficient for a person with a western education.
>
> would you prefer that I direct my explanations to some other group? I
> am talking to you, you know.
Crikey. I'm not saying that I couldn't follow your instructions.
I'm saying that the number of steps in your instructions will depend
on who the instructions are for. Do you not agree with this?
In other words, you are not attempting to measure *all* the
knowledge or intelligence *required for the creation*. You are
attempting to measure the *additional* knowledge or intelligence
required if the performer of the task already has a set of knowledge:
the knowledge of a person with a western education.
Why does the the measurement vary according to the taget audience?
A 2 feet square piece of glass is *always* two feet square.
The 2 doesn't change under *any* circumstance. No matter *who*
does the measurement. No matter *why* they are doing the
measurement. No matter *what* the glass is being used for.
On the other hand, "number of steps required to draw a house in
the sand" *does* vary, depending on who is the intended user of
the instructions.
Doesn't this tell you something about your metric?
> >How about you describe the steps necessary to draw a one
> >inch line in the sand. Not as part of drawing a house, just a
> >one inch line by itself. Following your logic, you can't just say
> >"draw a one inch line in the sand". You have to enumerate
> >multiple steps.
>
> I think that is your challenge to yourself. I say that the statement
> "a horizontal one-inch line is drawn" is sufficient for any educated
> Westerner to follow.
I'm not sure you understood what I was asking. I'm asking what
steps would be sufficient if the creation was simply a horizontal
one-inch line, *not* a house.
You seem to be saying that 1 step is not enough: that more than
1 step must be enumerated. It's not clear to me why this is the case,
but lets run with that idea for the moment.
Here's a possible set of steps for the creation of a one inch line in
the sand:
1. Pick up stick
2. Push one end of the stick into the sand
3. Move this end of the stick one inch to the right.
4. Remove stick from the sand.
How's that sound? Remember, the task is not to create a house,
but to create a one inch line in the sand.
For some reason, the amount of knowledge or intelligence required
to create a one inch line in the sand *by itself* is 4 time the amount
of knowledge or intelligence required to perform *the same task*
when this task is part of creating a picture of a house in the sand.
Does this not tell you something about your measurement?
<snip>
--
John Drayton
R. Baldwin
news:4291c585$0$4659$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
There is an excellent book by Petroski titled "To Engineer is Human: The
Role of Failure in Successful Design." It is available from Amazon.
Failure is only one of the reasons options are ruled out in design, but
definitely one of the most important. Toyota uses a method called "set based
design" involving the parallel testing of multiple versions of a subsystem,
so that weaker designs can be ruled out.
Deadrat
> Using the highest order of logic known to exist, one must approach the
> zero in this manner.
>
> What is 5 x 0? The answer, here, too, is five.
>
> What is 0 x 5? The answer now becomes zero.
>
A. 5 x 0 = 5
B. (5 x 0 ) x 5 = 5 x 5
C. (5 x 0) x 5 = 25 (presumably)
D. 5 x (0 x 5 ) = 25
E. 5 x 0 = 25
F. 5 = 25
So you're arithmetic isn't even associative. (See step D.)
Deadrat
Dave...@aol.com
> Zoe wrote:
> > On 20 May 2005 14:10:44 -0700, "Dave...@aol.com"
> <Dave...@aol.com>
> > wrote:
*snippage*
In addition, the number of facts regarding the contents of my desk
is increasing proportional to the disorder.
More facts (using your defintion of them), and more disorder.
If facts is in direct proportion to intelligence required to create,
then my desk is indicative of intelligence.
Of course, this is in direct contradiction to your First Law of
Intelligence as put forth in Creation Theory-2. (Level of disorder
in the system is inversely proportional to the number of facts used
to create it.)