Tom—you can’t write a C program that adds 2 and 2 and gets 5. You can write a C program that takes two and two, and produces five—through an entirely different algorithm than addition. And you’re adding in an additional layer of model, besides—remember that 2 means absolutely nothing in the universe. “Two” is a concept within a particular mathematical model. You can choose the axioms for your model pretty much at will—the only question is how you have to twist the model to make it describe the universe.
And yes, I can write a program in Bayes-language that assigns a 1% probability to the Sun rising—simply by changing the definitions for these things, as you did when you wrote that you could write a C program that added 2 and 2 to get 5. It is the definitions—a form of axiom in themselves—that give meaning to the modeling language. Bayes-language can describe a universe completely contradictory to the one we live in, simply by using different definitions.
Bayes-language doesn’t naturally describe the probability of the Sun rising, after all—you can’t derive that probability from Bayes-language itself. You have to code in every meaningful variable, and their relationships to one another. This is no different from what you do in C.
And first, no, the laws of physics are provably no such thing—as we have no way to assign probability that we have a significant enough subset of those laws to be able to produce meaningful predictions of the laws of physics we don’t yet know. And second, the laws of physics are equivalent to multiple contradictory coordinate systems. Any model can be, with the correct translations and transformations and definitions, accurate in describing the universe. That the universe behaves as a model might expect it to, therefore, says nothing about the universe, only about the model—and only as a model.
Tom—you can’t write a C program that adds 2 and 2 and gets 5. You can write a C program that takes two and two, and produces five—through an entirely different algorithm than addition. And you’re adding in an additional layer of model, besides—remember that 2 means absolutely nothing in the universe. “Two” is a concept within a particular mathematical model. You can choose the axioms for your model pretty much at will—the only question is how you have to twist the model to make it describe the universe.
And yes, I can write a program in Bayes-language that assigns a 1% probability to the Sun rising—simply by changing the definitions for these things, as you did when you wrote that you could write a C program that added 2 and 2 to get 5. It is the definitions—a form of axiom in themselves—that give meaning to the modeling language. Bayes-language can describe a universe completely contradictory to the one we live in, simply by using different definitions.
Bayes-language doesn’t naturally describe the probability of the Sun rising, after all—you can’t derive that probability from Bayes-language itself. You have to code in every meaningful variable, and their relationships to one another. This is no different from what you do in C.
And first, no, the laws of physics are provably no such thing—as we have no way to assign probability that we have a significant enough subset of those laws to be able to produce meaningful predictions of the laws of physics we don’t yet know. And second, the laws of physics are equivalent to multiple contradictory coordinate systems. Any model can be, with the correct translations and transformations and definitions, accurate in describing the universe. That the universe behaves as a model might expect it to, therefore, says nothing about the universe, only about the model—and only as a model.