Now, THIS is what I call a discussion!
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KnowledgeIsPower wrote
Right, I understand that. The question I'm asking is, what is the empirical research that can prove the difference between a cosmic coincidence and a cosmic law?
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You and I have been imprecise in our use of the language. There is no provable difference between a cosmic coincidence and an event that conforms to our understanding of a cosmic law. However, if one searches the last 13 Billion years or so and finds evidence for not a single instance of failure to conform to that law, one could be very wrong about the law even existing and yet would be justified in betting the planet on the outcome of the next few such events. Science is not about proof and I assume you do not really mean "proof" in your post.
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The next question, assuming you can answer that, is, why do these laws exist? I assume, unless you're a theist, you'll just say "that's just the way things are". We can agree that all explanations must come to an end. At some point you have to stop asking "why" and say "that's just how things are".
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Another good question. I wonder, if laws exist, whether it matters much to our use of them as models of real system behaviors, "why" or "how" or "must" they exist.
Why is F = MA? Because, if it wasn't, we would use another equation instead. There is no necessity for F = MA to be true. Some deist kind of god might have decreed it, I suppose. Personally I think that the laws and constants in this universe are simply those under which such a universe can develop. Again, because, if they were different, it wouldn't be in
this universe.
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The problem is that you need to stop your explanation BEFORE you cross the line into superfluous unempirical metaphysics. Unless you can design some kind of experiment that can test for things that "have to be the way they are" and things that "just are the way they are" then the best thing for science to do is reject it. It's not needed and puts us on unempirical grounds, where science doesn't belong.
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I see no scientific grounds for rejecting the vast collected body of knowledge that has been gleaned at great individual effort over tens of millenia. But I do not see why you care about the distinction between something that must be versus something that just is, when the things have already occurred. What is the probability that all of the electronic states in my CPU would take on the exact pattern down to each individual bit, two seconds ago? Exactly 1.0000000000... .
Remember that empirical methods are not strictly limited to what can be performed in controlled laboratory experiments.
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Sure you can, the only problem is that the same thing can be said for a string of coincidences. A precedes B precedes C and so on. But you can't actually perform any experiment that can tell the difference between A causing B causing C or simply that A coincides with B coincides with C. There's no testable difference yet you insist that you know there is one. How?
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I guess you never heard the story about the old guy sitting on his front porch watching a dog chase a rabbit around the house around and around and finally decided based on his observations that rabbits cause dogs.
I also guess you have not heard of repeatability. Without repeatability of some sort a phenomenon cannot be verified and so must be accepted, if at all, with only a tiny reliance. However, if a phenomenon does show repeatability, its probability of being a real phenomenon goes up accordingly. Some phenomena have been verified and repeated so often that you are willing to trust your life and that of your loved ones (if any) to it without a qualm.
There is no religion or mysticism or metaphysics involved here. It is as simple as "2+2=6 ... -2" as Cal insists.