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From: Woody Lipinski <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, May 4,[masked]:04 AM
Subject: Re: [atheists-27] Scientific Certainty

Don,

please encourage DC Atheists to attend today at 6 PM in following meeting:

• Sunday, May 4, 2014

  6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
• Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax

  2709 Hunter Mill Road, Oakton, VA (map)
• This Sunday night meetup is hosted by Humanists of UUCF, who are always delighted when members of DC Region Atheists can join them.

  Ayanna Watson, founder of Black Atheists of America will lead a discussion on why "Diversity Matters". The discussion will cover the importance of embracing one’s own diversity and the benefits of encouraging others to embrace their differences. Often times, in an attempt to live a more ethical life, people focus on the similarities and are afraid to focus on diversity. The idea stems from the ideology that finding a common ground is the best way to relate to each other. She will discuss how focusing on diversity can help us appreciate the dignity and worth of every person and work for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

 GMU Secular Student Alliance active members will participate and express desire to meet with you.

On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 2:32 AM, Don Wharton <[address removed]> wrote:

Scientific Certainty

In our last Rockville discussion group I voiced my unhappiness with the habit of scientists to never assert things with certainty. Scientists are fond of saying that findings are just the most likely understanding based on current evidence. There is a felt difference between a logical certainty within mathematics that is not felt or expressed with scientific empiricism. Fundamentalists are fond of asserting that they are absolutely certain of things such as young Earth creationism.

It seemed to me that scientific findings with overwhelming evidence could be more effective if they were asserted with certainty. I felt that there were many claims about the universe were best presented as 100% true or completely false. Note that I am not saying that we should not be open to evidence that we are wrong about any such findings. We should always be open to reasonable evidence even if prior evidence conveys an overwhelming appearance of certainty.

My group itself proved my point about scientists. There were three scientists in our group, two physicists and one neuroscientist. I tossed out the proposition that that the orbit of the Earth was outside the orbit of Venus and within the orbit of Mars. All three of the scientists in my group insisted that I was wrong. I said to them that they could not calculate a probability that the orbit of the Earth's orbit was within the orbit of Venus. They insisted that it could be done. Given quantum mechanics presumably we should not considered ourselves to be certain.

The notion that we somehow should not be certain that the orbit of our Earth being outside the orbit the orbit of the obit of Venus seemed so preposterous to me that I claimed for a second time that they could not calculate a probability for the Earth being inside the orbit of Venus. All three again told me that I was wrong. I think I am right. There will be more on my claim that they are wrong later.

I think people can become confused by the ease with which extreme values can be represented by exponential notation. Let me start by advancing a notion of certainty that better deals with the extreme values that can come from quantum mechanics. Presume that we have to write a probability in non-exponential form. Presume also that we can change the entirety of our universe outside our solar system into paper and write a probability of[masked]... continuing until it fills the entirety of all that paper before there is a single non zero digit. I think most of us would agree that this probability is a reasonable simulation of certain falsehood. Similarly a probability of[masked]... with the entirely of that paper being filled with without ever reaching a non-9 digit would be a reasonable simulation of a certainly true condition.

I want to first look at the statistical view of reality via the laws of quantum mechanics. I have invested a good bit of time looking at the Schrodinger Equation and its calculation of the wave function. Even if I were to fully master an understanding of the mathematics there is a severe problem in calculating the actual values. I think it would have to be done with a computer program.. In addition the actual values would be so extreme that the normal floating point representation of the numbers might be inadequate for the task. Even if I could convert the methods to something that I could run on my computer it might not complete the calculation in my lifetime. However, it is quite easy to impute a “wavelength” to large objects. The wavelength is is just Plank's constant divided by the momentum. Plank's constant is already an extremely small constant. When we multiply the mass of the Earth by the 30 kilometers per second speed around the sun we get roughly 179 trillion trillion trillion Kg meters/second. When we divide this very large momentum that into Plank's constant we get an insanely small length of less than 10^-62 m. Given Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle the product of our uncertainty about the momentum Earth and its location need not exceed Plank's Constant divided by 2 pi. If we had absolute certainly about the momentum we would know nothing about the location. However, given how massive the momentum is of the Earth, even very minor uncertainty in it might mean that our expected deviation from its expected location would be vastly smaller than the Plank radius. Obviously this would have no possible directly measurable meaning. However, it would have meaning if we use Schrodinger's equation to actually calculate the probability of finding the Earth at a location that is many trillions of times further away from its expected location than the Heisenberg uncertainty distance.

The Earth's orbit is on average[masked] million kilometers (93 million miles) from the sun, Venus is about 108 million kilometers. I think the probability of observing the location of the Earth about 42 million kilometers closer to the sun as you read this is sufficiently close to zero to satisfy my criterion defined above for certain falsehood. Frankly looking at the numbers and the equations I think we would not have to look a single kilometers or even a single meter away to find an improbability so extreme that it would satisfy my criterion for certainty. Perhaps a single centimeter would be vastly more than enough.

Then there is a problem of potential energy. Notice if the Earth were not just observed within the orbit of Venus but continued on with an orbit within that of Venus there would be a massive loss of potential energy. I think the energy that would be required to lift the Earth back into its current orbit would vastly exceed all the energy ever used by humanity in our existence as a species. Where would this energy go. Quantum mechanics does not presume to do away with the laws concerning the conservation of energy. In fact, discussions of the Schrodinger equation explicitly cite the conservation of energy in its design. I don't see that it is even logically possible to calculate a real probability of the orbit of Earth being inside the orbit of Venus for quantum mechanical reasons. I don't think that there is any way to rationalize the destruction of potential energy with any model of quantum mechanical events.

For the record, my calculation is that it would take about 3 * 10^59 digits to satisfy my certainty criterion with typical 12 point fonts and 8.5x11 inch sheets of paper (two sided printing). If you go to 6 point fonts multiply the number of digits by four.

Don

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