What does the BGV theorem say?

[Jim]

@PdotdQ

Plausibility is just that X is within reason, or even it is reasonable to think that X. Probability analysis is quantitative. Without probability analysis, we cannot say that X is more likely than Y. We can only say that X is within reason, or it is reasonable to believe that X is true, i.e. plausible. I have no problem with this. Do you really think that I believe that the Universe having a beginning is unreasonable? After all I kept saying that my personal believe is that the Universe do have a beginning.

Thanks for that clarification. And I realize as a Christian you would believe in the beginning of the universe. I’m just a bit ignorant about the distinctions between probable and plausible. Thanks for your patients with me on this and on all my other ignorances in general. I do appreciate it.

@PdotdQ

I do not subscribe to MN (or at least some formulation of MN). I believe that science cannot detect the supernatural, but that does not mean that I subscribe to MN.

Glad to hear that. Science cannot detect the supernatural seems like a much more neutral position. If I’m following what you’re saying correctly I think you may be the first scientist I’ve come to realize doesn’t subscribe to MN. I’ve even dialogued with a YEC scientist, and an OEC scientist and they both defended MN in the context of doing science.

@PdotdQ

So is the BGV theorem. Also, it is unclear what you mean by “indirect empirical evidence”. Most of physics is “indirect empirical evidence”. This of course depends on what you mean by direct or indirect. Is LIGO detection of gravitational waves direct? Certainly a lot of analysis is required to obtain the LIGO result; the only thing “directly” measured are interferometric patterns from two lasers. Yet, the physics community agrees that their measurement is “direct”, and the team won the Nobel prize specifically for the “directness” of this measurement.

I’m trying to work this out. I’m not sure how to distinguish between something directly detected, and something directly observed. I guess detection would be in a sense direct access, but just very limited access. So I guess there would be degrees of being directly accessible, some providing a more complete picture than others.

But, when I say indirect empirical evidence, I essentially mean empirical evidence used to infer something that cannot itself be objectively verified. Empirical evidence used to infer possible explanations of how past events like OOL could or couldn’t have happened would be an example of this.

Though it might be more clear in some sense to just use the already available term of scientific fact, when I say direct empirical evidence, I mean an entity/event that is directly accessible to objectively verifiable observation or detection, and has been empirically confirmed by multiple observations or detections.

E.g., the existence of Pluto is an established fact, i.e., objectively confirmed through multiple direct observations using a telescope. There may need to be more distinction made here, but that’s the general gist of it.

To approach it from another angle, there are subjective inferences, and objective confirmations. Subjective inferences would be dependent on indirect empirical evidence and/or logical proofs. Whereas objective confirmations would be a result of direct empirical observations and/or logical proofs. In other words confirmations are established facts that are not susceptible to subjectivity.

I’m not real familiar with LIGO, but I would say a detection is direct access, but in the most limited sense. It provides a very small piece of the whole. Now LIGO may be described as a multiple instrumentation detection as opposed to a single instrumentation detection, like, say, a microscope.

But whether or not that distinction is necessary I’m not sure. Guess it would depend on the context. So with LIGO I would say if it is indeed shown to be accurate, it confirms the existence of CGW, but only provides a very limited picture of their existence.

Now I’m no philosopher, nor do I pretend to understand all of the scientific terminology, but I’m just trying to come up with a general way of making distinctions in order to be able to discuss these issues in a way that I, and maybe others like me, can follow and make sense of what’s going on in a discussion.

I’m not claiming this is the perfect way to go about the distinctions, and there are probably adjustments that would need to be made. It’s just an attempt on my part to provide a somewhat coherent way to keep a conversation on track.

@PdotdQ

Not always. This depends on the uncertainty in the observations of the empirical evidence versus the uncertainty of the observations that support the theoretical basis from which the mathematical proof flows from. The proper way to do this is to be agnostic about ranking empirical evidence vs inductive evidence vs abductive etc a priori and just plug everything into Bayesian inference.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. I’m mainly concerned with established scientific facts and confirmed human experience which would mean the highest degree of certainty. Are you saying that we should be neutral to whether or not these facts could be overturned by subjective inferences?

@PdotdQ

Evidence, as I mentioned before, is cheap. What is necessary is strong evidence. Just any old evidence can be nearly worthless, as your conclusion (posterior) can be dominated by what you previously assumed is true (prior). In this case, the conclusion (the posterior) that the universe has a beginning is not changed significantly by the BGV theorem (the evidence), and is mostly driven by the fact that you already assume previous to knowing about the BGV theorem that the universe has a beginning (the prior).

I’m not quite sure I follow you here. I think you’re saying that in light of my prior assumptions, based on the evidence I’ve already considered, though BGV would add additional weight to support my conclusion, it wouldn’t significantly affect it. Is that correct?