A big steaming pile of philosophy
I was wandering around aimlessly on Wikipedia today when I came across an article on the omphalos hypothesis. Hopefully you don't know what the omphalos hypothesis is and you don't care that you don't know. In fact, I hope you stop reading this now before you waste any more of your time learning about what is quite possibly the most useless idea ever conceived.
According to Wikipedia, the Omphalos hypothesis "contains a powerful philosophic problem, one that troubles even those who have applied it in recent times."
So what's this "powerful philosophic problem"? Well, according to this hypothesis, the universe could have been created 100 years ago (or yesterday, or five minutes ago, etc.) pretty much as it is now. A creator somewhere could have waved his magic wand and created the Earth complete with birds in the air, water in the oceans, fossilized dinosaur bones in the ground, and stupid biped creatures filling online encyclopedias with nonsense. No evidence that we can see of the age of the earth can be considered reliable, because the planet could have been created with that evidence already on it.
So... I'm still left wondering... what's this "powerful philosophic problem"? And what's the reason for singling out this particular wacky hypothesis among all the other wacky hypotheses I can come up with? Maybe Bertrand Russell can clear things up for me:
"There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that 'remembered' a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago."
It's not logically impossible - I guess that makes it probable too, right? Yeah that makes sense. When I leave the house in the morning and the grass is wet I always think to myself "Wow, that must've been one hell of a water balloon fight" instead of "Gee, maybe it rained last night" because both ideas provide a logical explanation for why the grass is wet and I'm totally incapable of determining which one is more likely to have occurred.
Wikipedia: "It is important to note that the concept is unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific method — in other words, it is impossible even in principle to subject it to any form of test by reference to any empirical data because the empirical data itself is considered to have been arbitrarily created to look the way it does at every observable level of detail. This philosophical approach, extended to other areas, has serious negative implications for science as a whole, if it is to explain anything."
Ooo I bet scientists everywhere are just trembling in their lab coats, terrified about the 'serious negative implications' of the 'unfalsifiable' omphalos hypothesis. Or maybe they're just too busy doing things like curing diseases to care. Seriously, I don't think any scientist in his right mind gives a shit. If you drop a ball, science can provide laws that tell you how rapidly the ball will accelerate and how long it will take before it hits the ground. Someone can use these same laws to design a parachute. The ability to predict what's probably going to happen in the future based on what's been observed in the past is what people care about. If what's been observed in the past isn't real in your omphalos-hypothesis bizarro world it still doesn't matter, as long as what we think is past behavior helps us predict future behavior.
Of course, if you want to, you can believe that acceleration under gravity is completely random and it just so happens that every time you've dropped the ball in the past it has - just by random chance - happened to appear to obey some law. If you think this way, then I suggest you drive to the gas station right now and buy one of every type of lottery ticket they have - I bet you'll win them all. Meanwhile, I will continue to choose to believe what's probable until someone proves it wrong.
According to Wikipedia, the Omphalos hypothesis "contains a powerful philosophic problem, one that troubles even those who have applied it in recent times."
So what's this "powerful philosophic problem"? Well, according to this hypothesis, the universe could have been created 100 years ago (or yesterday, or five minutes ago, etc.) pretty much as it is now. A creator somewhere could have waved his magic wand and created the Earth complete with birds in the air, water in the oceans, fossilized dinosaur bones in the ground, and stupid biped creatures filling online encyclopedias with nonsense. No evidence that we can see of the age of the earth can be considered reliable, because the planet could have been created with that evidence already on it.
So... I'm still left wondering... what's this "powerful philosophic problem"? And what's the reason for singling out this particular wacky hypothesis among all the other wacky hypotheses I can come up with? Maybe Bertrand Russell can clear things up for me:
"There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that 'remembered' a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago."
It's not logically impossible - I guess that makes it probable too, right? Yeah that makes sense. When I leave the house in the morning and the grass is wet I always think to myself "Wow, that must've been one hell of a water balloon fight" instead of "Gee, maybe it rained last night" because both ideas provide a logical explanation for why the grass is wet and I'm totally incapable of determining which one is more likely to have occurred.
Wikipedia: "It is important to note that the concept is unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific method — in other words, it is impossible even in principle to subject it to any form of test by reference to any empirical data because the empirical data itself is considered to have been arbitrarily created to look the way it does at every observable level of detail. This philosophical approach, extended to other areas, has serious negative implications for science as a whole, if it is to explain anything."
Ooo I bet scientists everywhere are just trembling in their lab coats, terrified about the 'serious negative implications' of the 'unfalsifiable' omphalos hypothesis. Or maybe they're just too busy doing things like curing diseases to care. Seriously, I don't think any scientist in his right mind gives a shit. If you drop a ball, science can provide laws that tell you how rapidly the ball will accelerate and how long it will take before it hits the ground. Someone can use these same laws to design a parachute. The ability to predict what's probably going to happen in the future based on what's been observed in the past is what people care about. If what's been observed in the past isn't real in your omphalos-hypothesis bizarro world it still doesn't matter, as long as what we think is past behavior helps us predict future behavior.
Of course, if you want to, you can believe that acceleration under gravity is completely random and it just so happens that every time you've dropped the ball in the past it has - just by random chance - happened to appear to obey some law. If you think this way, then I suggest you drive to the gas station right now and buy one of every type of lottery ticket they have - I bet you'll win them all. Meanwhile, I will continue to choose to believe what's probable until someone proves it wrong.
posted by jester at 10:01 PM
1 comments
