Quantum gravity

I recently asked an eminent physicist [Don Page] a question about the relationship between Relativity and quantum mechanics. Here's the exchange:

I was reading an interview with Roger Penrose from 10 years ago:

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/sep/06-discover-interview-roger-penrose-says-physics-is-wrong-string-theory-quantum-mechanics

The idea of parallel universes—many worlds—is a very human-centered idea, as if everything has to be understood from the perspective of what we can detect with our five senses. 

The trouble is, what can you do with it? Nothing. You want a physical theory that describes the world that we see around us. That’s what physics has always been: Explain what the world that we see does, and why or how it does it. Many worlds quantum mechanics doesn’t do that. Either you accept it and try to make sense of it, which is what a lot of people do, or, like me, you say no—that’s beyond the limits of what quantum mechanics can tell us. Which is, surprisingly, a very uncommon position to take. My own view is that quantum mechanics is not exactly right, and I think there’s a lot of evidence for that. It’s just not direct experimental evidence within the scope of current experiments.

You have called the real-world implications of quantum physics nonsensical. What is your objection?

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

Of course, this debate has raged for decades, with competing interpretations of quantum mechanics.  Penrose offes an interesting criticism, but it seems to beg the question. What if the world we see around us isn't all there is because there's more than one universe? In that case, the theory shouldn't describe or predict just one outcome, should it? 

Suppose both theories are true, only Relativity is true for our universe while quantum mechanics is true for more than one universe, including ours? Maybe Relativity accurately describes the space-time structure of our universe, but the quantum world is more fundamental than the macro world, which is generated by the quantum world, and the rules for the quantum world transcend the macro world of our particular universe? Our universe represents one set of quantum outcomes, but there are others. The rules of Relativity are specific to our universe, unlike the rules of quantum mechanics. Both theories would be mutually consistent because they describe distinct, overlapping domains. Perhaps the quantum structure of a universe is variable, so quantum mechanics must be more flexible to accommodate the variance, which makes it probabilistic in reference to any particular universe, since it doesn't single out any particular universe.  Does that make any sense? 

I tend to agree with you.  Roger Penrose seems to be among what I think is a small minority (which does not prove that he is wrong, though on this issue I tend to agree with the majority) that spacetime and general relativity is more fundamental than quantum theory.  My tentative position is that quantum theory is universally true (at least as what I see as the most conservative option), and that it implies that general relativity is not universally true but has a limited range of validity, though that range does seem to include most of our observable universe (the part we can observe, taking the very early universe, where GR may not apply, not to be observable by us).

Miracles, materialism, and quantum mechanics

Creationism and idealism

http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2018/09/does-physics-lead-to-god.html#more

Here's a striking example of a philosopher of science who rejects young-earth creationism but subscribes to theistic idealism to explain quantum mechanics. That's quite ironic since idealism is far more antirealist than mature creation.

In Defense of the Simulation

In recent weeks, there has been a little bit of discussion about the universe as a simulation.  I wanted to toss a few pennies into the mix and give a defense of the idea.  This is not to argue that I believe the world is actually a computer simulation or part of the Matrix or anything like that, but simply to point out that the idea has more going for it than a lot of people first realize and it is wise to consider rather than just brushing it off as if it has no merit.

The first line of reasoning is something I’ve mentioned before.  It actually fits Elon Musk’s argument on why he thinks the universe is a simulation, and I’ve also heard Neil deGrasse Tyson make a similar claim.  It deals with the statistical likelihood of us being in a simulation and if materialism is true, I believe it is an airtight argument.  The line of reasoning goes like this:

We have already advanced our computer technologies to such an extent that we can do very complex simulations right now.  The rate of computing is increasing so quickly that it seems that in a very short amount of time, we will be able to do such things as fully replicate a human mind.  In fact, we will be able to replicate more than one mind at one time.  The instant we are fully able to replicate a human mind, given materialism, the simulated mind will be self-aware and thinking.  Ultimately, there will be no difference between the simulated mind and our own physical mind.  In fact, in 2013 researchers were able to simulate one second of biological brain processing time using 82,944 processors over 40 minutes.  In theory, again given materialism, that network would have been identical to a normal human being’s brain with the awareness of one second of time passing.

So we are on the cusp of replicating human beings in a digital environment.  If materialism is true, there will be no difference in the mental space of the machine and the biological components.  In fact, materialism stipulates that we are all biological machines as it is.

But here’s where the math comes into play.  If the minds we mimic are indistinguishable from our own, and our own minds are the types of minds that design simulations, then it stands to reason that the digital minds we create are also going to create their own simulations.  And if we are able to simulate ourselves to such an extent that we are indistinguishable from our simulations, then so too our own simulations will be able to create their own simulations that are indistinguishable from themselves.  In short, if it is possible for us to do this, then it is a statistical certainty that we actually have already done this, as have the minds that we have created, and so on.

Given the fact that billions and billions of simulated worlds have therefore been created, the math game is simple.  There is one “real” world and billions and billions of simulated worlds that are indistinguishable from that “real” world.  Thus, the odds that you are in the one “real” world are billions and billions to one against.  Therefore, you are statistically certain to be in a simulation.

As stated throughout, the above line of reasoning only works if materialism is true.  Additionally, it relies on us actually getting to the pivotal point where we can actually replicate a mind exactly like our own.  But this line of reasoning is not the only line of reasoning leading toward the simulation conclusion.  So let me look at the second line of reasoning, which is the quantum world.

The world “quantum” comes from the fact that energy is dispensed in indivisible packets called quanta.  Similar to the concept of atoms, there is only so far you can subdivide until you reach the foundational limit.  But in the realm of pure number, the quanta does not make sense.  You can easily divide numbers on and on and on, until they reach an infinitesimal value, and even at that point you can still divide it an infinite number of times more.

But while you could do that in mathematically theory, in the real world you cannot.  The real world is quantized.  At first glance, it doesn’t make sense why that should be so.  However, those who have studied computers understand this quite easily.

If you use computers for math functions, you quickly realize there is a limit to the size of values.  You cannot divide an infinite number of times because at some point the computer runs out of the resources to hold the data needed to divide further.  Therefore, there is a fundamental limit in place, the absolute smallest amount of data you can go to, which is of course the bit, 0 or 1.

This means that computers, fundamentally, are quantized.  It is impossible to get around this.  The quanta is built into the foundation of how computing works.  So, while it is not apparent why such restrictions would be so in the “real” world, it is extremely obvious why they would be so in a simulated world.

We can even extend this metaphor further when we consider the role of observation in the way that experiments play out.  The most famous example of this is the double-slit experiment.  Briefly, for those who may not know it, when trying to determine if light was a particle or a wave, researchers shone a beam of light through a single slit and onto some photosensitive paper (i.e., a film plate).  What showed up is what you’d expect if light was made of particle-like photons.  However, when light was shone through two slits set a short distance apart, what appeared on the photosensitive paper showed interference zones, which happen with waves.  This held up even when the light was dimmed down so that it was only releasing one photon at a time.  Each photon would make a single distinct point of impact, much like a particle would, but over time the design that built up showed the interference pattern of a wave.

Even this is not truly the most remarkable aspect of this experiment, however.  When scientists tried to determine which of the two slits a single photon went through, the simple fact that they were observing the experiment meant that what appeared on the photosensitive paper no longer showed interference.  In other words, by trying to observe which slit a photon went through, the photon no longer acted like a wave at all: it behaved as if it had always been particles.

Why this happens is still not understood.  Clearly, the act of observing the experiment interferes with the experiment and changes things, but it is not clear why putting a measurement device on one slit and not the other changes the behavior of particles going through the slit without any measurement device too.  And if you really want to melt your brain, look up the quantum eraser experiment, wherein by “erasing” the data that one would have learned by the observation so that you cannot use it, the interference pattern reemerges.  Yes, this means that whether or not the interference pattern emerges is completely dependent upon whether or not you can know which slit the photons pass through.  If you can know, there is no interference; if you can’t know, there is interference.

Again, this behavior seems quite confusing and not intuitive at all, at least in our “real” world.  But if you were designing a simulation, it would make perfect sense.  I know this because at one point I was going to design a simulation that would pit two countries in a war against each other.  A player would control one of the countries, controlling the army’s budget and things of that nature.  But because I was thinking of countries with populations of millions, it quickly became apparent that it would be too calculation intensive to replicate millions of units for each country.  Instead, I could use statistics to compress the data.

Each country would have a birth and a death rate.  Therefore you’d have a certain number of citizens at a certain age, with a certain number who could have children, and a certain number in the work force, and so on.  One could easily just make up a bunch of actuary tables to accomplish this.

But the problem is that it would be a very boring game.  If you’re playing the game, you want something rendered on screen.  But what would render?  Easy: what the player is looking at.  So if you zoomed into a specific city looking at specific people in a specific building, then those individuals would be actualized.  Where they come about was based on the statistical likelihood of what would be there, but once rendered they would become definite objects.  At least up to the point when the player was no longer looking at them, at which point they would go back to being nothing but a probability.

What struck me when I was musing on this was that’s exactly how sub-atomic particles seem to behave.  When you’re not looking directly at them, they behave in a statistical manner, having a probability of being in a specific location at a specific time.  But once you “zoom in” and look at them directly, they become definite, specific entities.

This even gave rise to a form of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, because you could only see what was on your screen.  What wasn’t rendered was only probability.  And that meant that if you tracked a single entity with enough precision that it was on your screen, you had no knowledge of what was near it that could affect it (such as an enemy soldier that might “kill” that entity).  And if you zoomed out enough to see what was near it, you would lose the specificity of the location of that entity.

In designing this simulation, this behavior was needed because it would save computer processing time in not having to keep track of millions upon millions of individual entities.  It seems reasonable that if we are in a simulation, the same thing would be in effect now, even if the fundamental computer running our software is trillions of times more advanced than what we have today.

My final stream of evidence involves a similar concept, which is the relativity of time, mass, and length.  We know that time slows down (relative to stationery objects) the faster that an object moves, up to the speed of light where time stops completely.  Equally, the mass of an object increases up to infinity when it is at the speed of light (this is why photons, which move at the speed of light, have to be mass-less, because if they had any mass it would have to be infinite).  Additionally, the length of an object shrinks, relative to a stationery object, the faster that it moves.

All of these things are linked together, therefore, and it’s almost like there is a governor attached.  Again, we see similar things in simulations.  Calculations have caps in place to keep the simulation moving smoothly.  If you use more resources in one area, you have to free them up in another area, or else the whole thing gets bogged down.  This sort of limitation is exactly what we see in computer systems today, put in place to keep things from blowing up and becoming useless.

In conclusion, I’ll just say this.  I’m not advocating that we actually are in a simulation.  By no means.  But if I were going to design a simulation of the universe, the way I would have done it leads toward the very things that we see in the universe around us.  So make of that what you will.

Between the devil's advocate and the deep blue computer

1. In chapter 4 of Where the Conflict Really Lies, Alvin Plantinga discusses quantum mechanics. Plantinga's aim is twofold: to show that quantum mechanics is compatible with miracles/special providence–as well as human/divine agents who enjoy libertarian freedom. 

Calvinists face a somewhat different challenge, and that is whether quantum mechanics is compatible with "theistic determinism". 

2. Before proceeding, we need to define our terms and draw some distinctions.

i) There's a sense in which Calvinism is deterministic. The reservation I have with that characterization is that "determinism" is an imprecise way to classify Calvinism. That's because an outcome can be determinate without being predeterminate. And there's more than one sense in which that might be the case.

For instance, if an outcome is directly caused, then it's not the end-result of a chain of events leading up to that outcome. In that regard, the outcome is determinate but not predetermined. 

To take a different kind of example, an outcome can be determinate but unintended. It wasn't predetermined in the sense of premeditation. For instance, chemical reactions are determinate but not predeterminate in that sense. 

Calvinism is deterministic is a more specific sense than generic determinism, because Calvinism has a doctrine of predeterminism in particular rather than a doctrine of determinism in general. 

Predestination is a type of premeditation. Everything happens according to God's master plan for the world. In that regard, "determinism" fails to capture the divinely intentional element of Calvinism.  

ii) Calvinism is neutral on physical determinism. Whether or not all physical events are physically determined is a matter of indifference to Calvinism inasmuch as the fundamental determinant in Calvinism is predestination. But predestination isn't synonymous with physical determinism since the locus of predestination is God's immaterial mind and will. God's blueprint for the world as well as God's resolve to implement his plan. 

iii) In Calvinism, there's more than one causal modality by which God's plan eventuates. There's God's timeless creative fiat. There's an order of second causes. And there are miracles which circumvent a chain of second causes. 

3. In addition, there are two different definitions of libertarian freedom:

There seem to be at least two different fundamental notions of what free will is in the contemporary literature. The first of these, which seems to have garnered the most attention in the last century, works under the assumption that for a person to rightly be said to have free will, she must have the ability to do otherwise than what she does, in fact, do. Under this view I could be said to have freely chosen to drive to work only if I also could have freely chosen, for example, to bike to work or to skip work altogether. This approach to free will is referred to as a ‘leeway-based approach’ (cite my book) or an ‘alternative possibilities approach’ (see Sartorio (2016).)

In contrast, a smaller percentage of the extant literature focuses primarily on the issues of ‘source,’ ‘ultimacy,’ and ‘origination’. This second approach doesn’t focus immediately on the presence or absence of alternative possibilities. On this approach, I freely choose to drive to work only if I am the source of my choice and there is nothing outside of me from which the choice is ultimately derived.

In what follows, we refer to the first of these conceptions—the conception that free will is primarily a matter of having alternative possibilities—as the ‘leeway based’ conception. Similarly, we will refer to the second of these conceptions—that free will is primarily a matter of our being the source of our choices in a particular way—as the ‘sourcehood’ conception. (John Fischer and Carolina Sartorio refers to sourcehood views as ‘actual sequence’ views; see Fischer (2006) and Sartorio (2016)).

Both of these notions can be seen in the following passage taken from Robert Kane:

We believe we have free will when we view ourselves as agents capable of influencing the world in various ways. Open alternatives, or alternative possibilities, seem to lie before us. We reason and deliberate among them and choose. We feel (1) it is ‘up to us’ what we choose and how we act; and this means we could have chosen or acted otherwise. As Aristotle noted: when acting is ‘up to us,’ so is not acting. This ‘up-to-us-ness’ also suggests (2) the ultimate control of our actions lies in us and not outside us in factors beyond our control (Kane (2005), 6). Kevin Timpe, Routledge Companion to Free Will. 

4. Apropos (3), we need to disambiguate libertarian freedom (as defined above) from Calvinism. 

i) I'd say that the ultimate sourcehood definition is straightforwardly at odds with Calvinism. Human agents can't be free in that sense.

ii) But the leeway definition is equivocal. We need to distinguish between alternate possibilities in the psychological sense in contrast to alternate possibilities in the metaphysical sense. 

By "psychological", I mean human agents can imagine alternate pathways. And when we make a choice, that often involves mentally comparing and contrasting alternate pathways.

That's consistent with Calvinism. According to Calvinism, God has predestined rational agents to make choices by engaging in that type of deliberation.

Likewise, it's consistent with Calvinism that human agents can and do influence the world in various ways. 

iii) That, however, doesn't entail that there are open alternatives in the metaphysical sense because not everything that's conceivable is feasible. Although we can entertain many apparent possibilities, it doesn't follow that we can act on all of them. Indeed, it's a commonplace of human experience that there's often a disappointing shortfall between imaginary pathways to our goal and realistic pathways to our goal. 

Pathways that seem to lie wide open may in fact have washed out bridges along the way. That's in part because human imagination is very shortsighted. When we contemplate a course of action, there are many intervening steps that fall outside our ken. 

In addition, our pathway may be blocked by other agents. What seems to be an unobstructed pathway in the mind often hits a wall when we attempt to act on our choice. 

iv) Finally, Calvinism affirms that unlike human agents, God does have leeway freedom. God can access alternate possibilities. God does have open alternatives at his disposal. 

5. One of the complications with assessing the relationship between freedom and determinism vis-a-vis quantum mechanics is the absence of an agreed-upon interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are deterministic as well as indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. There's insufficient evidence to ascertain which is correct. At least according to the current state of the evidence, some deterministic and indeterministic interpretations are empirically equivalent. And it may be that even in principle, there can never be sufficient evidence to settle that dispute. It's striking the degree to which debates over the proper interpretation of quantum mechanics resorts to thought-experiments.

6. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that quantum mechanics is actually deterministic. That would amount to physical determinism at a subatomic level. If true, then that doesn't generate even a prima facie tension between predestination and quantum mechanics.

7. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that quantum mechanics is actually indeterministic. If some physical events or outcomes are physically uncaused or indeterminate, is that consistent with universal predestination?

Let's consider an analogy. At present, I believe there are computer chess players that can beat the very best human players. 

Suppose,for discussion purposes, we grant that human chess players have libertarian freedom. Suppose choosing which move to make originates with the player. 

Likewise, there's a sense in which a player has leeway freedom. As he scans the board, the pieces, and their position, many alternate pathways lie open to him. That's not just imaginary. It correspond to objective reality in terms of empty spaces on the board and different ways in which different kinds of pieces can move. There are multiple opportunities for action. In that respect, there's more than one way ahead. 

Ah, but here's the catch. Because the computer is unbeatable, every pathway leads to defeat. Every alternate course of action leads to checkmate.

It follows that a determinate outcome is consistent with indeterminate choices. Although it might seem that determinism and indeterminism are antithetical, they can be combined. Even if every pathway is indeterministic, the denouement is the same in each case. 

8. I'm not suggesting, from a Calvinistic perspective, that chess players have libertarian freedom. Rather, I'm using an a fortiori argument (a maiore ad minus). If even in the greater case, where indeterminate choices are nevertheless consistent with determinate outcomes, then mutatis mutandis, that holds true in the lesser case where leeway freedom (and ultimate sourcehood) is false. And that's an analogy for quantum mechanics, even on indeterministic interpretations, where causal determinism is false at the subatomic level. 

Quantum gravity

Ever since the development of quantum mechanics in the 20s,  there's often thought to be two conflicting pictures of the physical world: the subatomic domain is indeterministic while the macroscopic domain is deterministic. Put another way, Relativity is deterministic while quantum mechanics is indeterministic. Despite some of the best minds in science laboring to reconcile the two theories, the conflict remains intractable. Or so I frequently read. 

In fairness, I've overstated the issue. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics are deterministic. The hidden variables interpretation is deterministic. But from what I've read, Bell's theorem, while it didn't rule out hidden variables, made life very confining for the possibility of hidden variables.

The many-worlds interpretation is deterministic. Every alternate possibility that's physically possible must play out. Hence, the multiverse. That's my understanding. 

But for whatever reason, there are prominent physicists who are dissatisfied with that interpretation.

You can also have antirealists like Stephen Hawking who don't think there's a real conflict because quantum mechanics is just a mathematical model. Likewise, I don't think Bas van Fraassen believes in "theoretical entities" like elementary particles. 

I myself don't have a stake in this issue. Physical indeterminism is compatible with theological determinism. 

What I'd like to briefly discuss is a general principle. Are physical determinism and indeterminism irreconcilable? Can both be true in different respects? 

There are, for instance, situations where the initial state may be indeterministic, but cross a threshold into determinism. For instance, the way a chess game begins doesn't predetermine how it will end. At the outset there may be an infinite number of pathways to victory or defeat. But as the game progresses many pathways are (literally) taken off the table. There comes a turning-point in the game where it's no longer possible for both players to win. One is bound to lose. In x number of moves, he'll be checkmated.

Good players can see that coming and concede defeat before it happens. So something that was initially indeterministic can become inevitable.

Another example is gridlock. At one time of day there may be multiple viable routes out of town, but if all the arterials become too congested, there comes a point where the hapless driver can't go forward, backward, right, or left. 

To take a final example: consider the floor plan for a house. Suppose you begin with square footage. Say you have 5000 sf to play with. At that initial stage the possible floor plans are endless. Could be one story, two stories, three stories. Could be square, rectangular, hexagonal, and so on.

However, as you begin to pencil in rooms, that reduces available space for additional rooms. Likewise, the location of some rooms increasingly limits where to put other rooms. As the process continues, you narrow down the range of options. There comes a point at which earlier choices select for the remaining choices. They literally squeeze out alternative configurations. 

So, as a genera principle, I don't seen an inherent conflict between physical determinism and indeterminism. But it may well be that the relationship between Relativity and quantum mechanics isn't analogous to my comparisons.

The argument from ignorance

Atheists often mock the Christian appeal to mystery or paradox. They think that's intellectually evasive. A cop-out.

Before getting to the main point, I'd note that mystery and paradox are not synonymous. A logical paradox is mysterious, but a mystery isn't necessarily paradoxical. 

On a related note, atheists accuse Christians of resorting to an argument from ignorance or God-of-the gaps. However, in other contexts, atheists appeal to mystery. For instance, some atheists say we may never be able to explain the naturalistic origin of life because we don't have enough physical evidence about primordial conditions to reconstruct the distant past in that regard. In principle, we could explain the origin of life naturalistically if we had enough trace evidence to reconstruct the initial conditions, but that may be lost. 

More dramatically, some atheists say we find quantum mechanics baffling because our simian brains were not evolved to understand that sort of thing. That kind of intelligence didn't confer a survival advantage on the ancient African savannas for our early ancestors. So natural selection didn't develop brains that have the cognitive ability to resolve quantum mechanical paradoxes. In that event, it's something we can't figure out even in principle. Human reason is too limited. It hits a ceiling.

Likewise, there may be problems in math that are humanly insoluble. Once again, our simian brains evolved to solve more practical problems. So we hit a wall. 

A theory of everything

http://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/PoythressVernSemioticAnalysisOfTheObserver.pdf

House of mirrors

i) To my knowledge, there are roughly two longstanding problems with relativity and quantum physics. One is how to harmonize the two. The other is that, even on its own terms, there appears to be a intractable weirdness to quantum mechanics. Some of what it posits seems to be physical impossible, yet there's evidence for it.

There's also some weirdness with relativity (e.g. the twin paradox), but that seems less baffling. 

ii) So we have two world pictures (relativity, quantum mechanics) that are powerful, accurate, well-confirmed theories. Theories that make testable and tested predictions.

But thus far they don't mesh, and even on its own, there are things about quantum mechanics that defy comprehension. It just doesn't seem to be realistic in some respects, even though it works.

iii) What this suggests to me is that we need a new world picture that transcends these two world pictures. A picture that captures the best of both.

For a time, string theory was the holy grail, but many physicists have become disenchanted with its prospects, not to mention physicists who were skeptical from the get-go.

iv) Let's toy a thought-experiment. Suppose humans can't perceive the physical world directly. Suppose we can only perceive the effects of an indetectable physical reality. All we have to go by are the effects. Something physical is producing them, but it's out of range. 

v) Apropos (iv), suppose the sensible world is like a house of mirrors. The mirrors simultaneously reflect reality and distort reality.

There are different kinds of mirrors, viz. right-angled mirrors, convex mirrors, concave mirrors, infinity mirrors.

Suppose we were born into a world in which we only saw reflections. Complex reflections. 

In one respect, these would be realistic. They'd be projections of a physical reality. Grounded in reality. 

But in another respect, they'd be unrealistic. Mirror images can depict spatial relationships that are physically impossible to instantiate in 3D. 

For instance, mirrors can illustrate nonlocality or action at a distance (quantum entanglement). The same object instantly appears to be in more than one place at the same time.

Our cosmic house of mirrors would be mathematically complex to describe, yet mathematically elegant. 

The images would correlate with reality. But because we couldn't compare the reflection to what it reflected, it would be hard to say when reality ends and distortion begins. On this scenario, we lack direct access to the objective standard of comparison. 

The ethics of mature creation

The problem with the mature creation view is that the phenomena that indicate "coherent age" contains information about the past which would not be otherwise present if the past was unreal. Take the example of distant starlight. Holding the mature creation view would indicate that the light from any stellar body beyond about 10,000 light-years away consist of photons created in transit. Therefore, such light is not truly indicative of what is happening in the stellar bodies. But when the light portrays for example a supernova, taking the mature creation view must say that the supernova did not actually happen since the light containing the information about the supernova was created in transit. How is this not deceptive, to indicate an astronomical event which did not actually happen? 

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-problems-with-mature-creation-view.html

i) I think Daniel does a nice job of framing the issue. I find his objection somewhat ironic, for even though I'm more sympathetic to OEC than he is, I am, at the same time, more sympathetic to mature creation than he is. Indeed, I think that mature creation is true to some degree. It's just a question of how much. And once you allow for mature creation, it's not easy to identify a cut-off point that isn't arbitrary.

ii) The charge of deception is the classic charge against mature creation. However, I rarely if ever find any critic discuss the nature of deception. What are the necessary conditions of deception? 

a) Normally, deception is defined as making a false statement with the intention to deceive. However, even a true statement can be deceptive. Take a lawyer who asks a "simple question" to elicit a "simple answer." Giving a true answer will be misleading because it lacks sufficient context. 

Moreover, it's possible for the speaker to make a true statement that he mistakenly believes to be false. 

b) Is a false expectation is a necessary condition? Someone can only be deceived if he expected the truth to be different. 

c) However, the issue of false expectation raises another issue: who bears the onus? is it speaker's duty not to foil the listener's expectation, or listener's duty not to have that expectation in the first place? 

It's hard to state a universal principle. If a listener has a reasonable expectation, then perhaps there's a the prima facie onus on the speaker not to foil the listener's expectation. 

Yet that's overdrawn. Even reasonable expectations can be wrong. We're fallible. So it would be extreme to say it's unethical to ever contradict a reasonable expectation.

If, however, the listener has an unreasonable expectation, then it's his fault, and not the speaker's, if the speaker foils his expectation. 

d) Put another way, the truth can be deceptive if the listener has a false expectation. But if his expectation was unreasonable, then he only has himself to blame. 

Did the speaker deceive you? Or did you deceive yourself by entertaining a false expectation? 

So one consideration when considering the ethics of deception is a justified or unjustified expectation. Was the speaker a deceiver, or was the listener self-deceived? 

iv) Take parents who adopt a newborn. They don't tell him that he's adopted. And they don't tell him he's not adopted, either. They just don't say.

They don't tell him when he's a child because they fear that would foster a sense of insecurity and rejection. They don't tell him when he's an adolescent because that's an emotionally unstable period of life. There never seems to be the right time to tell him. 

So he grows up believing these were his biological parents. Is that deceptive? If so, is that unethical? 

v) Does everyone have the same expectations about anything? Is there such a thing as a uniform human expectation? If not, then isn't deception or self-deception inevitable? Isn't a communicator bound to deceive some people some of the time?

Unless everybody has the same expectations, it doesn't seem possible to avoid deceiving some people. There's no intention to deceive. Rather, deception is the ineluctable side-effect of native listeners. 

a) For instance, there are literal-minded people who never get satire. They always read it straight. Did the satirist deceive them? Is satire unethical because some people take it seriously?

b) Likewise, there are naive people who are easily surprised by things that don't surprise cynical people. Is it the speaker's duty to avoid confusing naive people? Or is it the listener's duty not to be so naive? 

c) What about optical illusions? In a sense, they're only illusory if you don't recognize that they are optical illusions. But does every observer have that level of sophistication? Aren't some observers fooled by optical illusions?

Or take an audiovisual illusion–like seeing lightning before you hear thunder. We understand that because we know that lightwaves travel faster than soundwaves. Even though it's the same event, it seems to be separated in time. The effect is observer-relative. Depends on whether you witness the storm overhead or at a distance. But a prescientific observer doesn't have that interpretive framework. 

Scientific theories like Relativity and quantum mechanics have counterintuitive implications for time and space. They contradict common sense expectations. Take the twin paradox, Schrödinger's cat, or quantum nonlocality. Would it be unethical for God to make a world like that?

vi) At the risk of belaboring my stock illustration, a period movie set "contains information" about past nonevents. These include period stage props. Antique replicas. 

Even if the movie is based on a true story, there will be fictional details to fill in the gaps. Perhaps the director builds a set of Dodge City, based on historical photographs. But all he has are pictures of the facade. Even though the interior may be an accurate reconstruction of 19C saloons, that's not what the Long Branch Saloon really looked like inside. If you went back in time, that's not what you'd see. 

Likewise, here will be extras playing bit characters who never existed. Moreover, Dodge City never existed at the location of the movie set. And the 19C town doesn't exist in the here and now. 

vii) Now, Daniel might raise the obvious objection that when we watch a movie set in the Old West, we know this isn't really the past. Rather, it's an artistic recreation of the past. So it's not deceptive. Not dishonest. 

But that depends on the viewer. Does a young child who watches a Western know that? 

Science & religion

http://www.shenvi.org/Essays/SAR/ScienceAndReligion.htm

Why Quantum Theory Does Not Support Materialism

http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952939

God and chance

Is chance compatible with predestination? Depends in part on how we define our terms. 

Take a deck of cards. The order of the cards is random in the sense that the sequence is internally uncaused. The succeeding card isn't the effect of the preceding card. The cards are causally independent of each other. 

And that's what makes the outcome unpredictable. You can't know from last card dealt what the next card will be. For one is not the result of the other. 

But that doesn't mean the sequence is uncaused. Rather, it's caused by the dealer. Shuffling the deck causes the cards to occur in a particular sequence. Order is imposed from an outside force. 

By the same token, there's a sense in which the sequence of a stacked deck is random. For even though the card sequence is intentional, it's still the case that each card is causally independent of every other card. It's not like the domino effect. The cards are blind, but the cardsharp is not. 

Likewise, God can prearrange independent causal chains to converge at a particular point down the line. Two chains of events aren't directly linked. In that respect, their concurrence is a matter of "chance."But both can be dependent on a common, overarching factor. They reflect divine planning. 

That's the sense in which "random" events like 1 Kgs 22:34 and Lk 1:9 are predestined. 

Some freewill theists take the position that due to quantum indeterminacy, even God can't know the future. Because quantum events are inherently indeterminate, they are inherently unpredictable. 

How should a Calvinist respond? In at least three different ways:

i) There are deterministic as well as indeterminstic models of quantum mechanics. The many-worlds interpretation is deterministic. 

ii) To say quantum events are physically uncaused or physically indeterminate (even if that's true) doesn't mean God can't cause or determine them, for primary causation isn't physical. On one model of fiat creation, God doesn't make history through a series of incremental installments. It's not a series of discrete, creative fiats, one after another. Rather, God instantiates the entire timeline by a single creative fiat. 

iii) We could also say that if quantum indeterminacy is incompatible with predestination, and predestination is true, then predestination falsifies indeterministic models of quantum mechanics.  

Divine action in a quantum world

A friend shared this with me:

http://www.relocatingtoelfland.com/2012/05/16/divine-action-in-a-quantum-world/

I’ll make three brief observations:

i) The correct interpretation of quantum mechanics remains very diverse and controversial.

ii) Even if we interpret quantum mechanics realistically (whatever that amounts to), it wouldn’t mean that quantum events are uncaused and/or indeterminate in relation to God. Rather, this has reference to second effects. The internal dynamics of the world. How mundane events influence, affect, or interact with other mundane events.

iii) Wolfgang Pauli draws an intriguing distinction:

We have seen that the emergence of this conception in physics was from the outset associated with a freer treatment of the idea of cause. It will be explained later that the idea of causality, critcised earlier from the empirical standpoint by D. Hume, has undergone a further essential generalisation in quantum mechanics…Instead of “causal” the physicist prefers to say deterministic. By this he means a theory in which the state of a system at all other times, earlier and later, follows mathematically from the state at a given time. W. Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy (Springer-Verlag 1994), 130-131.

On this view, quantum events could be uncaused, yet still be determinate (thus defined). And that’s at the level of mundane factors–even before we take divine agency (e.g. predestination, providence, miracle) into account. 

Scientific Study Disproving Science

Although I have written about this before, today I read an article that claimed Parallel Universes Exist – Study. Here are some quick excerpts:

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science".

The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.

In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.

A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.

As I pointed out the last time I addressed this issue, the idea of a multiverse utterly destroys science. In fact, since the induction problem already occurs in a single universe, retreating to a multiverse will only compound the inductive problem. The multiverse, in other words, is even more damaging to science than Hume’s inductive problem.

Hume’s inductive problem tells us that just because we have always seen the sun rise each morning does not guarantee that it will rise tomorrow morning. But those who address Hume can at least retreat to the probability argument: given the multitude of times the sun has risen and the fact that it has never not risen, there is no reason to doubt the sun will rise.

The multiverse theory, however, does not have the ability to fall back to probability, because the fact of the matter is that there are no odds left. The sun literally does not rise tomorrow in some universe (and this can be caused by any number of things: perhaps nuclear fission results in the sun exploding; or perhaps the heart of the sun quantum leaps to the Orion Nebula.

As a result of all this, perhaps a better headline for that article could have been: Science Doesn’t Exist – Study. Because you cannot have science when your framework is everything happens in SOME universe. There is no scientific reason, under this theory, why an action occurs in any specific universe (it’s random as to which universe it will act in and which it will not), and therefore science cannot explain anything that occurs. Not only are we left with no inductive reasoning, we are left without causation either. (Why is it that x follows y? Because this universe had that particular random split occur…)

Naturally, Quantum Mechanics is difficult to understand. But one thing we know is that you cannot “solve” the problems of Quantum Mechanics by undermining the foundations that brought forth Quantum Mechanics in the first place. That would simply be self-refuting, and that’s what we get with this study.

Epistemology in a Many-Worlds Scenario

Steve forwarded an article on to me that dealt in some aspects with a many-worlds scenario. Since I am not going to rebut that article specifically in this post, it’s not necessary to link to it. Suffice to say that it got me thinking about the nature of epistemology in a many-worlds scenario.

There are many ways to get to a many-worlds scenario. The most common currently is the idea of the multiverse, where the universe splits at every quantum decision. This was proposed as way of reconciling the seemingly contradictory data we get when conducting experiments such as the double-slit experiment. Or we can propose an infinite expansion of the universe where there will be pockets of individual universes within the multiverse (which is all the universes combined). These pockets are formed because space expands at a geometrical rate, and as such after a certain distance space expands faster than the speed of light, so an observer will never be able to observe what goes on after a certain distance. Each of these pockets form their own universes of observation, and in an infinite expansion there will be an infinite number of these.

Now there are many potential things we could talk about if we assume this theory is true—and indeed, if the theory is true, in an infinite number of alternate universes I did discuss those other aspects of the theory. Further, in some of those universes I actually will come to the exact opposite conclusions that I come to in this universe. After all, even if we have an infinite number of universes, we only have a finite amount of matter in each universe (which is the case because the expansion of the multiverse limits the amount of matter that can be observed in each universe, and since nothing travels through space faster than the speed of light, matter that is beyond the range of observation wouldn’t affect the individual universes). If we have a finite amount of matter in an infinite number of universes, the same universe will repeat itself, as will all other possible universes. Thus, in an infinite number of universes I am writing this post; in an infinite number of other universes, I am writing the exact opposite of this post. Finally, in an infinite number of other universes than the previous two, I did not even exist to write anything in the first place, etc.

This brings up an interesting question as to epistemology. Let’s just examine one particular aspect (again, assuming this theory is true): supernatural claims. There are an infinite number of worlds that exist wherein a burning bush appeared to Moses. (Note: even if Moses is a mythical figure in our universe, he must exist in an infinite number of other universes with the exact same result as recorded in Exodus.) Further, there are an infinite number of universes where someone named Jesus was crucified and rose again on the third day. (There are other universes where Jesus was crucified and rose on the second day, or the fourth day, etc. too).

Now here’s the thing: if there are an infinite number of universes where this occurred, how can we say that these events did not occur in this particular universe? In reality, since there would be universes where this did occur, and since there would also be universes where this did not occur yet where it is claimed that it did occur, then the epistemological question rears its head: how do we know which type of universe we are in?

This is brought to bear even more clearly when we consider quantum splits too. If there are an infinite number of universes, then there exist universes in which the quantum selection always yields the result expected by classical Newtonian physics. In other words, there must exist an infinite number of universes wherein photons going through a double-slit experiment will always land as they would if classical physics were correct. In such a world, no one would ever discover quantum mechanics. In fact, since quantum mechanics acts in that world identically to the world we get in Newtonian physics, then there would be no reason to say that QM is actually at work in that universe—even though QM is the reason that universe exists.

We can carry that further. There exist an infinite number of worlds that, up until this point in time, act exactly like ours, but which tomorrow will have such results as every subatomic particle in the Sun quantum-leaping to Pluto’s orbit. Now the question is: how do we know that our universe is not one of those universes where this will occur? We cannot use the “It’s very improbable that this will occur” excuse, because we have an infinite number of worlds to deal with—it will happen in an infinite number of worlds even as it does not happen in a different infinite number of worlds. It is impossible to use “odds” to determine whether or not it will happen in this particular universe without knowing which particular universe out of the infinite universes we are in.

The upshot of all this is that if the many-worlds idea is true, it is impossible to know anything at all. Ultimately, what you know is actually the result of a quantum split that did not occur in an infinite number of other universes. For the atheists, there are an infinite number of worlds where you are theists, and the reason you are an atheist in this world has nothing to do with reason—it has to do with the fact that in this world, the quantum split didn’t occur like it did in other worlds. The same is true of theists. The same is true for any belief, including the beliefs expressed in this post.

In short, if we use the many-worlds scenario to explain why something happens, we are cutting ourselves off from the ability to explain anything at all. Many-world scenarios cannot coexist with a scientific epistemology.

The Entropy Paradox

Our resident ignoramus, Touched By A Stone, has weighed in on my comments on Steve’s previous post about the Entropy Paradox. Never one to let knowledge get in the way of his vitriol, T-Stone has accused me of being “thoroughly confused” and presenting “pure hooey.”

This despite the fact that (as I told T-Stone) I was presenting arguments from Brian Greene in The Fabric of the Cosmos. Greene happens to be a physicist. T-Stone happens to be dimwitted. Which one wins this contest?

T-Stone says:

Parsimony isn't a statistical evaluation, it's an evaluation of *economy*.

Unfortunately for T-Stone:

The notion of entropy was first developed during the industrial revolution by scientists concerned with the operation of furnaces and steam engines, who helped develop the field of thermodynamics. Through many years of research, the underlying ideas were sharply refined, culminating in Bolzmann’s approach. His version of entropy, expressed concisely by the equation on his tombstone [S = k log W], uses statistical reasoning to provide a link between the huge number of individual ingredients that make up a physical system and the overall properties the system has.

Greene, Brian. 2004. The Fabric of the Universe. New York: Vintage Books p. 151 (emphasis in bold added)

To carry on with Greene’s thought:

…[I]magine unbiding a copy of War and Peace, throwing its 693 double-sided pages high into the air, and then gathering the loose sheets into a neat pile. When you examine the resulting stack, it is enormously more likely that the pages will be out of order than in order. The reason is obvious. There are many ways in which the order of the pages can be jumbled, but only one way for the order to be correct. …A simple but essential observation is that, all else being equal, the more ways something can happen, the more likely it is that it will happen. And if something can happen in enormously more ways, like the pages landing in the wrong numerical order, it is enormously more likely that it will happen….

Entropy is a concept that makes this idea precise by counting the number of ways, consistent with the laws of physics, in which any given physical situation can be realized. High entropy means that there are many ways; low entropy means there are few ways. If the pages of War and Peace are stacked in proper numerical order, that is a low-entropy configuration, because there is one and only one ordering that meets the criterion. If the pages are out of numerical order, that is a high-entropy situation, because a little calculation shows that there are [Greene then writes a number that continues for the next page and a half which only a masochist would reproduce here]—about 10 ^ 1878—different out-of-order page arrangements.

(ibid, pp. 151-153, all italics his)

Naturally, there are some differences between this and physics:

Of course, in making the concept of entropy precise and universal, the physics definition does not involve counting the number of page rearrangements of one book or another that leave it looking the same, either ordered or disordered. Instead, the physics definition counts the number of rearrangements of fundamental constituents—atoms, sub-atomic particles, and so on—that leave the gross, overall, “big-picture” properties of a given physical system unchanged. As in the example of War and Peace, low entropy means that very few rearrangements would go unnoticed, so the system is highly ordered, while high entropy means that many rearrangements would go unnoticed, and that means the system is very disordered.

For a good physics example, and one that will shortly prove handy, let’s think about [a] bottle of Coke… When gas, like the carbon dioxide that was initially confined in the bottle, spreads evenly throughout a room, there are many rearrangements of the individual molecules that will have no noticeable effect. For example, if you flail your arms, the carbon dioxide molecules will move to and fro, rapidly changing positions and velocities. But overall, there will be no qualitative effect on their arrangements. The molecules were spread uniformly before you flailed your arms, and they will be spread uniformly after you’re done. …By contrast, if the gas were spread in a smaller space, as it was in the bottle, or confined by a barrier to a corner of the room, it has significantly lower entropy. The reason is simple. Just as thinner books have fewer page reorderings, smaller spaces provide fewer places for molecules to be located, and so allow for fewer rearrangements.

But when you twist off the bottle’s cap or remove the barrier, you open up a whole new universe to the gas molecules, and through their bumping and jostling they quickly disperse to explore it. Why? It’s the same statistical reasoning as with the pages of War and Peace. No doubt, some of the jostling will move a few gas molecules purely within the initial blob of gas or nudge a few that have left the blob back toward the initial dense gas cloud. But since the volume of the room exceeds that of the initial cloud of gas, there are many more rearrangements available to the molecules if they disperse out of the cloud than there are if they remain within it. On average, then, the gas molecules will diffuse from the initial cloud and slowly approach the state of being spread uniformly throughout the room. Thus, the lower-entropy initial configuration, with the gas all bunched in a small region, naturally evolves toward the higher-entropy configuration, with the gas uniformly spread in the larger space….

The tendency of physical systems to evolve toward states of higher entropy is known as the second law of thermodynamics. (The first law is the familiar conservation of energy.) As above, the basis of the law is simple statistical reasoning: there are more ways for a system to have higher entropy, and “more ways” means it is more likely that a system will evolve into one of these high-entropy configurations. [I note in passing that this is the third time Greene has used “statistical reasoning” in regards to entropy; perhaps T-Stone should e-mail him to correct Greene’s obvious stupidity!] Notice, though, that this is not a law in the conventional sense since, although such events are rare and unlikely, something can go from a state of high entropy to one of lower entropy. When you toss a jumbled stack of pages into the air and then gather them into a neat pile, they can turn out to be in perfect numerical order. You wouldn’t want to place a high wager on its happening, but it is possible. It is also possible that the bumping and jostling will be just right to cause all the dispersed carbon dioxide molecules to move in concert and swoosh back into your open bottle of Coke. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this outcome either, but it can happen.

The large number of pages in War and Peace and the large number of gas molecules in the room are what makes the entropy difference between the disordered and ordered so huge, and what causes low-entropy outcomes to be so terribly unlikely. If you tossed only two double-sided pages in the air over and over again, you’d find that they landed in the correct order about 12.5 percent of the time. With three pages this would drop to about 2 percent of the tosses, with four pages it’s about .3 percent, with five pages it’s about .03 percent, and with 693 pages the percentage of tosses that would yield the correct order is so small—it involves so many zeros after the decimal point—that I’ve been convinced by the publisher not to use another page to write it out explicitly. Similarly, if you dropped only two gas molecules side by side into an empty Coke bottle, you’d find that at room temperature their random motion would bring them back together (within a millimeter of each other), on average, roughly every few seconds. But for a group of three molecules, you’d have to wait days, for four molecules you’d have to wait years, and for an initial dense blob of a million billion billion molecules it would take a length of time far greater than the current age of the universe for their random, dispersive motion to bring them back together into a small, ordered bunch. With more certainty than death and taxes, we can count on systems with many constituents evolving toward disorder.

(ibid, pp. 153-157, italics his)

Now that we have established how unlikely it is for even one Coke bottle's worth of carbon dioxide to randomly form out of a high entropy situation, it is time for the paradox:

Earlier, we introduced the dilemma of past versus future by comparing our everyday observations with properties of Newton’s laws of classical physics. We emphasized that we continually experience an obvious directionality to the way things unfold in time but the laws themselves treat what we call forward and backward in time on an exactly equal footing. As there is no arrow within the laws of physics that assigns a direction to time, no pointer that declares, “Use these laws in this temporal orientation but not in reverse,” we were lead to ask: If the laws underlying experience treat both temporal orientations symmetrically, why are the experiences themselves so temporally lopsided, always happening in one direction but not the other? …

Notice that in our discussion of entropy and the second law, we did not modify the laws of classical physics in any way. Instead, all we did was use the laws in a “big picture” statistical [there’s that word again, T-Stone] framework: we ignored fine details…and instead focused our attention on gross, overall features…. We found that when physical systems are sufficiently complicated (books with many pages, fragile objects that can splatter into many fragments, gas with many molecules), there is a huge difference in entropy between their ordered and disordered configurations. And this means that there is a huge likelihood that the systems will evolve from lower to higher entropy, which is a rough statement of the second law of thermodynamics. But the key fact to notice is that the second law is derivative: it is merely a consequence of probalistic reasoning applied to Newton’s laws of motion.

This leads us to a simple but astounding point: Since Newton’s laws of physics have no built-in temporal orientation, all of the reasoning we have used to argue that systems will evolve from lower to higher entropy toward the future works equally well when applies toward the past. Again, since the underlying laws of physics are time-reversal symmetric, there is no way for them even to distinguish between what we call the past and what we call the future. …Thus, not only is there an overwhelming probability that the entropy of a physical system will be higher in what we call the future, but there is the same overwhelming probability that it was higher in what we call the past. …

This is the key point for all that follows, but it’s also deceptively subtle. A common misconception is that if, according to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy increases toward the future, then entropy necessarily decreases toward the past. But that’s where the subtlety comes in. The second law actually says that if at any give moment of interest, a physical system happens not to possess the maximum possible entropy, it is extraordinarily likely that the physical system will subsequently have and previously had more entropy. …With laws that are blind to past-versus-future distinction, such time symmetry is inevitable.

That’s the essential lesson. It tells us that the entropic arrow of time is double-headed. From any specified moment, the arrow of entropy increase points toward the future and toward the past. And that makes it decidedly awkward to propose entropy as the explanation of the one-way arrow of experiential time.

Think about what the double-headed entropic arrow implies in concrete terms. If it’s a warm day and you see partially melted ice cubes in a glass of water, you have full confidence that half an hour later the cubes will be more melted, since the more melted they are, the more entropy they will have. But you should have exactly the same confidence that half an hour earlier they were also more melted, since exactly the same statistical reasoning implies that entropy should increase toward the past. And the same conclusion applies to the countless other examples we encounter every day….

Toward this end, imagine it’s 10:30 p.m. and for the past half hour you’ve been staring at a glass of ice water (it’s a slow night at the bar), watching the cubes slowly melt into small, misshapen forms. You have absolutely no doubt that a half hour earlier the bartender put fully formed ice cubes into the glass; you have no doubt because you trust your memory. And if, by some chance, your confidence regarding what happened during the last half hour should be shaken, you can ask the guy across the way, who was also watching the ice cubes melt (it’s a really slow night at the bar), or perhaps the video taken by the bar’s surveillance camera, both of which would confirm that your memory is accurate….

But as we’ve seen, such entropic reasoning—reasoning that simply says things are more likely to be disordered since there are more ways to be disordered, reasoning which is demonstrably powerful at explaining how things unfold toward the future—proclaims that entropy is just as likely to have been higher in the past. This would mean that the partially melted cubes you see at 10:30 p.m. would actually have been more melted at earlier times; it would mean that at 10:00 p.m. they did not begin as solid ice cubes, but, instead, slowly coalesced out of room-temperature water on the way to 10:30 p.m., just as surely as they will slowly melt into room-temperature water on their way to 11:00 p.m.

No doubt, that sounds weird—or perhaps you’d say nutty. To be true, not only would H2O molecules in a glass of room-temperature water have to coalesce spontaneously into partially formed cubes of ice, but the digital bits in the surveillance camera, as well as the neurons in your brain and those in the brain of the guy across the way, would all need to spontaneously arrange themselves by 10:30 p.m. to attest to there having been a collection of fully formed ice cubes that melted, even though there never was. Yet this bizarre-sounding conclusion is where a faithful application of entropic reasoning—the same reasoning that you embrace without hesitation to explain why the partially melted ice you see at 10:30 p.m. continues to melt toward 11:00 p.m.—leads when applied in the time-symmetric manner dictated by the laws of physics. This is the trouble with having fundamental laws of motion with no inbuilt distinction between past and future, laws whose mathematics treats the future and past of any given moment in exactly the same way….

Math and intuition concur that if there really were fully formed ice cubes at 10 p.m., then the most likely sequence of events would be for them to melt into the partial cubes you see at 10:30 p.m.: the resulting increase in entropy is in line both with the second law of thermodynamics and with experience. But where math and intuition deviate is that our intuition, unlike math, fails to take account of the likelihood, or lack thereof, of actually having fully formed ice cubes at 10 p.m., given the observation we are taking as unassailable, as fully trustworthy, that right now, at 10:30 p.m., you see partially melted cubes.

This is the pivotal point, so let me explain. The main lesson of the second law of thermodynamics is that physical systems have an overwhelming tendency to be in high-entropy configurations because there are so many ways such states can be realized. And once in such high-entropy states, physical systems have an overwhelming tendency to stay in them. High entropy is the natural state of being. You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high-entropy state. Such states are the norm. On the contrary, what does need explaining is why any given physical system is in a state of order, a state of low entropy. These states are not the norm. They can certainly happen. But from the viewpoint of entropy, such ordered states are rare aberrations that cry out for an explanation. So the one fact in the episode we are taking as unquestionably true—your observation at 10:30 p.m. of low-entropy partially formed ice cubes—is in fact in need of an explanation.

And from the point of view of probability, it is absurd to explain this low-entropy state by invoking the even lower-entropy state, the even less likely state, that at 10 p.m. there were even more ordered, more fully formed ice cubes being observed in a more pristine, more ordered environment. Instead, it is enormously more likely that things began in an unsurprising, totally normal, high-entropy state: a glass of uniform liquid water with absolutely no ice. Then, through an unlikely but ever-so-often-expectable statistical fluctuation, the glass of water went against the grain of the second law and evolved to a state of lower entropy in which partially formed ice cubes appeared. This evolution, although requiring rare and unfamiliar processes, completely avoids the even lower-entropy, the even less likely, the even more rare state of having fully formed ice cubes. At every moment between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., this strange-sounding evolution has higher entropy than the normal ice-melting scenario…and so it realizes the accepted observation at 10:30 p.m. in a way that is more likely--hugely more likely—than the scenario in which fully formed ice cubes melt. That is the crux of the matter.

(ibid p.157-165, italics his)

Brian Greene includes a note here that illustrates even more clearly how absurd T-Stone has been in questioning what I previously wrote:

Remember, on pages 152-53 we showed the huge difference between the number of ordered and disordered configurations for a mere 693 double-sided sheets of paper. We are now discussing the behavior of roughly 10^24 H2O molecules, so the difference between the number of ordered and disordered configurations is breathtakingly monumental. Moreover, the same reasoning holds for all other atoms and molecules within you and within the environment (brains, security cameras, air molecules, and so on). Namely, in the standard explanation in which you can trust your memories, not only would the partially melted ice cubes have begun, at 10 p.m., in a more ordered—less likely—state, but so would everything else: when a video camera records a sequence of events, there is a net increase in entropy (from the heat and noise released by the recording process); similarly, when a brain records a memory, although we understand the microscopic details with less accuracy, there is a net increase in entropy (the brain may gain order but as with any order-producing process, if we take account of heat generated, there is a net increase in entropy). Thus, if we compare the total entropy in the bar between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. in the two scenarios—one in which you trust your memories, and the other in which things spontaneously arrange themselves from an initial state of disorder to be consistent with what you see, now, at 10:30 p.m.—there is an enormous entropy difference. The latter scenario, every step of the way, has hugely more entropy than the former scenario, and so, from the standpoint of probability, is hugely more likely.
(ibid. p. 165 note)

So now we can see that when T-Stone offers his “trick question” about two decks of cards and asking which has more entropy, he’s not even in the right playing field. The fact is that the entropy paradox does exist, and scientists do choose the value that is less statistically likely—that is, they trust their observations are correct. In so doing, they continually stipulate that the further back we push time, the less entropy was in the universe, which means that the further back in time we go the less likely it was to have spontaneously arisen this way and the more likely it is that our memories are wrong. But since very few people want to live in a universe where we cannot trust our own experiences, the net result is that scientists ignore the entropy paradox and assume the least parsimonious explanation. To be sure, there have been attempts to imagine how the big bang could have introduced low entropy at the beginning of the universe, but these theories are untestable (and, as T-Stone is so fond of saying, untestability means it’s not science).

Now, T-Stone can certainly feel free to continue to mock me if he wishes, but his protestations do not affect reality. To use a metaphor from the book, he can continue to flail his arms around in the air, but it will not override the reality that the air is uniformly mixed.