Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Skepdick]

Gravity pulls the object down with the same force in every direction (in all 360 degrees), meaning there is no preferred direction for movement. This is precisely why the system is ill-defined at that singularity—it's not a case of violating Newton’s laws, but rather a mathematical indeterminacy within the model.

Yes. That's called non-determinism.

The reason the object would eventually move in reality is because no real-world system is perfectly symmetrical.

Uhuh. No real world system is perfectly symmetrical, but a real world-system perfectly conserves quantities?

Nice double standard.

Quantum fluctuations, thermal vibrations, or microscopic imperfections in the surface would introduce asymmetry, selecting a direction.

Yes. That's called non-determinism.

[Gary Childress]

Perhaps a Wonderful Anecdote from the Annals of My Own Awakening might help His Bigness?

Offered of course in the spirit of self-serving Humility:

In a small village nestled between two great mountain peaks in a region of Colombia only accessible by metaphysical transport, there lived a skilled cartographer named Alexis Jacobi. Alexis was renowned for his detailed and accurate maps, which helped earth residents to navigate the landscapes of the Cosmos.

One day, a wise elder manifested himself from out of a giant mango Alexis’ wife placed at the center of the dining table, and posed to Alexis this perplexing question: "How do we know that your cosmic maps truly represent the Universe?" Alexis was taken aback, as he had always assumed that his universal maps were a direct reflection of reality.

The shimmering, glimmering ebullient phantasm explained, "Your maps are made up of symbols — lines, shapes, and words. But how do these symbols connect to the actual phenomena they represent?" Alexis realized that he had never thought about this with proper depth.

He prostrated himself before this Radiant Elder and kissed his toes.

The elder continued, "The symbols on your cosmic maps are like words in a language. They have meaning only because we agree on their meaning. But what if our language, our symbols, and our maps are incomplete or inaccurate or “skewed”?"

Alexis’ world was turned upside down! He felt sick and barfed in a planter. He began to question the nature of reality and how it relates to the symbols we use to describe it. He realized that his cosmic schema, like our language and concepts, are mere approximations of reality to which we can become abnormally invested.

As Alexis delved deeper into this mystery, he discovered that different cultures and individuals have their own unique symbols, languages, and maps. Each of these systems represents a distinct paradigm, a way of understanding and interacting with the world.

Alexis came to understand that the paradigms we adopt have a profound impact on our psychology and decision-making. They shape our perceptions, influence our emotions, and guide our actions.

The wise elder disappeared, then reappeared, smiling. "Alexis, my latent Sat-Guru & Friend, you have grasped the essence of the symbol grounding problem. Remember, our understanding of reality is always filtered through the symbols, languages, and maps we use. Be mindful of these limitations, and strive to see beyond the boundaries of your own paradigm, chump!"

From that day forward, Alexis approached his cosmical cartography with a newfound sense of humility and wonder. He recognized that his fabulous maps, like all symbols and languages, are mere representations of reality — and that the true nature of the world always remains a mystery waiting to be explored.

Sounds like a heroic journey.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sounds like a heroic journey.

In reverse, down into the pit of metaphysical ruin!

[Gary Childress]

Sounds like a heroic journey.

In reverse, down into the pit of metaphysical ruin!

Did you start out in the "pit of metaphysical ruin" or did you get there from somewhere else that you were previously? I mean, did you start out in a pit of metaphysical ruin or did something specific happen in your life that caused you to feel like you descended into a pit from somewhere else? Was it something specific that you read for example? And if you started somewhere else, then how would you characterize the place you started from?

[Belinda]

Concerning Skepdick's "there are no physical laws-------", in the context of what metaphysical substances exist, physical laws is a synonym for laws of nature. And nature is a system: and systems are defined as sets of coherent laws.

Therefore I regard your stance as overly postmodern for practical purposes. It's okay to begin from a postmodern stance, but in the everyday political world we must choose as moderns.

Giving it a label is beyond the point. So is the synonimy.

The whole thing is about the conceptual mish-mash entailed by the symbol grounding problem. How the way we speak and think about reality connects to reality. And how the paradigms we choose to adopt as "ontological" have direct consequences on our psychology and decision-making.

Physics rests on the ontological claim that energy exists.
But that's not the teritory - that's the map.

The language/concepts of "energy" is a way of modeling nature, it's not nature.

In everiday politicking we must absolutely reject zero-sum thinking. Such as the conservation laws of physics.

Human systems can generate genuine increases in capability, knowledge, or value that don't have to be balanced by corresponding decreases to human benefactors elsewhere.

This is the point Big Mike can't seem to grasp. If I eat an apple - you can't have it, but if you share your knowledge with me - both of us can have it. Knowledge-sharing doesn't obey conservation laws.

An apple is a measurable thing that we can evaluate according to sweetness, ripeness and other attributes. A heuristic device, such as mathematics, or physics, does not get to be evaluated according to attributes but according to how it fits with needs.I think that to compare apples and such with
intellectual paradigms is like trying to do a comparative evaluation of swimming and flying; each is useful in its context.

I am no physicist but I can see that academic physics as it stands is has a lot of value for a great many people. Do physicists generally regard their industry as a way to absolute truth? I doubt it. I'd be more inclined to regard physicists as thinking their industry is a map --a frame-- an intellectual device for thinking with.
Maybe I could better understand Zero Sum theory if you would be good enough to suggest an alternative to the present paradigm that energy really exists ; for it seems to me that modern physics fits well with technologies we need.

In the context of politics however there are technologies and political regimes that are life-destroying, as we all know only too well. The socialist/Christian ethic supports the have-nots. Is the socialist /Christian ethic applying a mere sticking plaster to enormous social suffering? Is it possible that with no Zero Sum thinking social evils will no longer exist?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Did you start out in the "pit of metaphysical ruin" or did you get there from somewhere else that you were previously? I mean, did you start out in a pit of metaphysical ruin or did something specific happen in your life that caused you to feel like you descended into a pit from somewhere else? Was it something specific that you read for example? And if you started somewhere else, then how would you characterize the place you started from?

I got here because BigMike destroyed everything! I was relatively happy. I woke up with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. I believed that I was in control of what I did, that I could act freely! Along came this DEMON and pulls the rug out from under me! Down, down I tumbled into that pit of despair you now find me in.

Forlorn, depressed, not wanting to eat. I closed all the curtains. It’s like a dark miasmic goo has settled over…everything!

Oh you mock me, don’t you!? You revel in my pain, my angst!

You are truly cruel, CRUEL.

LIFE IS A SHITHOLE!

Smoosh me like a cockroach, I don’t care …

::::sob, whimper::::

[Gary Childress]

Did you start out in the "pit of metaphysical ruin" or did you get there from somewhere else that you were previously? I mean, did you start out in a pit of metaphysical ruin or did something specific happen in your life that caused you to feel like you descended into a pit from somewhere else? Was it something specific that you read for example? And if you started somewhere else, then how would you characterize the place you started from?

I got here because BigMike destroyed everything! I was relatively happy. I woke up with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. I believed that I was in control of what I did, that I could act freely! Along came this DEMON and pulls the rug out from under me! Down, down I tumbled into that pit of despair you now find me in.

Forlorn, depressed, not wanting to eat. I closed all the curtains. It’s like a dark miasmic goo has settled over…everything!

Oh you mock me, don’t you!? You revel in my pain, my angst!

You are truly cruel, CRUEL.

LIFE IS A SHITHOLE!

Smoosh me like a cockroach, I don’t care …

::::sob, whimper::::

There' s nothing to mock. It sounds like you've had a remarkable intellectual journey. Maybe the journeys isn't at its completion yet? I don't know.

[seeds]

In the heart of the Metaphysical Mountains, Alexis Jacobi stood tall within his castle keep, a fortress constructed from the very fabric of abstract thought. The walls were woven from threads of an intoxicated epistemology, the towers anchored in the bedrock of fabled ontology. As the last defender of the castle, Jacobi prepared to face the horror that had been besieging his stronghold for a number of turbulent centuries:

BigMike, the monstrous embodiment of scientistic hubris, had been assailing the Castle with an arsenal of extraordinarily crafted rhetorical devices! His arguments were razor-sharp, his logic airtight, and his scorn for metaphysics a palpable, crushing force, undergirded by poisonous resentment.

As BigMike wheeled up to the castle gates, Jacobi steeled himself for the battle ahead. He summoned a maelstrom of effervescent concepts, each one a sparkling, iridescent bubble of thought that floated forth to confront the monster.

The first wave of concepts — a frothy mixture of Platonic idealism and Kantian transcendentalism — burst forth from the castle gates, only to be popped by BigMike's withering scorn. "Fanciful nonsense!" the monster bellowed, “Hand-waving par excellence!”, his voice like a crack of thunder. "Your precious metaphysics is nothing but a castle built on sand!"

Undeterred, Jacobi summoned a second wave of concepts — a dizzying array of poststructuralist and postmodernist thought jacked up with Seeds-like ironies and wee babies in baby-chairs raising their arms in defiance! -– which danced and swirled around BigMike like a maddening swarm of insects. But this monster was unfazed, his scientistic worldview a bulwark against the metaphysical onslaught.

As the battle raged on, Jacobi's concepts grew increasingly desperate, increasingly bizarre. He summoned a swarm of Foucauldian power-knowledge dynamics, only to see them swatted aside by BigMike's dismissive gestures. He conjured a maelstrom of Derridean différance, only to watch as the monster reduced it to a mere footnote in the grand tome of scientific progress.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting the Metaphysical Mountains in a bloody orange glow, Jacobi realized that his castle was on the brink of collapse. BigMike's scientistic rhetoric had proven too powerful, too persuasive, too prolonged. Even the 2001 parody did not phase him! The monster's words had eaten away at the very foundations of the castle, leaving it a crumbling, precarious thing, destined for history’s rusting junkyard.

In a last-ditch effort to save his stronghold, Jacobi summoned a single, final concept -– a glowing, ethereal bubble of pure, unadulterated Being. The concept floated forth, a shimmering, iridescent sphere that seemed to contain the very essence of existence within interconnected orbs of grandeur.

BigMike sneered at the concept, his voice dripping with contempt. "You think a mere abstraction can stop me?" he growled, his words like a rusty gate scraping against concrete.

And with that, the monster reached out a massive, clawed hand and popped the bubble of Being. The concept dissipated, its essence fleeing into the void of nothingness like a whispered secret between non-existent phantasies.

As the bubble burst, the castle keep began to crumble, its walls dissolving into nothingness like sugar in the rain, like snowflakes on a lake. Jacobi stumbled backward, his eyes wide with horror, as BigMike's triumphant roar echoed through the Metaphysical Mountains.

The monster's scientistic rhetoric had proven too powerful, too persuasive. The castle of metaphysics had fallen, its defender vanquished by the crushing weight of BigMike's whirling words of scientistic realism.

And as the darkness closed in, Jacobi realized that he was doomed to wander the ruins of his castle, forever trapped now in a living nightmare of the scientistic hubris of the Age.

But wait!!!

Just as in all great movies where evil (BigMike's materialistic nihilism) seems to have vanquished goodness (Jacobi's metaphysical hopefulness), a faint glimmer of light begins rising from the ashes of the fallen castle.

Furthermore, the ever-intensifying light is accompanied by the slowly rising volume of the song "Unstoppable" - https://youtu.be/cxjvTXo9WWM - by Sia.

The light, of course, is "TRUTH" itself, which, in grand cinematic fashion, has the camera pull back from the scene of the battle to reveal that the entire theatre of war between BigMike and Alexis Jacobi took place on the head of a pin, somewhere amidst the sands of the Sahara Desert.

It was initially planned to be filmed in a teapot, but the writers felt that that might seem a little too cliché-ish.

If not obvious, the point is that BigMike's ideas and assertions might not be as big (or as important) as he makes them out to be.
_______

[Gary Childress]

In the heart of the Metaphysical Mountains, Alexis Jacobi stood tall within his castle keep, a fortress constructed from the very fabric of abstract thought. The walls were woven from threads of an intoxicated epistemology, the towers anchored in the bedrock of fabled ontology. As the last defender of the castle, Jacobi prepared to face the horror that had been besieging his stronghold for a number of turbulent centuries:

BigMike, the monstrous embodiment of scientistic hubris, had been assailing the Castle with an arsenal of extraordinarily crafted rhetorical devices! His arguments were razor-sharp, his logic airtight, and his scorn for metaphysics a palpable, crushing force, undergirded by poisonous resentment.

As BigMike wheeled up to the castle gates, Jacobi steeled himself for the battle ahead. He summoned a maelstrom of effervescent concepts, each one a sparkling, iridescent bubble of thought that floated forth to confront the monster.

The first wave of concepts — a frothy mixture of Platonic idealism and Kantian transcendentalism — burst forth from the castle gates, only to be popped by BigMike's withering scorn. "Fanciful nonsense!" the monster bellowed, “Hand-waving par excellence!”, his voice like a crack of thunder. "Your precious metaphysics is nothing but a castle built on sand!"

Undeterred, Jacobi summoned a second wave of concepts — a dizzying array of poststructuralist and postmodernist thought jacked up with Seeds-like ironies and wee babies in baby-chairs raising their arms in defiance! -– which danced and swirled around BigMike like a maddening swarm of insects. But this monster was unfazed, his scientistic worldview a bulwark against the metaphysical onslaught.

As the battle raged on, Jacobi's concepts grew increasingly desperate, increasingly bizarre. He summoned a swarm of Foucauldian power-knowledge dynamics, only to see them swatted aside by BigMike's dismissive gestures. He conjured a maelstrom of Derridean différance, only to watch as the monster reduced it to a mere footnote in the grand tome of scientific progress.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting the Metaphysical Mountains in a bloody orange glow, Jacobi realized that his castle was on the brink of collapse. BigMike's scientistic rhetoric had proven too powerful, too persuasive, too prolonged. Even the 2001 parody did not phase him! The monster's words had eaten away at the very foundations of the castle, leaving it a crumbling, precarious thing, destined for history’s rusting junkyard.

In a last-ditch effort to save his stronghold, Jacobi summoned a single, final concept -– a glowing, ethereal bubble of pure, unadulterated Being. The concept floated forth, a shimmering, iridescent sphere that seemed to contain the very essence of existence within interconnected orbs of grandeur.

BigMike sneered at the concept, his voice dripping with contempt. "You think a mere abstraction can stop me?" he growled, his words like a rusty gate scraping against concrete.

And with that, the monster reached out a massive, clawed hand and popped the bubble of Being. The concept dissipated, its essence fleeing into the void of nothingness like a whispered secret between non-existent phantasies.

As the bubble burst, the castle keep began to crumble, its walls dissolving into nothingness like sugar in the rain, like snowflakes on a lake. Jacobi stumbled backward, his eyes wide with horror, as BigMike's triumphant roar echoed through the Metaphysical Mountains.

The monster's scientistic rhetoric had proven too powerful, too persuasive. The castle of metaphysics had fallen, its defender vanquished by the crushing weight of BigMike's whirling words of scientistic realism.

And as the darkness closed in, Jacobi realized that he was doomed to wander the ruins of his castle, forever trapped now in a living nightmare of the scientistic hubris of the Age.

But wait!!!

Just as in all great movies where evil (BigMike's materialistic nihilism) seems to have vanquished goodness (Jacobi's metaphysical hopefulness), a faint glimmer of light begins rising from the ashes of the fallen castle.

Furthermore, the ever-intensifying light is accompanied by the slowly rising volume of the song "Unstoppable" - https://youtu.be/cxjvTXo9WWM - by Sia.

The light, of course, is "TRUTH" itself, which, in grand cinematic fashion, has the camera pull back from the scene of the battle to reveal that the entire theatre of war between BigMike and Alexis Jacobi took place on the head of a pin, somewhere amidst the sands of the Sahara Desert.

It was initially planned to be filmed in a teapot, but the writers felt that that might seem a little too cliché-ish.

If not obvious, the point is that BigMike's ideas and assertions might not be as big (or as important) as he makes them out to be.
_______

I've always wanted to see an ending where the dragon and Seigfreid suddenly realize that those aren't swords and fangs but rather mops and brooms they're using to clean up the stadium after a Stones' concert.

I'm weird. \_('_')_/

[Skepdick]

An apple is a measurable thing that we can evaluate according to sweetness, ripeness and other attributes. A heuristic device, such as mathematics, or physics, does not get to be evaluated according to attributes but according to how it fits with needs.I think that to compare apples and such with
intellectual paradigms is like trying to do a comparative evaluation of swimming and flying; each is useful in its context.

I am no physicist but I can see that academic physics as it stands is has a lot of value for a great many people. Do physicists generally regard their industry as a way to absolute truth? I doubt it. I'd be more inclined to regard physicists as thinking their industry is a map --a frame-- an intellectual device for thinking with.
Maybe I could better understand Zero Sum theory if you would be good enough to suggest an alternative to the present paradigm that energy really exists ; for it seems to me that modern physics fits well with technologies we need.

In the context of politics however there are technologies and political regimes that are life-destroying, as we all know only too well. The socialist/Christian ethic supports the have-nots. Is the socialist /Christian ethic applying a mere sticking plaster to enormous social suffering? Is it possible that with no Zero Sum thinking social evils will no longer exist?

I agree with all of that in principle - indeed, physics is useful, but it's precisely the tendency to absolutize it is what makes it harmful, since in physics everything is necessarily a zero-sum game - a conservation law. If we extent this mindset into the social domain then we are forced to interpret every social interaction as a zero-sum game too with no possibility of nett-negative; or nett-positive.

While many political/social interactions are zero-sum games or even nett-negatives, the possibility of nett-positive interactions is still possible in principle.

Under a physics paradigm ethics and economics discourse would be simply impossible. You can't create value. Social evils will always exist, but that's a better paradigm than being unable to even conceive of such things.

If we force everything into a physics paradigm of strict conservation, we lose the ability to even conceptualize these fundamental aspects of human social and economic systems.

You can paraphase this in even more general terms. I am against equational/symmetric reasoning in the social domain. We care about assymetries, not symmetries!

And to give you some intuition about the distinctions...

Equational/Symmetric reasoning: Everything must balance. What goes in must come out. A = B relationships. Reversible processes. Conservation laws

Asymmetric reasoning: Irreversible processes. Creation and destruction. Unequal relationships. One-way transformations. Growth and decline.

The Mathematician/Physicist is a social cripple because asymmetric reality becomes invisible or incomprehensible to to a person trained in symmetries.

[BigMike]

An apple is a measurable thing that we can evaluate according to sweetness, ripeness and other attributes. A heuristic device, such as mathematics, or physics, does not get to be evaluated according to attributes but according to how it fits with needs.I think that to compare apples and such with
intellectual paradigms is like trying to do a comparative evaluation of swimming and flying; each is useful in its context.

I am no physicist but I can see that academic physics as it stands is has a lot of value for a great many people. Do physicists generally regard their industry as a way to absolute truth? I doubt it. I'd be more inclined to regard physicists as thinking their industry is a map --a frame-- an intellectual device for thinking with.
Maybe I could better understand Zero Sum theory if you would be good enough to suggest an alternative to the present paradigm that energy really exists ; for it seems to me that modern physics fits well with technologies we need.

In the context of politics however there are technologies and political regimes that are life-destroying, as we all know only too well. The socialist/Christian ethic supports the have-nots. Is the socialist /Christian ethic applying a mere sticking plaster to enormous social suffering? Is it possible that with no Zero Sum thinking social evils will no longer exist?

I agree with all of that in principle - indeed, physics is useful, but it's precisely the tendency to absolutize it is what makes it harmful, since in physics everything is necessarily a zero-sum game - a conservation law. If we extent this mindset into the social domain then we are forced to interpret every social interaction as a zero-sum game too with no possibility of nett-negative; or nett-positive.

While many political/social interactions are zero-sum games or even nett-negatives, the possibility of nett-positive interactions is still possible in principle.

Under a physics paradigm ethics and economics discourse would be simply impossible. You can't create value. Social evils will always exist, but that's a better paradigm than being unable to even conceive of such things.

If we force everything into a physics paradigm of strict conservation, we lose the ability to even conceptualize these fundamental aspects of human social and economic systems.

You can paraphase this in even more general terms. I am against equational/symmetric reasoning in the social domain. We care about assymetries, not symmetries!

And to give you some intuition about the distinctions...

Equational/Symmetric reasoning: Everything must balance. What goes in must come out. A = B relationships. Reversible processes. Conservation laws

Asymmetric reasoning: Irreversible processes. Creation and destruction. Unequal relationships. One-way transformations. Growth and decline.

The Mathematician/Physicist is a social cripple because asymmetric reality becomes invisible or incomprehensible to to a person trained in symmetries.

Skepdick, your entire argument is built on a false dichotomy—as if understanding conservation laws somehow prevents us from conceptualizing social or economic progress. That’s just nonsense. The physical world operates under conservation principles, but value, innovation, and social progress are emergent phenomena within those constraints. There’s no contradiction here, only your confusion.

Economics and ethics are not about creating something from nothing; they’re about rearranging and optimizing existing resources, conditions, and incentives to improve human well-being. The idea that conservation principles make value creation "impossible" is just your own misunderstanding of how value actually emerges—through efficiency, knowledge accumulation, and systemic improvements.

And let’s address this ridiculous claim that physicists and mathematicians are "social cripples" because they study symmetries. That’s the kind of ignorant anti-intellectualism that people resort to when they don’t understand a subject but want to dismiss it anyway. Symmetries don’t make asymmetries invisible—they help us understand when and why asymmetries occur.

You’re not arguing against physics; you’re arguing against a cartoon version of it that you’ve invented because reality doesn’t fit your narrative.

[Skepdick]

Skepdick, your entire argument is built on a false dichotomy—as if understanding conservation laws somehow prevents us from conceptualizing social or economic progress. That’s just nonsense.

OK, cupcake.

The physical world operates under conservation principles, but value, innovation, and social progress are emergent phenomena within those constraints.

Well, yeah! Emergentism is precisely the escape hatch you need given the failure of reductionist physics in the social domain.

Economics and ethics are not about creating something from nothing; they’re about rearranging and optimizing existing resources

Sorry, I don't understand how you can "optimize" something somewhere without "deoptimizing" something elsewhere.

Conservation laws and all that.

conditions, and incentives to improve human well-being.

At the expense of...? You know - conservation laws. +5 here means -5 elsewhere...

The idea that conservation principles make value creation "impossible" is just your own misunderstanding of how value actually emerges—through efficiency, knowledge accumulation, and systemic improvements.

Well, explain it to us then, genius. How does a nett positive emerge from a zero-sum system?

How do I accumulate knowledge without somebody else losing it? Who lost out? Who balanced the equation of my gain?
Why isn't knowledge a conserved quantity?

And let’s address this ridiculous claim that physicists and mathematicians are "social cripples" because they study symmetries. That’s the kind of ignorant anti-intellectualism that people resort to when they don’t understand a subject but want to dismiss it anyway.

Except, you got that all backwards. I am dismissing precisely the subject I do understand.

I am dismissing it on the basis for its insufficiency and inapplicability to the social domain.

Symmetries don’t make asymmetries invisible—they help us understand when and why asymmetries occur.

Contradiction.

How could an asymmetry possibly occur?!? You keep insisting that conservation laws (symmetries!) are never violated.

You’re not arguing against physics; you’re arguing against a cartoon version of it that you’ve invented because reality doesn’t fit your narrative.

I am arguing against abuse and misapplication of equational reasoning you have so thoroughly demonstrated.

Forcing the square peg of human affairs into the round hole of reductionist equational reasoning is a perverse form of anti-intellectualism. It's scientism.

[BigMike]

Skepdick, your entire argument is built on a false dichotomy—as if understanding conservation laws somehow prevents us from conceptualizing social or economic progress. That’s just nonsense.

OK, cupcake.

The physical world operates under conservation principles, but value, innovation, and social progress are emergent phenomena within those constraints.

Well, yeah! Emergentism is precisely the escape hatch you need given the failure of reductionist physics in the social domain.

Economics and ethics are not about creating something from nothing; they’re about rearranging and optimizing existing resources

Sorry, I don't understand how you can "optimize" something somewhere without "deoptimizing" something elsewhere.

Conservation laws and all that.

conditions, and incentives to improve human well-being.

At the expense of...? You know - conservation laws. +5 here means -5 elsewhere...

The idea that conservation principles make value creation "impossible" is just your own misunderstanding of how value actually emerges—through efficiency, knowledge accumulation, and systemic improvements.

Well, explain it to us then, genius. How does a nett positive emerge from a zero-sum system?

And let’s address this ridiculous claim that physicists and mathematicians are "social cripples" because they study symmetries. That’s the kind of ignorant anti-intellectualism that people resort to when they don’t understand a subject but want to dismiss it anyway.

Except, you got that all backwards. I am dismissing precisely the subject I do understand.

I am dismissing it on the basis for its insufficiency and inapplicability to the social domain.

Symmetries don’t make asymmetries invisible—they help us understand when and why asymmetries occur.

Contradiction.

How could an asymmetry possibly occur?!? You keep insisting that conservation laws (symmetries!) are never violated.

You’re not arguing against physics; you’re arguing against a cartoon version of it that you’ve invented because reality doesn’t fit your narrative.

I am arguing against abuse and misapplication of equational reasoning you have so thoroughly demonstrated.

Forcing the square peg of human affairs into the round hole of reductionist equational reasoning is a perverse form of anti-intellectualism. It's scientism.

Skepdick, your entire approach is just a desperate attempt to misapply conservation laws where they don’t belong. Yes, physical energy is conserved, but how that energy is used and transformed matters. Almost all energy on Earth is stored solar energy—the sunlight that powers ecosystems, fuels weather patterns, and, through photosynthesis, provides the foundation for life itself. That energy isn’t just static—it’s harnessed, converted, and optimized to sustain and improve conditions here on Earth. Life flourishes within physical constraints. It doesn’t mean we’re stuck in a zero-sum game.

Your "at the expense of what?" argument is just lazy. Efficiency gains, knowledge accumulation, and technological advancements don’t require "deoptimizing" something elsewhere. Solar panels don’t steal energy from the sun—they harness it better. Scientific progress doesn’t erase old knowledge—it builds on it. Medicine doesn’t heal one person by harming another—it improves human well-being across the board.

You demand an example of how a net positive emerges from a zero-sum system? Look around you. Civilization itself is proof. Every advancement, from agriculture to antibiotics to electricity, has expanded human potential without "violating" physics. You don’t understand the difference between physical conservation laws and the emergence of value from intelligent adaptation.

You’re not dismissing physics because it’s "insufficient"—you’re dismissing it because you don’t understand how emergence works and it conflicts with your weak, reductionist take. You think physics is "just equations" when, in reality, it describes why the universe produces complex, non-zero-sum interactions within conservation principles. You’re arguing from ignorance and pretending it’s insight.

[Skepdick]

Skepdick, your entire approach is just a desperate attempt to misapply conservation laws where they don’t belong.

Ahahahahahahaha.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


Where is it that conservation laws don't belong? In which domain are conservation laws not applicable?

[BigMike]

Skepdick, your entire approach is just a desperate attempt to misapply conservation laws where they don’t belong.

Ahahahahahahaha.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


Where is it that conservation laws don't belong? In which domain are conservation laws not applicable?

Conservation laws apply to physical quantities—energy, momentum, charge—not to abstract concepts like value, knowledge, progress, or well-being. You’re treating social, economic, and intellectual development as if they’re bound by the same rigid constraints as closed physical systems, which is a fundamental category error.

You want to laugh? Laugh at your own absurd misunderstanding of how emergent phenomena work. The energy of the sun fuels life on Earth—yet we don’t claim life is "zero-sum" just because energy is conserved. A book doesn’t lose information when someone reads it; knowledge expands without depleting a finite resource. Innovation creates efficiencies that allow societies to produce more with less—without some cosmic balance sheet demanding equal "de-optimization" elsewhere.

If you think conservation laws dictate human advancement must be zero-sum, then tell me—where was the "negative trade-off" when humanity transitioned from stone tools to metallurgy? Where was the "conserved loss" when the printing press expanded literacy? What exactly was "de-optimized" when antibiotics doubled human life expectancy?

You keep pretending your argument is clever, but it’s just intellectual laziness dressed up as smug contrarianism.