I have trouble because you are using language where law comes first and happening comes second where I think happenings come first and law comes second. I was also answering a question different from whether a law is an accurate descripion of the events. I was answering a question on which one depends on the other with law being secondary.
My imagination is also failing to picture what it would even mean for the universe not to be lawful when "law" is taken broadbly and can contain arbitarily many details. Often the question is posed on the context of simple laws. But when you ask in priciple, such things as "brute force laws" that simply list all world events need to be considered too. The universe comes to a certain state and then doesn't know how to reach a next state and so never leaves that state? For each state transition there would be a brute force law that would be correct. I can't imagine how the world could be anything without that way of being establishing a character for it.
So, let's get back to a more basic question, and I apologize for how pedantic this will sound. I really don't intend it that way. I just need to know something about your approach here. Anyway: do you think we have any reason to believe that an apple when dropped will, ceteris paribus, fall to the ground?
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!