Yes, but with a big but.
We don't know what "all else equal" means. Inparticular it encompasses unknown and ununderstood phenomena. And because we can't replicate what we don't know (and for various other reasons) each apple dropping we do could in principle be dependant on some arcane detail of the universe. We coulde also very easy be driven to a situation where our beliefs of solidity would be more relevant/override the understanding of falling (such as having the apple on a table). Also the mental structures used in that assesment would be suspect. It is in fact more so that the ground accelerates into the apple and the apple is the one staying stationary. We could also question whether talk of apples and grounds make sense. Also there are known risks such as false vacuums happening so that the dropping doesn't have time to take place. You could also drop an apple in orbit and it would not fall to the ground.
But even if the apple would just stay in midair that would be lawful. It doesn't but it very well could have. There is not a reaction the apple can make that would count as "too chaotic" to be a lawful response (or we are not using lawful in that sense here (and indeed the theorethical notion of chaos applies to systems determined to great precision)).
Some laws are straight out of question as they simply are not the case. However among those that are consistent with our data there is not a clear winner. And it will always be underdetermined.
Yes, but with a big but.
Assume that we know everything there is to know about the world, but nothing about the future. Everything we've observed (and we've observed everything so far) tells us that in cases like this one, the apple always falls to the ground. Do we have any reason at all to believe that it will fall to the ground this time? In other words, do we have any reason at all to think that the future will resemble the past? If so, what?
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!