Looking for deep philosophical questions please help [Archive]

oneindelijk

March 27th, 2009, 01:12 PM

What I would like to know:
Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light ?
Travel, in the sense of relocating, because moving through space
with even the speed of light is already proven impossible, but
there might be other ways (like mentioned above quantum-transportation).

I've been trying to deduct certain things, but to may factors remain unknown
(some maybe just te me ?)
So, since there is a believe initial that the origins of life have been 'planted' on earth by a meteorite containing the necessary ingredients,
this probably would have happened on many planets. Given the fact that there are so many planets and so much time, the probability of life is quite enormous on planets that had the right conditions.
And if intelligent development is a natural occurring evolution in carbon-based life, surely there must have been intelligent races
in the past couple of billion years and I suppose they would have invented
interstellar/-galaxic 'travel', if it's possible and if they survived long enough.
So why did we never have visitors ?
- where they just not able to find us
- was our planet not interesting at that moment
Or did we have visitors, maybe or ancestors and did their message not survive long enough (maybe Vond Daniken was right ?)

Anyway, if it turns out quantum teleportation/wormholes other methods of relocating are not allowed by the law of physics, then we have a problem.
Our sun is about to die ! (We only have 4,5 billion years left to find out)

(came here for a xorg.conf problem -> not solved !!)
;-)

mips

March 27th, 2009, 01:14 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

S0m3th1ngw13rd

March 27th, 2009, 01:41 PM

What if C-A-T really spelled dog.
-Ogre Revenge of the Nerds II-Nerds in Paradise.

Just thought I would throw that in there lol

SupaSonic

March 27th, 2009, 02:08 PM

just looked at the cafe

here's one for you

Poll: "internet" or "Internet"? ( 1 2)
Looking for deep philosophical questions please help

alex2399

March 27th, 2009, 02:47 PM

Well I personally would recomend that you first start with if we see / percive things trhough our brain (and through words/pictures) how can we be sure that it's interpered correctly?
I advise you to read Hegels Phenomenology of Spirti; a tough read, but probably satifying once you get trough it.

:D

You can't, you just assume since its real. Examples are numerous. For instance persons with Schizophrenia. They can for instance have visual hallucinations, or auditory and many others. They interpret it as real, but it isn't there. Or they interpret happenings differently, like when they hear a helicopter, they believe its looking for them, when its really and most probably not. Or when they hear a sound, or see something on TV they interpret it as the neighbour spying on them. Seems maybe unreal to you, but to them it sadly is.

Question: We all know that we are conscious. But we can not prove that we are. But do you think that consciousness can be pointed to something materialistic (like a brain structure for instance) or is it phenomenal, not materialistic and that it belongs to something we know nothing about? And would it then adhere to the laws of physics?

An example to get you thinking.
A Woman, Terry Schiavo had an accident which left her in a vegatative state. Meaning she was awake. But she didn't show any signs of overt conscious behavior.
Researchers put her in an fMRI scanner to measure brain activity in response to the following questions:
- Imagine palying a game of tennis
- Imagine visiting the rooms in her house

They also had a control group, persons who were healthy and conscious. Results showed that both the control group and Terry Schiavo had the same indistinguishable brain activity patterns in response to the questions. For instance, when asked the tennis question, she responded with activity in an area that is linked to motor behaviour.
So she could understand the instructions and respond to them, though not overtly.
But do you think she was conscious? Or do you think that consciousness is something else and that this brain activity is just an automated response to an input being the questions? Also think about the fact that most things we do are unconsciouss, like lifting a cup of coffee, you do not think about how you lift it, you just do it.

Tews

March 27th, 2009, 02:59 PM

Try this one on ..

If it takes a chicken a day and a half to lay an egg and a half, how long does it take a grasshopper to kick the seeds out of a cucumber..

Thats about as deep as I can go right now! :lolflag:

jespdj

March 27th, 2009, 03:06 PM

What is north of the North Pole?

And what about this one:

A hundred prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned; and each pirate has 12 coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin. In the room is a single switch, which the prisoner may either leave as it is, or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are all made to wear either a red hat or a blue hat; they can see all the other prisoners' hats, but not their own. Meanwhile, a six-digit prime number of monkeys multiply until their digits reverse, then all have to get across a river using a canoe that can hold at most two monkeys at a time. But half the monkeys always lie and the other half always tell the truth. Given that the Nth prisoner knows that one of the monkeys doesn't know that a pirate doesn't know the product of two numbers between 1 and 100 without knowing that the N+1th prisoner has flipped the switch in his room or not after having determined which bottle of wine was poisoned and what color his hat is, what is the solution to this puzzle?
That should keep him busy for a while! :) From here (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001243.html).

etnlIcarus

March 27th, 2009, 04:20 PM

Sorry, can't resist.
How about the fact that the universe itself is expanding faster than the speed of light?That's only believed to have happened for a short period of time directly after the big bang; when the four fundamental forces of the universe were acting as a unified, "superforce".

Also, the fact that we don't know where most of the universe went, as you'd need more gravity than we have for our universe to form using our models.I'm not exactly familiar with this - are you sure you're not conflating the universe with galaxies and this problem isn't solved by the presence of dark matter?

If you would teleport by disintegrating and integrating again, will you die?This almost comes down to pure semantics over the definition of death. Technically, any cessation of the function of your vital systems constitutes death. However, death is only a generalised term and generally only applied to a permanent state, from which you do not and cannot return. It's simply more correct on a practical level to say that your life is suspended.

Granted, this depends on a) the school of thought on teleportation and b) whether the non-destructive teleportation of particle structures more complex than light is even possible.

Does morality exists or are "moral" people just subjecting to the cultural standards?The way you've expressed the question ("Does morality exist?") portrays a greater expectation about what morality 'has to be for me to call it morality'; some kind of transcendent, omnipresent force guiding occurrences. This cannot be supported logically. Equally, your alternative casts disparagement; as if there is something inadequate (or even tyrannical) about a purely practical construct describing a prerequisite for complex social systems, which aids the survivability of a species through the promotion of collectivistically (or more commonly, tribalistically) sound behaviours.

I'm going to attempt to keep this neutral to avoid the thread being locked:

Is that what God says good because he says only good things or because everything that God says is good? In particular, is murder bad because God said so, or maybe God forbid murder because it's bad?To suggest that a god is bound by the good/bad dichotomy is to imply that god does not live up to it's own job description; that is, a god bound by a morality not of it's own choosing and application is not a god at all, but merely a more powerful entity* than ourselves, who in itself is bound to a yet higher power.

*I acknowledge that the notion of a god as an entity/being/consciousness/etc in itself proposes a less-than-godly god but that's a discussion for another day.

Is the outcome of every possible action predetermined and quantum mechanics as me know them are an unfinished theory? Einstein thought so.

It's an arrogant assertion that because our understanding of aspects of physics such as quantum mechanics are only emerging, that 'nothing makes sense'. Essentially that's what's being implied; that because physical interactions proved more complicated and nuanced than we anticipated, that we should admit defeat and declare basic notions of truth and knowledge void in the wake of a 'random' universe. Of course, this achieves nothing (even for determinism/fatalism's critics, who seem to think that the insanity of true randomality is somehow more supportive of notions of, "free will", than a deterministic universe ever was). Frankly, I'm just thankful this question is only really given credence among the philosophical fringes.

Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light ?For any object/particle which regularly only travels at subluminal speeds, no. Some particles have been predicted to exist which can travel faster than light but they're limited to superluminal speeds, potentially create causality paradoxes and i'm unaware of any theoretical proofs for their existence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon
I'm guessing if I actually read that wiki entry myself, I could provide a more meaningful answer but CBFed.

So, since there is a believe initial that the origins of life have been 'planted' on earth by a meteorite containing the necessary ingredientsPanspermia is an also-ran theory. Primordial soup theory, even after incorporating criticisms from earlier tests, still produces demonstrable proof that extra-terrestrial sources for amino acids are unnecessary.

this probably would have happened on many planets. Given the fact that there are so many planets and so much time, the probability of life is quite enormous on planets that had the right conditions.
And if intelligent development is a natural occurring evolution in carbon-based life, surely there must have been intelligent racesIt's really quite impossible to construct anything meaningful, given our current knowledge. We don't have a very broad frame of reference to be making good predictions about the likelihood of life on other planets, let alone the form it takes. Besides that, I don't think you have a very good grasp of just what panspermia proposes; it's not even suggesting that this material had to have come from beyond the outer reaches of this solar system.

So why did we never have visitors ?Any alien smart enough to get around universal constant C is smart enough to know not to invite the neighbours over. If an alien did make contact, we'd have to wonder what kind of lacklustre dangers this species contended with during it's evolution to think that going anywhere near humans is a good idea.

Anyway, if it turns out quantum teleportation/wormholes other methods of relocating are not allowed by the law of physicsWhile there are serious doubts as to whether it's safe/stable enough to ever be used (let alone commercialised!), I think wormholes are pretty darn safe from the laws of physics.

Our sun is about to die ! (We only have 4,5 billion years left to find out)If it puts your mind at ease, we'll be lucky to survive the next 1000 years. The sun is more likely to kill us in a grand, cosmic fart, than the likelihood that we'll live long enough to see it go supernova.

We all know that we are conscious. I don't. :(

But we can not prove that we are.Again, I think this is better solved with semantics than philosophy.

But do you think that consciousness can be pointed to something materialistic (like a brain structure for instance) or is it phenomenal, not materialistic and that it belongs to something we know nothing about?I don't think this question has been meaningfully qualified.

Anyway, I'm aware I haven't made any suggestions. So here goes:

If time is infinite, an infinite amount of time is required to reach any one specific moment in time - moments such as the big bang or any other reference point you wish to mention. As an infinite amount of time is required to reach our reference points, these points will never be reached. Essentially, do state changes become impossible?

PhoenixMaster00

March 27th, 2009, 04:22 PM

Just tell him to ponder about the thought that the universe may just be a 3d hologram and what this means for everything we currently hold as true.

That should keep him going a while :P

Mooose?

March 27th, 2009, 04:23 PM

What happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object?

Solution (highlight):
The unstoppable force stops; the immovable force moves.

smartboyathome

March 27th, 2009, 04:24 PM

That's only believed to have happened for a short period of time directly after the big bang; when the four fundamental forces of the universe were acting as a unified, "superforce".

No, it is believed to still be happening, as light and such can still reach us from "the beginning of time", and it wouldn't be able to if we were expanding faster than the speed of light. This theory is debated by scientists, though, like all radical theories should be. ;)

I'm not exactly familiar with this - are you sure you're not conflating the universe with galaxies and this problem isn't solved by the presence of dark matter?

I meant galaxies, and dark matter is only a theory. The fact we can't prove there is anything there outside of theorizing that it is this matter which creates gravity makes it a huge problem, since the dark matter doesn't seem to have way of being harnessed. It is another one of those "up for debate" things, though.

artir

March 27th, 2009, 04:55 PM

davo11

March 27th, 2009, 05:27 PM

the inconsistent triangle about god (have a look on google for it)
(the cliched)are we alone?
are we really real? (very interesting, we could just be machinations of some higher beings imagination.)
did the universe happen or just be? (and if it just is, is time real - or do we just perceive things happen in an order, with cause and effect.)

these are quite interesting to say the least.

gn2

March 27th, 2009, 05:36 PM

Here's one, how does gravity work, it's known that bodies of mass attract, but why?

artir

March 27th, 2009, 06:27 PM

Here's one, how does gravity work, it's known that bodies of mass attract, but why?

That would be more physical than philosophical I think.
Ask the LHC :)

ninjapirate89

March 27th, 2009, 06:34 PM

Why do people drive on parkways, and park on driveways?

How do we get pink lemonade without pink lemons?

Why does the post office have a mailbox?

Flash858

March 27th, 2009, 06:36 PM

If evolution is true, why are there still Mac users? ;)

artir

March 27th, 2009, 06:39 PM

If evolution is true, why are there still Mac users? ;)

By the same reason monkeys live in the same time period as humans.

SleepyFloyd

March 27th, 2009, 08:05 PM

There's a remote village. Every man there is always clean shaven. The barber of the village tells you that he shaves EVERY man except those, who shave themselves.

Does (can) the barber shave himself?

Or, try Newcombs paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox).

SleepyFloyd

March 27th, 2009, 08:22 PM

You can also try to refute one of the pillars of my personal philosophy:

"The final goal of each person's lives, from Hitler to Gandhi is to achieve happiness. We spend our lives running behind a moving car(happiness), which we know we'll never reach, but we are forced to do so. The final Why of every action a person does is to achieve happiness"
Why am I posting this here->To prove that nobody on Earth can refute this->
Why do I want to prove it?->Because I want to think I've created an axiomic philosophic principle and a way of demonstrating it. (Altough Aristotle thought something similar a long long time ago)->Why do I want to think...->(...)->To achieve happiness

This can't be an axion, cause it's a paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism).

Making happiness an end leads to the conclusion that it's not a mean. Thus we couldn't actually pursue happiness, because we would have to refer to means to achieve this end. This end (happiness) has to be different from the mean. Thus, we would need to do things that aren't pleasurable to use to reach happiness. That's paradoxical.

Or, in the words of the Wiki article: "Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap."

Make happiness an end in your life and you'll be the unhappiest person ever.

gn2

March 27th, 2009, 08:42 PM

That would be more physical than philosophical I think.

Physics is part of natural philosophy.

Everything that we "know" is actually what we believe.

Science is really just a belief system.

ice60

March 27th, 2009, 08:45 PM

I meant galaxies, and dark matter is only a theory. The fact we can't prove there is anything there outside of theorizing that it is this matter which creates gravity makes it a huge problem, since the dark matter doesn't seem to have way of being harnessed. It is another one of those "up for debate" things, though.
i think it's dark energy, not dark matter, you're talking about. distant galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light - that's a fact. it happens because of the expansion of the universe though dark energy. each meter of space expands that's why more distant objects travel away faster.

i think dark matter is fact too, they've charted it through gravitational lensing.

a patient, clever friend has spent many hours trying to explain it to me lol

lisati

March 27th, 2009, 09:03 PM

1. If you would teleport by disintegrating and integrating again, will you die?

And would your consciousness be continous? (as has been suggested, it might depend on the mechanics of the chosen method of teleporting)

Why did all the dinosaurs die out? :confused:
I once came across the suggestion that it was flatulence. Why are farts so funny?

There's a remote village. Every man there is always clean shaven. The barber of the village tells you that he shaves EVERY man except those, who shave themselves.

Does (can) the barber shave himself?.
Hi, Mum!

Bachstelze

March 27th, 2009, 09:06 PM

Gnome or KDE?

artir

March 27th, 2009, 10:04 PM

This can't be an axion, cause it's a paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism).

Making happiness an end leads to the conclusion that it's not a mean. Thus we couldn't actually pursue happiness, because we would have to refer to means to achieve this end. This end (happiness) has to be different from the mean. Thus, we would need to do things that aren't pleasurable to use to reach happiness. That's paradoxical.

Or, in the words of the Wiki article: "Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap."

Make happiness an end in your life and you'll be the unhappiest person ever.

But when you ask Why? to anything and ask Why? again to that answer and so on, you get to Happiness, by this method, I say happiness is the end, and trying to get happiness is the mean.

artir

March 27th, 2009, 10:10 PM

Physics is part of natural philosophy.

Everything that we "know" is actually what we believe.

Science is really just a belief system.

Well, Science can be seen as a belief, but personally I think Science is nothing you need to believe in(You have to), because it's based on proven truths, demonstrated by experimentation.

It's true that when I read "There are bosons, quarks and that stuff" I cannot demonstrate myself that, so I have to believe the scientist who said that, because I think they did their investigation properly.
That's a bit paradoxical, btw, because I believe in that and I cannot demonstrate it myself.
The same applies to religions, but the difference is that no one on Earth can "demonstrate" God, thus you need to belive, with faith and without facts.

Philosophy is based on theory more than in practice. Since science split from philosophy some centuries ago, the practice part belongs to the science.

sisco311

March 27th, 2009, 10:18 PM

koenn

March 27th, 2009, 11:14 PM

Everything that we "know" is actually what we believe.
Science is really just a belief system.

This is incorrect.

A belief system is set of statement which are believed to be true, and as a whole explains something about the nature of the world we live in : belief systems provide meaning.

science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge (not 'meaning') based on the scientific method, the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses (in contrast to statements that are simply 'believed')

One can argue that observation can be biased; scientists are aware of this and therefore the scientific method includes criteria that experiments should be repeatable, hypotheses should be verifiable and falsifiable, and so on.

There is a clear distinction between believing and knowing; science is not 'just a believe system'

smartboyathome

March 27th, 2009, 11:33 PM

Gnome or KDE?

That is an easy one, everyone knows the One True Desktop Environment is LXDE, no argument there. ;)

bakedbeans4life

March 28th, 2009, 12:06 AM

If this has been spoken of before, I do apologise.

Given that science can not prove nor disprove the existence of God or Gods, regardless of faith or religion (bear with me), if you devised such an experiment that would conclusively provide an answer one way or the other, what would be your choice of action? Would you even conduct the experiment at all, knowing the end result could be the cause of a conflict that could wipe out mankind?

What would come first, the science truth (you tell all) or the morale truth (you say nothing)?

Hell, what do I know. Chicken + eggs = breakfast. Sunday lunch too.

cardinals_fan

March 28th, 2009, 12:09 AM

If you're on a bridge with a really heavy guy, with a group of children playing on the road underneath, and you see a car coming with broken brakes and steering: are you allowed to throw the heavy guy off the bridge in front of the car and kill him in order to save the children?
The classic utilitarianism vs. Kantiasm/categorical imperative debate.

Can we round to zero?

smartboyathome

March 28th, 2009, 12:09 AM

What would come first, the science truth (you tell all) or the morale truth (you say nothing)?

Depends if your mind is more logical or more spiritual. If your mind is more logical (like mine), then you would be more likely to go with the scientific truth, as it is the most logical thing. If your mind is more spiritual, you would go with the morale truth, as it is more reasonable.

benerivo

March 28th, 2009, 12:19 AM

What would come first, the science truth (you tell all) or the morale truth (you say nothing)?Some people wouldn't believe the result, so it wouldn't change anything...

bakedbeans4life

March 28th, 2009, 12:34 AM

Some people wouldn't believe the result, so it wouldn't change anything...

When I posed the question I never believed it would provide an answer, rhetorical or otherwise.

Nice avatar, from an episode of Red Dwarf by the title of "Quarantine", I believe.

koenn

March 28th, 2009, 12:38 AM

If this has been spoken of before, I do apologise.

Given that science can not prove nor disprove the existence of God or Gods, regardless of faith or religion (bear with me), if you devised such an experiment that would conclusively provide an answer one way or the other, what would be your choice of action? Would you even conduct the experiment at all, knowing the end result could be the cause of a conflict that could wipe out mankind?

What would come first, the science truth (you tell all) or the morale truth (you say nothing)?

Not an issue.
People who believe, don't need to know. They believe. People who want to know, would be inclined to do the experiment, because they'd want to know. Especially since the "cause a conflict" is highly speculative, and therefore the 'moral' aspect is far-fetched

morgan141

March 28th, 2009, 12:52 AM

Here's one, how does gravity work, it's known that bodies of mass attract, but why?

There is a point where a physicist must say 'it just is' or 'it fits experimental evidence'. It might be that a physicist may explain why things with mass attract but it will have to be explained in terms of other things. Purely from a logical point of view this will either cause an infinite regression in endless questions or a circular argument.

A similar question that lots of people ask is why is energy and momentum conserved (classically)? In the case of the conservation of momentum this creates an interesting circular argument. Esseentially if momentum isn't conserved then if you looked at something from a different inertial frame of references then the laws of physics would be different depending on where you are. Now you could look at this in two ways, either momentum is conserved because the laws of physics are the same for all (inertial) frames of reference or the laws of physics are the same for all inertial frames of reference because momentum is conserved. Each way of looking at the situation is as valid as the other. A similar argument can be constructed for energy but is related more to time than frames of reference.

Essentially it boils down to the fact that physics doesn't really ask why the universe works, only how the universe works. The concept of mass fits with currently accepted models so it is an accepted fundamental property of the universe. If another model came along which would encompass the whole concept of mass in a better theory with a more fundamental unit then that would be used instead. However, if such a wider theory was created and it didn't improve the accepted models then it's nothing more than speculation.

I know this mustn't be a very satisfactory answer but that's physics for you :P.

koenn

March 28th, 2009, 01:10 AM

Essentially it boils down to the fact that physics doesn't really ask why the universe works, only how the universe works. The concept of mass fits with currently accepted models so it is an accepted fundamental property of the universe. If another model came along which would encompass the whole concept of mass in a better theory with a more fundamental unit then that would be used instead. However, if such a wider theory was created and it didn't improve the accepted models then it's nothing more than speculation.

I know this mustn't be a very satisfactory answer but that's physics for you :P.

Gravitation is a beautiful example: From Galileo over Newton to Einstein, each came up with a more accurate theory while the previous theory remained valid for the circumstances it was designed in. The wikipedia article on Gravitation illustrates this very well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation

etnlIcarus

March 28th, 2009, 03:44 AM

No, it is believed to still be happening, as light and such can still reach us from "the beginning of time", and it wouldn't be able to if we were expanding faster than the speed of light.Allow me to say um, wot? I'm getting the feeling you should perhaps read up on comoving coordinates.

I meant galaxies, and dark matter is only a theory. The fact we can't prove there is anything there outside of theorizing that it is this matter which creates gravity makes it a huge problem, since the dark matter doesn't seem to have way of being harnessed. It is another one of those "up for debate" things, though.
It's really not up for debate. You've got a choice between 'galaxies don't work', which is evidentially untrue, or 'there is unseen mass', around which many tested predictions have been made. At this point even our understanding of the big bang is heavily dependent upon the presence of dark matter/energy. It's not, "only a theory", created in some kind of vacuum; it's a theory used to describe the fact that we're only directly seeing about 5-10% of the total mass in the universe and the rest of it doesn't seem to want to interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, beyond some subtle gravitational lensing.

i think it's dark energy, not dark matter, you're talking about. distant galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light - that's a fact. it happens because of the expansion of the universe though dark energy. each meter of space expands that's why more distant objects travel away faster.

i think dark matter is fact too, they've charted it through gravitational lensing.Pretty much. There's really nothing paradoxical or testing of physics about the distance between two moving objects increasing (or 'expanding') faster than classical information can be exchanged between those two objects.

Edit:

If this has been spoken of before, I do apologise.

Given that science can not prove nor disprove the existence of God or Gods, regardless of faith or religion (bear with me), if you devised such an experiment that would conclusively provide an answer one way or the other, what would be your choice of action? Would you even conduct the experiment at all, knowing the end result could be the cause of a conflict that could wipe out mankind?

What would come first, the science truth (you tell all) or the morale truth (you say nothing)?

Hell, what do I know. Chicken + eggs = breakfast. Sunday lunch too.

Beyond any direct answer to this question, I don't really like your premise. If I had conclusive proof of the existence or non-existence of god, there wouldn't be any room for, "conflict". I think the question should be, "how dishonest and arrogant can people be; that they'd sooner wipe out the species, than admit fault?".

That said, the risk of earth going nuclear is substantially greater, were we dealing with conclusive disproof. Although I'd be begrudged to say, "here is conclusive proof for the existence of a non-denominational god, which somehow manages to rectify all the dire logical shortcomings of the original assertion"*, I doubt there are many willing to kill in objection to that finding.

*whoops, bit of personal bias crept through there. >.>

gn2

March 28th, 2009, 10:34 AM

Essentially it boils down to the fact that physics doesn't really ask why the universe works, only how the universe works.

Exactly.

The reason why we don't have the answer to why is because we are simply incapable of comprehension, it is beyond our understanding thus far.

Science is the study and interpretation of that which we are able to record and measure.

We believe what we are able to experience, therefore science is a belief system

Clearly there is that which we are unable to record or measure or interpret, therefore science cannot be considered complete.

etnlIcarus

March 28th, 2009, 10:38 AM

We believe what we are able to experience, therefore science is a belief systemFallacious reasoning.

Clearly there is that which we are unable to record or measure or interpretActually that's not 'clear' at all.

gn2

March 28th, 2009, 10:48 AM

Actually that's not 'clear' at all.

So explain to me why bodies of mass attract each other.

artir

March 28th, 2009, 10:52 AM

Because of the theoretical existance of a particle called Graviton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton), in which we have to believe, but nobody has been able to demonstrate its existence yet.
(Just like god)
In this case, since not even scientists can prove it exists 100%, we believe in graviton just like we people who believe in God believe in God

etnlIcarus

March 28th, 2009, 11:03 AM

So explain to me why bodies of mass attract each other.Pick your physics. Doesn't really matter which you choose, only in Newtonian physics does it even become a meaningful question.

Because of the theoretical existance of a particle called Graviton, in which we have to believe, but nobody has been able to demonstrate its existence yet.
(Just like god)You just equated gravitons with god. Remind me: why do I, "have to believe", in god, again?

artir

March 28th, 2009, 11:23 AM

Pick your physics. Doesn't really matter which you choose, only in Newtonian physics does it even become a meaningful question.
You just equated gravitons with god. Remind me: why do I, "have to believe", in god, again?

You don't have to; I personally, I'm agnostic, but what I'm saying is that the believe that graviton exists, based on faith and theory is based on the same basis as God's beliefs: faith and theory.

The difference may be that in some years the graviton will be possible to be demonstrated, or at least, I think so, while God will remain undemonstrated forever or at least for a long long time.

WatchingThePain

March 28th, 2009, 11:26 AM

I wonder if a computer can ever become aware of itself and have a conscious?.
Don't bore me with Eliza. I mean think for itself.

etnlIcarus

March 28th, 2009, 11:29 AM

I would have said the difference were an actual reason/necessity to assume the existence of one, as opposed to the other. I also wouldn't have use the word faith in that context but that's just my own, personal hangup with the word. :p

morgan141

March 28th, 2009, 01:32 PM

Exactly.

The reason why we don't have the answer to why is because we are simply incapable of comprehension, it is beyond our understanding thus far.

Science is the study and interpretation of that which we are able to record and measure.

We believe what we are able to experience, therefore science is a belief system

Clearly there is that which we are unable to record or measure or interpret, therefore science cannot be considered complete.

I'm sorry but I disagree. For someone who isn't a scientist I can see how it would appear to be a belief system (arguably popular science is a belief system, but I won't go into that), but for an actual scientist in the field it simply isn't. Science is capable of making quantified predictions concerning the universe, often to a startling degree of accuracy, a belief system cannot. To take your example with mass again it is essentially a human construct which is a requirement for accepted gravitational models to make predictions. This is basically the fundamental principle on which the scientific method relies on.

Science is certainly not complete, personally I don't believe it'll ever be complete but that's up for argument. However, that doesn't mean there are any boundries stopping us from developing other than the fact that we either don't have the technology or intelligence yet. 'Yet' being the vital word in that sentence.

Another important thing that people seem to forget is they detach reality and science as if they are two different entities. Everything you do in your life can be seen as an experiment, admittedly with the majority of events they're very simple experiments. So say you drop a pen, you predict that it'll fall to the ground, as it has done millions of times before. However, the question is did you 'know' the pen would fall or did you predict/believe the pen would fall? That, in my opinion, is just semantics.

etnlIcarus

March 28th, 2009, 01:46 PM

I'm sorry but I disagree. For someone who isn't a scientist I can see how it would appear to be a belief system (arguably popular science is a belief system, but I won't go into that), but for an actual scientist in the field it simply isn't. Science is capable of making quantified predictions concerning the universe, often to a startling degree of accuracy, a belief system cannot. To take your example with mass again it is essentially a human construct which is a requirement for accepted gravitational models to make predictions. This is basically the fundamental principle on which the scientific method relies on.

Science is certainly not complete, personally I don't believe it'll ever be complete but that's up for argument. However, that doesn't mean there are any boundries stopping us from developing other than the fact that we either don't have the technology or intelligence yet. 'Yet' being the vital word in that sentence.

Another important thing that people seem to forget is they detach reality and science as if they are two different entities. Everything you do in your life can be seen as an experiment, admittedly with the majority of events they're very simple experiments. So say you drop a pen, you predict that it'll fall to the ground, as it has done millions of times before. However, the question is did you 'know' the pen would fall or did you predict/believe the pen would fall? That, in my opinion, is just semantics.

Noble effort. However, the bulk of that can be reduced to a single sentence: A, "belief system" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_theory), and science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory) are fundamentally distinct processes due to the methodology and standards which define them.

Of course, I'm pretty certain gn2 already knew that, considering the misleading way he specifically attempted to conflate the two.

SleepyFloyd

March 28th, 2009, 01:50 PM

I wonder if a computer can ever become aware of itself and have a conscious?.
Don't bore me with Eliza. I mean think for itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

WatchingThePain

March 28th, 2009, 05:40 PM

Thank you for that interesting link but I am still unconvinced. I am biased as I would like to think that a computer can develop it's own level of consciousness.
I don't think the turing test is relevant or useful.
If people are biological machines then how come they developed a conciousness?.

jwbrase

March 28th, 2009, 06:30 PM

A similar question that lots of people ask is why is energy and momentum conserved (classically)? In the case of the conservation of momentum this creates an interesting circular argument. Esseentially if momentum isn't conserved then if you looked at something from a different inertial frame of references then the laws of physics would be different depending on where you are. Now you could look at this in two ways, either momentum is conserved because the laws of physics are the same for all (inertial) frames of reference or the laws of physics are the same for all inertial frames of reference because momentum is conserved. Each way of looking at the situation is as valid as the other. A similar argument can be constructed for energy but is related more to time than frames of reference.

I'd say that it's not a circular arguement but rather one of equivalence: Consistent physics between inertial frames *is* conservation of momentum.

MikeTheC

March 28th, 2009, 08:09 PM

Why is progress more accurately defined as synergistic than purely linear?

(I know the answer to this. Let's see how you do.)

gn2

March 28th, 2009, 11:55 PM

~ I'm pretty certain gn2 already knew that, considering the misleading way he specifically attempted to conflate the two.

No, i'm pretty much uneducated and know none of all that.

What I do know is that science is unable to provide all the answers.

Science is the interpretation of that which we are able to record, nothing more.

There remain things which we are unable to record, therefore science doesn't have all the answers, science is merely the current state of our knowledge, i.e. what we currently believe to be correct.

Often what is believed to be scientifically correct is later found to have been wrong.

Ergo science is a belief system.

jARLAXL

March 29th, 2009, 12:23 AM

Why is progress more accurately defined as synergistic than purely linear?

(I know the answer to this. Let's see how you do.)

What does synergistic mean in this context?
And how would you define progress anyway?

To keep up with the subject some deep philosphical qs:
start with:
"What am I"
Definately you may think you have an answer for such a question like a heap of particles/star mass but doubly check that these are compatible with other theories like the Heisenberg one and that the "accurate" numerical observation doesn't change the result of your observation. Also check that your answer to this is not influenced by your viewpoint bias (science, religion, politics, survival, velocity etc)

Eventually you can replace the What with "Who" or "How" "Why" or even empty space (i.e: Do i/we exist?)
continue asking questions by replacing the subject and the object of the sentences (keep the verb unchanged initially) as well as reading several books till you find popular questions: "was it a good idea to get down from the trees?", what are words and do they really define something? etc.

etnlIcarus

March 29th, 2009, 03:18 AM

What I do know is that science is unable to provide all the answers.Technically it is; science is the formalisation of the cognitive learning process. Science can conceivably explain anything within the realms of experience (and in practice it manages to go a fair bit beyond that). It's one real limitation is the human beings manning the helm of the good ship, Science. We simply can't do it justice.

Often what is believed to be scientifically correct is later found to have been wrong.

Ergo science is a belief system.

Ergo? There is no logical continuity between these statements. As I demonstrated in my last post (as did someone else); science and, "belief systems", are fundamentally distinct.

The irony here is your specific criticism of science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism) is what explicitly precludes science from being a belief system.

HermanAB

March 29th, 2009, 03:19 AM

Here is an ancient one:
Can god make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?

MasterNetra

March 29th, 2009, 05:02 AM

1. If you would teleport by disintegrating and integrating again, will you die?
2. Does morality exists or are "moral" people just subjecting to the cultural standards?
3. Is that what God says good because he says only good things or because everything that God says is good? In particular, is murder bad because God said so, or maybe God forbid murder because it's bad?
4. Is the outcome of every possible action predetermined and quantum mechanics as me know them are an unfinished theory? Einstein thought so.

I guess that the rest of interesting (in my opinion) questions would take too long for an internet forum to explain ;)

1. Sounds to me the process involves what one could consider death then at the receiving location you would be re-intergrated and thus reborn. A matter of perspective prehaps?
2, morality is culture depended, enough said. Some things may seem universal in that aspect, (anti-theft, protecting children, etc) as they are have roots steming from ideals which have roots themselfs steming from some of our instinctive behaviors as well behaviors that have been passed generation after generation and introduced to other population groups (such as anti-nudity, of course that was enviromentally stimulated as well then kept even as some moved to areas in which clothing wasn't needed for survival. But details :p)
3. Thats religion and religion is essentially a shared ideological system which more often then not it seems is setup to control people.
4. Einstein couldn't even make the leap in his mind that the universe wasn't static despite his own theories demonstrated that it wasn't. Personally i doubt actions are predetermined , at least in the way most people would think anyway. But then again we are not yet advanced enough to know for certain.

But thats my take on those anyway.

Here's a question is our universe (as we know it) in which the creation/destruction of matter is supposedly not possible the norm or is actually a uncommon pocket/cloud in a endless size space in which chaos is the norm?

MikeTheC

March 29th, 2009, 05:14 AM

What does synergistic mean in this context?
And how would you define progress anyway?
I would define progress as a change of the state of homeostasis in which the subject has obtained a new state which is in some way better than the previous state.

And synergistic in this context means what it generally means: a group of things combined equal more than the sum of the constituent parts. Ergo, progress causes one to have access to more and/or better states than one previously had access to, such that prior to achieving this "progress", while one could have an improved state, the particular facets of improvement were heretofore unattainable.

To give you an example, prior to the advent of computer technology, while one could type letters on a typewriter and mail them, one could not carry on a real-time text-based conversation. Therefore, technological progress provided access to the opportunity to have a "better" form of communication than was otherwise possible to achieve previously.

jwbrase

March 29th, 2009, 05:29 AM

Technically it is; science is the formalisation of the cognitive learning process. Science can conceivably explain anything within the realms of experience (and in practice it manages to go a fair bit beyond that).

I wouldn't say "within the realms of experience." I'd say "within the physical universe." Science can only explain what can be empirically observed and tested, and thus can only explain what exists and operates within the universe and under its physical laws. I would argue that some things within the realms of human experience do not fit within the realm of the empirically observable, and thus cannot be scientifically explained.

It's one real limitation is the human beings manning the helm of the good ship, Science. We simply can't do it justice.

Ergo? There is no logical continuity between these statements. As I demonstrated in my last post (as did someone else); science and, "belief systems", are fundamentally distinct.

The irony here is your specific criticism of science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism) is what explicitly precludes science from being a belief system.

Probably it's better to say that science is a means, based on empirical evidence, of formulating and choosing between belief systems about the physical universe.

jwbrase

March 29th, 2009, 05:46 AM

Here is an ancient one:
Can god make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?

Yes.

He can also lift a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it. :-D

In other words, he can make anything, and he can lift anything.

Also, it strikes me that he could make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it by making a rock whose mass exceeded that of the rest of the universe. Since that rock would then define "up" and "down" for the rest of the universe (including itself), he would be unable to lift it, not because of any lack of omnipotent power on his part to hurl it around as he pleased, but because "lift" would not be defined for the rock (at least, not as long as it remained in one piece), seeing as its own center of mass would define "up" and "down" for it, and, however it was moved around, its center of mass would always be exactly zero inches from its center of mass.

etnlIcarus

March 29th, 2009, 05:47 AM

I wouldn't say "within the realms of experience." I'd say "within the physical universe." Science can only explain what can be empirically observed and tested, and thus can only explain what exists and operates within the universe and under its physical laws.Emphasis on the bolded bits; just what is it you define empiricism as, because as best I can tell, we're saying the exact same thing?

I would argue that some things within the realms of human experience do not fit within the realm of the empirically observable, and thus cannot be scientifically explained.Not to be obnoxious but, such as? I really can't for the life of me think of any examples and as best I can tell, this statement is contradictory.

jwbrase

March 29th, 2009, 08:19 AM

Emphasis on the bolded bits; just what is it you define empiricism as, because as best I can tell, we're saying the exact same thing?

Well, by "empirically observable and testable" I mean observable with the five senses and, in the words of the Wikipedia article on empiricism, "testable by observation or experiment."

For the definition of empiricism itself, the Wikipedia article's definition is good as far as I'm concerned. The "Philosophical usage" section, I think, gives a good idea of what I'm arguing against here. Philosophical empiricism as the article defines it says that, "for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced, it is to be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience." I'm arguing that not all human experience is sense based, and that some of that which is sense based might not necessarily be testable.

Not to be obnoxious but, such as? I really can't for the life of me think of any examples and as best I can tell, this statement is contradictory.

Probably because you subscribe to philosophical empiricism, which, as I read it, is almost defined by holding that statement to be contradictory. :)

If there exists anything supernatural, and any one of the following is true:
a) Any part of the human mind is supernatural,
b) supernatural beings/events not part of the human mind can interact with the human mind, or
c) innate ideas have been formed in the human mind by supernatural events,

then there exists a part of human experience that does not come through the five senses, but rather directly to the mind. As a Christian I definitely subscribe to a) and b), and probably c).

If free will exists, and if there exists any being (physical or supernatural or both) that has free will that can interact with the physical world, then there is the potential for things that can be observed with the five senses, but are not testable. A being with free will can choose whether and how to react to its environment, as opposed to a being without, which just follows the laws of its environment. Thus it is possible to test the reactions of a being without free will, but not of one with free will. As a Christian, I believe that there exist beings with free will that can interact with the physical world.

Thus I believe that there exist things in the realm of human experience that are not empirically observable and testable, and thus fall outside of the realm of science. I think you'd agree with me that such things fall outside the realm of science, but I have the feeling you'd disagree as to whether they constitute part of human experience or even exist. Of course, I don't know you, so that feeling may be wrong, but it seems to follow from what you've said so far.

koenn

March 29th, 2009, 09:45 AM

What I do know is that science is unable to provide all the answers.

Science is the interpretation of that which we are able to record, nothing more.

There remain things which we are unable to record, therefore science doesn't have all the answers, science is merely the current state of our knowledge, i.e. what we currently believe to be correct.

Often what is believed to be scientifically correct is later found to have been wrong.

Ergo science is a belief system.

1-
Science doesn't have "all" the answers, nor does it pretend to have or is it supposed to have. There are questions that fall outside the realm of science : questions as to "the meaning of it all" and "is there a purpose to this". Ideology, religion, art, ... are attempts to provide answers to those. This goes back to the distinction between belief systems (~meaning) and science (~knowledge) I explained earlier. You're actually supporting my point that science is not a belief system.

2-
What you're doing is substituting words that describe scientific activity such as 'hypothesis' and 'accept a premise' or 'work on the assumption that ..." with the word 'belief', and then conclude that science must therefore be a belief system. This is a fallacy because the meaning of the word 'belief' as a "synonym" for hypothesis is not equal to the meaning of 'belief' in "belief system"

Compare: a computer is a person that does computations (link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer)). Linux gives me full control over my computer; I can use my computer whatever way I want. Ergo, Linux is a means to control and enslave people.

gn2

March 29th, 2009, 10:18 AM

Technically it is; science is the formalisation of the cognitive learning process. Science can conceivably explain anything within the realms of experience ~

But can we be certain that our five senses are able to detect all that there is....?
We only have knowledge of that which we are capable of experiencing.

Would you preclude any possibility that there exists something which we are not capable of experiencing?

koenn

March 29th, 2009, 11:06 AM

But can we be certain that our five senses are able to detect all that there is....?
We only have knowledge of that which we are capable of experiencing.

Would you preclude any possibility that there exists something which we are not capable of experiencing?

Although you're probably addressing etnlIcarus, allow me to butt in.

If something exists but we are not capable of experiencing it, it would have no bearing on us and the world we live in, so its existence is irrelevant.

Personally, I don't preclude the existence of, say, a flying spaghetti monster, or an invisible pink unicorn, or a teapot orbiting the sun but which is so small that it can't be seen through telescopes or its existence can't be deduced from gravitational effects on the other planets' orbits, etc etc.

One might then wonder what "exists" actually means.
There's a deep philosophical question for you.

--- edit
maybe jwbrase in #70 is asking the question you were trying to ask ?

spupy

March 29th, 2009, 11:17 AM

Hey, I have one:
Why is this thread mostly filled with science questions, and not philosophical, as the OP requests? :)

Anyway, something serious:
1. If you teleport (like in Star Trek) by desintegration and whatever the reverse process is called, you will have the same body, but will you have the same soul? Or will your consciousness be lost every time you teleport, replaced by another one, which is indistinguishable to other people?
I'm certain that this will not work with cloning, and that is the reason a strongly egoistical and self-centered individual wont care about cloning himself, since he will be able to keep his body, but not his consciousness. In simpler words, after the process, it wont be you who will be looking through these eyes.
The worst is that you can't ask someone who has teleported if his soul was replaced, since for the new soul, it will look like it hasn't been replaced. I don't want to teleport...

2. The purpose of the individual life is reproduction. But what is the purpose of life as a whole? Does the purposelessness of life (if there really is no purpose) as a whole discard the purpose and worth of an individual life? I think, in an attempt to give reason and purpose for life in general, people created religion...

etnlIcarus

March 29th, 2009, 11:36 AM

I'm arguing that not all human experience is sense based, and that some of that which is sense based might not necessarily be testable.On what basis you're arguing that, I cannot imagine. Although I get the feeling I'm about to find out...

If free will existsMassive tangent I'd rather avoid (and not a particularly good argument, either).

and if there exists any being (physical or supernatural or both) that has free will that can interact with the physical world, then there is the potential for things that can be observed with the five senses, but are not testableNothing in your argumentation actually supports reaching that conclusion. The closest you came to supporting that assertion was supposing the existence of something that bypasses the physical senses altogether, which is still not particularly useful to this reasoning.

I think you'd agree with me that such things fall outside the realm of science, but I have the feeling you'd disagree as to whether they constitute part of human experience or even exist.Well you've misread me. I don't think such things fall outside the realm of science but, rather, outside the realm of experience. It's an old and pretty poor argument that the 'supernatural' can interact with the physical world purely inconspicuously; that effects exist upon the physical universe (enough, apparently, that consideration of the supernatural is justified) yet almost paradoxically, these effects can't then be 'observed and tested'. It's simply intellectually sloppy: that an entire argument should rest on a superfluous nuance, for no other reason than to reach a desired conclusion.

Forgive me if that sounds forward but arguments for the supernatural really don't constitute much more than thought experiments, which would be good in the context of the original topic but stand as little more than a curiosity in the face of mainstream philosophical thought, and doubly so for the philosophy of science. Though I appreciate your honestly - certainly helps to explain why you were taking me to task over my phrasing.

Although you're probably addressing etnlIcarus, allow me to butt in.Such impetuousness! Just for that, I'm going to directly plagiarise you in answering gn2!

But can we be certain that our five senses are able to detect all that there is....? We only have knowledge of that which we are capable of experiencing.

Would you preclude any possibility that there exists something which we are not capable of experiencing?
If something exists but we are not capable of experiencing it, it would have no bearing on us and the world we live in, so its existence is irrelevant.

Personally, I don't preclude the existence of, say, a flying spaghetti monster, or an invisible pink unicorn, or a teapot orbiting the sun but which is so small that it can't be seen through telescopes or its existence can't be deduced from gravitational effects on the other planets' orbits, etc etc.

One might then wonder what "exists" actually means.
There's a deep philosophical question for you.

I totally could have said something as awesome at that. >.>

jARLAXL

March 29th, 2009, 07:28 PM

Yes.

He can also lift a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it. :-D

In other words, he can make anything, and he can lift anything.

+1 (except we are not sure it is he/she/it/they or whatsoever)

Trail

March 30th, 2009, 08:19 AM

Also, it strikes me that he could make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it by making a rock whose mass exceeded that of the rest of the universe. Since that rock would then define "up" and "down" for the rest of the universe (including itself), he would be unable to lift it, not because of any lack of omnipotent power on his part to hurl it around as he pleased, but because "lift" would not be defined for the rock (at least, not as long as it remained in one piece), seeing as its own center of mass would define "up" and "down" for it, and, however it was moved around, its center of mass would always be exactly zero inches from its center of mass.

Erm, no. Or at least I don't get it. You can get any two points in the universe and define an axis, then require that the rock goes "up" or "down" in relation to that axis. I don't see how a rock bigger than the universe would invalidate up and down by itself. It's a question of whether you accept that any points that can define an axis are parts of the rock (i.e. universe in your statement) or there can be a theoretical axis that does not belong to the universe, and that the rock can move in relation to.

fissionmailed

March 30th, 2009, 08:24 AM

You can't prove anything without a doubt.

jocheem67

March 30th, 2009, 09:00 AM

Pity that threads like this are so easily getting hijacked by the ones who wanna put God into it ( NOFI ). It inevitably ends up in a God vs. Science discussion...
Makes a potential interesting discussion land into a "yes - no" story and just not interesting anymore.

I studied philosophy and am still interested in metafysics. Beware that is not talking about fysics and it's laws, that's about the provability of being, Plato's cave and stuff like that.

However nowadays philosophy tends toward discussion about moral more and more...that can be metafysical still ( is humanity moral - is nature not -- that kind of questions )
Still I think philosophy gets more and more interesting when talking ethics.
For example discussions on euthanisia, or questions on mentally disabled people allowing to have children and raise them themselves..
Or..an important one: where do we lay the boundaries for medical science and allow people to have a natural death..

Well at least that's my field, and a pretty demanding one it is.

In politics too ethics is getting more and more actual, after having seen the Bush-administration and his divine reasons for going to war and let the rich get richer. Don't forget that that administration was highly motivated by it's interpretation of a moral construct. Very interesting and imho more than discussing the boundaries of universe or whatever and certainly more than the old "God ---Science" thingie.

gn2

March 30th, 2009, 09:25 AM

Maybe god lit the fuse for the big bang explosion?

Moustacha

March 30th, 2009, 09:29 AM

Can one simply walk into Mordor?

etnlIcarus

March 30th, 2009, 10:02 AM

Maybe god lit the fuse for the big bang explosion?Maybe I did. >.>

Or maybe Chaotic inflation or M-theory are correct and both god and I are out on our proverbial butts.

jARLAXL

March 30th, 2009, 11:57 AM

Erm, no. Or at least I don't get it. You can get any two points in the universe and define an axis, then require that the rock goes "up" or "down" in relation to that axis.

Think of it like you are in the North Pole and want to find the direction to the north. Simply every direction is not the north. Furthermore in spherical coordinates every direction is the south. The direction to the north is lost because you are in the north pole. So if the universal space is limited there is no way to define over or below it simply because thats how currently the space is defined. Well at least that axis is not defined for us humans yet. You can of course argue that there are more dimensions etc which our telescopes haven't found yet or that the universe is infinite something which, similar to a finite universe, has be taken to show either the existence or the absence of god(s):confused:.

marsrover

June 11th, 2009, 09:27 PM

What I would like to know:
Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light ?

(came here for a xorg.conf problem -> not solved !!)
;-)

yes people actualy have sent a atom faster than the speed of light
it just dissipared (like for real so /\ is real)

and you would have to be in some light blacker than black (ultra black)
so you could send an atom slower than light and undo the time loop you made

got all this info from a show called eureka (hulu rocks)

peace

PuddingKnife

June 11th, 2009, 09:45 PM

Read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

It deals with the question "How did things come to be this way?". This was a book I read in my youth that really opened my eyes to the way the world works and why we're on this long strange trip.

http://www.ishmael.org

uberdonkey5

June 12th, 2009, 01:41 AM

uberdonkey5

June 12th, 2009, 02:01 AM

I'm looking for some deep philosophical questions for a roaster friend,
Already started him on the big bang and what the universe is expanding into.
What came first the chicken or the egg and if you travel at the speed of light and turn on your headlights what would happen ?

Any extras would be gratefully appreciated thanks.

these aren't philosophical questions... people know the answer to all these through science... i.e.

1. pressuming the universe is expanding into something is a misconception of what the universe is...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

2. the egg came first... chickens evolved (many generations back) from ancestors similar to fish (as did we), and these fish layed eggs.

3. information cannot travel faster than the speed of light i.e. two light particles can be flying away from each other (thus, in relation to each other, at twice the speed of light) however information cannot pass between them. Mass also changes with velocity, therefore to 'turn your headlights on' ignores all the other consequences of travelling in your (presumably) car at this speed.

(PS it is interesting that the universe is 156 billion light years wide, but only 13.7 billion years old... but how can that be??! how can the outer edges be flying away from each other faster than the speed of light? Well.. its because although light is only travelling at the speed of light, the universe expanded...)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html

disclaimer: I am not a physicist, I am a biologist.. ask a physicist for more accurate answers to 1 & 3.

if this isn't enough, what about retrocausality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality

uberdonkey5

June 12th, 2009, 02:07 AM

Often what is believed to be scientifically correct is later found to have been wrong.

Ergo science is a belief system.

I agree, but..

... a GOOD scientist would never declare anything to be true without doubt, and therefore never really believes in anything (science, like all our thoughts, are simply models of reality). Science is actually a 'method' whereby evidence is used to suggest what is more likely.. science's strength is that if more evidence is available it will change the conclusions in light of new evidence.

However, science does make some assumptions, one of the largest being that if all the conditions that caused an event in the past occur again, the same event will occur i.e. if we drop a ball once, then pick it up and drop it again, this time it will also fall to the floor.

uberdonkey5

June 12th, 2009, 02:11 AM

damn, u lot must be bored with me.. but this is an excellent book on what science is, how it developed, and its limitations...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Thing-Called-Science-Third/dp/0335201091/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244768987&sr=8-11

WatchingThePain

June 12th, 2009, 02:14 AM

Why did all the dinosaurs die out? :confused:

People killed them :-s

rookcifer

June 12th, 2009, 02:16 AM

Relativity has some interesting outcomes. For example, imagine an astronaut being pulled towards a black hole. An outside observer from the earth will see him as moving slower and slower towards the black hole, until he appears almost stationary. The astronaut will see himself moving normally towards the black hole (well, until he's torn apart by the gravitational force).

That's not all. If the astronaut is able to maintain a position where escape is still possible (that is outside of the event horizon) and he returns to where the outside observers are, the observers will all be dead and the astronaut will have aged only at a fraction. Depending on the gravitational force involved, perhaps thousands or millions of years will have passed on the "outside." Essentially this is time travel to the future.

Or, if we have two twins, one living on the earth and another traveling on a spacecraft that accelerates close to the speed of light and then returns to earth, then the twins will have different 'age'.

Depending on how close to the speed of light the twin traveled, it's possible that when he returns that thousands of years would have passed. This is known as the "twin paradox" as coined by Einstein and company, and is actually very similar to the scenario of the astronaut at the black hole. The former is a result of general relativity and the latter is a result of special relativity. Essentially, the effects of gravity and acceleration are the same to an observer. This is known as the equivalence principle which Einstein came up with it while riding on an elevator.

But really, none of these are "philosophical" questions because they have definitive scientific answers (both theoretical and experimental). Just because the results of science are counter-intuitive does not make them "up for question."

You can also try to refute one of the pillars of my personal philosophy:

"The final goal of each person's lives, from Hitler to Gandhi is to achieve happiness. We spend our lives running behind a moving car(happiness), which we know we'll never reach, but we are forced to do so. The final Why of every action a person does is to achieve happiness"

I would not say this is totally without merit, however I would not call it original. Plato argued essentially the same thing in The Republic.

Besides, I take a more Nietzschean perspective to the "human desire" issue -- all men are motivated by their Will to Power. This is Nietzsche's logical extension of the Platonic viewpoint. Instead of "all men want good" (where "good" is predicated on a definition that differs depending on who you ask), it should be "all men want to exert their superiority over others." I think this "will to power" is an invariant law of nature, and it isn't just specific to humans.

The problem with philosophy in general is the lack of agreed upon definitions. Languages are part of the problem (as Russell and Wittgenstein made apparent) so, really, formal mathematics must be used.

WatchingThePain

June 12th, 2009, 02:21 AM

Right so is my Pizza going to be delayed?.

arcdrag

June 12th, 2009, 05:04 AM

etnlIcarus

June 12th, 2009, 05:29 AM

hmm, love philosophy and these are some classics:

ethics:
1. is there any absolute right and wrongs

logic:
1. can we understand the universe using only the capability of our brain, which is necessarily limited by its evolution
2. are there any real 'truths' that apply to our world (i.e. maths, such as 1+1=2 can be true, but the real world has more uncertainty)
3. since our perception is shaped by our understanding of reality (i.e. we see a chair as a chair and not as fire-wood (usually) because we are conditioned that way), can we EVER really perceive reality objectively.

religion:
1. should we be passionate about life, or try to quel our passions
2. if you knew that god didn't exist, but also that a belief in god would make you happier, would you try and believe in god? (really asking... is truth or happiness more important).

erm.. if you want more write to me

Ethics 1: As at a minimum, a construct and, at a maximum, an abstraction of the behavioural characteristics of our species, there's simply no basis for proclaiming absolutes.

Logic 1: You make no mention of human senses. I assuming this is an unintended limitation: a brain without stimuli certainly can't understand anything.

More to the point, however: by it's very design, the human brain (or the brain of any animal, for that matter), understands it's environment with a level of coherency, as a matter of biological necessity. How much coherency and on what scope depends both on capacity and the availability of stimuli. Evidentially, humans have already reached the point where we've processed 99% of the stimuli available to us and the majority of our efforts are now focussed on devising ways to extend our sensory capabilities, if only to keep our brains occupied.

2. The concept of truth really only requires a minimum of one constant. You can get away with a near-infinite amount of uncertainty, so long as it's only near-infinite. Of course, it goes without saying that the more variables you've got to account for and the fewer constants you have the luxury of dealing with, the more difficult reliable predictions become.

3. The paradox here is objectivity is still only a point-of-view. Consciousness and the way we learn (in a nutshell, matching and categorising patterns) is an inherent limitation of any understanding. You more or less said it yourself:
a GOOD scientist would never declare anything to be true without doubtHumans simply aren't in a position to be proclaiming anything with absolute certainty. The best we can do is eliminate possibilities and thoroughly test our ideas to minimise the chance of fallacy.

"Religion", 1: In short, be passionate in your off hours. The moment your actions or thoughts begin to affect others in a non-consensual context, you have a responsibility to be considerably less indulgent and selfish.

2. I can't for the life of me fathom why a belief in a god would make me happier. Unless, of course, you're talking about a 'personal', more anthropomorphised god*, who does my bidding, smites my enemies and thinks I'm awesome, in which case I'd probably kill myself out of self-loathing.

*of course, "anthropomorphised god", is redundant. Giving god a beard and robes is just as absurd as assigning consciousness/person-hood/motivation to infinity in the first place.

rookcifer

June 12th, 2009, 06:54 AM

Here's one, how does gravity work, it's known that bodies of mass attract, but why?

Newton wondered the same thing, but it wasn't solved until Einstein and General Relativity. Basically, it has to do with the curvature of spacetime itself (as mathematically formulated by differential geometry, aka tensors). Mass warps the space and time around it, and the bigger the mass the more warpage occurs. The concept is quite simple, and yet so compelling, it's hard to imagine that a genius like Newton couldn't reach the logical conclusion. However, the mathematics of GR are very complex. It took Einstein years to construct the theory, and he had to have help from a colleague and also from the mathematical legend, David Hilbert. Hilbert even went so far as to deride Einstein's mathematical acumen (but gave Einstein full credit for GR).

Think of putting a bowling ball onto a rubber sheet. The bowling ball "warps" that sheet (it makes an impression). Now roll a marble on the sheet. What happens? The marble appears to be attracted to the bowling ball. The sheet is analogous to spacetime, the bowling ball is the sun and the marble is the earth. Granted, it's not a perfect analogy because this model is only 2D, whereas real space is 3D (and time makes it 4D).

What I would like to know:
Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light ?

Depends on what "it" is. Special relativity says that no object with rest mass can travel faster than c. To do so would require infinite energy to propel the object and would also result in the object having infinite mass and contracting to an infinitely small length (Lorentz contraction). This obviously is impossible. Photons (light) and other such particles can travel at c with no problems because they are massless particles.

Travel, in the sense of relocating, because moving through space
with even the speed of light is already proven impossible, but
there might be other ways (like mentioned above quantum-transportation).

Quantum tunneling, like everything else in QM, is based on probabilities. Only subatomic particles have been observed to undergo quantum "jumps." It's possible, in theory, for something as large as a human to tunnel, but the odds are so infinitely stacked against it that it's, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

So, since there is a believe initial that the origins of life have been 'planted' on earth by a meteorite containing the necessary ingredients,
this probably would have happened on many planets. Given the fact that there are so many planets and so much time, the probability of life is quite enormous on planets that had the right conditions.

I agree that life is prevalent in the universe, but I have no evidence of it directly. However, the probability of there being earth-like planets residing in the habitable zones of solar systems similar to our own is too great to be dismissed. And judging from the past few years of extrasolar planet research, there are likely many planets out there the size of earth.

And if intelligent development is a natural occurring evolution in carbon-based life, surely there must have been intelligent races
in the past couple of billion years and I suppose they would have invented
interstellar/-galaxic 'travel', if it's possible and if they survived long enough.

There was a simple equation developed to answer this question -- it's known as the Drake equation. The problem is that there are a number of variables that must be plugged into the equation. Some of the values we know fairly well, but some of the values are just wild guesses. This means some solutions to the equation return a value of 0 (no intelligent life out there) while others return a value of millions of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. It depends on who you ask and on who is doing the guessing of some of the values.

Anyway, if it turns out quantum teleportation/wormholes other methods of relocating are not allowed by the law of physics, then we have a problem.
Our sun is about to die ! (We only have 4,5 billion years left to find out)

Wormholes (also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges) are indeed allowed by General relativity. Kip Thorne at Cal-Tech did some good research on them in the 80's. His conclusion: they are a real possibility. However, the problem is that in order to artificially create one, it would require technologies far beyond ours -- and even then, it would be extremely hard to keep one open for any period of time. And then you have the question of whether a human can even survive in one.

And 4.5 billion years is a long time. It's doubtful that humans survive anywhere close to that long.

nandemonai

June 12th, 2009, 08:28 AM

When I posed the question I never believed it would provide an answer, rhetorical or otherwise.

Nice avatar, from an episode of Red Dwarf by the title of "Quarantine", I believe.

OT: Yes, and I love that episode. :P

lisati

June 12th, 2009, 08:43 AM

I haven't been following this thread closely but have two observations:

1. No offense intnded to those of a more "religious" inclination than myself, neither is a flamewar intended: What commonly masquerades as "religion" sometimes appears to me as a counterfeit that leaves the holder of the views in question no better off than someone who's scientific outlook is based more on subjectivity than objectivity. The "real thing" iedally can be carried through to "the real world" and improve people's lives. Enough said, "religion" can be a touchy subject that is discouraged in the forum COC for good reason.

2. I've never been able to get my head round the idea that how fast we travel relative to something else affects the passage of time: surely it has more to do with how we perceive the passage of time.

The Real Dave

June 12th, 2009, 10:02 AM

Ok, probably not the deepest question, but one that I definately found interesting.

You have a standard computer mouse (no tricks here, mouse as in the thing you move your onscreen cursor with). You purchase another computer mouse. You now have two computer mice. Mice is the right plural term right?

Wrong. You have two computer mouses. Why? Becuase in the English language, the plural of a word is specific to the object its associated with. The plural of the mammel rodet mouse, is indeed mice. However, a computer mouse is not a mammel rodet living mouse, and so though they share the same word as a name, the plural of that word changes, as it is dependant on the object, and not the word.

So the plural of a computer mouse, is computer mouses.

user_not_expert

June 12th, 2009, 09:39 PM

In response to the original question on this thread, somewhere in the mid 70s I caught a conceptual virus from an episode of the David Caradine 'Kung-fu' series for which I have not yet found a cure:

"I seek not to know the answer, merely to understand the question"

(Does anybody out there know if this is a quote, if so, by whom and when, or a scriptwriter's invention, also if so by whom?) Philosophically this could keep your friend occupied for a lifetime.

Wittgenstein essentially raised the same issue:

"Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all."

i.e. just because our language lets us ask a question like "is there a flying spaghetti monster?" does not necessarily make it a meaningful question, or one with a meaningful answer.

For instance, the word "supernatural" has appeared on this thread, but it could be argued that as we are natural beings and therefore our experience is a natural consequence of our existence as natural beings - if there could be a 'supernatural', it would be so far outside of our ability to experience that it would have no meaning or relevance. Therefore the word 'supernatural' has been coined as a blanket term with many different meanings to cover 'natural' experiences and events for which we do not yet have/there may be no explanation, or for which we do not choose to accept the alternative explanations.

Almost any philosophical (political/religious/social/etc.) debate I hear or read leaves me asking "hey, hold it everybody, forget the debate, can we go back and look at the validity of the assumptions you brought with you? because if not, this is liable to degenerate/has already degenerated into a conflict of articles of faith (more generously, an exchange of points of view) rather than a search for meaning."

I fear that this conceptual virus has not proved to be the world's most contagious .-)

lisati

June 12th, 2009, 10:01 PM

"I seek not to know the answer, merely to understand the question"

That thought appeals to me. I wonder how many problems could be avoided if people took more time to understand questions better. I know I've sometimes been guilty of just skimming through requests for help on these forums and come up with a response that was either irrelevant or failed to take account of some detail....

drawkcab

June 12th, 2009, 10:31 PM

Here's a Parmenidean/Heideggerian favorite:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

rookcifer

June 12th, 2009, 11:28 PM

2. I've never been able to get my head round the idea that how fast we travel relative to something else affects the passage of time: surely it has more to do with how we perceive the passage of time.

It has nothing to do with perception, it has to do with the physical laws of the universe. As was explained in this thread, the twin paradox is a physical manifestation of special relativity. If one twin goes away in a space ship and travels near the speed of light for a period of time, when he returns to earth he will be younger than his twin. It is a real physical property. His twin will be old and wrinkled (or even dead) and he will be much younger (how much younger, depends on how close to c he traveled and for how long).

And the same thing happens with gravity. If a twin goes off and lives near a very massive body (like a black hole), when he returns he will be younger than his twin. Again, how much depends on some equations.

The reason this is counter-intuitive is because we on earth are trained to view time as a separate entity from space. This is incorrect. Time cannot exist without space. Thus when space gets warped, time gets warped as well.

thisllub

June 13th, 2009, 12:41 AM

Where do all the lost socks go?

Cov(enant)

June 13th, 2009, 12:43 AM

I like this thread.

Since we cannot proof the existance of god, wouldn't it be smarter to just live an agnostic life ? As in ... there might be something, but because of a lack of evidence, I just pass the question until further notice.
In any other part of life we're critical and suspicious. Just in religions the law of common sense seems suspendet, why ?

Conditioned for easy manipulation (brainwashed) ?

gn2

June 13th, 2009, 12:52 AM

Newton wondered the same thing, but it wasn't solved until Einstein and General Relativity.

Nope, it still has yet to be explained exactly what makes bodies of mass attract, that's why I chose to mention it.

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 12:53 AM

Where do all the lost socks go?

If I understand correctly, current cutting-edge science tentatively suggests that they unravel into super-string, while most religions hold that the korrigans steal them .-)

gn2

June 13th, 2009, 01:05 AM

I like this thread.

~ we cannot proof the existance of god ~

Correct.
Nor can the existence of god be disproven.

Belief does not require proof.
You can believe what you like without restraint by the shackles of science.
Great isn't it?

Then there's creativity and art.
How does science measure and explain art?

Take the works of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko.
How do you explain why some people like them and other people do not?
How do you scientifically measure the qualities of artworks?

Science?
It's just a small branch in a big tree in an infinite forest.

BslBryan

June 13th, 2009, 02:07 AM

Most all questions are indeed the answers.

In mathematics, y=10+2 is simply another way to say "12", but we must say "12" to interpret that answer.

So, the answer to the question "Why are we here?" is simply "Because we are here." The reason this answer is unsatisfactory is because we have not yet developed methods (like numbers, language, time) to explain the answer properly.

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 05:46 AM

Here's a Parmenidean/Heideggerian favorite:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"Just as curiously, why there is only something.

I like this thread.

Since we cannot proof the existance of god, wouldn't it be smarter to just live an agnostic life ? As in ... there might be something, but because of a lack of evidence, I just pass the question until further notice.
In any other part of life we're critical and suspicious. Just in religions the law of common sense seems suspendet, why ?

Conditioned for easy manipulation (brainwashed) ?I wouldn't call it brainwashing. Rather, cultural conditioning. While we've always had the traditions of Hellenistic philosophy, the average individual has been utterly oblivious to anything introspective of knowledge. Similarly, attempts to formalise knowledge are generally construed as authoritarian, while the extent of education throughout western history has generally been limited to Sunday morning sermons. The mid-late 19th and 20th centuries broadly changed that but there's still a certain lag. There's this naive notion of nobility associated with 'standing apart' and 'thinking outside the box', which people take as an invitation and vindication of their right to believe whatever they want.

There's also a blatant vein of anti-intellectualism which permeates popular culture: in your average horror/disaster movie, right after the black guy or the teens who just had sex die, the critical thinker is almost always next. Similarly transcendent of religion is your new-age nonsense popping up everywhere. To borrow from one of the few intelligent things Dubya ever said (out of context, as it may be) this really is the, "soft bigotry of low expectations"; for the sake of being nice, we excuse and often accommodate idiocy.

Belief does not require proof.
You can believe what you like without restraint by the shackles of science.
Great isn't it?As a measure of our democratic progress, most definitely. As a measure of human honesty, respect and intelligence, definitely not. People who don't even attempt to reconcile their beliefs with reality really are just contemptuous.

Then there's creativity and art.
How does science measure and explain art?

Take the works of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko.
How do you explain why some people like them and other people do not?
How do you scientifically measure the qualities of artworks?Sigh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics), science doesn't even need to explain those things.

Science?
It's just a small branch in a big tree in an infinite forest.I'd say you're talking nonsense but it's a bit late for that. You just keep posting the same vague, esoteric gobblty-goop. Waxing poetic is not a substitute for having something to say of merit.

rookcifer

June 13th, 2009, 07:01 AM

Nope, it still has yet to be explained exactly what makes bodies of mass attract, that's why I chose to mention it.

Yes it has. Read my post again and I explain it the best way possible without using tensor calculus.

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 07:09 AM

Yes it has. Read my post again and I explain it the best way possible without using tensor calculus.

I was going to say before: you were responding to a disingenuous challenge. That particular tangent was continued in another thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7360901#post7360901) (can't remember which page and I'm shaped ATM so CBFed finding out) and was basically just Gn2 childishly regressing on the specificity of the original question.

rookcifer

June 13th, 2009, 08:05 AM

I was going to say before: you were responding to a disingenuous challenge. That particular tangent was continued in another thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7360901#post7360901) (can't remember which page and I'm shaped ATM so CBFed finding out) and was basically just Gn2 childishly regressing on the specificity of the original question.

I can't be too hard on gn2. Very few people, outside of physicists, understand relativity. Most people have heard of it but know nothing about what it's even supposed to explain.

I have taken part in threads such as this on non-Linux forums for years, and I have learned that no matter how often relativity is explained, some people just won't get it (or refuse to accept it because of its counter-intuitive nature). And I have seen some very smart people fail to grasp some of the concepts. And yet here we are, 100 years after Einstein published the theory, and most people don't have a clue as to what the basic principles behind it are. Thus, we can only imagine how difficult it would have been 100 years ago for Einstein to "explain" it.

Arthur Eddington was one of the physicists who widely promoted relativity and probably understood it better than almost all of his colleagues. Someone once came up to him and said:

"Professor Eddington, is it true only three people understand relativity?"

Eddington: "I am trying to think who the third person might be."

iponeverything

June 13th, 2009, 08:36 AM

I am a prisoner - After the physical cage breaks and falls away, will I still find myself confined? Trapped on well worn paths, wondering in heavens or hells of my own creation or better yet, weighed down by an appetite, but left without a palette.

Or will the spark disappear, quenched by the mystery by which it was born. I no longer or I never was.

gn2

June 13th, 2009, 08:36 AM

Yes it has. Read my post again and I explain it the best way possible without using tensor calculus.

But does that explain how mass or energy (or anything) came to exist in the first place....?

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 08:47 AM

gn2

June 13th, 2009, 08:54 AM

Fling out the bait and reel em' in.

Some are too easily caught.

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 09:05 AM

It's probably a bit late to suddenly jump out and claim, "lol, was trollin'".

thisllub

June 13th, 2009, 09:09 AM

[
Correct.
Nor can the existence of god be disproven.

Actually that is incorrect.
The existence of a god could be easily proven if that god chose to appear.

It is also possible to prove that there is no god, although it is no small task.

If I want to prove that a shark is not a dog all I have to do is prove that it is a fish.
Likewise proving that all known gods are false proves that gods are a man made notion and therefore that no god exists.

I am not saying that I have such proof, just a method.

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 09:41 AM

I actually ignored that point for two reasons:

1. 'Well you can't prove it didn't happen!', is about as compelling an argument as you'd get from a 5yo, claiming to have jumped the shark on a motorcycle. It's simply undeserving of riposte (though a stern facepalming might be in order).

2. Depends on the type of, "proof", in question. For example, if we're to consider a mathematical proof, the failure to provide such a proof is indeed evidence against the existence of our object in-question, as the hypothesis proved logically untenable. The inability to develop a mathematical proof that doesn't earn the ire of your peers is usually a death sentence for a hypothesis.

I was reluctant to post reason #2 as I know exactly where this will lead: gn2 will hop on the google, find whatever obscure mathematical arguments have been made for the existence of god since the bronze age and copypasta them, devoid of context or academic scrutiny. Edit: I also wouldn't put it past our confused friend to proclaim 'omg, a mathematical proof that god exists!', failing to grasp the limitations of any informal mathematical proof.

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 11:31 AM

I was reluctant to post reason #2 as I know exactly where this will lead: gn2 will hop on the google, find whatever obscure mathematical arguments have been made for the existence of god since the bronze age and copypasta them, devoid of context or academic scrutiny. Edit: I also wouldn't put it past our confused friend to proclaim 'omg, a mathematical proof that god exists!', failing to grasp the limitations of any informal mathematical proof.

I'll save "our confused friend" the bother, try:

Gôdel's elaboration of Leibniz's version of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of God's existence.

It's assumptions are massively flawed.

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 12:04 PM

The reason this answer is unsatisfactory is because we have not yet developed methods (like numbers, language, time) to explain the answer properly.

Or it may just be that some questions are unanswerable or at least unsatisfactory, by any methods "(like numbers, language, time)" - see Wittgenstein, Gôdel et al.

Incidentally, I find 'why' questions very unsatisfactory because they are questions of infinite regression, i.e. one can repeat the question to any answer and continue the process until everyone wanders off to get a life, as every parent has discovered .-)

I brought my kids up asking 'what if' (or what would be the consequences if) instead of 'why', its far more practical:-

"What if there were nothing instead of something?"
"Would you be able to ask that question?"
"No, I can only ask that question because there is at least me."
"Therefore the question is only askable in a 'something' universe.
A something universe demands no further explanation, it is merely a precondition to the ability to ask the question."

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 12:05 PM

And we just came full-circle, back to philosophy. That was one smooth segue, dude. (referring to first post, not subsequent one).

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 12:25 PM

Waxing poetic is not a substitute for having something to say of merit.

Waxing poetic may not be a substitute but it could be seen as equally valid (if one accepts the premisses 1. that poetry is a form of artistic expression and 2. that artistic expression lies outside of the brief of science or formal logic (as discussed earlier on this thread)).

Anyway, I quite like the branch/infinite forest metaphor .-)

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 01:09 PM

Yeah, I like the metaphor as well. It's still nonsense, though.

artistic expression lies outside of the brief of science or formal logic (as discussed earlier on this thread)I don't believe this was discussed at all.

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 01:55 PM

Yeah, I like the metaphor as well. It's still nonsense, though.
I don't believe this was discussed at all.

Agreed, but elegant, then again, many popular metaphors are nonsense. If some areas of physics (especially cosmology) can rest on the elegance of the mathematics more than experiential evidence, surely the metaphor can be allowed the same latitude?

o.k., thanks for correcting my use of language .-)
perhaps "vaguely mentioned" would have been more accurate, posts 71, 107 and your own 109 - "Sigh, science doesn't even need to explain those things."

memory does have a habit of inflating subjects of interest, ho humm!

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 02:22 PM

You're conflating the usage of the word elegance in the sciences with it's more common-day usage. If you want to know why the metaphor is elegant, look more to aesthetics and psychology (and FTR, I'd describe the metaphor more as logic in a vacuum/unsubstantiated premise, rather than elegant). If you want to know why string-theory is elegant, look more to it's predictions and symmetries. Should also point out that string theory (which I'm assuming is what you were referring to) is not exactly the best example of the scientific discipline (extra emphasis on the word discipline). I also wouldn't personally describe that as elegant, either; although it is certainly promising.

Edit: I didn't explain that as well as I had intended to. To understand why a notion such as said metaphor is pleasing, look to general cultural conditioning and human inquisitiveness (forest imagery and the promise of something new to explore is very much an appeal to emotion). To understand why something within the sciences is 'pleasing', you have to look at it's consistency with previous empirical successes and it's potential solutions to known theoretical problems.

In the very strictest sense, this creates the potential for fallacy but only to the extent to which possibilities are given investigative priority; findings and experiments are very much immune and are self-correcting. It's sheer indulgence, versus the necessary, minimal and indeed self-conscious application of intuition; the implications of which are limited only to the overall rate of progress, rather than the validity of conclusions.

To phrase this in yet a third way (brevity seems to be eluding me tonight), it's the difference between, "it sounds right, therefore it is correct", and, "it sounds right, so lets see if it is correct". As the metaphor in-question was written in the context of a completion of proof or Q.E.D, it would be cynical to suggest it was soundly reasoned, let alone demonstratively so.

I've got to find a better use for my Saturday nights...

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 04:00 PM

lol! Fair point etnlIcarus, though not so much conflating as trying (but obviously failing) to be light-hearted.

Not just string theory, though in its early days it was described to me as such, Just thinking back to talks with scientist friends who have used the term for various hypotheses, some of which have fallen by the wayside, others have gained mainstream acceptance. Also Eric J. Lerner has some um interesting things to say on the subject (depending on your pov), in his criticisms of neo-platonism.

(just read the edit)
Nice explanation, thanks, may I quote it? (with credit of course .-))

As for Saturday nights, I think I would enjoy drinking a beer with you, but Breizh and Oz are somewhat diametrically opposed .-(

etnlIcarus

June 13th, 2009, 04:10 PM

As far as I'm concerned, I give up all right and credit for my thoughts the moment I hit submit. And I usually disassociate myself from them not long after that. :p

user_not_expert

June 13th, 2009, 04:37 PM

imho, that is one rare and wise approach .-)

(incidentally, as you seem to be the one who notices details on this thread, my smilys arn't trying to wink, its just that I only have one eye .-))
[edit] That wasn't very precise, either, I've got two, but the other one sits in a jar of formaldehyde, oops)

iponeverything

June 14th, 2009, 03:40 PM

The blanket of reason is a cold comfort. Have you ever tried to wrap it around a distraught wife? a dream? a childhood memory?

I choose the "nonsense" of poetry and metaphor, not to nourish emotional bonds or to foster a positive perspective on life, but because it's a window to incorporeal. Reason has no perch from which to dismantle, analyse and distil my dreams.

etnlIcarus

June 14th, 2009, 04:21 PM

I think what people often seem to miss is that one does not need to assign meaning or value to an experience, in order to simply enjoy it. If one wishes to further the experience, they're more than entitled to seek to explain it but explaining it only with the vocabulary of their imagination is as shallow a pursuit as the experience was to begin with. And frankly, reality tends to be far more fascinating and sophisticated than one can imagine it to be.

Moreover, I think hostility towards more critical explanations of the human condition have less to do with any actual shortcomings in doing so, and more to do with the perception of judgement or the amplification of one's own inhibitions. Explaining an experience is not the same as dismissing it, nor proclaiming it is unworthy of experience.

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 04:27 PM

And frankly, reality tends to be far more fascinating and sophisticated than one can imagine it to be.

How does one imagine reality?

etnlIcarus

June 14th, 2009, 04:30 PM

How does one imagine reality?

Sans ego. If you've proved me wrong on any count, it would have to be that one.

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 04:35 PM

Relativity, has it been upgraded from it's status as a theory to a proof?

etnlIcarus

June 14th, 2009, 04:37 PM

I'm going to bed. Anyone else feel like keeping gn2 amused for a while? I'd hate to disappoint the lad.

user_not_expert

June 14th, 2009, 05:00 PM

Sorry, was going to give this afternoon a miss, but puzzled by this. Not trying to argue, just elucidate some understanding .-)

I think what people often seem to miss is that one does not need to assign meaning or value to an experience, in order to simply enjoy it. If one wishes to further the experience, they're more than entitled to seek to explain it

No problem so far,

but explaining it only with the vocabulary of their imagination is as shallow a pursuit as the experience was to begin with.

As an artist (albeit blessed/cursed with an enquiring mind), I find this puzzling as it could be read as a dismissal of my entire raison d'être.

And frankly, reality tends to be far more fascinating and sophisticated than one can imagine it to be.

In its richness and subtlety, agreed but conceptually it still remains that although I can imagine anything I can experience, I cannot experience everything I can imagine.

Moreover, I think hostility towards more critical explanations of the human condition have less to do with any actual shortcomings in doing so, and more to do with the perception of judgement or the amplification of one's own inhibitions.

I think its maybe a lot more complicated than this would suggest.

Explaining an experience is not the same as dismissing it, nor proclaiming it is unworthy of experience.

Wholeheartedly agree

H2SO_four

June 14th, 2009, 05:19 PM

Relativity, has it been upgraded from it's status as a theory to a proof?

Still "just" a theory.

koenn

June 14th, 2009, 05:28 PM

I'm going to bed. Anyone else feel like keeping gn2 amused for a while? I'd hate to disappoint the lad.
I've been tempted to step in, but evry time i'm about to click "reply", this thought pops up in my head :
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience

Not that I want to imply anyone's an idiot ("this is a moderated forum ..."), but it's kinda hard to discuss any scientific or philosophical subject with people who lack the basic vocabulary and concepts to even remotely understand what you're talking about.

MasterNetra

June 14th, 2009, 05:32 PM

Reality is mostly perception which is moulded primarily by our intellectual capacity, our senses, as well our creativity (granted creativity is not by any means required for shaping our perceptions, but does has its effect). And sure thanks to our senses we are aware and perceive matter (to a degree). Although I would imagine there is much that goes on around us that we are not aware of. (Although the fact that radio waves and ultraviolet light is emitted around us has been brought to our attention curiosity of technology we can't perceive any of it, we can use technology to convert it to something we can, but itself eludes us...And to think how much more their maybe that we also can't experience and don't have the technology to even detect it?)

koenn

June 14th, 2009, 05:37 PM

Relativity, has it been upgraded from it's status as a theory to a proof?

Theory, explained by wikipedia:

A theory, in the general sense of the word, is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of observations.

The term is often used colloquially to refer to any suggested explanation, even fanciful or speculative ones, for an event or class of events.

In scholarly use, however, the term is reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of the class to which it pertains.

so, in your question, do you mean that relativity is just one of "any suggested explanation" and possibly a speculative one, or did you use the term in its "scholarly" context ?

user_not_expert

June 14th, 2009, 05:46 PM

Relativity, has it been upgraded from it's status as a theory to a proof?

As far as I understand, I don't think scientists (at least in physics and cosmology) have really been looking for proofs (in the euclidean sense) for the better part of a century. It now seems to be the search for a more testable/accurate hypothesis.

In philosophy, the entire concept of 'proof' is open to question and in mathematics it could be seen as a grey area.

On the other hand, I think you will find that all (or nearly all) of Einstein's conjectures when it has become possible to test them (gravity lensing, the time paradox, etc.) have satisfied his predictions.

If you live in a technological world - you are using a computer - then that technology rests on the twin pillars of relativity and quantum, which, if measured by their results, have been the most successful theories in the history of the practice of science.

It would therefore be somewhat churlish, if not absurd, to embrace the results whilst attempting to reject the thinking that led to those results.

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 06:17 PM

If you live in a technological world - you are using a computer - then that technology rests on the twin pillars of relativity and quantum, which, if measured by their results, have been the most successful theories in the history of the practice of science.

As I understand it, computers trace their ancestry to devices designed and built by an engineer, not a quantum physicist.

MasterNetra

June 14th, 2009, 06:20 PM

As I understand it, computers trace their ancestry to devices designed and built by an engineer, not a quantum physicist.

Not quite computers ancestry traces back to the Chinese Abacus (Their ancient calculator) though not electronic its considered a primitive computer as calculations could be done on it. ^.^ Installing Ubuntu on it though would be easy, just slap a Ubuntu sticker on it and its running it! XD

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 06:24 PM

Theory, explained by wikipedia:

so, in your question, do you mean that relativity is just one of "any suggested explanation" and possibly a speculative one, or did you use the term in its "scholarly" context ?

As I understand it, a theory is an idea or proposal that as yet remains unproven.

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 06:25 PM

Not quite computers ancestry traces back to the Chinese Abacus

I was thinking of Tommy Flowers' Colossus and Colossus II

MasterNetra

June 14th, 2009, 06:29 PM

I was thinking of Tommy Flowers' Colossus and Colossus II

Though I forget his name, but someone in the 1800's made a attempt to produce a mechanical computer, technology though wasn't high enough at the time and he couldn't get the funding he need so it flopped. another thinker ahead of his time.

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 06:34 PM

Sounds like Babbage's difference engine (http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/).

MasterNetra

June 14th, 2009, 06:38 PM

Sounds like Babbage's difference engine (http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/).

That's the one! ^.^ A shame mechanical/electronic computers couldn't of been developed earlier we probably be even further along technologically ^.^ Though I should of remembered Babbage as its just a interesting name, but meh.

koenn

June 14th, 2009, 06:40 PM

As I understand it, a theory is an idea or proposal that as yet remains unproven.
When people mention 'the theary of relativity', they don't go by your personal definition, so what exactly are we discussing then ?

Oh well, I'll just refer back to post #138 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7455570&postcount=138) and leave it to that.

iponeverything

June 14th, 2009, 06:51 PM

MasterNetra

June 14th, 2009, 07:05 PM

Amazing. Experience, fortunately, I have enough to keep me awake for this life, its definitely underrated. Still, I would not trade the nightmares for the experiences. Its not imaginary vs reality, but how life is defined by death. Its finding the essence of experience, one that alludes reason. The poetry of Blake and Wordsworth was not a shallow pursuit, it was quest for truth.

I have stood on the threshold between life and death, fully conscience and alert. Its exhilarating and I got a taste of something. Something that makes the sun warmer, the grass greener and people more human.

For you, what defines life?

Life is something that can reproduce in some way or another and consumes an resource(s). ^.^ When at some point we should decide to cast aside our inefficent organic bodies for something else (crystalline, mechanical, etc), for as logn as we maintain a method of reproduction, and still consumes something wither its a phyiscal, electrical, or whatever, we still we be a living thing, not organic, but a lifeform none the less. ^.^

gn2

June 14th, 2009, 07:17 PM

When people mention 'the theary of relativity', they don't go by your personal definition, so what exactly are we discussing then ?

Don't know about you but I know nothing of relativity, so I'm certainly not discussing it, I'll leave that to others.

I asked a question seeking an explanation, a "theory" was given as an answer.

user_not_expert

June 14th, 2009, 07:20 PM

As I understand it, computers trace their ancestry to devices designed and built by an engineer, not a quantum physicist.

Start with the abacus, go on to Napier"s Bones, from there to Charles Babbage and sideways to Byron's daughter Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, (Ada Lovelace) who could be thought to be the true originator of the modern computer in that she seems to be not only the first to conceive of a 'universal' thinking machine, but also the inventor of programing.

Then go to John von Neumann, mathematician, who certainly made contributions to quantum theory and proposed the basic architecture of the modern computer and Alan Turing, mathematician.

Dr Tommy Flowers used vacuum tubes to construct Colossus and the early development of these ran parallel with with the development of modern atomic theory. Although early vacuum tubes were developed with no real understanding of the underlying physics, that does not apply to their later development and refinement in the 30s and 40s, or todays solid state devices.

Have I left anybody out?

koenn

June 14th, 2009, 07:24 PM

Don't know about you but I know nothing of relativity, so I'm certainly not discussing it, I'll leave that to others.

I asked a question seeking an explanation, a "theory" was given as an answer.
and a theory is, by definition, an explanation that accurately describes a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and makes definite predictions about the results of future observations.
So your question was answered satisfactorily, and all is well in the universe.

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 02:56 AM

As an artist (albeit blessed/cursed with an enquiring mind), I find this puzzling as it could be read as a dismissal of my entire raison d'être.Hardly. Elaborating upon something we hinted at earlier: a hypothesis would fit very much within the definition of art. A new idea of perspective, relying on a degree of intuition and creativity. The only question is then what to do with that work of art. Emphasis on the phrase, "only your imagination".

In its richness and subtlety, agreed but conceptually it still remains that although I can imagine anything I can experience, I cannot experience everything I can imagine.Oh come now, I'm quite certain that you've experienced things you have not imagined. There's even a more complex relationship that that to be observed: imagination cannot exist in the complete absence of experience.

I think its maybe a lot more complicated than this would suggest.I really don't think it is. Overwhelmingly objections arise from misunderstandings, usually due to fragile a priori. The only exception I can think of is from epistemological defeatists, whose objections are hardly limited to scientific principle.

Anyway, there's two more pages of replies I'm yet to read and I've got s**t to do. Sorry if I've missed anything.

MaxIBoy

June 15th, 2009, 05:37 AM

I'm looking for some deep philosophical questions for a roaster friend,
Already started him on the big bang and what the universe is expanding into.Strictly speaking, it's not expanding. In fact, there's really no good way of expressing it in spatial terms-- the closest you can get is to say that the Universe is the same size, but everything is getting smaller. See, the difficulty is that the Universe doesn't have an "inside" and an "outside." We're not "inside" the Universe, we just "are."

What came first the chicken or the eggThe egg. Whatever animal laid the egg was not a chicken. It, had some kind of mutation over the course of its life, causing it to lay the world's first chicken egg. If you got close to some Uranium, and you had a mutation that would cause green hair, you would not start growing green hair, but if you had any children after that, they would have green hair. That is, if you survived through the inevitable cancer.
and if you travel at the speed of light and turn on your headlights what would happen ?It is impossible to travel at the speed of light, actually. However, it is theoretically possible to travel at almost the speed of light. This video explains it pretty well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjpBjgIMVk&feature=related

Okay, now for some suggestions:

Are there more impossible things than there are possible things? I.E. if you made a list of everything that could be done, and a list of everything that could not be done, which list is bigger?
Is the Universe deterministic?
Do virtual particles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle) actually exist, or are they merely a convenient excuse for events we can't predict?
Is it really possible to define the concept of "humor?"

If he's made it this far, hit him up with the halting problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem), give him some pencils and paper, and then check up on him the next day.

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 08:02 AM

I asked a question seeking an explanation, a "theory" was given as an answer.Then I cannot see why you would be dissatisfied, as a theory fits the definition of an explanation perfectly.

Is it really possible to define the concept of "humor?"This is actually an interesting question, though the best answers are reserved more for behavioral psychology, behavioral evolution and perhaps to a lesser extent, sociology. In a nutshell, humour is a bonding ritual (adversarial and tribalistic as it tends to be) and/or a mental exercise, depending on the 'joke' in question. 'Bodily function' jokes tend to be more the former; irony, more the latter and sarcasm, somewhere in the middle.

Ubuntafied

June 15th, 2009, 08:36 AM

user_not_expert

June 15th, 2009, 12:59 PM

G'day My deep philosophical question is.
If a person is considered BRAIN DEAD at which time is the soul released for reincarnation. Is it upon definition of brain death (when the only thing keeping the body sustained is the breathing machines and supplied nutrients). Or is it when the machines are switched off.

Where does the soul reside and for ethalogical reasons should was start to consider a new term such as soul release...

You ask for deep philosophical questions...

erm....

May I respectfully suggest that this is a theological problem rather than a philosophical one. As most (if not all) religions address both, it can be easy to confuse the two.

I think that Śākyamuni Siddhārtha Gautama stated the distinction most clearly, and I stumbled upon it again quite recently (I think either earlier on this thread or on the Buddha-Ubuntu thread) but as I do not have the time to search here or in my books, I will try to paraphrase with apologies for any inaccuracy.

There had been a lot of heated debate in the community on similar issues (the nature and mechanics of reincarnation, not breathing machines .-)) and Śākyamuni declared/suggested that all that can be truly discussed is the human experience of the here and now (philosophy) and that it was fine to discuss such issues if one recognised that they were both a distraction from awareness of the here and now and pure speculation (theology).

I seem to remember that he also indicted that a failure to recognise the speculative nature of theology would lead to unnecessary conflict. Perhaps he was connected to the science/religion debate on philosophy threads .-)

gn2

June 15th, 2009, 03:07 PM

Then I cannot see why you would be dissatisfied, as a theory fits the definition of an explanation perfectly.

I was not disatisfied with the explanation, the problem was that the explanation is a theory.
As most of us know, a theory is not proof.

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 03:21 PM

I was not disatisfied with the explanation, the problem was that the explanation is a theory.
As most of us know, a theory is not proof.
This is a worse non-argument than your 'science can explain how, it just can't explain how', spiel (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/proof).

gn2

June 15th, 2009, 03:25 PM

Proof to me means "beyond all reasonable doubt", I suspect that's due to my legal training.

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 03:30 PM

Yeah... remind me never to hire you as my lawyer. "But your honour, you have to understand, my argument meant something to me!"

gn2

June 15th, 2009, 03:37 PM

I am not now, nor have I ever been a lawyer.

A theory might make a good defence, but you would never get a conviction based on a theory.
At least not in a Scottish criminal court.

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 03:46 PM

I am not now, nor have I ever been a lawyer.Well I, for one, am relieved.

A theory might make a good defence, but you would never get a conviction based on a theory.
At least not in a Scottish criminal court.
Well Scotland must have either the lowest conviction rate in the world, or the laziest scientific community in the world.

gn2

June 15th, 2009, 04:11 PM

Conviction rate is no yardstick for any justice system.

I doubt the scientists in Scotland are lazy, but as I have no interaction with them I have no proof, just belief.

fatality_uk

June 15th, 2009, 04:16 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scottish_scientists
No bad for a wee country!

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 04:19 PM

oh dear lord ...koenn, tag; you're it.

forrestcupp

June 15th, 2009, 04:27 PM

Are you guys still arguing about theories? We're on page 17 now. This is the worst case of hijacking I've ever seen.

How about some deep philosophical questions?

etnlIcarus

June 15th, 2009, 04:38 PM

Because epistemology, empiricism, mathematics, scientific principle aren't philosophical subjects at all. And I'm going to bed, anyway. Trust forrestcupp to break up a fight.

gn2

June 15th, 2009, 04:47 PM

How about some deep philosophical questions?

I'm ready, fire away.

craigeo

June 15th, 2009, 05:25 PM

How does posi traction work?

user_not_expert

June 16th, 2009, 12:23 AM

How does posi traction work?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

user_not_expert

June 16th, 2009, 11:35 PM

I was not disatisfied with the explanation, the problem was that the explanation is a theory.
As most of us know, a theory is not proof.

Sorry Forestcupp, but actually this is one of the deep philosophical questions.

gn2, what if, from a philosophical p.o.v, we've run out of proof?

What if in a relativistic world, not just in scientific thinking, but cultural, religious, etc.,, even legal, we find ourselves bereft of rock solid proof?

What if we react to expressions of fundamentalism (of any variety or denomination) with such shock because we have become accustomed to the freedoms that come from relativism?

What if as a result of this, on the principle that with freedom comes responsibility, we just have to work harder to understand (anything) in order to make valid choices and debates between different possibilities, because the only alternative is to retreat into positions of prejudice, a route recent history tells us that leads to the fields of Flanders, to Guernica, to Auschwitz, to the killing fields of Kampuchea, to 9/11, and potentially to nuclear overkill?

What if in a world of sufficient complexity, proof is no longer a valid currency?

Jackelope

June 16th, 2009, 11:38 PM

if you travel at the speed of light and turn on your headlights what would happen ?

Sorry man, this is what I was going to say...until you said it first. :D

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 01:15 AM

Quote:Originally Posted by tio2
if you travel at the speed of light and turn on your headlights what would happen ?

Try this, as its one of the easier aspects of relativity (it must be if I can grasp it .-))

You would see the headlights as normal, streaming away from your chosen means of transport, whilst to an outside observer in a different time/space reference, the light would never leave the filaments.

This is because light travels at the speed of light relative to any given point of reference in the time/space continuum, there being no absolute point of stasis to measure anything from.

The light from a bulb, turned on on the middle of a carriage pulled by a speeding train reaches both ends of the carriage at the same time if you are on the train. From the platform, you would hypothetically observe that in the time between the light leaving the bulb and reaching the ends of the carriage, the back of the carriage has moved towards the point from which, relative to you, it was emitted, whilst the front of the carriage has moved away, thus causing a differential. All observers in this thought experiment measure the light moving at the speed of light relative to their own position in time/space.

Effectively, wherever you are, and at whatever speed, you are static and at the centre of the universe (unfortunately this argument does not seem to work on traffic cops)

etnlIcarus

June 17th, 2009, 01:46 AM

user_not_expert, if you actually manage to get through to gn2, I'll owe you some kind of sexual favour.

alket

June 17th, 2009, 02:33 AM

###

thisllub

June 17th, 2009, 03:22 AM

etnlIcarus

June 17th, 2009, 06:08 AM

Can God create another God ?Sure god can - just as soon as god figures out what to do with that rock.

Not strictly true.
Relativity is only meaningful up to the speed of light.
At or beyond the speed of light there is another set of rules the likes of which we do not understand.
We know that it must be possible for events to occur faster than the speed of light as there is not other way to explain cosmic inflation.

Not that I can think of anyway.

You're sort of correct in that we know it's possible for matter to exceed C during the early inflationary epochs where we know the physical laws of the universe were a bit questionable. We also know some forms of non-classical information can travel faster than C and we've theorised some particles that can only travel FTL but in the context user_not_expert was talking about (non-exotic forms of matter in the current universe), for all intents and purposes, the speed of light in a vacuum is still a very relevant limitation.

HappinessNow

June 17th, 2009, 06:17 AM

Which way does that old pony run?

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 09:17 AM

user_not_expert, if you actually manage to get through to gn2, I'll owe you some kind of sexual favour.

Now there's an interesting proposition .-)

Can God create another God ?

A brief scan of the ancient Greek and the Hindu pantheons would suggest that this question is not only difficult theologically, but exceedingly complicated and possibly risqué (although it does seem to have inspired a lot of artwork) .-)

Not strictly true.
Relativity is only meaningful up to the speed of light.
At or beyond the speed of light there is another set of rules the likes of which we do not understand.
We know that it must be possible for events to occur faster than the speed of light as there is not other way to explain cosmic inflation.

Not that I can think of anyway.

Fair cop, I've probably been too long in the 'proof' section of this thread and I did have to massively simplify for time and space .-) (+ the subtlties are ignored by traffic cops!)

You're sort of correct in that we know it's possible for matter to exceed C during the early inflationary epochs where we know the physical laws of the universe were a bit questionable. We also know some forms of non-classical information can travel faster than C and we've theorised some particles that can only travel FTL but in the context user_not_expert was talking about (non-exotic forms of matter in the current universe), for all intents and purposes, the speed of light in a vacuum is still a very relevant limitation.

Being a user, not an expert (of life as well as computers), I'm still sitting on the fence between the dominant and the more credible of the alternative cosmological theories, but I doubt if these issues will be resolved (by the experts) in my lifetime .-(

Sorry folks, just celebrating cos I've worked out a way to multi-quote .-)

gn2

June 17th, 2009, 09:26 AM

gn2, what if, from a philosophical p.o.v, we've run out of proof?

This is what I have been trying to get across all along, but perhaps I lack the tools to do so effectively enough for the satisfaction of all participants in the thread.

If we have no proof of something, or if we are simply unable to find proof yet, then what we are left with is belief.

lisati

June 17th, 2009, 09:33 AM

Proof to me means "beyond all reasonable doubt", I suspect that's due to my legal training.

Do you mean this (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080432/) movie? I saw a screening of it that had an appeaance of the person whose story inspired the book the movie was based on.

gn2

June 17th, 2009, 09:45 AM

Do you mean this (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080432/) movie?

Haven't seen it, but it does seem to be about the legal principle that burden of proof rests with the prosecution to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.

etnlIcarus

June 17th, 2009, 10:03 AM

Being a user, not an expert (of life as well as computers), I'm still sitting on the fence between the dominant and the more credible of the alternative cosmological theories, but I doubt if these issues will be resolved (by the experts) in my lifetime .-(I'm hedging my bets on some discovery coming along in the next decade that causes every physicist's head to explode. A GUT will then be developed, which will involve 88 dimensions, 31 flavours of ice cream, a Puerto Rican midget and a blind-folded penguin.

If we have no proof of something, or if we are simply unable to find proof yet, then what we are left with is belief. I'm begrudged to point you to a dictionary again but your absolutist notions of words such as, "proof", practically demand it.

Alright, at the risk of inviting another headache: how would we, as human beings, be able to distinguish something you would define as proved, from the more literal usages of the word?

but it does seem to be about the legal principle that burden of proof rests with the prosecution to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.I'm not sure reasonable doubt means quite what you think it means.

gn2

June 17th, 2009, 10:37 AM

~ how would we, as human beings, be able to distinguish something you would define as proved, from the more literal usages of the word?

Maybe it's you who needs to consult a dictionary, it's "proven", not "proved".

As for interpretation of my words, I'll leave it up to you to interpret them any way you like.

I'm not sure reasonable doubt means quite what you think it means.

I'm happy that I understand it well enough, having had to investigate criminal cases and present reports on them to Procurator Fiscals.

EDIT: Or should that be Procurators Fiscal?

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 10:51 AM

I'm hedging my bets on some discovery coming along in the next decade that causes every physicist's head to explode. A GUT will then be developed, which will involve 88 dimensions, 31 flavours of ice cream, a Puerto Rican midget and a blind-folded penguin.

lol, especially the penguin, though I once raised the subject of the penguin with an old friend who is described as a 'mathematical physicist', he replied that penguins were too much work and he felt life was simpler keeping apples. I suppose that with his Maxwell, Dirac, Lilienfield, Naylor, Wolf, Ig Nobel & Pólya prizes to juggle he's far too busy to fathom the ultimate mystery of cups .-)

etnlIcarus

June 17th, 2009, 11:37 AM

Maybe it's you who needs to consult a dictionary, it's "proven", not "proved".Per my instruction, proven is chiefly American usage (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prove), not that I really care; I would have much preferred to answer to my question.
As for interpretation of my words, I'll leave it up to you to interpret them any way you like.Yet you've gotten so het-up when people have 'misunderstood' you, previously and, indeed, you've seemed quite eager to make yourself understood.
I'm happy that I understand it well enough, having had to investigate criminal cases and present reports on them to Procurator Fiscals.Then perhaps you'd like to explain to me how it differs so much as a standard of truth to all the other things you've labelled as, "beliefs". I'd be even more curious to read your thoughts on the influence of the forensic sciences on legal standards during the last few centuries.

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 11:56 AM

This is what I have been trying to get across all along, but perhaps I lack the tools to do so effectively enough for the satisfaction of all participants in the thread.

If we have no proof of something, or if we are simply unable to find proof yet, then what we are left with is belief.

Jurisprudence, as I understand it, uses the word 'proof' to mean "beyond all reasonable doubt", not "rock hard certainty" and this difference forms one of the arguments against the death penalty.

Most scientists, on the other hand would demand "rock hard certainty" before venturing the word 'proof' and would classify legal proof as 'theory'.

The job of a scientist is to doubt, and the concept of scientific proof is a hangover from classical models based on mathematics. Its a bit like saying "I don't know what an operating system is, I just bought a computer and use it to play games"

Belief isn't strictly an issue if your job description is 'doubter'.

The word 'theory' in a scientific usage has been described several times above, but try "the best guess we can possibly make based on all the evidence we have at our disposal", which is, after all, effectively what a jury is asked to do, even in matters of life and death.

A cautious guess bassed on partial evidence is an hypothosis

A best guess based on as much evidence as we can muster is a theory

Nobody can be certain that a proof exists

Witgenstein (again) pointed out that in normal human language we often use the same word (or symbol) to mean different things, and that strictly for logical sense it would be easier to asign different symbols to different meanings.

This I think is one of those instances .-)

etnlIcarus

June 17th, 2009, 12:29 PM

user_not_expert, I'm positive you're trying to show me up with all this 'diplomacy' and the distinct lack of condescension. :p

gn2

June 17th, 2009, 01:40 PM

user_not_expert, I'm positive you're trying to show me up with all this 'diplomacy' and the distinct lack of condescension. :p

Maybe he just doesn't feel the need to wave his willy around like you do.

gn2

June 17th, 2009, 01:45 PM

~ perhaps you'd like to explain to me ~

Nope, I wouldn't.
I have no wish to participate in any further discourse with you on this or any other topic.
Read into this whatever you will, frankly I don't care what you think and am not in any way interested in any response you may choose to make about me or my thoughts, whatever you imagine they may be.

watsbe

June 17th, 2009, 01:46 PM

Why do we tell our kids to eat the crust on bread?

Ubuntafied

June 17th, 2009, 01:48 PM

A deep philosophical question would be,, Does a believer believe his beliefs or does his belief make him believe. :popcorn:](*,)

Ubuntafied

June 17th, 2009, 01:53 PM

So they can grow hair on their chest of course...lol

don't know about girls though.

handy

June 17th, 2009, 02:33 PM

This thread should be moved to the Community Cafe Games, section.

Because it is full of sheet.

etnlIcarus

June 17th, 2009, 02:40 PM

Read into this whatever you will
I'd be more likely to read into the responses you did post. Oy vey.

And I wouldn't describe myself as a ...willy waver. I simply take offence to people who clearly don't have much grasp on a given subject but would have you believe they do. That and if I spot FUD regarding an issue of interest, I'll do my darnedest to correct it.

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 03:36 PM

user_not_expert, I'm positive you're trying to show me up with all this 'diplomacy' and the distinct lack of condescension. :p

Nah, its just that I lost 13yrs of my life fighting a tort case through the Alice in Wonderland world of the English courts. It's an adversarial system (don't know about Scottish criminal law) that is more akin to medieval trial by combat than an academic search for truth.

Forget TV representations, truth and justice go out the window in favour of "What the judge wants to hear" or, as one lawyer put it to me, "will you try to understand that this is not about justice, its about law!"

In the end I got so fed up with the funny handshake brigade making stupid agreements behind my back, I went into court with an all woman team and wiped the floor with them. :D

result is that if I come across an adversarial argument, I'd rather find out what both parties have to contribute than listen to the endless repetition of what is usually a semantic misunderstanding.

Wouln't want to put you down or show you up .-)

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 03:40 PM

This thread should be moved to the Community Cafe Games, section.

Because it is full of sheet.

Isn't that why its called Looking for deep philosophical questions please help? ;)

user_not_expert

June 17th, 2009, 03:49 PM

A deep philosophical question would be,, Does a believer believe his beliefs or does his belief make him believe. :popcorn:](*,)

Sorry Ubutified, any chance you could expand on this a bit? It looks an interesting question, but comes too close to tautology for my understanding.

Ubuntafied

June 19th, 2009, 02:21 AM

Sorry Ubutified, any chance you could expand on this a bit? It looks an interesting question, but comes too close to tautology for my understanding.
G'day User,

Does a person that has a belief (in any given topic) believe in said topic. Or in fact is it that he/she is predisposed (by upbringing, culture, science or locality for example) to believe in such topics.

About the Tautology of the question I am sorry I should have phased it a little better.

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 03:56 AM

<snip>
The job of a scientist is to doubt, and the concept of scientific proof is a hangover from classical models based on mathematics. Its a bit like saying "I don't know what an operating system is, I just bought a computer and use it to play games"
<snip>

A cautious guess bassed on partial evidence is an hypothosis

A best guess based on as much evidence as we can muster is a theory

Nobody can be certain that a proof exists

Witgenstein (again) pointed out that in normal human language we often use the same word (or symbol) to mean different things, and that strictly for logical sense it would be easier to asign different symbols to different meanings.

This I think is one of those instances .-)

In mathematics a proof is a logical demonstration of a theorem or proposition. In mathematics we can posit any axioms (any premise) as being true and simply work out the consequences. Proof, in this setting has a very well defined meaning. Similarly, in more axiomatic approaches to mathematical physics proofs are furnished to support theorems and propositions. In such settings proof has nothing to do with ontological truth (with what's actually real) it has to do with logical consistency of the theorem, conditioned upon the assumption of the truth of the axioms of the theory.

Generally, in physics the word proof is never used outside of this context. The closest thing to anything that's "true" is simply reliably repeatable empirical data. A scientist who calls any theory true has either lost their philosophical bearings or has an incredibly limited view of the history of science. Truth is quite a crude and idealistic measure for a scientific theory. It seems more appropriate to consider theories as either useful or adequate for a certain job (or not as the case may be). A theory may be said to be consistent with experiments, but an experiment should never be said to prove a particular theory. It's generally true that multiple theoretical models suffice to explain a particular set of data. In my view, science assembles toolkits that allow us to describe various situations. The whole notion of a unique "true" theory seems like an arcane relic to me. It seems reminiscent of the days before science had separated itself from natural philosophy.

I would say that a hypothesis is simply a guess about what will happen when a certain experiment is carried out or when a certain measurement is made. A theory is more like a model that seeks to account for a whole set of observations in a consistent manner. Proofs may be employed to expand the reach of a mathematical theory. They do not constitute claims about ontological truth. In science the closest thing to truth is simply an observation, not an explanation of that observation.

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 04:00 AM

Does science care about what reality is, or only how it appears?

H2SO_four

June 19th, 2009, 04:02 AM

Philosiraptor time!

H2SO_four

June 19th, 2009, 04:03 AM

Does science care about what reality is, or only how it appears?

Science cares what reality is, using how it appears to try to explain.

etnlIcarus

June 19th, 2009, 04:04 AM

G'day User,

Does a person that has a belief (in any given topic) believe in said topic. Or in fact is it that he/she is predisposed (by upbringing, culture, science or locality for example) to believe in such topics.

About the Tautology of the question I am sorry I should have phased it a little better.

Haha, still a tautology. I think you're hinting at the concept of agency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_%28philosophy%29) a bit, here. There is a bit of a paradox when it comes to human agency: common notions of self-determinism have been undermined by the studies of psychology, neurology and physics. We think in terms that are at-odds with the observable universe, or in terms that at least represent a flawed perspective. There's really no definite answer to your question, although there's certainly a bit to think about on the subject.

ericab

June 19th, 2009, 04:09 AM

how many licks **does** it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop ?

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 04:10 AM

Science cares what reality is, using how it appears to try to explain.

But if we only have access to how something appears then how are we to ever address what it "is"? Why should I ever take an explanation for what I observe and hold it up as being more real than the observation itself?

H2SO_four

June 19th, 2009, 04:15 AM

But if we only have access to how something appears then how are we to ever address what it "is"? Why should I ever take an explanation for what I observe and hold it up as being more real than the observation itself?

Why do you assume that you are observing something that is not as it is?

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 04:31 AM

Why do you assume that you are observing something that is not as it is?
I made no claim divorcing observation from (ontological) essence. I simply prefer to frame science in terms of things I have access to -- observations. If you wish to claim such a connection then the onus is on you to demonstrate it.

How do you know the essence of a thing? I only have senses. I can only observe things via those senses and report my observations/perceptions. I can tabulate properties. I cannot comment on a thing's essence or true nature. You seem to be invoking some kind of gnosis here.

Alternatively, are you claiming that reality is composed of perceptions and observations?

HermanAB

June 19th, 2009, 05:15 AM

There is an ancient Greek dilemma:
Can god make a rock so heavy, that he cannot lift it?

---

Can you wiggle out of that dilemma without impaling yourself on one of its horns?

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 05:21 AM

Can you draw a round square?

Ubuntafied

June 19th, 2009, 05:27 AM

Haha, still a tautology. I think you're hinting at the concept of agency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_%28philosophy%29) a bit, here. There is a bit of a paradox when it comes to human agency: common notions of self-determinism have been undermined by the studies of psychology, neurology and physics. We think in terms that are at-odds with the observable universe, or in terms that at least represent a flawed perspective. There's really no definite answer to your question, although there's certainly a bit to think about on the subject.
To avoid sounding like a Tautological Agent, LOL. put simply does one believe becouse he/she is told or not.

??2nd quote

Ubuntafied

June 19th, 2009, 05:33 AM

There is an ancient Greek dilemma:
Can god make a rock so heavy, that he cannot lift it?

---

Can you wiggle out of that dilemma without impaling yourself on one of its horns?
How could he know until he makes it. I would think that the question is rhetorical.

lisati

June 19th, 2009, 05:43 AM

Can you draw a round square?

I make the sound of one hand clapping when making such a drawing.

etnlIcarus

June 19th, 2009, 06:06 AM

To avoid sounding like a Tautological Agent, LOL. put simply does one believe becouse he/she is told or not.

??2nd quote

Odd. Each time you try to clarify the question, it just becomes more nonsensical.

Why should I ever take an explanation for what I observe and hold it up as being more real than the observation itself?Unless I'm mistaken, no one has suggested you should.

You seem to be invoking some kind of gnosis here.You're perhaps over-reaching.

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 06:09 AM

I make the sound of one hand clapping when making such a drawing.

Well played. I salute you! :D

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 06:40 AM

Why should I ever take an explanation for what I observe and hold it up as being more real than the observation itself?
Unless I'm mistaken, no one has suggested you should.
I believe you're mistaken. I asked this:
Does science care about what reality is, or only how it appears?

Then H2SO_four replied:
Science cares what reality is, using how it appears to try to explain.

I responded with this:
But if we only have access to how something appears then how are we to ever address what it "is"? Why should I ever take an explanation for what I observe and hold it up as being more real than the observation itself?
Our observations are the closest thing we have to truth in science. The proposition here is that somehow science uses the data we collect to create an explanation for how reality actually is. In my view science only seeks to provide a self consistent explanation for the data (and hopefully future data -- i.e. more observations about how reality appears to our senses and instruments). I think this is an important point. According to my understanding of the philosophy of science questions of ontological truth were abandoned quite some time ago in favor of predictive models. The worth of a theory lies in how well it matches our observation and allows us to predict new ones, not how well it describes reality (something we can never verify in any way). Observations, not some idealized notion about reality provide the metric for our theories. Or have I misunderstood something?

You seem to be invoking some kind of gnosis here.You're perhaps over-reaching.
It's possible. But I don't know how else to invoke a transitive property between a set of observations and some kind of ontological truth. Doing so relies on a whole raft of metaphysical assumptions that I would rather not make.

etnlIcarus

June 19th, 2009, 07:46 AM

Then H2SO_four replied:
Science cares what reality is, using how it appears to try to explain.

This is the important bit. H2SO_four didn't directly answer your initial query. You seem to be making a lot of inferences about what [s]he's actually saying. Even taking that into account, I'm still not sure how you arrived at, "Why should I ever take an explanation for what I observe and hold it up as being more real than the observation itself? "

The proposition here is that somehow science uses the data we collect to create an explanation for how reality actually is. In my view science only seeks to provide a self consistent explanation for the data (and hopefully future data -- i.e. more observations about how reality appears to our senses and instruments).This is where the distinction lies between what science is and how it's used. In practical usage, ontological essence is what scientists (not science) try to get at. No scientist would literally claim that an object is purely and wholly what it appears to be; merely, explanations built on sensory data provide an approximation of that essence (or at least an aspect therein). As science is not posited as anything other than an approximated model of knowledge to begin with, I'm not sure what the problem is.

Observations, not some idealized notion about reality provide the metric for our theories.Again, I'm not sure how you arrived here. Even following it's preceding sentence, this appears to be a non-sequitur.

Shiftbutton

June 19th, 2009, 08:09 AM

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 08:35 AM

I suppose I did make some inferences. Though, I'm not sure why you say that it wasn't a direct reply.

This "reality" (being independent of observations) must be a feature of the explanation I have constructed to account for the observations themselves. This is the inference that I made. Can you point out what else "reality" could label? What is more real than the observation?

I do not impute essence. Why do you presume that scientists try to get at ontological essence? This seems like a philosophical trap, which I would like to avoid. You seem to assume that the existence of an objective reality with some undefined essence exists. I do not wish to assume this and this isn't something that science asks of me. Science is a set of descriptions and models. It can cause confusion and muddled communication when these models get mistaken for some ill-defined reality.

You really don't see how a sentence which affirms empiricism rather than some idealized, unspecified reality as the basis for modern science fits with the rest of that paragraph? I'm not sure what I can do to clarify, especially since the preceding sentence essentially paraphrases the same thing. I don't see how a sentence that paraphrases the one preceding it should be described as a non-sequitur.

I did find this statement very interesting: "As science is not posited as anything other than an approximated model of knowledge to begin with, I'm not sure what the problem is." Perhaps you have some Bayesian sensibilities in you after all. ;)

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 08:42 AM

It's quite well known that all theories fall short of being significantly "true" due to the subjectivity of Human thought and sensory perception. Forgive the somewhat none helpful Existentialist sentiment there; I felt some Hodge&podge (+10 points if you get that lil' reference) philosophy was needed.

As to the matter of the big bang etc. I was thinking that may fall more under scientific history, as it's more related towards a historical event rather than the study of human thought/rationality etc etc.

Just shiftbutton's two cents.

Thanks. That's a big part of what I have been driving toward.

Not a bad characterization of cosmology, I think. As with human history there isn't a single history. There are many conceptions of what happened that can be fit to our contemporary information about what occurred in the past.

etnlIcarus

June 19th, 2009, 09:38 AM

This "reality" (being independent of observations) must be a feature of the explanation I have constructed to account for the observations themselves. This is the inference that I made. Can you point out what else "reality" could label? What is more real than the observation?Again, I don't think there's been any disagreement here, though now that you've phrased this in such a way, I'm beginning to understand what you're getting at. You seem to have an almost semantic objection to any invocation of ontology, as 'truth' can be inferred independent of that particular philosophical discipline.

Why do you presume that scientists try to get at ontological essence?Because trying to determine truth is up there with eating, sleeping and f***ing on the scale of natural human behaviours. Again, I think this is more about semantics than any genuine disagreement. This seems to be confirmed by your closing statement and your agreement with Shiftbutton (whom I also agreed with).

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 10:41 AM

Good. I'm glad we're making progress. :)

Truth is only accessible to us in a conditional, abstract sense. A statement can be conditionally true if it's logically consistent with a premise you have accepted as true. In mathematics you can assert any axiom you like as true.

However, in science we don't have such freedom. We ask that theories provide a structure that ties our data together in some comprehensible way. Thus, science has a much more difficult task before it. It cannot be a purely axiomatic pursuit, unlike mathematics. It must try to reverse engineer, so to speak, the correct axioms to produce a theory that's consistent (within error) with our measurements. Thus, it seems rather backwards to me to talk about truth or reality in the context of a theory. The history of science has been a continual process of finding failures in existing theories and then searching for a new set of assumptions that will consistently account for new data.

I can say it this way: I strongly doubt that our data will ever be uniquely described by a single theory. People will find various ways to think about nature that are consistent with the data. We will always have multiple suitable theory that adequately describes data in various physical situations. We will always (in my opinion) also be able to find situations where our theories fail to adequately describe (or predict) observations.

Furthermore, results such as Goedel's incompleteness theorems provide good reasons to doubt that a monolithic theory is capable of describing all possible data or even encompassing the results of all existing physical theories. The logical system will end up being either incomplete, or logically inconsistent. The alternative is to settle for multiple logic patches that work well in their respective domains and paste them together at the boundaries to form a global map. This is also what relativists do, since it's impossible to produce a global coordinate chart for spacetime (another instance of conflict between completeness and consistency).

Certainly, a quest for (objective) truth and knowledge got me interested in science in the first place. However, I have come to regard such a quest as a kind of snipe hunt. I have become much more pragmatic in my approach to science over the years.

It's very much easier to identify when a statement is inconsistent or inadequate than to identify when it's true (in principle this is not possible). I understand this to be a strong reason for people like Popper advocating falsification rather than verification as being a prime driver of scientific progress. In Popper's view, science is an attempt to consider the set of falsifiable propositions and remove them from consideration when they fail. In this view, science consists of an attempt to pare down the set of not-false (i.e. consistent so far) propositions rather than finding a true proposition.

etnlIcarus

June 19th, 2009, 11:20 AM

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that we both just wasted the better part of a Friday for nothing...

Chronon

June 19th, 2009, 11:25 AM

Oh well. There are worse ways, I think. :p

user_not_expert

June 19th, 2009, 06:21 PM

G'day User,

Does a person that has a belief (in any given topic) believe in said topic. Or in fact is it that he/she is predisposed (by upbringing, culture, science or locality for example) to believe in such topics.

About the Tautology of the question I am sorry I should have phased it a little better.

G'day Ubuntified, Interesting question. Someone once took the trouble (& the grant ;)) to look into this. Can't give you the reference or the figures cos its just something I remember reading 10 to 20 years ago, but if I remember correctly, the statistical evidence would suggest that in most cases the latter applies.

It was found in the study, that the overwhelming majority of those who actively chose a belief system later in life, after a period of neglect or disillusion, chose the belief system they had been reared in.

The clear majority of the believers I have met seem to accept their native belief systems passively as 'truth' without even looking at, let alone considering the alternatives.:sad:

ZackM

June 19th, 2009, 06:22 PM

How does posi traction work?

It just does....</joe dirt quote>

forrestcupp

June 19th, 2009, 06:34 PM

Groucho Marxist

June 19th, 2009, 06:55 PM

user_not_expert

June 19th, 2009, 06:57 PM

In mathematics a proof is a logical demonstration of a theorem or proposition. In mathematics we can posit any axioms (any premise) as being true and simply work out the consequences. Proof, in this setting has a very well defined meaning. Similarly, in more axiomatic approaches to mathematical physics proofs are furnished to support theorems and propositions. In such settings proof has nothing to do with ontological truth (with what's actually real) it has to do with logical consistency of the theorem, conditioned upon the assumption of the truth of the axioms of the theory.

Generally, in physics the word proof is never used outside of this context. The closest thing to anything that's "true" is simply reliably repeatable empirical data. A scientist who calls any theory true has either lost their philosophical bearings or has an incredibly limited view of the history of science. Truth is quite a crude and idealistic measure for a scientific theory. It seems more appropriate to consider theories as either useful or adequate for a certain job (or not as the case may be). A theory may be said to be consistent with experiments, but an experiment should never be said to prove a particular theory. It's generally true that multiple theoretical models suffice to explain a particular set of data. In my view, science assembles toolkits that allow us to describe various situations. The whole notion of a unique "true" theory seems like an arcane relic to me. It seems reminiscent of the days before science had separated itself from natural philosophy.

I would say that a hypothesis is simply a guess about what will happen when a certain experiment is carried out or when a certain measurement is made. A theory is more like a model that seeks to account for a whole set of observations in a consistent manner. Proofs may be employed to expand the reach of a mathematical theory. They do not constitute claims about ontological truth. In science the closest thing to truth is simply an observation, not an explanation of that observation.

Thank you Chronon for a precise statement of the point I was trying to make. At the time I was trying to (possibly over-)simplify in order to disambiguate a semantic misunderstanding. I apologise for any erroneous inferences that could be drawn from this :D

user_not_expert

June 19th, 2009, 07:15 PM

how many licks **does** it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop ?

How long **is** your tongue?:lolflag:

user_not_expert

June 19th, 2009, 07:53 PM

What if we're not really moving forward in time? Maybe instead, there are an infinity of parallel worlds that are a frozen snapshot of what we think of as a point in time. Each successive parallel world is just a split second advancement from the previous one, and instead of moving forward in time, we're constantly jumping from one parallel world to the next so consistently that it just seems that we are moving forward in time, and there's really no time at all.

Don't know if the debate on 'steady flow' against 'discrete packets' of time has ever been resolved, but surely our experience would define either as "moving forward in time", whichever was the case.

But then, the sun still rises and sets, the moon still waxes and wanes and trains still arrive at their destinations, whatever may be the 'reality' .-)

forrestcupp

June 19th, 2009, 09:45 PM

But then, the sun still rises and sets, the moon still waxes and wanes and trains still arrive at their destinations, whatever may be the 'reality' .-)

But maybe the sun doesn't rise and set, and maybe the moon doesn't wax and wane. Maybe they're always in the same spot, but they're in a slightly different spot in each parallel world. Since we're constantly passing through parallel worlds, it just appears that they are moving, when they really are not. Even our bodies appear to be moving when they really are not. Our consciousness is the only thing that is really present and active. :)

user_not_expert

June 19th, 2009, 10:36 PM

But maybe the sun doesn't rise and set, and maybe the moon doesn't wax and wane. Maybe they're always in the same spot, but they're in a slightly different spot in each parallel world. Since we're constantly passing through parallel worlds, it just appears that they are moving, when they really are not. Even our bodies appear to be moving when they really are not. Our consciousness is the only thing that is really present and active. :)

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I was agreeing with the possibility of your proposition, (despite my deep reservations about the Cartesian mindset), but was trying to say that we still describe the sun as rising, etc., over 400yrs (if time flows :p) after discovering that we spin and the sun does not rise or set.

The train referred to a (probably apocryphal) conversation between Einstein and a bemused elderly cleric sharing the same carriage, when Einstein was (or by your proposition, is) reputed to have asked "Do you know at what time our destination is due to arrive at this train?"

Point is that whatever explanations one can come up with for how things might really be working, unless (and sometimes even if) they prove useful, the mindset of everyday experience (or conciousness) just flows right through them.

etnlIcarus

June 20th, 2009, 06:35 AM

user_not_expert

June 20th, 2009, 01:06 PM

I'm still trying to figure out what forrestcupp refers to by, "we're". What exactly is passing between static parallel universes? Is this ...whatever it is, in of itself, capable of state changes?

If the answer to that last question is yes, the proposition becomes rather redundant.

Forrestcupp's idea also seems to be one more of a conscious change in perception, rather than proposing any fundamental shift in the mechanics of how time works (re user_not_expert's 'sun still rises' comments).

Over the last three quarters of a century there has been a lot of speculation mostly inspired by the outer reaches of quantum mathematics as to the 'Ultimate Nature of Reality'. Most of the proposed models seem to be untestable, and even if they were the case, one would end up responding "so, what does that actually change?" In the silly season the popular press tends to run the usual half-truth stories on any new ones which tends to fuel the lay view that science is "just another belief system".

Ultimately, imho, these are just intellectual games as in my post about the Buddha's distinction between speculation and the 'here and now', and to be fair, if anyone bothers to dig the relevant theorists out, they are patiently told (yet again), that just because something works at a sub-atomic level, does not mean that we can extrapolate it to a world view.

The whole raft of multiple universes, arrows of time, segmented reality, determinism, anthropomorphic principles etc., has however proven (or prooved ;)) fruitful for fiction, especially imo in the works of the late Douglas Adams and the Disc World series of Terry Pratchett (who at least uses them fairly consistently).

My objection to the Cartesian mindset, is that although Descartes' reduction to "cogito ergo sum" is unassailable from a theoretical pov, its consequences are actually unworkable and I personally feel that the cultural adoption of reductionist models has been one of the most disastrous paradigm shifts in history. .-)

etnlIcarus

June 20th, 2009, 01:30 PM

That's all well and good (well, a bit concise-to-the-point-of-obscurity) but how was that a response to my post? :p

user_not_expert

June 20th, 2009, 01:55 PM

That's all well and good (well, a bit concise-to-the-point-of-obscurity) but how was that a response to my post? :p

Oops, Sorry about the obscurity, just supporting your point on redundancy, in that all such propositions use different words to explain the same the same experience without changing anything. :neutral:

etnlIcarus

June 20th, 2009, 03:27 PM

Oh okay. Carry on then!

user_not_expert

June 20th, 2009, 05:09 PM

Oh okay. Carry on then!

O.k.

Here's a couple of big ones (or just my ignorance needing an explanation :sad:)

1. If super-symmetry states that time is symmetrical in all directions and we only perceive a time arrow moving into a future that has already happened (determinism), do we have a conflict (or even another of those paradox thiggies) with the uncertainty principle which seems to imply the opposite (free will).(And where does relativity fit as it seems to suggest that multiple unsynchronised time lines run in parallel depending on speed or mass)?

2. If time travel did prove possible (as some physicists have speculated), despite the intimate connection between space and time, we live on a planet that spins and orbits a sun which sits in a spiral arm of a galaxy which also spins in a possibly expanding (or shrinking) space with no absolute co-ordinates. This means that despite our sense of being static, we are all travelling through the space time continuum at frightening speeds on a distinctly wobbly trajectory. Despite fiction's determined effort to ignore these factors, would the real problem of time travel not be 'could the hero kill his grandfather before is father was conceived', but where, not when would he arrive as at any point in the past we will not have arrived in space where we now are.

I know these are pure speculation but they puzzle me ;)

etnlIcarus

June 20th, 2009, 05:19 PM

With the first one, I think it's a common misconception that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (and/or it's derivatives) is somehow supportive of the concept of, "free will". Free will requires a god-like level of agency over the universe; not, as a bumper sticker once put it, that, "s**t happens". Neither a set-in-stone universe, nor a completely random one (which is insane and not what we're discussing but it illustrates my point), furthers in any way the concept of free will.

And on that note, I'm going to bed. Ciao.

user_not_expert

June 20th, 2009, 05:23 PM

And now for the really big one!

(drum roll)

How do some people manage to fit a whole day into just 24 hours?

(ta-da)

Asked as a fully paid up member (or I would be if anyone had time to organise it) of the campaign for 'just one more: second in every minute, minute in every hour, hour in every day, day in every week, week in every month and month in every year' :cool:

user_not_expert

June 20th, 2009, 05:46 PM

And on that note, I'm going to bed. Ciao.

Bon nuit .-)

The rest of this post last night was dumb because I'd failed to check my sources, so I've just edited it out.:oops:

Lateforgym

June 21st, 2009, 12:03 PM

rookcifer

June 21st, 2009, 12:16 PM

One thing to watch out for in science discussions is when people get to technical vs practical common sense. I had a someone tell me once "time slows down when you are in space". He reveled in his faux intelligence backed up by research he had done. How smart he was (he thought)! I later used common sense to figure out that his premise was based on the use of a quarts watch. Problem is quarts vibrates and earths gravitational effect affects the vibrations, slowing them as you get further away. Thus time didnt slow, the quarts vibration did. Of course when I brought this inconvenient fact to him, he wouldnt engage his misconception, as if he was still right, but just didnt happen to be interested in discussing it at the moment. Beware of people who handle losing arguments in this way, they are only interested in being right for their own ego. They are not interested in ultimate truths.

Actually a clock in space (an atomic clock or even the most theoretically precise clocks possible) will tick faster in space relative to earth. This is a result of both General Relativity and Special Relativity and can easily be demonstrated by GPS satellites (http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html) (they have to be calibrated for these effects). Time on Earth will be slightly slower than time in orbit due to both gravitation (GR) and relative motion (SR).

Lateforgym

June 21st, 2009, 12:16 PM

Oh another thing. Philosophy is great only if your looking for the ultimate truth. Otherwise you will waste time with dolts who want to discuss if everyone actually sees the same color blue.

Also avoid college classes on philosophy. I took a couple and they sucked and were worthless. I hated them. I went into the course thinking we would expand our minds discussing how pot should be legalized or how Supreme Court Rulings are biased while trying to cover up that fact using big words common Americans doesnt use. Instead, the professor was only interested in studying past Philosophers, while we scrambled to write stuff down. All the class turned out to be was a regurgitation of what some idiot said years ago. It was such a waste, the class should have been called Regurgitation: can you remember all this useless crap for a test?.

Lateforgym

June 21st, 2009, 12:36 PM

"Actually a clock in space (an atomic clock or even the most theoretically precise clocks possible) will tick faster in space relative to earth. This is a result of both General Relativity and Special Relativity and can easily be demonstrated by GPS satellites (they have to be calibrated for these effects). Time on Earth will be slightly slower than time in orbit due to gravitation and will be even slower due to relative motion."

I could be wrong but I think time is still time. Its just that the item used to measure it is simply effected by gravity having an effect on its function. Perhaps that too simplistic but "Special Relativity predicts that the on-board atomic clocks on the satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect of their relative motion" Doesnt speak to me. What is "dilation"? what is "relative motion"? Anything can be relative to anything based on arbitrary opinion, so I get lost when people start using terms like "relative"( maybe there is a scientific definition and I confuse it with mine). Im sure there is a practical way to discuss this without scientific terms and theories that I would have to study? Sorry if I go silent for a while, I need to get a couple hours sleep but will check back in.

user_not_expert

June 23rd, 2009, 08:25 PM

Im sure there is a practical way to discuss this without scientific terms and theories that I would have to study?

Sorry Lateforgym but philosophy is an ongoing discussion. Your college classes were trying (amongst other things) to catch you up with the story so far.

In the several thousand years that the discussion has been running in the west alone, its collected lots of

big words common Americans doesnt use.

That's just the way it is. (like the Linux command line)

Philosophy is great only if your looking for the ultimate truth.

um, no. Philosophers mostly gave that one up some time ago. You might get a philosophy discussion going on whether or not there could be such a thing as 'ultimate truth', but if you are actualy looking for any you'd do better talking to a priest (pick your own flavour) than to a philosopher.

I get lost when people start using terms like "relative"( maybe there is a scientific definition and I confuse it with mine).

Yup, there's a scientific definition', its about relative speeds and relative densities amongst other things, and the upshot is that, for real, its time that changes not the things we use to measure it.

And no, its not about

|Quote]Anything can be relative to anything based on arbitrary opinion[/Quote]

If you need to understand it more than that, you'll have to go find a scientist who can explain it to you in ordinary words common Americans do use.

Point is, lots of scientific thinking is head to head with common sense, but when you test it, the scientific thinking usually wins.

The word 'philosophy' means 'liking wisdom', and whether or not individual philosophers have managed to be wise, the study and practice of philosophy has meant borrowing ideas and words from all over - east and west, science, religion, the study of language, maths, politics and everyday experience.

You want to sit down with some mates and talk about

how pot should be legalized or how Supreme Court Rulings are biased

then you are all practising philosopy - depending how the discussion goes, maybe 'ethics', maybe 'political philosophy, maybe 'pragmatism', maybe 'jurisprudence' - these are all aspects of philosophy, but only a small part of a much larger picture.