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Post by abacus9900 on Dec 19, 2013 16:23:35 GMT 1
As you have not given a direct answer to my question as whether the Universe consisting entirely of an oven is possible or not, I give up in frustration. I hope you don't do that. It is very irksome and a little rude, I agree. But otherwise it's an interesting and enjoyable debate, I think, and you have a valuable knack for progressing it. When someone still cannot understand a perfectly full and lucid reply, I have to draw the conclusion that there must be something wrong with the questioner, not the answer.
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Post by abacus9900 on Dec 19, 2013 16:58:14 GMT 1
This is not how I would describe the process hypothesised in this thought experiment. There's a snake's nest of assumptions and unexpressed "philosophical speculations" hidden within that description. I would take the time to analyse them, but I've already pointed out to you the basic drawbacks in drawing so far illegitimate conclusions about the nature of "the universe" from our current understanding of quantum physics. It is a fascinating subject, and I certainly expected to be discussing those matters when I opened this thread - but now it's taken on this unexpected direction, for 14 pages, I think it would be appropriate to do so elsewhere. No, it doesn't. At present, the most it says is that our current understanding of what we call quantum physics is inadequate to explain certain observations of the behaviour of elementary particles. Precisely, so we have to conclude our intuitive and "commonsense" models of what we think of as reality have to be extended in order to accommodate the new data.You appear to me to be like many other deniers of your ilk where you refuse to admit that the orthodox science is fundamentally flawed but that instead, we only need to tweak it a bit in order to accommodate experimental results which do not "fit." Of course we never observe probability a wave because a probability wave is just a mathematical abstraction created to represent an intellectual model which resolves the experimental results of QM. What we observe is the collapsed state of these potentials originating in the many histories of the states of probability waves. What we do, in effect, is to "pick out" a particular history of a particle that happens to coincide with the way we are measuring it. On the macro scale, when we look or touch or smell something we are still measuring or observing in our particular way and this will cause the probability waves to collapse according to our physical interaction with them. However, if let us say, some other very different organism were to interact with them, another set of outcomes would result because their physiology could measure them very differently. It's only confusing if you assume there exist two separate realities that do not communicate with one another. This is simply untenable.
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Post by fascinating on Dec 19, 2013 21:39:14 GMT 1
As you have not given a direct answer to my question as whether the Universe consisting entirely of an oven is possible or not, I give up in frustration. I hope you don't do that. It is very irksome and a little rude, I agree. But otherwise it's an interesting and enjoyable debate, I think, and you have a valuable knack for progressing it. Thank you for your comments, but after 14 pages has this discussion really progressed very much at all? I was hoping to find something that I could agree with abacus on (even if only to agree on the meaning of what he is saying) and move forward from there.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 23, 2013 19:23:36 GMT 1
I don't know how to "look beyond the science." I think I know how to evaluate claims about observations, that's all. Your claim that this is all "highly subjective" begs the question. Are we able by mathematical formulations of our observations to construct a means be which we are able to interact with reality in an objective manner? I say yes - this is what the scientific revolution, and by close extension the Enlightenment, is all about. You say, I gather, that we can't. You can provide no evidence for this belief - no "proof", understood empirically - and otherwise I don't see how such a claim advances our understanding of the world in the least. What's the point of such a theory, therefore?
No. New York is in New York. Full stop. Absolutely. The distance betwen my thumb and forefinger is less than the distance between Land's End and John o'Groats. Full stop - absolutely.
In any possible sense that "sense" has any meaning. Provide possible counter-examples, please, before you issue such sweepingly dogmatic diktaks.
Nothing of the sort has been shown. Anyone can invent axioms - these are not "mathematics".
It's your term that's contentious. Except by lunatics.
No need to make such a leap. You certainly haven't yet provided any such reason.
By "Newtonian" I gather you mean "logical"? Fine by me. If you can give me a differentiation between what you claim the universe to be and what someone who claims "I am Napoleon" says it is, I'll take your half-baked attempts to recycle Idealism seriously. Until then, you're merely saying: we don't understand what the universe is.
They're both incorrect, but you've zeroed in on the essential point, well done. Now work it out!
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 23, 2013 19:25:54 GMT 1
I hope you don't do that. It is very irksome and a little rude, I agree. But otherwise it's an interesting and enjoyable debate, I think, and you have a valuable knack for progressing it. When someone still cannot understand a perfectly full and lucid reply, I have to draw the conclusion that there must be something wrong with the questioner, not the answer. You're evasive, sir. You cannot answer simple points put to you. The reason is obvious - your whole argument is a mess.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 23, 2013 20:06:09 GMT 1
I do not think mathematical equations invented to describe elementary particles are what we think of as reality. If there are fundamental contradictions between the two, the first place I look as suspect are the mathematical equations.
"Deniers" of my ilk?! What utter bollocks. Tallk sense, man; offer some cogent reasons for believing in your half-baked fantastical conclusions, offer the slightest smidgeon of observtaional evidence, the smallest degree of logical reasoning by which you reach your unhinged phnatasmagorical extrapolations, and then we'll tralk about "fundamental flaws". And, incidentally - you're the one spouting the "orthodox science" here! That alone tells you just how deep the crisis modern physics is in.
Quite. Don;t foget it, and start talking about how it shows us reality, now, will you?
Like you've just done. Bollocks. We don't observe "collapsed state of these potentials." That's all a theoretical interpretation.
Bollocks. Prove it! By which I mean - give one smallest smidgeon of evidence to support such a claim.
Bollocks. Prove it. It's nonsense, utter nonsense.
Neptune existed before we detected it. The stalctites existed before the cave was explored. Insensate matter coalesced before life developed. Life developed bfore consiousness did. Provide one smallest smidgeon of evidence that negates these hypotheses.
Bollocks. Provide one smallest smidgeon of evidence to lead us to suppose in our wildest imaginings this might be true.
The mathematical formulis, of QM gives no bridge. That's what's untenable. It's wrong - it's incomplete. Enough said. No need to alter our views about how reality behaves. When it is complete, when it can say - this is how QM relates to macroscopic objects - then might be the time to consider what it says about "reality".
No, it's just gobbledygook, full stop. It doesn't describe any world, least of all our own. It's just unleashed unconstrained hypothetical guesswork, dressed up as "science". That's why you can get half a dozen different fantastical theories, all extrapolating the same set of data, all saying completely different things.
It has no merits whatsoever. Name a single one.
QM does not. You do not cite it. You cite some half-baked idiot's interpretation of it. It's called woo-woo science.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 27, 2013 6:21:43 GMT 1
So, let's recap on what your theory is, abacus, and then you might be able to more clearly explain exactly what its merits are to us stubborn deniers who still insist against all the evidence (that strangely only you are privy to, and for some reason won't share with anyone else) that science and ratonality are able to tell us something objective about the world.
Your theory says we can't know anything about the universe except how it is filtered through our sense apparatus. A being with different sense apparatus might be living in a completely different universe to us, where any truth we think we might have found out about it could for it be utterly false, and facts created by its senses are pari passu false for us.
And yet nevertheless you insist, against this solipsist prison created by your own logic, that there is all the same something existent "out there" - this much you claim is "obvious" and "certain", otherwise we would have nothing for our apparatus to sense - but we can know nothing about it beyond our own subjective experience. You go further, in a logical leap that you actually have no warrant for, given the premises to your argument, and claim indeed that it is our subjective exprerience that actually creates this "out there" that we sense - or, at least, if not ours, some other sensate being, like an amoeba perhaps (though this form of "creation" is not as "fully developed" as the one we perform.)
When pressed, it turns out that for some reason you take the findings and a particular strand of theoretical interpretations of quantum mechanics as being somehow exempt from your analysis. These abstruse mathematical equations, and a certain variety of interpretation of them, you take to be unquestionable fact - something we know about the universe, even though you don't deny the fact that no one has a clue how to scale up these findings or apply the mathematical equations describing them to macroscopic objects.
But because of these equations, and a particular interpretation of what they mean, you claim that - before your hypothetical amoeba at least - all that existed in the universe was...a "probability wave". An abstract mathematical function, applying to the entire universe. This function does not actually describe any thing or arrangement of things - particles, energy, spacetime, a ground to its metric - because none of this exists yet, until something comes along able to sense it. Your solution to the enigma of how anything could evolve able to so sense if nothing exists - no particles, no space, no energy - is that somehow in this instance it's able to "go back in time" and thereby by its observations of a non-existent past bring the conditions necessary for its existence - and thus its ability to observe - into being. Until then, all that there "is" is an equation, or a function of it, purportedly describing the probabilities - an infinity of them - that anything at all might happen. Our little amoeba, by this hypothetical bootstrap observing ability, cleverly selects just that one actual eventuality from the infinity of other possibilities that happens to lead to its own actual existence.
Is that a fair summary of your theory?
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Post by abacus9900 on Dec 27, 2013 16:29:31 GMT 1
I think that the best way of trying to persuade you that "objectivity" is just a relative idea is to ask you to look at what we loosely term as "reality" as fundamentally nothing other than "information." What do I mean by this? I mean the ability of anything to register or not to register in the sense of existing or not. The modern parlance for this idea is encapsulated in the "bit." A bit can be in one of two states: 1 or 0, yes or no, positive or negative, so a bit represents the fundamental unit of reality or, more to the point, of information. So whatever theories we have thought of in order to describe the universe we experience can all be described in terms of bits, not in terms of physical reality but in abstract terms of bits. What this means is that our current ideas about time and space are only as good as the information we have managed, thus far, to gather about them which implies we have incomplete knowledge about such ideas which leads us to the further implication that we are wrong. So, for example, to take your example of the distance between your forefinger and thumb absolutely being less than the distance between Land's End and John 'o Groats is only as valid as the information we currently posses about these. How do we know that one day we might find that our conventional ideas about time and space are naive and totally misguided because at that time we have gathered much more information about physics than we currently do? You can think of the march of civilisation and knowledge as the process of "information" networking (to use a fashionable term) with itself, thereby producing a richer and richer tapestry of "knowledge" over time as illustrated by successive theories about the physical world from the ancient Greeks right up till the present day. Newton, for example, was not wrong when he described how bodies interacted with one another but he applied his ideas within the informational context of his day and the same principle must, therefore, apply to us now. No doubt Einstein will be found wanting in his theories in time and in fact, they are now in terms of not being able to unite the quantum world with the classical one.
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Post by fascinating on Dec 28, 2013 9:20:22 GMT 1
How about giving a straight answer to mrsonde's question in reply 216, abacus?
There is nothing original in your latest reply. Yes, it could be that the distance between my finger and thumb is larger than the length of the whole of Britain, but such an idea must call into question just about all knowledge, because in the world as I understand it, there are millions of people, with their fingers and thumbs living within Britain's length. Yes we can speculate that all this is an illusion, but there is nothing new about such speculation. You are not giving reasons why we should think that such speculations might be true, you are failing to present an alternative theory that explains everything in a system that is coherent, still less any scientific investigations that might test such a theory.
Here is a question that you might be able to answer: do you believe that anything is absolutely true? Or are there no things of which we can be absolutely sure of?
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Post by abacus9900 on Dec 28, 2013 11:50:08 GMT 1
How about giving a straight answer to mrsonde's question in reply 216, abacus? There is nothing original in your latest reply. Yes, it could be that the distance between my finger and thumb is larger than the length of the whole of Britain, but such an idea must call into question just about all knowledge, because in the world as I understand it, there are millions of people, with their fingers and thumbs living within Britain's length. Yes we can speculate that all this is an illusion, but there is nothing new about such speculation. You are not giving reasons why we should think that such speculations might be true, you are failing to present an alternative theory that explains everything in a system that is coherent, still less any scientific investigations that might test such a theory. Here is a question that you might be able to answer: do you believe that anything is absolutely true? Or are there no things of which we can be absolutely sure of? Nothing can be absolutely true because the nature of information itself is not absolute due to its evolving and often random character. One can think of information as an evolving organism a bit like what happens in the celebrated computer game "Life", where, after a specific set of initial conditions are set up with a few rules, the consequences can never be predicted. Or, take the game of chess, where total predictability of the outcome is impossible due to the countless number of future variations of moves. This is why science itself is made possible, viz. the ability to test current theories and allow the possibility of falsification to be exercised. BTW, we are not really discussing science here, rather, we are talking about the philosophy of science so the possibility of scientific testing is not the issue. Also, there is nothing original in my reply because there is no need to introduce anything else that it pertinent. One does not change one's argument when there is no need to simply in the interests of wishing to be seen as "original."
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 29, 2013 4:43:41 GMT 1
I think that the best way of trying to persuade you that "objectivity" is just a relative idea is to ask you to look at what we loosely term as "reality" as fundamentally nothing other than "information." Relative to what? Yeah. 'Bout time you asked and answered that one. Well - that's not what is ordinarily meant by "information" as it is scientifically understood. Actually - the sentence is not what anyone ordinarily means by anything, come to think of it. No, it's not. That's right. How do you get from this to your attempted definition above - that something needs to register it as such? Yes - but some bits can and do relate to reality. No, it doesn't. What you say may be true, but it isn't what you've just paraphrased about "bits". Your "further implication" is an inference, not an implication, and it happens to be false. Given all you've said, it's entirely possible that some of our knowledge - incomplete or not - can be true. More than possible, I would say. I look around me, at the television in the corner, at the keyboard in front of me, at the words appearing before me, at the light provided by my electrically powered illumination, and I can say with well grounded confidence that we can indeed find out things about the way the universe works. 'Fraid not. For that to be true, you would have to argue that at some point in the future the nature of space would have to be completely different. But the nature of space can't be entirely different, now, or as we have known it. You would have to be able to say: well, it's different now in this or that way. But then I would say: okay, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the other way when this statement was true. In fact, it was true then, when space was what it was then. So - absolutely true. whatever you may imagine might happen to space and time in the future. It doesn't matter. It won't change the validity of our measurements. That's what science is all about. Not theory change - measurements. 800 miles is longer than a few inches, in reality, absolutely, whatever happens in the future - either to change our ideas about space and time, or to change space and time themselves. You can. But why? What's the advantage? You're disproportionately obsessed with theory-formation and theory-change, that's all. That's why you've been led to these bizarre conclusions. This isn't what the "advance of civilisation and knowledge and science" is fundamentally about. Facts, sir, facts.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 29, 2013 5:06:52 GMT 1
Nothing can be absolutely true because the nature of information itself is not absolute due to its evolving and often random character. One can think of information as an evolving organism a bit like what happens in the celebrated computer game "Life", where, after a specific set of initial conditions are set up with a few rules, the consequences can never be predicted. One can; but why would one want to, when it leads to such absurd conclusions? You've correctly asserted that the basic unit of information is a bit, the difference between 1 and 0. How does this "evolve"? How is it not absolutely true? It is what it is, always, eternally. As I've pointed out to you, that's the basis of mathematics - it's all you need. Ohhhh dear. Popper again. Do you not actually read the posts that respond to yours? Abacus, my dear chap, you would do so much better if you answered the responses to you, rather than waffle off like this. Answer the posts! I hazard a guess that then you'd find you really don't know what the hell you're talking about. Really. I mean that. (Can you appreciate that because you don't answer counterpoints put to you, the suspicion is formed in others' minds that you don't do so because you don't know what you're talking about? That you're like some politician, blustering his way through to the preordained script he's been given?) I understand you're trying to find a route by which you can rationally confirm or support your belief in God, life after death, and all that. But - look, that sort of emotional need is none of anyone else's business. And, between you and me, I believe the same sort of thing - I just object to the cackhanded way you're subverting everything that's important about science, and knowledge, and civilisation, to get there. If we could be satisfied with that sort of idiocy we could all be happy back in the middle ages, accepting what the Pope said the universe was like. Now, get a grip. Present a rational argument for your ideas. That crucially involves responding to criticism. Answer the posts.
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Post by fascinating on Dec 29, 2013 8:57:49 GMT 1
Abacus said Thank you for answering my question directly; I can now give a response. Think about what you have written here, if NOTHING is absolutely true then it may be that there is no Land's End or John O Groats, no finger and thumb, no Abacus and no Universe at all. But you then go on to insist that information or reality evolves somehow, and from what you have said before it actualises the possible realities by the mechanism of experiencing by sentient beings. Which brings us back to the problem of how there can be sentient beings in the Universe before it has evolved enough to produce those sentient beings.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. You have stated that nothing can be absolutely true. If you don't mind I would like you to answer a couple more questions. 1. If nothing is absolutely true, then is it possible that nothing at all exists (including ourselves)? 2. On your theory about things being actualised by observation, is it not absolutely true that the things actualised really do now exist, or is their existence in doubt?
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Post by abacus9900 on Dec 29, 2013 13:03:06 GMT 1
Abacus said Thank you for answering my question directly; I can now give a response. Think about what you have written here, if NOTHING is absolutely true then it may be that there is no Land's End or John O Groats, no finger and thumb, no Abacus and no Universe at all. But you then go on to insist that information or reality evolves somehow, and from what you have said before it actualises the possible realities by the mechanism of experiencing by sentient beings. Which brings us back to the problem of how there can be sentient beings in the Universe before it has evolved enough to produce those sentient beings. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. You have stated that nothing can be absolutely true. If you don't mind I would like you to answer a couple more questions. 1. If nothing is absolutely true, then is it possible that nothing at all exists (including ourselves)? 2. On your theory about things being actualised by observation, is it not absolutely true that the things actualised really do now exist, or is their existence in doubt? Once again, misunderstandings abound! Nobody is saying that reality does not exist (at least in my view) but not in any absolute sense. By this, I mean that reality is not a single entity because it changes its character over time, which is why we Homo-Sapiens do not define reality as would (say) a Velociraptor in the age of the dinosaurs. The fact that there were no sentient beings at one point in the past demonstrates that reality changes radically, given enough time. Also, the fact that the universe had the potential to develop sentient beings means that there has always existed the possibility of the development of reality. Surely this is straightforward enough, isn't it? Who can say what reality will be like in thousands of years time, assuming we survive as a species? I'm sure that if we could somehow transport a caveman/cavewoman from the distant past to the present time he/she would consider much of what they saw as magic, yet to us it's just "reality."
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Post by fascinating on Dec 29, 2013 19:19:20 GMT 1
I politely ask you to answer my actual questions specifically, only then can we make progress, I feel. My questions are 1. If nothing is absolutely true, then is it possible that nothing at all exists (including ourselves)? 2. On your theory about things being actualised by observation, is it not absolutely true that the things actualised really do now exist, or is their existence in doubt?
You have said "Nobody is saying that reality does not exist (at least in my view) but not in any absolute sense." - which is a rather strange sentence, which I assume means "Reality does exist (at least in my view) but not in any absolute sense." Then you attempt clarification by saying "By this, I mean that reality is not a single entity because it changes its character over time," I am having difficulty in grasping what you mean here, as obviously a thing MUST exist ABSOLUTELY to change in character over time. The nature of the Earth has changed over time, but there is no doubt about the absolute reality of the Earth. An individual human being changes in character over time, but that individual really does exist, absolutely, so why are you trying to say he can't exist in an absolute sense just because of change? Again, the whole Universe has greatly changed in character over time, but the important fact here is that the Universe does continue to exist, absolutely. Just because we don't know what the Universe will be like in thousands of years time doesn't invalidate the fact; I think we can assume that nothing is about to come along and destroy the Universe in the next few thousand years (a very short space of time in terms of the whole Universe), therefore the Universe will then ABSOLUTELY EXIST IN REALITY, as it does now, no matter what development it undergoes.
I think I have a little more understanding of what you mean. You take the word "absolutely" to mean "fixedly", I think, so that if things change, they (to you) become less absolute. But "absolutely" simply means "definitively" or maybe "literally" or "undeniably". I would contend that I exist and that is an absolute truth; the fact that I change all the time doesn't invalidate that, there has to be that "me" undeniably existing to change!
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