Yay!! I have carried around a copy of Sabine Hossenfelder's essay since she entered it into the contest. It is excellent, thought provoking and, above all, important to solving the real world problems desperately needing real solutions. I'm so glad that she was one of the winners. Congrats to all!
Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 26, 2014 @ 16:32 GMT
Tom,
have you already got one of those new-fangled plug-in brain extensions telling you how to think? ("fifth step is not only feasible, it is already practiced every day by those who value rational, objective knowledge")
The idea of a "rational, objective" individual is a myth!!
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Peter Jackson replied on Aug. 26, 2014 @ 16:44 GMT
Lorraine,
I suggest your incisiveness well matches your insight. Of course it's only everyone ELSE who is irrational and subjective, but at least that makes you only one millionth of 1% wrong to almost everybody!
I table a proposal that we consider the possibility bringing back the 'scientific method' when our intellectual evolution permits, but perhaps to also try actually
applying it this time. (I always was an optimist!)
Best wishes
Peter
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 26, 2014 @ 17:22 GMT
Lorraine, do you mean a biofeedback machine? No, I don't have one of those; I do, however, subscribe to the Lumosity program, and I find it extremely helpful to my focus.
If a rational, objective individual is impossible, so is science as a rationalist enterprise.
What do you think science is? What do you think is the point of doing science?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 27, 2014 @ 11:56 GMT
Tom,
by "brain extensions", Sabine Hossenfelder certainly means "brain implants". I thought it was funny: you seemed to imply that you already had a brain implant. Not that I think brain implants are feasible.
The essay says information will be "directly fed back into our brain and we can truly feel the consequences of certain decisions". I think that's Orwellian: governments and others would certainly misuse any such ability to get into the brain and influence outcomes. As Georgina said, ideas can have unintended consequences.
Re "objective": I think science seems to work despite that fact that scientists are subjective, seemingly because people can agree on symbolic representations of reality. Re "rational ": I think we tend to think of ourselves as rational; as Peter says, it's: "everyone ELSE who is irrational and subjective".
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 27, 2014 @ 14:44 GMT
Lorraine,
Are heart pacemakers Orwellian? They operate on the same principle as any other feedback mechanism: dampen the stray electrical impulses that enable the desired effect (regular, healthy heartbeat). One is not forced by the state to have such an implant, and it wouldn't make sense to try. It also doesn't make sense to refuse one, if the alternative is a heart attack.
What Sabine addresses is a matter of personal choice -- more than most, research scientists and technicians are bombarded with stray information that often overwhelms productive, creative activity. One finds means to block it out, just as a pacemaker blocks unwanted signals.
It really doesn't matter if the feedback comes from a surgically implanted device, or from more external means. Anecdotally -- I already mentioned my daily use of the commercially available Lumosity program, which is a set of games testing speed, memory, attention, flexibility and problem solving. In the year or so of using the program, my highest percentile score (compared to other users) is in problem solving (99.6) and lowest in attention (85.7). This is no surprise to me, because I am dyslexic; what is encouraging is that while my problem solving score started high and has remained about the same all this time, the attention score has improved by 30 or 40 points.
That one has a right to be irrational, I don't dispute. Certainly, these forums reinforce that right to an often exaggerated degree. So long as the means to achieve and further the presence of rational individuals and rational public policy are available, using them cannot but be a rational choice.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 27, 2014 @ 14:46 GMT
By the way, Lorraine, would you attempt to answer my question:
What do you think is the point of doing science?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 27, 2014 @ 15:42 GMT
Tom,
Brain implants of the step 5 type are not feasible. But supposing that they were feasible: they are different to heart pacemakers. Heart pacemakers are not about implanting complex information/ideas that are designed to cause a person to act on them on some way.
Re rationality:
There is no objectively true measure of rationality. What is "rational public policy"? According to whose view is it rational?
Re What do you think is the point of doing science?:
Is there an objectively-true point of doing science? The answer to your question is inherently subjective.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 27, 2014 @ 16:17 GMT
"Brain implants of the step 5 type are not feasible."
Why not?
"But supposing that they were feasible: they are different to heart pacemakers."
How?
"Heart pacemakers are not about implanting complex information/ideas that are designed to cause a person to act on them on some way."
They aren't? What do you think brain signals are made of?
"Re rationality:
There is no objectively true measure of rationality."
There certainly is. It's the measured correspondence between abstract theory and physical result.
"What is 'rational public policy'? According to whose view is it rational?"
Locke, Adam Smith, Spinoza, Jefferson, Madison, among many others. Those thinkers to whom rational individuals are the basis of a rational self organized society.
"Re What do you think is the point of doing science?:
Is there an objectively-true point of doing science? The answer to your question is inherently subjective."
Since science is a rationalist enterprise, and I gave you a precise definition of rational, your argument is soundly counter-exampled. If you think science is other than a rationalist enterprise, you have another question to answer:
What is science?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 28, 2014 @ 22:57 GMT
Tom,
Re "Brain implants of the step 5 type are not feasible." :
I am assuming that, like veins, the brain has a general organization of functions; but, like veins, there is no definite pattern of individual neurons (or veins). I.e. they are uniquely, individually grown and interconnected. I.e. brain implants would have to be individually tailored.
What is also not feasible is the idea that people should or would accept brain implants to fix social problems. I'm amazed at both your, and the essay's, naivety about human nature.
Re "Locke, Adam Smith, Spinoza, Jefferson, Madison, among many others. Those thinkers to whom rational individuals are the basis of a rational self organized society." :
Well where is this amazing rational self organized society? How are you going to get everyone to agree on YOUR subjective view of what is rational for society? Answer: seemingly you'll have to bring in the jackboots and the Orwellian brain implants.
Re Science: the science that you fervently believe in is all about a "God's eye" view of the universe. You believe in a thing that doesn't exist.
Lorraine
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Georgina Woodward replied on Aug. 29, 2014 @ 02:24 GMT
Military plans to test brain implants to fight mental disorders. Not the right way to go in my opinion. The solutions are to develop healthy nurturing lifestyles with peer support and social connectivity and addressing specific underlying brain injury or disease- not putting an implant in the brain. Is this research a slippery slope? I think it might be. What about implants for soldiers to combat fearfulness? What about implants for insomnia? Implants for lack of concentration? Implants for criminals to assist their impulse control? Implants to combat thinking differently perhaps given to political prisoners? Implants to prevent procrastination or lack of punctuality? With this kind of thinking is there anybody who doesn't need a brain implant for one condition or another? If nothing else, step 5. an implant to assist decision making. Will everyone have an implant tailored to their own mental shortcomings, divergence from the expected norm, or employer requirements? Panacea?
TED talk.The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans;Daniel Amen
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 29, 2014 @ 02:26 GMT
Lorraine, you couldn't be more wrong about my view.
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Georgina Woodward replied on Aug. 29, 2014 @ 06:37 GMT
The future of brain implants The Wall Street Journal This is a good article talking about some positive uses of brain implants and future possibilities. I think if I was severely disabled by Parkinsons disease or tetraplegic I might opt for a brain implant device. I think it is liberating and a great enhancement to quality of life in those circumstances where there is no cure and medication is only partially effective or has horrible side effects.It has to be a personal choice though, not a social compulsion.
I've just watched a horrific TV program "Botched bodies"about people disfigured by cosmetic plastic surgery gone wrong. Brain implant surgery also carries risks and so I think it shouldn't be undertaken lightly as a fashion trend. People have accepted body implants for identification at some high security places of work,for access to a night club and ease of paying for drinks and for Alzheimers affected people at risk of wandering. My dogs are chipped as it is compulsory here.So maybe it's not such a big step for people to voluntarily choose to have a chip in their brain for personal enhancement such as easier decision making.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 29, 2014 @ 13:29 GMT
"So maybe it's not such a big step for people to voluntarily choose to have a chip in their brain for personal enhancement such as easier decision making."
Bingo. It's simply another method of feedback.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 29, 2014 @ 16:25 GMT
Georgina,
The TED talk was interesting: Daniel Amen made a good case for the use of brain scans to ensure people get appropriate treatment.
Re brain implants: That experimental military program is really only about using stimulation (i.e. nothing very complex) to attempt to heal malfunctioning brain circuits.
But the Wall Street Journal article would have us believe that off-the-shelf brain implants are coming. But there have always been a lot of over-confident predictions about the future. I can remember reading an online English newspaper article about 15 years ago in which a journalist over-confidently asserted that if humans wanted to fly, we would fly (i.e. that we now had the power to genetically engineer ourselves to have wings) - it all seems rather silly now.
I think that apart from the general organization of brain areas, that neurons and brain interconnections are unique, dynamic and complex: neurons are continually being accessed and "re-written" and new connections made. I doubt that a fixed implant would even be appropriate in a unique, dynamic and wobbly environment, when it comes to the issue of specific thoughts and ideas and interconnections to all other thoughts and ideas.
Lorraine
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Georgina Woodward replied on Aug. 29, 2014 @ 21:54 GMT
Hi Lorraine,
yes the Daniel Amen talk is really good. Most amazing is the ability of the brains to heal itself with the appropriate intervention.
You may be right about the complexity of the brain making use of complex chips unfeasible. Miniaturization doesn't seem to be a problem
Brain-inspired chip fits 1m 'neurons'on postage stamp but the working interface between the chip and the brain may be more difficult to achieve.
Mouse memories'flipped'from fearful to cheerful Admittedly these mice were genetically engineered to enable the technique to work. I can see the temptation to give soldiers a switch so they can turn off feeling bad.
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Georgina Woodward replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 00:31 GMT
Tom,
Its not just another form of feedback. The information is passively received not actively sought. There may not be the ability to consider the source of the information, its reliability, because it is experienced as a feeling of knowledge of what's right. Where will it come from? I will know that if I do x there will be consequences y and z and therefore it is right for me. What about consequences v, p and f? There might be exclusion of contradictory information, only that which reinforces the stated desired aim being fedback. Lets say you say that you support non nuclear energy production that does not produce green house gasses. You could be given hydro electric dam generation as the technology that best fits your preferences and reports of positive outcomes of such projects. You would not necessarily also receive all of the information that makes the choice un-desirable such as reduced fertility of farm land down stream, reduced abundance of fisheries downstream. If you are given all of the information positive and negative then you are back to square one of having to make a choice rather than having it made for you by accepting selective information and abdicating responsibility to the chip. Isn't it swapping human bias due to lack of complete information and time for considered decision making for technological bias that only tells you what you have said you want to know and lets you think you have made good informed choices.
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Gyenge Valeria replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 11:20 GMT
Hi dear Georgina, Lorraine, Tom ..everyone!
Some interesting links
Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans: A Pilot Studyhttp://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/brain2brain/index.h
tml
Harvard creates brain-to-brain interface, allows humans to control other animals with thoughts alone | ExtremeTechhttp://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162678-harvard
-creates-brain-to-brain-interface-allows-humans-to-control-o
ther-animals-with-thoughts-alone
(and how far in past/future time to control other humans' thoughts..or by a sophisticate AI)
brain to brani interface - Google Searchhttps://www.google.hu/search?q=brain+to+brani+interfac
e&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&clie
nt=firefox-a&gfe_rd=cr&ei=Q64BVN7yKYeh8wfotYCIBA
(just copy the link into the browser I don't struggle with inserting the links here :)
And I suggest to watch the EUREKA TV Series...the fifth season is especially interesting...
Cheers,
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 13:52 GMT
"Its not just another form of feedback. The information is passively received not actively sought."
Are you not aware of all the environmental feedback you are subjected to every day that is not actively sought?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 14:01 GMT
Georgina,
I think what you said to Tom was well put. "If you are given all of the information positive and negative then you are back to square one of having to make a choice rather than having it made for you". Important decisions can't be outsourced; circumstances change and can't necessarily be foreseen, so decisions can't necessarily be planned in advance. So even if a "step 5" brain implant were feasible, it seemingly could not be flexible enough to cope with real life.
Valeria,
Thanks for the links, though I abhor experimentation on animals.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 14:16 GMT
"If you are given all of the information positive and negative then you are back to square one of having to make a choice rather than having it made for you".
When was the last time either of you made a choice not to breathe?
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 14:32 GMT
The trouble with anti-rationalist philosophies ("reality is subjective") is that they cannot lead to objective science.
This being so, one accepts a dualism between nature and event -- such that events are characterized as being in nature, but not of nature. This gives the appearance of free will without having to acknowledge any role that nature plays in decision making.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 15:14 GMT
Tom,
not so. But I have to go now, so will respond later.
Lorraine
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Gyenge Valeria replied on Aug. 30, 2014 @ 20:45 GMT
Hi Tom, Lorraine and everyone!
I deem, that is not the question whether 'Brain implants of the step 5 type' are feasible or not...
The crucial questions are:
- Who are experimenting with us?
- Whether do they want to control and drive us as an intelligent animals?
- If we are experimenting with very ourselves where are the reasonable limits remaining...
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Hi Tom, Lorraine and everyone!
I deem, that is not the question whether 'Brain implants of the step 5 type' are feasible or not...
The crucial questions are:
- Who are experimenting with us?
- Whether do they want to control and drive us as an intelligent animals?
- If we are experimenting with very ourselves where are the reasonable limits remaining natural human?
- What does actually mean to be human at all?
- What is worth to steer and how, and why? (As I pinpointed in my essay)
Lorraine, if you have time just read over the suggested link...
Harvard creates brain-to-brain interface, - which NOT ONLY and theoretically - allows humans to control other animals with thoughts alone | ExtremeTech"...This is one of the most important steps towards BBIs that allow for telepathic links between two or more humans - which is a good thing in the case of friends and family, but terrifying if you stop to think about the nefarious possibilities of a fascist dictatorship with mind control tech."and a further reading...
What is transhumanism, or, what does it mean to be human? | ExtremeTech"...What does it mean to be human? Biology has a simple answer: If your DNA is consistent with Homo sapiens, you are human - but we all know that humanity is a lot more complex and nuanced than that. Other schools of science might classify humans by their sociological or psychological behavior, but again we know that actually being human is more than just the sum of our thoughts and actions. You can also look at being human as a sliding scale. If you were to build a human from scratch, from the bottom up, at some point you cross the threshold into humanity - if you believe in evolution, at some point we ceased being a great ape and became human. Likewise, if you slowly remove parts from a human, you cross the threshold into inhumanity. Again, though, we run into the same problem: How do we codify, classify, and ratify what actually makes us human?"DO NOT BE so neglectful... Unfortunately, ALL ANYONE CAN READ ABOUT IT EXIST IN OUR WORLD. THIS IS OUR WORLD IN WHICH WE ACTUALLY LIVE!
I ought to think, the expression - humanity - need to be clarified first. Whether that is true or not, it seems to be a fact (as James Lee Hoover wrote in his essay and Turil also brought forth a very diverse extra-ultra brains database conception) our species and population here on our present Earth are quite diverse, even may be intentionally genetically engineered either for a kind of betterment, or conveying lowered capacity being kept under a direction of some ones in charge. I conclude much rather we need to finely discern the natural evolutionary processes, and a probable consciously and intentionally engineered steerable evolutionary mechanism.
We also should not be unobservant in that of an actual group or social consciousness is mainly determined at institutional levels and may be conditioned by lead forces consisting individuals with service to self or service to others interest being unbalanced in them. However, mainly they are who own yet presently those peculiar technologies (e.g. capable of high energy or subtle energy manipulations with which possible to encroach into the natural matter and energy flowing what allows reality and consciousness manipulations)
Are/may we at our present conscious control of our decision making what to steer and how and why?How to Make Wiser Decisions Using the Science of Behavior Analysis | PM eZinePerhaps (read at the page bottom)
"...Dr. Aubrey Daniels' Five-step Model*, a behavioral approach to problem solving and designing successful behavior change .." can better (closer to human approach) help than Sabine's suggested five steps.
Cheers,
Valeria
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 1, 2014 @ 08:43 GMT
Tom,
Re What is science, and how can it work when all information is subjective?:
I think science attempts a map of the territory and all the things in it, like a "God's eye" view of reality from the cosmos right down to the nanolevel. I think the natural basis for this attempt is that every creature needs some sort of map of the territory in which it exists, and needs some sort...
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Tom,
Re What is science, and how can it work when all information is subjective?:
I think science attempts a map of the territory and all the things in it, like a "God's eye" view of reality from the cosmos right down to the nanolevel. I think the natural basis for this attempt is that every creature needs some sort of map of the territory in which it exists, and needs some sort of understanding of how reality works.
Unaided by instruments, a human put into the same environment as a rabbit, an eagle, a dog, or a shark would presumably acquire less detailed hearing, sight, smell, or electroreception information respectively than these creatures. In addition to the differences in subjective information experienced by different species, each individual creature (and human) has a different spatial perspective on the surrounding environment. Even 2 scientists working on the same experiment in the same room have a different subjective perspective on the reality related to the experiment. So how can science work?
Answer: Firstly, at a fundamental level, categories of information (e.g. mass, charge) and their law-of-nature interrelationships are the same. What does differ is particular reality - the reality we represent with numbers.
I contend that numbers are a type of information relationship; and that information categories and relationships are subjective experience to particles, atoms, molecules and living things (i.e. information-integrated entities). Subjective experience IS information. Information IS physical reality, no-one can tell any difference: there is no "dualism".
Secondly, scientists and others can agree about reality, because we represent information categories and information relationships symbolically with written or spoken words or symbols. These symbolic representations of reality are the only "dualism" there is.
Note that computers process symbolic REPRESENTATIONS of information. Nature is what it is, it is the primary reality: our symbolic representations of it are seemingly inevitably limited.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 1, 2014 @ 12:22 GMT
"Even 2 scientists working on the same experiment in the same room have a different subjective perspective on the reality related to the experiment."
Then both the experiment, and the theory by which it operates, are useless to science.
What you advocate, Lorraine, is philosophy over science -- the practice of making decisions and conclusions based on observation alone. This is a step backward, before modern science began about four centuries ago.
I'm not saying that you may not be right -- that the rational, objective knowledge that science confers is ultimately inferior to mystical intuition. However, don't co-opt the name "science" for something it isn't.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 1, 2014 @ 13:39 GMT
Tom,
you've somehow equated subjectivity with "mystical intuition": I don't know where you got "mystical intuition" from - it's got nothing to do with what I was saying.
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 1, 2014 @ 13:56 GMT
"you've somehow equated subjectivity with 'mystical intuition': I don't know where you got 'mystical intuition' from - it's got nothing to do with what I was saying."
Then you have to describe in more precise terms what you mean by "reality is subjective" such that it has something to do with rationally objective science.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 1, 2014 @ 15:06 GMT
Tom,
I don't think I ever said "reality is subjective". I would have said that information is apprehended subjectively, by particles, pigs and people. Information belongs somewhere (to particles, pigs and people). Information is not objective, belonging nowhere, just somehow floating mystically in space.
And the content of information is categories and relationships.
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 1, 2014 @ 16:10 GMT
" ... Information is not objective, belonging nowhere, just somehow floating mystically in space."
No? Then how can it be " ... apprehended subjectively, by particles, pigs and people. "?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 2, 2014 @ 14:26 GMT
Tom,
I'm saying that information comes in distinct categories (e.g. mass, charge) which exist in law-of-nature relationship to other categories of information. I contend that particles carry all information and relationship i.e. information is not free-floating, it "belongs" to particles.
I contend that all information in the universe is apprehended as subjective experience by particles, atoms, molecules and living things. (Naturally particle information is the basis for all the higher-level categories of information apprehended by living things e.g. "red" is a higher-level category of information that is derived from a more fundamental category of information i.e. wavelength of light)
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 2, 2014 @ 15:19 GMT
Lorraine, no one disputes that information is discrete, i.e., categorical. What you're saying is that categories of information are innate properties of matter:
"I contend that particles carry all information and relationship i.e. information is not free-floating, it 'belongs' to particles."
If this were true, it would entirely obviate theoretical science (in fact,
James Putnam has beaten you to this idea by many years.)
"I contend that all information in the universe is apprehended as subjective experience by particles, atoms, molecules and living things. (Naturally particle information is the basis for all the higher-level categories of information apprehended by living things e.g. 'red' is a higher-level category of information that is derived from a more fundamental category of information i.e. wavelength of light)"
Your contention is easily falsified. What we call "red" is an
arbitrary choice of category in an interval lifted from the continuous electromagnetic spectrum, which we can intuitively understand by separating a ray of light, using a prism, into discrete colors of the visible spectrum.
Now, if you were to go a little further and say that physical reality is made of nothing but electromagnetism, we could reach some agreement. To do that, however, you would have to give up your belief that matter contains information innately. Here's why:
The electromagnetic function (and that of gravity, as well) is continuous and long range (infinite). When you try to say that it is discrete and short range, like the strong and electroweak forces, you make a category error -- i.e., you give up all we know about classical physics, which is the actual source of our experience, not the discrete particles to which we assign categories.
I have said before that I think James Putnam is right (in principle) -- though he doesn't go far enough. I'll say the same to you.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 4, 2014 @ 14:41 GMT
Tom,
I DO dispute "that information is discrete". I contend that categories are distinct, but information categories (e.g. mass or charge) only exist in relationship with other categories. So no information is stand-alone: it is inherently interrelated to other information.
Also, I wouldn't say that "categories of information are innate properties of matter". Information is not an attribute of a physical substance: information IS the physical substance of reality; information IS physical reality itself. I'm contending that particles are not matter, they are apprehenders/("carriers")/subjects/creators of information (i.e. categories and relationships).
Also, I think you are misinterpreting what I am saying about "red". I am saying that "red" is no longer "wavelength of light" information: red is a NEW category of information derived from wavelength information by the cones etc. in the eyes. "Red" has left "wavelength of light" information behind.
What do you mean James Putnam "doesn't go far enough"?
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 4, 2014 @ 16:34 GMT
Lorraine, we have a lot to agree on.
I too hold that information is fundamental -- I think, though, more fundamental than you imply. If as you say, " ... no information is stand-alone: it is inherently interrelated to other information," then no other relations than those between space and time are both sufficient and necessary to do physics.
That is why Joy Christian's...
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Lorraine, we have a lot to agree on.
I too hold that information is fundamental -- I think, though, more fundamental than you imply. If as you say, " ... no information is stand-alone: it is inherently interrelated to other information," then no other relations than those between space and time are both sufficient and necessary to do physics.
That is why Joy Christian's mathematical framework is complete:
Spacetime relations with matter (those relations that manifest as quantum correlations at every scale, and therefore imply polarized relations such as charge) are independent of the various values of mass, which according to special relativity, are identical to energy density. Field theories, in other words, completely describe the origin and evolution of mass, in a unitary manner, from the existence of space and time alone. Particles are secondary; quantum correlations in Joy's measurement framework are correlated points of
the Hopf fibration. So I agree with you in principle, but here is where you contradict yourself:
You say, " ... categories are distinct, but information categories (e.g. mass or charge) only exist in relationship with other categories."
You also say, "...'red' is no longer 'wavelength of light' information: red is a NEW category of information derived from wavelength information by the cones etc. in the eyes."
Red, however, only exists in relationship to an arbitrary interval in the continuous spectrum of visible light. It cannot be a fundamental category of an informational hierarchy, because it is in fact a derivation of something more fundamental.
My point is, that once you characterize information as something other than a discrete outcome of a continuous function, you give up the function in favor of a reality that is totally discrete and random. This is true even when you maintain hierarchies of information or spontaneous creation or replacement with new categories of information.
Our true experience of space and time is that of continuous function physics.
"What do you mean James Putnam 'doesn't go far enough'?"
James believes that mass is fundamental.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 14:52 GMT
Tom,
I'm saying that fundamental information in the universe is categories (e.g. mass, charge), relationships, and what we represent as numbers. We would symbolically represent fundamental information with equations, functions and numbers. (I'm not saying that mass and charge are necessarily THE MOST fundamental information).
But I would criticize your conception of information: There seems to be an unspoken assumption that information, rather miraculously, just apprehends itself. But you can't just assume that the universe somehow automatically apprehends information. The apprehension of information is a necessary property of the universe.
Similarly, the creation of law-of-nature information relationships can't just be assumed or taken for granted: the ability to create this information is a necessary property of the universe.
The actual apprehension and creation of information are 2 aspects of reality that are not representable as mathematical equations/functions. I'm contending that particles are not matter, and are not information: they are apprehenders/("carriers")/subjects/creators of information.
I'm also contending that new non-fundamental categories of information are created, apprehended and utilized by living things: they mean something to a living thing, but not to a particle. Some categories (e.g. "red") are seemingly ultimately due to genetic factors, but most of these new information categories are not due to some pre-existing rule.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 17:33 GMT
Sorry, Lorraine, I can't make any sense of this in a way that corresponds to what we know of the physical world.
You write: (assumption) "The apprehension of information is a necessary property of the universe."
Why? What does that even mean?
(conclusion from assumption) "Similarly, the creation of law-of-nature information relationships can't just be assumed or taken for granted: the ability to create this information is a necessary property of the universe."
So what is the fundamental property? -- the apprehension of information (for whatever you mean by that) or the ability to create information? What does the creating and what does the apprehending?
"The actual apprehension and creation of information are 2 aspects of reality that are not representable as mathematical equations/functions."
Then what do they have to do with physics?
"I'm contending that particles are not matter, and are not information: they are apprehenders/("carriers")/subjects/creators of information."
I thought you said previously that information isn't floating around the universe waiting to be apprehended.
"I'm also contending that new non-fundamental categories of information are created, apprehended and utilized by living things: they mean something to a living thing, but not to a particle."
Aren't living things characterized by relations among particles?
"Some categories (e.g. 'red') are seemingly ultimately due to genetic factors, but most of these new information categories are not due to some pre-existing rule."
I'm sorry I haven't convinced you that "red" is simply a name we adopted for a specific vibration in the visible band of the electromagnetic spectrum. If it didn't exist before humans could see it and name it, all the physics we think we know is wrong.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 23:21 GMT
Tom,
I know how you love Wikipedia definitions :) . So here is part of the Wikipedia definition of Physics:
"Physics (from Ancient Greek..."knowledge of nature"...)...More broadly...is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves"
I think that what I'm talking about fits within this broad conception of physics. I.e. trying to look at/analyze physical reality in order to understand how it works. I consider that in this quest, nothing is off-limits.
Re "red": This fits in with my contention that information categories (and relationships) are what is apprehended (subjectively experienced) by particles, atoms, molecules and living things. "Red" is like a temporary subjective physically-constructed information category that ceases to exist when the living thing (e.g. a person) dies.
How would YOU explain (in general terms) our human apprehension of "red"?
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Anonymous replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 00:44 GMT
Lorraine, thanks for providing another example of why not to trust Wikipedia for anything more technical than a celebrity biography. :-)
"Physics (from Ancient Greek...'knowledge of nature'...)...More broadly...is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves"
Physics is
far from a general analysis. It describes in highly...
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Lorraine, thanks for providing another example of why not to trust Wikipedia for anything more technical than a celebrity biography. :-)
"Physics (from Ancient Greek...'knowledge of nature'...)...More broadly...is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves"
Physics is
far from a general analysis. It describes in highly
specific terms, the measured phenomena that we extrapolate -- by correspondence of theory to measurement -- to a general structure of dynamically interrelated mechanics. Because correspondence is primary to construction -- as Popper's philosophy of science demonstrates -- there is not and cannot be a general theory of knowledge. That goes for all science, and it's how we know that science is a wholly rationalist enterprise.
"I think that what I'm talking about fits within this broad conception of physics."
I agree. It does.
"I.e. trying to look at/analyze physical reality in order to understand how it works. I consider that in this quest, nothing is off-limits."
And that's why a
scientific proposal has to pass the falsification test; no theory is ever verified, no matter how many experimental results are consistent with a theory. Popper called his intellectual biography
Unending Quest, a title that underscores the ephemeral nature of knowledge, and sums up his solution to what philosophers of science call the Demarcation Problem -- referring to the difference between philosophy and science.
Your philosophy does not become science until it is formulated in a way in which it can be disproved, i.e., falsified. You are correct that nothing is off limits -- in fact, Popper was criticized for allowing that such disciplines as astrology and Jungian psychology
could be formulated in scientific terms rather than dismissing them
a priori , as the critics would do.
"Re 'red': This fits in with my contention that information categories (and relationships) are what is apprehended (subjectively experienced) by particles, atoms, molecules and living things. 'Red' is like a temporary subjective physically-constructed information category that ceases to exist when the living thing (e.g. a person) dies."
There you go -- how would one falsify that? And do you think that there was no 'red' before there were biological creatures? Is there no 'red' on Mars, The Red Planet?
"How would YOU explain (in general terms) our human apprehension of 'red'?"
I thought I already had explained it, several times. Red is only what we call a specified interval of the continuous electromagnetic spectrum. If you mean something less technical -- then answer me this: how do you know that my perception, or apprehension as you say, of the color red is identical to yours or anyone's perception?
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 00:45 GMT
Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 01:30 GMT
Tom,
if physics was all boxed up, done and dusted, then there would be no need for further speculation about the nature of reality. Perhaps the current box that physics is in needs to be opened up: new ideas may be appropriate, even if they are not representable as mathematical equations/functions. Do you contend that EVERY aspect of reality/the universe is representable as a mathematical equation/function?
Re "do you think that there was no 'red' before there were biological creatures?":
I'm saying that there was no "red" before there were biological creatures: there was only varying wavelengths of light, where the information category is "wavelength of light".
I don't know that my subjective perception of red is in fact identical to yours: people merely agree that certain objects can be categorized as "red" objects, though this doesn't work for people who are colour-blind to red. So the wavelength is not necessarily the deciding factor when it comes to subjective perception.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 02:04 GMT
Lorraine,
here is something from Lev Goldfarb that I think you'll like.
Lev is very close to persuading me that a non-mathematical formalism will revolutionalize science. How about you?
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 10:55 GMT
"Do you contend that EVERY aspect of reality/the universe is representable as a mathematical equation/function?"
No, only that we can't claim to understand a phenomenon until expressed in formal language.
"Re "do you think that there was no 'red' before there were biological creatures?":
I'm saying that there was no "red" before there were biological creatures: there was only varying wavelengths of light, where the information category is 'wavelength of light'."
So what? You merely admit here, that 'information categories' are human inventions. not relevant to information in nature independent of humanity. Do you think that reality is not independent of human perception?
"I don't know that my subjective perception of red is in fact identical to yours: people merely agree that certain objects can be categorized as 'red' objects, though this doesn't work for people who are colour-blind to red. So the wavelength is not necessarily the deciding factor when it comes to subjective perception."
So what is the 'deciding factor' when it comes to subjective perception? Is any inter-subjective agreement sufficiently objective -- if we all agree that Apollo pulls the sun across the heavens in his fiery chariot, then does Apollo in fact exist?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 14:48 GMT
Tom,
Re "Do you think that reality is not independent of human perception? ":
Human beings are just another type of living thing. I would contend that all living things, not just human beings, categorize information. The development of entirely new categories of information goes together with the development of new types of cells and new types of complex life. But naturally, all these categories are ultimately based on more fundamental information categories like mass and wavelength.
I maintain that information is subjective experience, AND information is physical - there is no duality. But Lev Goldfarb contends that classes derive from eternal platonic forms - i.e. there is a duality.
Re "So what is the 'deciding factor' when it comes to subjective perception? ":
Clearly, the external environment and physical structures like cones in the eyes affect subjective perception. When it's dark outside, you don't subjectively perceive much colour.
Re "Is any inter-subjective agreement sufficiently objective -- if we all agree that Apollo pulls the sun across the heavens in his fiery chariot, then does Apollo in fact exist? ":
Obviously, when it comes to science, a lot more rigour is required than just two people agreeing that yes, this is a red object. It's more like many trained scientists agreeing that yes, the expected experimental outcomes have been repeatedly confirmed.
I think we must agree to disagree!
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 15:54 GMT
"I would contend that all living things, not just human beings, categorize information."
At what point do you demarcate living things from nonliving things?
" ... all these categories are ultimately based on more fundamental information categories like mass and wavelength."
And yet, you also claim that information isn't "floating around waiting to be apprehended." Which is...
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"I would contend that all living things, not just human beings, categorize information."
At what point do you demarcate living things from nonliving things?
" ... all these categories are ultimately based on more fundamental information categories like mass and wavelength."
And yet, you also claim that information isn't "floating around waiting to be apprehended." Which is it? -- floating categories of mass and wavelength, or creation of information categories by living things?
"I maintain that information is subjective experience, AND information is physical - there is no duality."
There sure is duality in your philosophy -- between roles played by living and nonliving things, though you never say how living and nonliving things differ.
"But Lev Goldfarb contends that classes derive from eternal platonic forms - i.e. there is a duality."
He does? I must have missed that -- where do you find it? In any case, though, a Platonic reality corresponding to physical measurement would not be a duality.
"Re "So what is the 'deciding factor' when it comes to subjective perception? ":
Clearly, the external environment and physical structures like cones in the eyes affect subjective perception. When it's dark outside, you don't subjectively perceive much colour."
The electromagnetic spectrum doesn't exist independent of eyes to see its visible part?
"Re "Is any inter-subjective agreement sufficiently objective -- if we all agree that Apollo pulls the sun across the heavens in his fiery chariot, then does Apollo in fact exist? ":
Obviously, when it comes to science, a lot more rigour is required than just two people agreeing that yes, this is a red object."
Right. It requires measuring the frequency and defining what part of it we are going to call 'red.'
"It's more like many trained scientists agreeing that yes, the expected experimental outcomes have been repeatedly confirmed."
What experimental outcomes? "Red" is a definition, not an outcome.
"I think we must agree to disagree!"
If you must.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 9, 2014 @ 16:26 GMT
Lorraine, okay, I think I see how you might be confused by Lev's references to Plato and Aristotle. The key to understanding the subtlety is this:
"One might be tempted to point out that the new formalism replaced the mind-matter duality with another, spatial-temporal, duality. In some sense, this might be true, but there is, especially from the scientific point of view, a crucial difference. As I mentioned at the beginning of Section 2, the original mind-matter split has completely removed the mind from our scientific picture of the Universe, while the proposed formalism is an attempt to bring it into this picture. At the same time, I would not use the term 'duality' to designate the proposed spatial-temporal relationship (if, indeed, it turns out to be true), since here we are dealing with the universal precedence of temporal, or informational, representation over the spatial one, and hence, with a relatively clear connection between them. Appealing to the popular hardware - software metaphor, one might say that, in this case, the 'hardware' is specified by the 'software'."
Lev as a computer scientist is an expert in recognition algorithms, i.e., the identity and evolution of form, which is why I thought you would appreciate his view. Far from dualistic, his method finds by a non-numerical method ('structs') that time and information are identical; it's the same conclusion I reached by a numerical method (random walk).
So I am asking you -- what mechanism resolves dualism in your framework? Or, if dualism is foundational, how does one determine that other than by just saying it?
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 10, 2014 @ 13:13 GMT
Tom,
I value what you have to say because it forces me to dig deeper and to think harder, even though I may disagree with what you say. But I don't like your tearing to shreds every sentence I write. But I hope that we can continue to argue about the universe and the nature of reality.
Best wishes,
Lorraine
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Georgina Woodward replied on Sep. 11, 2014 @ 00:04 GMT
Tom, why do you consider that the dualism needs to be resolved? Quote: to find an answer or solution to (something) : to settle or solve (something), Merriam Webstrer m-w.com
.....................................................
.................
Clearly the fantasy world contained in a novel is not the external world in which the book exists, the information, the pattern of ink...
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Tom, why do you consider that the dualism needs to be resolved? Quote: to find an answer or solution to (something) : to settle or solve (something), Merriam Webstrer m-w.com
.....................................................
.................
Clearly the fantasy world contained in a novel is not the external world in which the book exists, the information, the pattern of ink on paper is but not what is decoded from it. Clearly also the reality fabricated by the mind from received EM sensory data or represented by other kinds of processing such as film emulsion is not the external reality. The chemical changes to light sensitive cells or emulsions are but not the representation output.
Animals have a limited number of selective colour channels and thresholds of activation of specific cells which affect what colours can be seen. The colour composition of the image seen is clearly something belonging to it, the manifestation, depending on the composition of the sensory data
and the "apparatus",material or wetware used in its processing, rather than being an exact copy of what exists externally. This is clearly shown by optical illusions.
25 optical illusions.3 and 23 are my current favorites though 22 is a close runner up. Is what you are seeing the external reality?(rhetorical), definitely not, it is a fabricated reality that appears real to the mind.
The space-time output is not the external space. The sequence of events giving the sequential iterations of the Object universe and hence passage of time are not necessarily the same sequence of events observed because the order of events depends upon observer location due to the non instantaneous transmission of light. Not reversible, giving "one way arrow of time" because to see the event in reverse order would require travelling faster than the signal to receive most recently emitted signals before oldest signal,(and the signals are travelling out from the source at the speed of light.)
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 11, 2014 @ 02:05 GMT
Georgina, Tom,
I agree that "the colour composition of the image seen. . . [depends on the] . . . processing, rather than being an exact copy of what exists externally. "
Lev Goldfarb is talking about classes of objects. Galaxies, stars, stones, organisms, trees, cats, and molecules are the examples he gives. He says in his evolving online book : "it is natural to expect that several 'cat' structs should provide enough information for the recovery of the structure of the class of cats. " He uses his special "structs" to represent reality.
I am talking about categories of QUALITIES e.g. mass, charge, wavelength (which subjectively exist from the point of view of e.g. particles), and "red" (which subjectively exists from the point of view of some living things). Categories of objects (like a cat) would be derived from these categories of qualities. The categories and relationships that I'm talking about are represented by law-of-nature equations, but this is only at the fundamental level, because "higher-level" reality gets too complex for precise mathematical representation.
So how should humanity steer the future? It should steer in the knowledge that physical reality derives from subjective qualities, not from inanimate objects. It should also steer in the knowledge that not all physical outcomes are 100% consequential: particles, atoms, molecules and living things create reality. Humanity should steer the future with an attitude of respect for the rest of reality, not with an attitude of exploitation.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 02:02 GMT
P.S.
Georgina,
I think you have explained aspects of the subjectivity of information well in your post, but I consider that subjectivity (and also the arrow-of-time) must also be FUNDAMENTAL aspects of reality, not just something that is due to the complexity of living things.
Information doesn't just exist: changing information is somehow apprehended "by the universe" leading...
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P.S.
Georgina,
I think you have explained aspects of the subjectivity of information well in your post, but I consider that subjectivity (and also the arrow-of-time) must also be FUNDAMENTAL aspects of reality, not just something that is due to the complexity of living things.
Information doesn't just exist: changing information is somehow apprehended "by the universe" leading to more change. But leaving aside the specific issue of change, I contend that the issue of subjective experience is the issue of how the fundamental elements of the universe apprehend information. The subjective apprehension of category and relationship information (by particles, atoms, molecules and living things) is an intrinsic part of the universe: there is no external-to-the-universe platonic reality that performs an objective apprehension function.
Information does not exist discretely i.e. without interrelationship with other information, and information does not exist objectively i.e. without subjective apprehension. So the apprehension of information is not actually about a dual/separate aspect of reality that performs an apprehension function. It is we humans who conceptually divide indivisible information into various aspects. E.g. when we represent information symbolically/abstractly/with mathematical equations we leave out other inherent aspects of the nature of information.
Similarly, it is we humans who would make "red" a subclass of wavelength information. But knowledge of the structure of the eye and its cones has shown that "red" is in fact like a derived, meta-class of information. I'm saying that our mathematical representations of reality can lead us astray.
Tom,
I value what you have to say because it forces me to dig deeper and to think harder, even though I may disagree with what you say. But I don't like your tearing to shreds every sentence I write. But I hope that we can continue to argue about the universe and the nature of reality.
Best wishes,
Lorraine
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 03:17 GMT
Lorraine,
"Physical reality derives from subjective qualities, not from inanimate objects"??
Couldn't we distinguish between physical reality and models that physicists like Tom subjectively consider reality? With physical reality, I mean the postulate of causality instead of mystery. This means, even the best model provides merely an incomplete copy, merely a virtual reality. Such reality by definition is logically considered all-inclusive as originally also was the notion UNIverse before experts fabricated multiverses to contain it.
"Humanity should steer the future with an attitude of respect for the rest of reality, not with an attitude of exploitation" ??
While I strongly agree on that the pressure on science to without scruples exploit all resources must be stopped not just by means of Sabine Hossenfelder's nice well behavior but first of all by means of contraception in poor developing slums, I don't subscribe to the necessity respecting nature more than responsibility for future generations of humanity. I see such religions that replace God by an arbitrarily defined nature an inhumane perversion. Perhaps nobody needs to preserve Ebola viruses.
Eckard
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Georgina Woodward replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 10:49 GMT
This is the answer to the arrow of time conundrum. Change in arrangement of Object universe, only the youngest arrangement existing others recycled gives one way passage of time. That is fundamental. Sensory data persists in the environment allowing events to be observed after they have occurred. The potential
images span a sequence of iterations of the object universe, which could also be described as apparently spanning across time.
The question is asked why is there an arrow of time ie why can't the sequence of data be observed in either direction?
For simplicity consider just one source object ( though the same principle applies to multiple objects.) The potential sensory data spreads out from its source object at the speed of light and will be received by an observer spatially separated from it in the order it is produced. In order to see it in reverse the observer would have to travel faster than the speed of light in the same direction of propagation. that is moving even faster away the source object, each sample then being older and older data. As travel faster than the speed of light is not yet possible for a macroscopic observer seeing the appearance of time going backwards is not possible even though the data to produce that effect exists in the environment. Hence the arrow of time.
Yes Lorraine, subjectivity does not require an organism but a device or even a sensitive material can act as recipient of environmental potential 'sensory' data giving an output. All of these are reality interfaces that receive data and produce an Image reality from it, that differs from the Object reality in which it exists. Data can arrive together that has takem different lengths if time to arrive amalgamated into a space time output that exists within the uni temporal Object reality. This allows non simultaneity of events for different observers within a uni-temporal Object universe.
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Georgina Woodward replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 10:54 GMT
oops, I should have written;
,that is moving even faster away
from the source object, [and]
....
taken different lengths
of time to arrive....
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Anonymous replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 13:49 GMT
Why does yet another description of the arrow of time being fundamental explain why the arrow of time fundamentally exists?
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 14:56 GMT
" ... I don't like your tearing to shreds every sentence I write. But I hope that we can continue to argue about the universe and the nature of reality."
Fair enough, Lorraine. I'll try to behave myself. However, you leave yourself open to criticism with claims like:
"I am talking about categories of QUALITIES e.g. mass, charge, wavelength (which subjectively exist from the point...
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" ... I don't like your tearing to shreds every sentence I write. But I hope that we can continue to argue about the universe and the nature of reality."
Fair enough, Lorraine. I'll try to behave myself. However, you leave yourself open to criticism with claims like:
"I am talking about categories of QUALITIES e.g. mass, charge, wavelength (which subjectively exist from the point of view of e.g. particles), and "red" (which subjectively exists from the point of view of some living things)."
Mass, charge and wavelength are measured QUANTITIES. Are you saying that how particles and beings perceive these, changes the value of the measurement? Then you need to say more. And this:
"Information does not exist discretely i.e. without interrelationship with other information, and information does not exist objectively i.e. without subjective apprehension. So the apprehension of information is not actually about a dual/separate aspect of reality that performs an apprehension function."
If information doesn't consist of discrete bits, what relationship " ... with other information" is even possible? We assume a quantum bit from the start. In fact, it is this fundamental binary language that enables us to discern what we call 'information' from 'other information.' Now -- if you mean to say that all information lies on a continuum of differentiable measurement functions in
n dimensions, then it makes sense to me. That is not a subjective "apprehension function," however; it is a quite rational and objective measurement function:
The reason that Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity) applies only 'up to diffeomorphism,' is that we don't get the advantage of differentiating one thing from another at the limit of the singularity. There is no apprehension, in your terms. All measurement functions up to that limit, though, are easily resolved in relativistic terms where each "apprehender's" frame of reference is valid, and no frame is privileged.
So what is " ... the universe and the nature of reality?" If relativity is true and complete (we have no reason to think that it isn't), the nature of reality is trivially subjective, while the universe is non-trivially objective.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 15:51 GMT
Eckard,
I agree that "even the best model provides merely an incomplete copy". This is the way I see it: Causality means that laws-of-nature and current conditions lead to 100% consequential physical outcomes. But quantum decoherence is about CREATIVITY: newly-created numbers are assigned to one or more parameters of a physical outcome by particles, atoms, molecules and living things. Creativity itself cannot be represented by law-of-nature relationships, so laws of nature are an incomplete model of reality.
I agree that contraception/population decrease is essential to preserving what's left of the natural world. But also decreased consumption of resources by those in the rich world is essential.
Re Ebola: You can maybe get rid of the Ebola virus, but another equally virulent virus or bacteria will soon evolve.
But I think your attitude of human supremacy is exactly the WRONG attitude to take: we are part of a complex interrelated ecosystem, and we ourselves are a complex interrelated ecosystem (the vast majority of our cells are non-human). To think that one part of a complex interrelated whole is better than another part is illogical.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 16:17 GMT
Georgina,
Re "subjectivity does not require an organism but a device or even a sensitive material can act as recipient of environmental potential 'sensory' data giving an output":
I would contend that a device or a sensitive material is not a top-down bottom-up information-integrated object. So the object as a whole could not apprehend the information that is being apprehended by its part. The information-integrated part could subjectively apprehend simple information, but the whole could not subjectively apprehend the information situation.
I would contend that top-down bottom-up information-integrated objects are particles, atoms, molecules and living things, but not computers, chairs or carpet.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Georgina Parry replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 21:16 GMT
Lorraine,
apprehension of information i.e. some kind of understanding of it is not required for it to be converted into an image reality. Photographic film can produce a space-time image as its component images are formed from potential sensory data that has taken different lengths of time to reach the film.
"I would contend that top-down bottom-up information-integrated objects are particles, atoms, molecules and living things, but not computers, chairs or carpet." I'm afraid I don't understand the significance of that or utility in a model perhaps you could explain. Why is apprehension important rather than just interaction that may be with an animate or inanimate object?
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Georgina Parry replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 21:50 GMT
Anonymous you wrote "Why does yet another description of the arrow of time being fundamental explain why the arrow of time fundamentally exists?" Thank you so much for commenting on my post.
The answer to that question was clearly set out in the full post. Reading it carefully you will see that change of arrangement of the Object universe giving passage of time is fundamental but that is...
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Anonymous you wrote "Why does yet another description of the arrow of time being fundamental explain why the arrow of time fundamentally exists?" Thank you so much for commenting on my post.
The answer to that question was clearly set out in the full post. Reading it carefully you will see that change of arrangement of the Object universe giving passage of time is fundamental but that is not the answer to the arrow of time puzzle. So the answer is not just another arrow of time is fundamental answers. That alone does not overcome the argument related to the theoretical reversibility of time within space-time.
So here is the solution.
The environment contains potential sensory data that could give image reality outputs that depict the time when the data was produced i.e. was reflected or emitted from an object, thus the data pool has potential sensory data that might theoretically be "read" "forwards" or "backwards" giving the possibility of apparent forward or backwards flow of time. That is what is meant by time reversibility. However it cannot be read "backwards" because that would require faster than light travel to outpace the rate of propagation of the light signals. That is the difference between assuming that the light data just exists in block time, created there when the universe was formed, and could be read either way and an explanatory framework where the light is propagating at the speed of light from the source object within a uni-temporal Object universe.(Continually changing only the youngest iteration existing.)
The same applies for multiple source objects. The output reality will not necessarily have events in the order in which they occurred due to the effect of observer position and motion. The observer will still be unable to see the individual events in reverse order, vases reassembling, birds un-hatching and the like, as that requires faster than light speed motion.
That the arrow of time puzzle can be solved with the explanatory framework used is further evidence in favour of its correctness.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 15, 2014 @ 23:01 GMT
Lorraine,
I agree on that it is not just necessary to overcome doctrines of further growing population e.g. by Chomenei but also stop the increasing waste of resources by those who already are or will get rich.
However, I maintain: Ecologists tend to pervert the human perspective. The story with the sarcastic sentence in my essay "This (humanity) will go by" was told by Klaus Toepfer in Nairobi. Don't blame the logical human point of view for claiming human supremacy. Already Spinoza equated nature and God. Ecologists subordinate humanity to God's creation. Therefore, it is the ecologist who ascribe supremacy to human properties attributed to God, i.e. the nature. When ecologists naively "liberated" animals, they were misled by ideas that you seem to adhere too. I consider your argument "the vast majority of our cells are non-human" likewise naive.
Ebola, polio, malaria, flooding, deserts, ..., there are many examples of rather undesirable details of nature. While humanity is of course not something better than nature, the responsible to humanity conservation of nature is essential for survival of humanity, not vice versa. Nature was never absolutely in balance. It cannot be completely restored.
Eckard
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Georgina Parry replied on Sep. 16, 2014 @ 09:58 GMT
Anonymous, All,
My eldest son suggests that we may be able to
hear a reversed arrow of time because sound travels much slower than light. His idea is make a sound such as playing some loud music or creating a shock wave. Then fire a bullet with attached miniature microphone through the waves. Travelling faster than the speed of sound it will overtake the propagating waves intercepting them in the reverse order to their production. I don't know if that would work in practice but it is a cool idea. If it works it is evidence that it is only the inability to exceed the speed of light that prevents
seeing the reversal of the "arrow of time".
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 16, 2014 @ 15:11 GMT
Georgina,
I'm certain that's been done. I read something not long ago, but can't recall the details.
It's certainly also an established theory with light, mentioned in my 2011 essay and I think I've seen something else about it since, other than this;
Time Asymmetry Finally Found . Your eldest son seems to have inherited some of your intuition about physics.
I'm really not sure why so many seem to struggle with the concept that emitted signals which we assign as representing time don't change "time itself" when arriving at different rates (Doppler shifted).
I still prefer Einstein's description, time is essential as 'it stops everything happening at once'!
Best wishes
Peter
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 16, 2014 @ 15:32 GMT
Tom,
I think that there seems to be nothing necessarily wrong with law-of-nature equations as they stand. So I am not "saying that how particles and beings perceive [measurable information categories], changes the value of the measurement ".
But I contend that there is a problem: law-of-nature and number information has to be somehow apprehended by elements of the universe (e.g....
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Tom,
I think that there seems to be nothing necessarily wrong with law-of-nature equations as they stand. So I am not "saying that how particles and beings perceive [measurable information categories], changes the value of the measurement ".
But I contend that there is a problem: law-of-nature and number information has to be somehow apprehended by elements of the universe (e.g. particles). I contend that this apprehension of information is "subjective experience", which is the same sort of thing for particles and living things.
I contend that there are 3 different types of qualities experienced: categories, relationships, and what we represent with numbers (I contend that numbers are, or ultimately derive from, a type of category relationship where the category cancels out). Information qualities are experienced by information-integrated entities like particles or living things. The physical universe is made out of qualities.
But I would contend that mass, charge and wavelength are not themselves quantities: they are information categories. People would obtain quantities (numbers) via measurement. But the numbers mean nothing by themselves unless they are somehow equated to the category that they refer to e.g. the mass or charge category.
Information is not about "discrete bits" or quantum bits: all physical information belongs to some category, and is related to other information, and is one way or another quantified by a number. So "what relationship " ... with other information" is even possible"? Categories of information exist in law-of-nature relationships which are represented with symbols, e.g. + - ÷ x and = . I contend that these symbols represent real aspects of reality, but they can't be measured, they can only be inferred.
So I think I would agree that one aspect of information, the bit that can be represented by numbers, can USUALLY be represented as lying on "a continuum of differentiable measurement functions in n dimensions". This is not to say that n dimensions actually exist: it's only a way of representing possible information experience. Also, representing the outcomes of quantum decoherence requires a discontinuity.
I consider that the number infinity and complex numbers are not necessarily a problem, because numbers are just a type of information category relationship, not undecomposable entities. I don't know about black holes/singularities but, as above, I consider that all physical information (numbers and categories) is deeply interrelated to other information, and this relationship information is never absent.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 16, 2014 @ 15:40 GMT
Georgina,
Re "Why is apprehension important rather than just interaction that may be with an animate or inanimate object? ":
As I attempted to explain above to Tom, I contend that there is a problem. Law-of-nature and number information has to be somehow apprehended by elements of the universe (e.g. particles). I contend that this apprehension of information is "subjective experience", which is the same sort of thing for particles and living things.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Georgina Parry replied on Sep. 17, 2014 @ 00:38 GMT
Peter, I would really like to know if the experiment has been done and what the findings were.I am surprised I have not heard of it, if it has been done.
..............
If there is indeed apparent time reversal (reversal of the perceived arrow of time, an image reality), is there also an alteration in the perceived origin of the sound? As the observer is coming up behind the waves rather than receiving them from in front? Time and space reversal.I'd really like to try it myself.
I have seen a number of articles where reversible reactions occurring within forward passage of time are considered time reversal and I have also read about a receiver transmitting the reverse of the wave form received. But they aren't actual time reversal. Those examples are of another event, after the original event, occurring in normal passage of time. The effect I was talking about, by overtaking the waves already propagated, is experiencing the
same event that has already occurred in reverse ( true image reality time reversal), though still within normal 'forward' passage of time (object reality).
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Anonymous replied on Sep. 17, 2014 @ 11:21 GMT
Lorraine,
"Law-of-nature and number information has to be somehow apprehended by elements of the universe (e.g. particles). I contend that this apprehension of information is "subjective experience"."
I agree that's at the heart of physics, equivalent to Dirac, & von Neuman etc, and also the correct rationale of Bohr Copenhagen interpretation. The 'measurer' itself modulates the...
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Lorraine,
"Law-of-nature and number information has to be somehow apprehended by elements of the universe (e.g. particles). I contend that this apprehension of information is "subjective experience"."
I agree that's at the heart of physics, equivalent to Dirac, & von Neuman etc, and also the correct rationale of Bohr Copenhagen interpretation. The 'measurer' itself modulates the signal to produce what's found. That is the key process I identified in my essay, showing how it can produce the 'non-locality' effects attributed to spookyness. Why do most prefer myth and legend to reality!
On Law-of-nature formulas in particular I can identify many that can approximate outcomes, so are useful, but don't model nature's mechanisms so lead us to the current confusion;
1) Doppler shift. We well know in optics and astronomy that the mechanism is one of lambda/lambda, i.e. a wavelength change on a physical interaction. However as the simplest observable is 'frequency' theoretical physicists (etc) cut out wavelength completely in Doppler shift equations, so causing complete confusion about light and the role of 'time'. Between frames/inertial systems (co-moving media) the Delta is reciprocally lambda and relative speed, making LOCAL propagation speed (in BOTH media) the constant. The false formalism means our brains are confounded by the simple solution.
2) Maxwell's equations (really Heavisides). The transitions demand an 'aether' frame, and give the right answers, but we can't have aether! We then have to invent 'virtual' electrons! Nobody can answer what actually HAPPENS at the near/far field transition zone (the terms are different). Actually that's not quite true as I have, recovering Snell's Law where it fails along with a host of other logical solutions (KRR, Aberration, etc.)
http://viXra.org/abs/1306.0071 However though the findings aren't falsified I'm told there's no issue to solve as the present maths 'works'!
How on Earth can we effect change to progress understanding?
Peter
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 17, 2014 @ 11:48 GMT
Georgina,
T'was I. Axed by time! This Nature paper on the
'inverse Doppler effect' which I've cited is interesting, also;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_reversal_signal_processing
. but I can't find anything on the specific case you envisage.
If Lena Hau at Harvard slowed down light to 30mph we may imagine a detector going through the medium (BEC) at 60mph and getting a reverse image, but I doubt that's physically possible - unless we got it to scatter signals laterally, put it on a train and stood on the platform with a video camera ... hmmm.
Of course it can be done with sound by nominally reversing the 'inertial system' in which the sound is recorded. (Most electronic sound systems can play songs backwards that way).
I know I've seen other stuff but not kept links. Do let me know if you find anything else.
Best wishes
Peter
Best wishes
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 17, 2014 @ 15:31 GMT
Eckard,
I agree that "Nature was never absolutely in balance. It cannot be completely restored. "
But you are wrong about ecologists. Ecologists are merely struggling to redress the balance: humanity is so self-absorbed that it is barely aware that our population, our technology, our demand for ever bigger better and grander houses and consumer toys, our consumption of resources, our destruction of habitat, our poisons, and our rubbish is taking a terrible toll on the natural world. Only from a point of view of human puffed-up self-importance could one claim that ecologists "pervert the human perspective"!
One thing science and scientists (AND you) have failed to notice is that the non-human living world comprises creative subjects, NOT deterministic objects. As such, the non-human living world deserves our respect. It's about time science and scientists grew out of their current primitive views on the nature of reality.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 17, 2014 @ 22:55 GMT
Lorraine,
The sarcasm uttered by Klaus Toepfer takes the fictitious position of earth and other planets as if they were persons. When the earth complained as do you, the others replied, we know your problem:
"It's humans. Don't bother, this (the existence of humans) will go by."
Isn't this a perverse attitude?
I absolutely agree on the necessities you are trying to tell me. Yes, mankind needs to live up to its responsibility. I wrote "humanity must cope with its own behavior without leaving earth" and "Alfred Nobel guided us to the appropriate perspective": consequent critical rationalism: We, the mankind as a hole, are primarily responsible for ourselves including future generations. We need not the detour to feel responsible for conservation of creation. Responsibility for mankind includes responsibility for conservation of the environment we are living in, not the other way round. Well, this Nobelian perspective is not based on the belief in creation.
Rationalism for the sake of mankind as a whole avoids irresponsible actions due to personal interpretation of religious rules.
Those who "liberated" animals which even caused damage to other animals did so because they projected their feelings on the "creatures" they liberated.
Those green in the sense of naive people" who permanently travel around the world like missioners for less consumption of fuel are actually among the worst wasters of fuel.
Decades ago I decided not to drive a car any longer. Suspect me to be crazy. No. I just compared the pros and cons.
Eckard
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John Brodix Merryman replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 00:15 GMT
It's interesting how this thread has diverged into perceptions of time as a function of physical actions and human destructiveness of the environment. In many ways, one represents the underlaying physical explanation of the other. We are thermodynamically burning through planetary resources faster than the planet can regenerate them. Our clock/burn rate is faster than the environment can recycle...
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It's interesting how this thread has diverged into perceptions of time as a function of physical actions and human destructiveness of the environment. In many ways, one represents the underlaying physical explanation of the other. We are thermodynamically burning through planetary resources faster than the planet can regenerate them. Our clock/burn rate is faster than the environment can recycle our waste. Like an elastic band though, eventually it will have to snap back.
The issue is how do we integrate into the rhythms of the planet. It is not as though we don't now how to match our sense of time and space to what is around us, as we do it frequently with other people. Yet as a species, we are in a mad and unsustainable rush through all there is to offer, searching for some reductionist bottomline meaning or salvation.
A significant issue at the foundation of this is our western sense of time, which evolved from a sense of being distinct from and in competition with the larger context and environment, thus moving through and against it. As opposed to a more eastern sense of being one with one's context and in balance with it. Likely because intensive rice farming has been practiced there since the west was still largely hunter-gatherers. Thus working with the environment, as compared to being in competition with it.
The traditional eastern view of past and future is that the past is in front of the observer, because the past is known and one can see what is in front, while the future is behind the observer, because it cannot be seen.
So while the western view is of time as a line, where we move forward, toward the future and necessarily through our context, the eastern view is less naively intuitive and actually more physically real, in that what we see is of past events and then this information carrying energy passes us and goes to future encounters with observers further away. So it creates a much more objective physical explanation and not one based on immediate subjective perception.
So if we are ever to stop this mad rush through the only world we will ever have, it will take a much deeper reflection on the nature of this reality and not simply patching up the resulting messes.
Remember the faster clock only burns quicker and so falls into the past that much more rapidly. The tortoise is still plodding along, long after the hare has died.
Regards,
John M
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Georgina Parry replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 01:45 GMT
Peter ,
thanks. Time reversal signal processing is transmitting the reverse of a received signal back to its source so its the signal pattern and direction of propagation that is reversed. Not the same as experiencing in reverse a single signal still propagating in the same direction. Hypothetically reversing the same apparent event, not creating a new reverse event. Hypothetically giving apparent time reversal without affecting passage of time in object reality.
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 02:23 GMT
Eckard,
--------
P.S. to my previous post:
So what is creativity? Creativity is the only true action: everything else is mere consequence.
Creativity has occurred when one or more parameters of a physical outcome must be represented by non-consequential numbers. Quantum decoherence is an example of creativity occurring: A truly new non-consequential physical outcome has occurred.
--------
I am not taking "the fictitious position of earth and other planets as if they were persons". How could you think that I was saying that sort of nonsense??
Re "belief in creation": see above for my considered view of what "creativity" is.
Re "Rationalism": There is no such thing as absolute rationalism. There is only a type of subjective rationalism, such as you have used to avoid irresponsible actions. This so called "rationalism" is actually creativity (as I have defined it above). Good on you for not driving a car! You are a true "greenie"!
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 13:40 GMT
Georgina,
"Not the same as experiencing in reverse a single signal still propagating in the same direction."
Certainly true... from our familiar perspective.
However there is another entirely UNfamiliar way of looking at it, entirely consistent with Galilean and Special Relativity, which state that ALL inertial frames are entirely equivalent. It's rather 'outside the box' but I've found it to be an important foundation, Viz;
We have just THREE frames (systems with states of motion K, K' and K"). Nothing more! ONE (K) is the background propagation medium through which sound does the speed of sound in that medium. The second (K') is the propagating wave or particle (sound/light) rest frame. The third (K") is the observers own ('centre of mass') rest frame.
Now each can be any value we wish, with just ONE rule; neither K' or K" can exceed 'c' with respect to K. (so K' and/or K" can be
relatively 2C, or a minus value! subject to relative direction.
The purity of that takes a lot of detachment from embedded assumptions to visualise. It IS the postulates of relativity, except without the added bar of a limit BETWEEN K' and K", which needn't apply before they actually meet, when one becomes the new 'background' for the other. (read that min 3 times!) What it means is that all background systems (K) really have values K^n as each is a 'discrete' field and can itself move wrt any other. That's what Einstein missed, forcing him to abandon background frames.
Using that intuitive logic it really doesn't matter much which way round any sequence was originally emitted. two rocket ships doing 0.75c through the background medium rest frame CAN now be approaching each other at RELATIVE 1.5c. If it's comprehensible you'll be amazed how many anomalies are resolved when trying it out!
Best wishes
Peter
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 14:56 GMT
Peter, Georgina,
Re Peter Jackson comment on subjective experience (Sep. 17, 2014 @ 11:21 GMT ) --and-- "Why is apprehension important rather than just interaction that may be with an animate or inanimate object? " (Georgina Parry, Sep. 15, 2014 @ 21:16 GMT):
There is an assumption in Georgina's question that, in interaction situations involving fundamental reality, the universe somehow automatically apprehends the parameters involved, their numeric value, and their law-of-nature relationships (and produces the required physical outcome). There is an assumption that this automatic apprehension of situational information by the universe is so natural and unremarkable that it doesn't need to be mentioned as a property/aspect of the universe.
But what happens in the universe is NOT like what happens in a human-built computer. In a computer, known properties of matter are used in component parts to represent information, and to enable the required processing of represented information. We have developed and built computers so that they perform as required in response to anticipated symbolic inputs. Behind the scenes people have been working: every type of situation has been anticipated, handled appropriately, and repeatedly tested (ideally). It's not that the computer apprehends the situations: a computer works because WE know how to utilize the properties of matter to do things for us.
But we never set up the universe. It's the universe that "knows" its own properties, and "knows" how to run itself. I repeat: in any situation, the universe somehow apprehends the parameters involved, their numeric value, and their law-of-nature relationships (and produces the required physical outcome).
I am claiming that this apprehension of information is at the local particle/atom/molecule/living thing level, and that it is what we would call "subjective experience".
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 16:52 GMT
Lorraine,
I agree, but with strict interpretation. I have 2 ice creams, one in each hand, and run towards you and Georgina at 'c'. If you starts running towards the ice cream at v, MY explanation is that the closing speed is relative c+v UNTIL the local interaction, where it slows down to be absorbed by you. I then arrive with Georgina's ice cream later. If you agree with that we're on the same wavetrain.
Tom may tell you that a space-time diagram proves that either your ice cream is slowed down by v when you start moving, (so I'd drop it!) or it shrinks, or 'time itself' dilates. I agree with Tom, if we were in Wonderland that is. If in THIS universe however I have to suggest he's wrong. The change to c happens ON interaction ('locally') not at infinite range! Of course as we've consistently found Tom's never wrong that does leave something of a paradox!
The mind boggles. I'm going back for a 99.
Best wishes
Peter
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 16:57 GMT
Lorraine,
Writing belief in creation I meant belief in Creation. I am not sure whether your definition of creation includes playing dice. Someone meant: The Lord does not play dice.
While you did of course not say “… as if they were persons”, this perspective corresponds to the view of all those who give the protection of nature priority before the humanity-centered while definitely not less responsible view. Considering humanity as the illness of earth expresses resignation.
In what context if at all did I use the expression “absolute rationalism”? Striving for rationalism from the perspective of the only acceptable interests of mankind as a whole orients itself on compelling simple logic. Therefore it is not subjective, while religions were not only subjectively founded but they were or are even more problematic if a lacking common authority necessarily splits them into mutually contradicting individual interpretations, e.g. Sunnites and Shiites.
Young people tend to be green not because green is the color of Islam but in the sense of being prone to seek for something irrational that fulfills their desire to give some purpose to their life. Some of them are ready for being a suicide bomber, others do also vehemently support what they were told, for instance that rivers must be free to meander, eventually pollute large areas and even put life of millions of people at risk, and we have to make sure that packs of wolves or cormorants may spread without limits because they are God’s creatures too.
Eckard
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 18:00 GMT
"The change to c happens ON interaction ('locally') not at infinite range!"
If that were true -- one can be sure that it isn't -- one would be able to
measure the short range interaction of light with matter and compare it to the long range interaction of light with matter. As it happens we find by
measurement that electromagnetic radiation is, like gravity, of infinite range. I.e., the interaction at distances near and far is exactly the same -- that's what "locality" in physics actually means, that physical influences are limited to an object's immediate proximity; it doesn't mean that physical interactions are dependent on an object's arbitrarily preferred location compared to a distant location. (BTW, did you say that you are an astronomer?)
As I write this, I am watching a documentary on the History Channel about crackpot science in Germany under Hitler. Then as now, just believing in something doesn't make it physically true.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 18, 2014 @ 18:04 GMT
"There is only a type of subjective rationalism ..."
Now there's a fine oxymoron.
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Georgina Parry replied on Sep. 19, 2014 @ 04:18 GMT
Peter, All,
it does matter what order events occur for an observed object, because that gives the observed arrow of time, which isn't ever violated despite non simultaneity of events for observers with different frames of reference.Why that is so, when space-time shows events are time symmetric, has been a persistent problem. Vase intact, vase with hairline crack, vase with spreading crack, vase broken, vase broken into pieces, vase trampled into dust. The only way that can be reversed without creating another different event is to intercept the potential sensory data, formed when the events occurred, in reverse order. For a visible event that would require travelling faster than light speed in the direction of propagation I.E. away from the source, which isn't yet possible. That is why we don't see vases reassembling and eggs un-hatching, even though the potential sensory data to show those things exists within the environment. That's the answer to the why and it isn't trivial. The effect could hypothetically be demonstrated using sound instead of light. It would show that the only reason that we don't see things happening in reverse order is the inability to exceed the speed of the light signals. Also as the bullet/microphone
will not disappear into the past when "experiencing" reversal of time, according to the explanatory framework I have proposed, it will disprove the object time travel possibility of space-time and grandfather paradox. The bullet microphone object will continue to exist at uni-temporal-now and will continue to be be observable. Observation of the reversal of an event that has occurred does not reverse passage of time. The image reality observed is reversed within Object reality that is not reversed. That will then require rethinking what space-time really is and the explanatory framework provides the necessary alternative.It just needs to be tried. Our BBguns and Nerfs aren't going to cut the mustard : )
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 14:43 GMT
Peter,
Re "the closing speed is relative c+v UNTIL the local interaction, where it slows down to be absorbed by you. " :
I hope you don't mind, but until I acquire a clear idea about "what is space?" and "what is time?", I can't be sure one way or the other about what you say. (This clear picture may never emerge!)
Eckard,
Re "I am not sure whether your definition of creation includes playing dice. ":
I think the physical outcomes of throwing dice are fully determined. I think the outcomes must depend on very slight differences in the way the dice are thrown, though because of complexity and/or difficulty measuring the elements of the situation, we can't precisely model or predict individual outcomes. So my definition of creativity/creation has nothing to do with playing dice.
Eckard, Tom,
Re wolves, cormorants, rivers, and being "rational":
Clearly human beings are responsible for the rapid, widespread destruction of nature on this planet. But apologists can always seem to find "rational" reasons why each and every further act of destruction and damage of what's left is absolutely necessary.
Disturbingly, Eckard seems to want to straitjacket wolves, cormorants and rivers and seemingly everything else in nature!! He believes that there are "rational" reasons for it.
So it's clear that, in these matters, what is "rational" is a subjective view.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 16:56 GMT
Lorraine,
Clear pictures only come from testing models. It wont 'clarify' on it's own! The most fundamentally simple and intuitive model works. Give this a run and see;
Forget 'ether'. (All space does is 'condense' matter anyway). Space is just occupied by the diffuse interplanetary/ interstellar medium (ISM) we've found; Lots of gas, all in relative motion, but mainly free...
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Lorraine,
Clear pictures only come from testing models. It wont 'clarify' on it's own! The most fundamentally simple and intuitive model works. Give this a run and see;
Forget 'ether'. (All space does is 'condense' matter anyway). Space is just occupied by the diffuse interplanetary/ interstellar medium (ISM) we've found; Lots of gas, all in relative motion, but mainly free electrons so lets just consider it as that for now.
Forget 'time' as well. It doesn't "exist" in the same way as anything else. Only emission sequences we call 'signals' exist! Those can be changed in the same way as all other emissions which we DON'T decide to call 'time signals'! (i.e. wavelength and optical axis, and thus frequency can be changed at what we normally consider as a 'lens', or a refractive plane). We know there are more electrons closer to large 'bodies', at rest with the body. Period. Nothing the slightest bit exotic or unintuitive then, OK?
The other thing space is is BIG! Take the particles of a glass lens and spread them out over 2 parsecs, they do the same job as the lens but over the G BIGGER distance, because of 'Compton/Raman scattering', essentially absorption and re-emission. I just invoke what we find in optics; that all re-emission is at c in each electron's rest frame. That includes YOUR rest frame! but not till the signal
arrives of course!. How could it do so earlier?!
Now if you check you'll find that when consistently applied the above is ALL WE NEED to explain ALL OBSERVED PHYSICS! It's been a hopeless intellectual failure to get lost in the wonderland interpretations of dilating time and spooky faster than light propagation. If you can find ANY physical effect which you can't seem to resolve with the simple intuitive rules above just ask and I'll show you how.
Why not try falsifying the model? If you just 'wait' until you "get a clear idea" instead then I promise it will never come. That's what John Bell called 'sleepwalking'.
Best wishes
Peter
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 17:16 GMT
Tom,
"one would be able to measure the short range interaction of light with matter and compare it to the long range interaction of light with matter."
If ever there was an oxymoron that's it! As all physics is local there can be NO "long range interaction of light with matter" by definition.
We can't 'see' light that hasn't yet arrived Tom. That's the great intellectual failure. We may 'think' we can see a light pulse passing through a cloud chamber, but that's due to the 'infinite stupidity' Einstein identified. We only see light scattered off particles sequentially.
If you drive past the cloud chamber in your car at c it DOES NOT increase the propagation speed of the light in the chamber by v! Yet if you measure (video) the event from your car you will find APPARENT speed increase v. You will get that finding via the light signals
from the particles propagating at c (and c/n through the glass in your car windows).
The logic is simple and intuitive once the 'doctrinal blinkers' are removed.
That's why we measure quasar jets at up to 46c. It's because we're measuring using trigonometry not any interaction with the quasar jet itself. That is 'discrete field' dynamics. Light propagates at
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 18:04 GMT
" ... apologists can always seem to find 'rational' reasons why each and every further act of destruction and damage ..."
Lorraine, apologists and rationalists are polar opposites.
In the vernacular, "rational" may mean "reasonable", and opinions can differ as to what is reasonable; however, the technical meaning is "correspondent to fact." In science, the demonstration of fact by physical events is independent of reason and belief. One cannot reason or believe facts into existence. One can only test abstract theory against physical result.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 18:11 GMT
"If ever there was an oxymoron that's it! As all physics is local there can be NO 'long range interaction of light with matter' by definition."
That's not what locality means. Let's try this:
Since you say you are an astronomer, tell us whether the light that reaches your telescope lens and your eye from say, Alpha Centauri, causes to happen now what you see happening in the lens.
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John Brodix Merryman replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 18:53 GMT
Tom,
"what you see happening in the lens."
If I may add a response, to a large extent, it does. The very nature of a lens and the reception of a signal affects what information is extracted from it. For instance, would you be getting the exact same information, if your lens was along the exact same line of sight, but much closer, or further away? What if you used a radio telescope, rather than an optical one?
Regards,
John M
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 20, 2014 @ 19:47 GMT
Tom,
I axiomise a more consistent definition of 'local' which has spatial limits, as those of Einstein's 'small space s' in motion within 'larger space S'. 'Domain limits' are also logically essential in astrophysics, and certainly in optics.
John is correct. We must distinguish between the characteristics of signals emitted from afar, which have no relationship at all with our lenses until they arrive, and the signal parameters after interaction. It doesn't take much knowledge of refraction to understand the differences.
Your own definition of 'Local', which is the ancient one, never allowed logical consistency free of apparent paradox and anomalies. That's it's problem. If you insist no other definition is possible then I cite YOU as one example you asked for; of doctrine overriding objectivity. Consider local as being within each physically REAL and spatially limit system of matter with a common kinetic bulk state K. Say a Galaxy. All other galaxies have different relative states K'-K^n. Light PROPAGATES at c within EACH (wrt it's centre of mass rest frame).
That means EM waves change speed constantly to maintain LOCAL c. Or do you suggest some way electrons will all re-emit at whatever *different* speed they wish!
I'm sure the simple intuitive logic won't be beyond you once you use objective not doctrinal analysis.
Best wishes
Peter
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 00:16 GMT
"The very nature of a lens and the reception of a signal affects what information is extracted from it."
No it doesn't.
"For instance, would you be getting the exact same information, if your lens was along the exact same line of sight, but much closer, or further away?"
No, but not because the lens is affecting what you see. The distance change affects your position in spacetime relative to the event, so that the event is witnessed in a different spacetime location.
"What if you used a radio telescope, rather than an optical one?"
Visible light and radio waves are on the same continuous spectrum of electromagnetism. The medium doesn't change the information.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 00:18 GMT
"I axiomise a more consistent definition of 'local' which has spatial limits ..."
I axiomize that if you make up your own definitions, you can make them fit any conclusion you wish.
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 01:32 GMT
Tom,
What if the lens is part of a two slit experiment?
What if one lens is moving at a high rate of velocity compared to one that is at rest?
Regards,
John M
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 02:13 GMT
Tom,
"causes to happen now what you see happening in the lens."
What happens now is that you are seeing/detecting this information. There is no backward causation to the event of that light's emission, but the release of that energy and its absorption are two distinct events. Maybe there was no change to the light, since it is traveling at C, but you do not "see" the entire "spectrum of electromagnetism," only what your process of detection registers.
Regards,
John M
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 02:40 GMT
"What if one lens is moving at a high rate of velocity compared to one that is at rest?"
John, as I have told you repeatedly, you wouldn't waste your time with these questions if you actually studied relativity, instead of arbitrarily assigning it some meaning that you only imagine. The real story is much more fascinating than what you think.
At rest
relative to what? The observer is at rest relative to the telescope lens. Because the velocity of the light that reaches the lens is independent of the velocity of any observers, two observers in relative motion may not agree on the order of events -- though each observer's result is valid in their own inertial frame,
because the speed of light is absolute.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 02:43 GMT
" ... the release of that energy and its absorption are two distinct events."
Not to a photon, which is always emitted at the speed of light! Sheesh.
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 09:04 GMT
Tom,
The speed of light is absolute and there is no "passage of time" for the light, but that is because its external activity is the absolute which is what creates time in the first place!
The reason the clock has stopped for light is because it has no internal activity, yet its external activity is the basis for all else. Such factors as the order of events are information, just like the spectrum of the light is information and the velocity of the observer can shift that spectrum, just as the position can affect the ordering of events.
Light is only present and at that fundamental level there is only what is present. Information/form is what is being created and dissolved, as the energy of that light is conserved. Time is an effect of the creation and dissolution of that form.
What the observer "sees" is information carried by the light. Location, such as the position of Alfa Centauri, its chemical composition, as in the spectral lines, etc. are what are being seen, ie. the information. Even the existence of this star is not eternal, but it does persist, creating the effect of time.
Regards,
John M
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 10:38 GMT
Tom,
The problem with relativity isn't the math, but the interpretation.
Obviously the light is the basis of the events, not the events being the basis of the light. There is no blocktime of days physically stretched out along a dimension f time. It is the sun shining on a spinning planet which creates the effect of days, not the existence of these events, called days, that are the basis of the sun shining on this planet. The light which radiated out from the sun during the course of yesterday isn't locked in some time warp. What wasn't absorbed and possibly reradiated, is now expanding out to those distant stars.
This way, there is no problem explaining why time is asymmetrical, since the inertia of the energy is the basis of time in the first place.
Regards,
John M
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 10:52 GMT
Lorraine,
"what is "rational" is a subjective view" ?? Don't confuse the subjective perspective of a person, a group, or a nation with that of the whole mankind.
You correctly understood that the randomness of dice does not contradict to causality. Therefore I don't see your definition of creation justified.
Eckard
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 14:00 GMT
"The problem with relativity isn't the math, but the interpretation."
Relativity is mathematically complete; it is not open to interpretation. There is no "problem."
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 14:40 GMT
Eckard,
Re "I don't see your definition of creation justified":
I am saying that the physical outcome of throwing dice is 100% consequential : there has been a smooth law-of-nature-lawful change in the numbers associated with the parameters of the situation.
But the physical outcome of quantum decoherence is not 100% consequential : there has been an abrupt change in one of the numbers associated with the parameters of the situation. This abrupt change has not been due to laws-of-nature.
A new non-consequential outcome has been CREATED by a particle, atom, molecule or living thing.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 15:36 GMT
Tom,
Of course it is mathematically complete, because it is, at its core, a tautology. Light is the basis of both atomic structure and action, so using it as a scale affects measures of distance and duration equally.
Then again, epicycles were mathematically complete, because we are the center of our view of the universe and there is no universal frame, other than a composite of all such frames. It is just that a geocentric frame is a sub-unit of the solar frame, which is a subunit of the galactic frame, which is a sub-unit of the cluster frame, etc.
Once we began to understand the universe wasn't fundamentally geocentric, there was no need for giant cosmic gearwheels to explain this cosmic order. Just as we will eventually discover there is no need for the "fabric of spacetime" to explain the relationship between light and mass, once we begin to understand time is not fundamentally a sequence of events, but is the process of these events forming and dissolving.
Duration is not a dimensional projection external to the present, but is the state of the present between the creation and dissolution of various marking events.
Regards,
John M
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 18:16 GMT
"Of course it is mathematically complete, because it is, at its core, a tautology."
Only linguistic statements can be tautologies, not physics. Mathematically complete means that the precise and non-ambiguous predictions of a theory (such as Newtonian physics, and relativity) are shown to precisely correspond to physical phenomena. You, Peter, and others are simply making up your own unfalsifiable 'solutions' to problems that have already been solved in falsifiable terms. Time to move on.
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 18:43 GMT
Tom,
So basically we have to just shut up and accept blocktime, wormholes, multiworlds, symmetric time, expanding universes, multiverses, dark energy, inflation, string theory, etc?
Sorry, but I haven't another universe or alternate reality to move on to, so I have to press on with coherent explanations for this one.
"Duration is not a dimensional projection external to the present, but is the state of the present between the creation and dissolution of various marking events."
Regards,
John M
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 18:53 GMT
Lorraine and Tom,
You might wonder that I see your issues related to each other via the question of chosen perspectives. Tom reiterates that SR is mathematically complete.
I agree with John on that elapsed time is different from the abstracted notion of time that extends from negative eternity to positive eternity which ignores the point of what John calls actuality. Having made one-sided physics abstract and then mathematically complete, one cannot expect the belonging mathematics correctly reflecting physical reality.
As one can make a picture of a dog but one does not get the other way round an actual dog from this picture, time in the perspective of physical actuality is not in a bijection to ordinary abstract time.
Lorraine was certainly shocked when I left our common perspective and reminded of Muslim suicide bombers who were likewise believing to save the world as do ecologist who are liberating animals. I maintain that humanity should steer its future from its own perspective, not from a questionable because subjective fictitious perspective of nature/God.
Not just Lorraine seems to hope that the idealized quanta will justify the belief in some sort of non-causality.
Eckard
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 21:20 GMT
"Sorry, but I haven't another universe or alternate reality to move on to ..."
John, I think you've already moved on to an alternate reality, in your head.
The things you are so incredulous about, have objective connections to physics.
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John Brodix Merryman replied on Sep. 21, 2014 @ 23:02 GMT
Tom,
I certainly realize I'm outside the mainstream. In my reality, the only consequence of misreading nature is simple physical pain, not the ostracism of my peers.
Eckard,
Yes, nature will do as it will, whatever the beliefs of our varied communities. It is quite interesting though, to gain some sense of where these various social entities are going. Much as the physics community has convinced itself there can be no alternative to whatever model it settles on, the political and economic powers that be are determined to quash any alternatives to their world view. The result is the same, an increasingly brittle and out of touch elite, over a confused and disillusioned populace that has to deal with a reality not being reflected in what they are being told. It is the calm before the storm.
Regards,
John M
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 10:44 GMT
Tom,
JM "The very nature of a lens and the reception of a signal affects what information is extracted from it." TR.."No it doesn't."
So in your universe there's no refraction, diffraction, KRR, aberration etc. etc. That's nonsense. It seems a course in basic optics would benefit your understanding significantly Tom.
Also surprisingly you suggest the axioms of Relativity; "are...
view entire post
Tom,
JM "The very nature of a lens and the reception of a signal affects what information is extracted from it." TR.."No it doesn't."
So in your universe there's no refraction, diffraction, KRR, aberration etc. etc. That's nonsense. It seems a course in basic optics would benefit your understanding significantly Tom.
Also surprisingly you suggest the axioms of Relativity; "are not open to interpretation." Have you never heard of Lakatos? Discoveries such as of Neptune clearly confirm that ALL theories have two parts. In the recent words of Lahav and Massimi (A&G June'14) there is;
1) A 'hard core' (namely the main theoretical assumptions...) and
2) An appended "protective belt" of auxiliary assumptions (and) hypotheses that are often used to protect the main the main theoretical assumptions from falsification. (or 'interpretations').
Lakatos showed a "negative heuristic" restrains attack on the hardcore with the circular belt of interpretation. In SR only the Postulates are the core theoretical axioms. The rest is interpretation, and can even be entirely wrong without affecting the core axioms. YOU may not consider the contents of this 'belt' at large, but Einstein certainly did and they surely must be. (see also for instance the Duhem-Quine thesis; Gillies 1993)
Back to infinity; My definition of 'local' is far closer to the core axioms by being spatially constrained. The inertial system represented by a galaxy moving as a bulk system through the local group ('K') is physically limited by the outermost matter in that state of motion; the halo, which re scatters all EM radiation to the local rest frame c. What could be simpler and more locally real.
Anyone who can't countenance that possibility and analyse it objectively is then prime example of blinkered 'a priori doctrine' ruling logic and science! Your objections have only been on that basis, which would make Relativity unfalsifiable so valueless against other theories making the same predictions. Do you also have any 'scientific' falsification to offer?
Best wishes
Peter
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 10:57 GMT
To,
Re; 'Mathematically complete.' "You, Peter, and others are simply making up your own unfalsifiable 'solutions' to problems that have already been solved in falsifiable terms."
Au contraire. As I've shown it's you making SR's interpretations 'unfalsifiable'. As my model predicts the same results found but with a physical mechanism it's far MORE falsifiable!
"Mathematically complete" of itself means little in terms of modelling nature as many other algorithms can give the same results.
Einsten's final (1952) paper shows he well knew that. Did you ever see him invoke a space-time diagram? This may shock, but he didn't.
Things that don't adapt die.
Best wishes
Peter
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 14:28 GMT
Eckard,
Re "Lorraine was certainly shocked":
Sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn't shocked. But I think it's ridiculous to compare "ecologist who are liberating animals" with "Muslim suicide bombers".
Re your belief that reality/the universe is 100% consequential:
If this is true, you can sit back and relax; what will be will be: your personal actions are 100% a consequence of the past, and whatever you do will make no difference to the already set-in-stone future.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 14:36 GMT
" It seems a course in basic optics would benefit your understanding significantly Tom."
It would, eh? The only understanding of optics that special relativity requires is that light travels in a straight line. Of course, that's just my unenlightened, troglodyte 'interpretation.'
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 14:44 GMT
"I've shown it's you making SR's interpretations 'unfalsifiable'. As my model predicts the same results found but with a physical mechanism it's far MORE falsifiable!"
Special relativity begs no 'interpretation.' Claiming something is 'more falsifiable' is in fact like saying that some attribute is 'more perfect.' Your adding a superfluous imagined 'physical mechanism' is absurd on the face of it -- as Einstein demonstrated in the case of luminiferous ether, in physics things that are not differentiable are identical -- i.e., the ether is identical to the vacuum. You've only falsified yourself.
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 15:42 GMT
Tom,
As you say SR can't handle refraction then it's false or incomplete. Correspondence with nature is a
requirement. But it's only YOUR
'interpretation' that can't do so, no matter how many in the throng follow it.
Unless the surrounding explanations are recognised as 'interpretation' and separated from core theory then they fail together.
Your suggestion of 'perfect' is flawed. We can obtain any answer in many ways Lets say Einstein hypothesised '6'. An algorithm stating 4+5+6 divided by 5, x 2 = 6 may well be perfect. Thousands may have it embedded in their brain and follow it as a religion. However if we find that nature has a simpler way and actually just adds 4 and 2 then the solutions are equivalent but the second gives insight into reality.
We can then escape this self imposed theoretical rut and advance understanding of nature, which is after all our aim.
You suggest; If one of two people move towards a pair of photons approaching from a distant galaxy, then the one which will eventually reach the moving observer effectively changes speed to c wrt that observer from that instant.
The alternative is, that once the photons ARRIVE and interact with the moving observers they couple and are 're-scattered' at c in the local rest frame, exactly as we find in experimental optics.
One of us may perhaps need to keep a lookout for some men in white coats, and I'm pretty sure it isn't me! I only have to watch for the 'thought police'!
Best wishes
Peter
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 16:17 GMT
"As you say SR can't handle refraction then it's false or incomplete."
Incredible. "As
I say"? Just what is it that
you don't understand about refraction such that it contradicts light traveling in a straight line? With every post, your rhetoric appears ever more desperate and absurd to me.
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John R. Cox replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 16:20 GMT
Horsefeathers! Pete,
You harp on wavelength then trot out a helix so you can just say any place on it is the 'start' of a wavelength to suit your purpose. The illusion of motion of a barber pole has been recognized and employed as an attention getting device by many cultures since Spot was a day old! What's your plan for 2020? Are you going to say, "see how smart I am to keep sucking these eggheads into a meaningless debate about a simple analytical geometric known!" Will the real Dr. Peter Jackson please stand up? jrc
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 16:32 GMT
" ... once the photons ARRIVE and interact with the moving observers they couple and are 're-scattered' at c in the local rest frame, exactly as we find in experimental optics."
What experiment is that?
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 17:31 GMT
jc,
If you read my essays you'll see I take great lengths to explain the helical path as the real 3D of what we 'see' represented in 2D as a wave. I've also consistently made that point in discussions. I'm desperately disappointed it's central importance seems to have still been entirely missed, or lost.
Many, including Einstein, and Bragg who expressed it well, have identified that we need to re-examine all we see and find familiar with new eyes. I identify the apparent motion encapsulated in a barbers pole is typical.
Bragg said "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them" Einstein said we don't yet understand 1,000th of 1% of what nature HAS REVEALED to us! I suggest that all the time we assume we know everything about what we see, we'll remain in this theoretical entrenchment.
Do you really assume or believe we don't need to further question the apparently familiar?
Best wishes
Peter
peter
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Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 17:52 GMT
Tom,
So refraction 'doesn't contradict' light traveling in straight lines! Yet you suggest MY; "rhetoric appears ever more desperate and absurd", and that it's ME who needs to study optics (again).
Fascinating argument. Are all those infinite geodesics crammed onto the face of a prism?
And to light "scattered' at c in the local rest frame, exactly as we find in experimental optics." you ask; "What experiment is that?"
Well if we include c/n in the case of dielectrics of n>1 I believe it is actually every single optical experiment ever carried out with measurement in the local propagating frame. Indeed those findings consistently bear out the postulates of one A Einstein from 100 years ago.
I certainly accept other interpretations are possible, but none so consistent I suggest. If you'd like to point to me any occasion Einstein himself invoked a space-time diagram I'd be interested.
Best wishes
Peter
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 22:40 GMT
"I certainly accept other interpretations are possible, but none so consistent I suggest."
Any interpretation of
anything is
possible. It is extremely elementary that no interpretation of relativity is
necessary. Any superfluous private meaning that you concoct in your mind is meaningless to the theory.
"If you'd like to point to me any occasion Einstein himself invoked a space-time diagram I'd be interested."
Peter, I'm thinking that either you don't know what a space-time diagram is, or you are thinking only of the ubiquitous pictures of Minkowski light cones. FYI, Einstein many times referred to and wrote down the metric tensor of Riemannian geometry -- for general relativity -- to identify the 16 points (10 of which are non-redundant) of a 4 dimension spacetime that is derived from ten individual metrics of special relativity in curved spacetime, combined into one matrix. (And no, Akinbo, that does not mean that light travels in other than a straight line; the model is the same as the Pythagorean theorem, written in 4 dimensions instead of 2.)
I think I'm done. I'm running out of ways to explain this elementary physics. Safe to say, it is
not controversial.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 23:13 GMT
"So refraction 'doesn't contradict' light traveling in straight lines! Yet you suggest MY; 'rhetoric appears ever more desperate and absurd', and that it's ME who needs to study optics (again)."
Actually, I'm starting to wonder whether you studied it the first time, since this nonsense is so easily falsified by as simple a phenomenon as the illusion of a stick that appears bent in the water. Light arriving from the water is measured later at the detector (eye) than than from the air -- as a
direct consequence of the straight pathway of light.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 23, 2014 @ 05:26 GMT
Lorraine,
We agree at least in the rejection of fatalism. Are you aware of the logical consequence that we are therefore at variance with the view of Ben Akiba, Parmenides, Zeno, Einstein and ultimately all those who believe in a created finite universe of spacetime? I am just trusting in causality (you called it consequentiality). It doesn't bother me that my free will is the sum of influences. What might confuse you is simply a question of perspective again.
In the thread "Q&A with Paul Davies: What is Time?" I yesterday briefly summarized my suggestion for an alternative. Only in case of compelling evidence for SUSY, BB, and the like I would feel forced to rethink my criticism.
What about your inability to take the belief of Muslims and the patriotism of Kamikaze pilots seriously. I could imagine being likewise indoctrinated. To you they are performing horrible crimes. From their perspective they are even ready to give their life for an ideal. Fanatics act on an irrational basis. This is also true for those who feel entitled to protect nature by all means instead of less egocentrically accepting their responsibility as part of mankind. You must not have other Gods beside this obligation.
Eckard
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 23, 2014 @ 14:53 GMT
Eckard,
There is the question of what words mean. Oxford dictionaries defines "free will" as "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate". "The sum of influences" is NOT free will: I think you are calling it "free will" because you yourself are confused : )
I don't know what to think about time (or space). Certainly I can't agree with blocktime, because that's fatalistic. I think time maybe has to do with the changing information experienced by individuals i.e. the subjective experience of individual particles, atoms, molecules, living things; and space maybe has to do with an interrelationship of individual information with the information of all other individuals. Maybe without what you call "material traces" in the brain, there is no "past" at all. I don't know about "elapsed time": as far as I can see, the only possible metronome for time is an abrupt change of number (e.g. due to quantum decoherence), working together with "a natural point of reference, the actual moment" (experienced by an individual subject).
I think suicide bombers probably have rigid unfree minds. I think environmentalists are not dying for an ideal, but living and working for a reality that they love: they are the antithesis of egocentric.
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 23, 2014 @ 17:45 GMT
Lorraine,
The notions past and future are originally categories, which include anything that either happened or is expected to happen, respectively. In contrast to the latter category, the past cannot be changed.
Something that happened did objectively belong to the reality. Does it matter at all whether or not someone is aware of it? No. Past events are reasonably understood as indisputable and preceding the current moment. Subjective experience can just provide a more or less incomplete picture of what is trusted as having objectively existed in the past. Ask yourself. Isn’t it definitely an objective fact that you were born before 2012, i.e. within what is now the past? Given your father was not yet known, then one could him expect to be identified in the future by means of an also objective common with you genetic trace. Material traces cannot only be found in the brain but everywhere.
Why is your view different? I am tempted to put you, Sabine Hossenfelder and many others into the drawer of mainstream idealists while I see myself rather guided by unbiased critical reasoning. Accordingly, I also tend to object to the metaphor of clicks from a metronome as demonstrating what you believe: the discreteness of time. The hypothetical Planck time is so small that there is no reason to abandon the notion of continuously divisible time. Isn’t the question more relevant whether the measured duration of an interval should be referred to its beginning or to its end?
Did you read what I wrote in Q&A? I strongly disagree with the idea that subjectivity, perception, and psychology is responsible for what is called the arrow and the flow of time. Davies is seemingly correct when he argues that time cannot flow within time. However, as do you, he ignores what I am trying to explain: Conventional time is not the original physical quantity. The clock effectively reads elapsed time.
Eckard
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Lorraine Ford replied on Sep. 26, 2014 @ 14:44 GMT
Eckard,
In my previous post, I was merely musing and speculating about time.
Here is what I can say definitely about time and space:
Whereas mass and charge can be measured and assigned numeric values, there are no actual "coordinate points of spacetime" (as Tom put it in the Why Quantum? forum) that can be measured and assigned numeric values. In fact there are no "coordinate points of spacetime" at all, measurable or non-measurable.
So what is space and what is time if they don't have coordinate points?
Cheers,
Lorraine
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 28, 2014 @ 04:25 GMT
Lorraine,
As did Kant, we may attribute belonging position and time to anything that happened or is expected to happen. If we follow mathematical physicists and ignore that their model must never be equated to reality, then there is no distinction between past and future but block time.
You are quite right the spacetime of Einstein and Minkowski is less plausible although it is often illustrated in 3D (x,y, and ict) by cones of past and future. Minkowski presumably died from appendix because he failed to acceptably interpret this.
I prefer considering in a xy plane just the ordinate y for radius r and the abscissa x for ict. Then the two lines y = x and y = - x are boundaries that include so called world lines, i.e. all possible motion with speed smaller than c, as did the surfaces of the two cones.
Anyway, the forbidden area (or space) outside is quite understandable: Einstein imagined that time/space are spreading like the radii of an explosion/implosion. This idea was inspired by a fiction writer Aaron Bernstein, was mathematically a consequence of Einstein's Poincaré synchronization intending to justify Lorentz transformation, and it gave rise to use non-Euclidean geometry.
Mathematical constructs of such kind are of course no measurable physical quantities. Spatial and temporal distances are measurable against natural zeros. Spatial coordinates require to arbitrarily choose a point and an orthogonal frame of reference including e.g. the positive directions of x, y, and z.
There are two possible time scales: Abstract time refers to an arbitrarily chosen event. The alternative scale of measurable time refers instead to the current moment. The abstract time is permanently shifting relative to the current moment. In this sense, time flows except for within records and models.
Eckard
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