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I am also interested in cosmological models that do not rely on a big bang the way it is normally presented as Crawford does in the link you provided.
These models sometimes call into question dark matter, dark energy and the constancy of physical "constants" such as the speed of light and gravitation.
Here is another paper by Wun-Yi Shu http://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1007/1007.1750v1.pdf. I have only read the introduction.
I lost another long post because of the idiotic setup of this forum. I am about done with this goat hole. It does not matter if I login first or not, it always tells me I do not have permission to post when I try to send my post, and I have to go through some other crap. Sometimes I have lost the post in the process. The people who run this outfit need to explain themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Anyway, that was a great link. Right now I do not feel like trying to recreate my detailed post, so I will let it go for now.
desiresjab you should take this up with someone. You should not need to log in every time: I never "log in" here. Your post are clearly expressed and valuable. And in an interesting way this thread touches on a similar discussion in the astronomy thread.
It doesn't seem like I used to have this irritating and sometimes destructive problem. Putting a lot of thought, time and effort into a post only to have it lost because of a consistent complication is unnerving. It could have with something to do with how long the post takes me to write. This one is fast. I will try iot and see if it goes through without the rigmarole.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreamwoven
That went through without complications. Something is timing me out, apparently, making it necessary for me to login again too quickly.Quote:
Originally Posted by desiresjab
I can read some higher mathematics decently, kind of like some people might be able to read a Portugese newspaper but are unable to speak or understand it fluently at ground level where it is spoken. The gentleman in the link takes great pains to show that under his model we live in a spherical universe in 3-space with both radiation and dust.
Since I am not intimately familiar with the notation of this exact subject, it is like skipping over a word you don't know in the Portugese newspaper and filling it in from context. You never know what a bracket instead of regular parentheses might mean, for it has different meanings in different areas of mathematics, and of course what is in this paper is not pure math but mathematical physics, which has some notation conventions of its own.
The universe is expanding in Shu's model, but had no beginning and has no end, and the rate of expansion accelerates and de-accelerates by an unknown mechanism, vaguely described (to me) as curvature pressure and radiation pressure.
Time is not constant in this model but a conversion factor which varies with the evolution of the universe, so other things like Plank's constant are also not constants. It is dazzling and I can only grasp some elemnts of it.
It appears even redshift is explained away as some kind of curvature pressure on photons. I am not sure if this means we are not really expanding but only appear to be doing so to ourselves, or if it actually matters to the model.
Powerful stuff, though. They are using the tools.
I only vaguely understand these papers. What they provide are prompts for ideas and if the ideas lead back to the papers a closer reading is warranted.
What I find interesting is Shu's willingness to consider that the speed of light and Big G are not constants. What does that mean? It means that there has not been adequate empirical evidence collected to establish that these two "constants" should be considered constant.
Shu's paper requires these to change. We now need empirical evidence to show that they actually do change. I think that data may be easy to come by. Rupert Sheldrake has been arguing that these are not constant for some time, especially Big G. Then we can ask if they are changing the way Shu predicts they should change.
However, I don't think replacing c and big G with functions of time is adequate. They are already constant functions of time and their values are determined in an ad hoc data fitting manner.
The only opinion I have is that guys like Shu live and work in a rarified atmosphere. Let's assume he is right. How many people on earth would be able to see his work and judge it fairly in minute detail? A mere handful. That is why these changes take so long--it still takes the few human beings who are capable to peer review the work. Then the dscovery has to be brought into play. This can take decades.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
This awful lag will be no more once cyborgs come on the scene. They will be able to evaluate discoveries with their immense computing power, and make human like judgements on their merits. Next, they will help get these discoveries into play in days rather than years. Humans are great, but it takes them too long to evaluate their own work and put their discoveries in play. Like many other aspects of human life, this lag is going to change and shorten to almost nothing in the near future.
Everything depends on us not wiping ourselves out, though. The whole structure is standing, with the greatest researchers at the top. The structure is a house of cards. It has been brought down partially many times, and mankind had to start building its research structure again. We have had it up for six hundred years. When it comes down, the highest research stops for the most part.
Probably the only thing a cyborg could do is validate is a mathematical proof.
I think you are right that it takes a few decades for knowledge to reach people like us unless it is our specialty field, but it has to reach our minds, not just our computers (or cyborgs).
One way to improve the flow of knowledge is to facilitate our networks which the internet helps to do. There is a book by Nicholas A. Christokas called "Connected: the surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives". He talks of three degrees of influence. To use this thread as an example, what we write influences each of us as well as anyone who happens to read it. That's level one. Each of us is connected to others. They are influenced even though they haven't read the thread. That's level two. Each of them are connected to others and those others are influenced even though they have never heard of Lit Net. That's level three. The influence gets weaker as one progresses to each level. The only way I can see cyborgs helping is if they improve the social networks in our lives.
I believe your first sentence is wrong, and I believe your second sentence is looking in the wrong direction.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Here's what I mean. The cyborg with quantum computing abilities could not only validate proofs, but quickly use them to search for further proofs. This is only the tip of the iceberg. With a top-down approach, it could almost instantly relate any new results in math to every field in science where they applied. No one but other cyborgs would have any chance at all of keeping up with the progress. At such a pace, the human mind by itself would lag exponmentially further behind.
Your second sentence looks in the wrong direction because the knowledge will never reach minions like you and me, only the results of it will, if we manage to stay in control of our cyborgs.
The ramifications are scary, because I do not see how it is possible for plain old human beings to stay in control for very long of machines that can out think them by an exponentially increasing margin.
For comfort, one could always imagine these powerful entities will forever remain subservient to their complacent human masters who are pale and fat and so not-very-smart. We can imagine they also will write the magazine articles which keep us up to date on recent progress in science and mathematics, we who will be no more than observers in this process. We had better hope our cyborgs desire fat, useless witnesses to their activities.
I agree that they could do more than validate proofs. Our computers currently provide us with similar aids. We do have to tell them what to do and when to start. However, I don't think they would have any more likelihood of taking over than the computers that provide climate control for our buildings would.
So, I'm not scared by any of this. Why? Because they are not conscious and so cannot make a choice to dominate us or not. How do I know they are not conscious? Because they follow algorithms and so their unconsciousness follows from Searle's Chinese Room argument.
True they are not conscious, but we can expect something in the not too distant future that acts like consciousness and can pass the Turing test. Once we lose our ability to distingusih their simulated consciousness from the real thing, then for all practical purposes, they are conscious, or at least we cannot prove otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Entities on the battlefield of mixed meat and silicon, with enhanced sensory and computing capabilities, will make humans obsolete fast on the battlefield. Similarly, they will make us obsolete everywhere in normal life, useless in war, research and technology, good for only politics and religion.
Do not overlook the key--that the new beings of meat and metal may not have true consciousness, but will have such sophisticated software that telling the difference will become impossible. Even their software is written by other cyborg specialists. They act just like humans and seem to have the same motivations, the can get inspired apparently. They do the same things we do--breed, eat, think--they are better than us. Why would they keep us around, and how would we actually control entities like this without becoming one ourselves?
The global elite have set it up that our future we will be as a chemical society of pill takers for every ailment, imagined and real. Right out of Orwell. How these interests will conflict or meld with the machine interests, is yet to be played out. But I imagine the cyborgs will need plenty of chemical assistance to keep their chimerical systems functioning properly. They will be writing their own software and developing their own medicine. What is hard to grasp is how fast the human world can transform. Once the exponentiation sets in, they will develop so fast we will have no control. They will be indispensable in every walk of life, and humans will be quite dispensable, in fact useless.
I thought there already existed computers that passed the Turing test. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...andmark-trial/Quote:
Originally Posted by desiresjab
If they are not actually conscious they cannot make a choice to dominate us to not. However, humans, who are conscious, can make choices to use them in ways that may not be ethical.
Perhaps those of us who have smart phones today are already cyborgs.Quote:
Originally Posted by desiresjab
There you go. We can already not keep up with it. This was about a year ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Fooled into friendship with a computer would be something like being fooled into sex by a transvestite. The government could end up creating "friends" for us all, who counsel us and slyly steer us toward good citizenship and productivity.
Being fooled by one's government is nothing new.