Cosmology

[YesNo]

It is a question philosophy frames but cannot answer. Only science and math are good at answering the questions philosophers can pose but have no chance of answering. When it comes to real answers we can trust, they will work because they are repeatable in experimental form and formualtable in mathematical structures.

I was reading parts of Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman's "Quantum Mechanics The Theoretical Minimum What you need to know to start doing physics" last night. It is not easy to get repeatable answers especially if you want to know more than one thing at a time like the position and the momentum of a particle or the spin of a particle along two different axes.

They write that the statement, "The particle has position x and the particle has momentum p", is "completely meaningless (not even wrong)". (page 21)

But that is what I like about positivism. Physicists with that perspective take evidence seriously even if it is not repeatable.

If I let myself stray too far from this rock, the next thing you know I am standing knee deep in philosophy. After a conjecture must come the hunt for evidence, not more extrapolation on the conjecture, or that turns into the interminable arguing of philosophers instead of science. It all comes down to getting enough evidence into a working model. That is all we can do, that is all we know, and that is about it.

Although I tend to agree that one needs to keep evidence close at hand, none of us can stop believing (aka conjecturing, aka philosophizing). We are all knee deep in philosophy and some of us have waded into the deep end. Which I suppose means that we have lost the solid ground of evidence under our feet and have only reason to rely on.

The idea is immensely appealing, as many ideas are, and great for philosophical musings, a hippie paradise of Maharishi cosmic consciousness, a very loose idea that sprung to public awareness in mid 20th century. We all like it, but belief is a strong word. How do you say you can believe it? Isn't it, rather, what you would like to believe and lean towards?

The problem is everyone believes something. A deeper problem: some of us don't think we believe the facts we know are true.

I was thinking about the mathematical model E=mc^2.

From an engineer's perspective that model is useful and convenient in getting nuclear power plants to work.

From a philosophical perspective, (perhaps out in the deep end, but who knows?), this relationship between energy and mass suggests there may be a similarity and a non-dualistic (aka monistic) relationship between consciousness and matter. It doesn't help determine which side wins out, energy or mass, but at least the concepts of "energy" and "mass" are better defined than "consciousness" and "matter".

[desiresjab]

I was reading parts of Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman's "Quantum Mechanics The Theoretical Minimum What you need to know to start doing physics" last night. It is not easy to get repeatable answers especially if you want to know more than one thing at a time like the position and the momentum of a particle or the spin of a particle along two different axes.

They write that the statement, "The particle has position x and the particle has momentum p", is "completely meaningless (not even wrong)". (page 21)

But that is what I like about positivism. Physicists with that perspective take evidence seriously even if it is not repeatable.



Although I tend to agree that one needs to keep evidence close at hand, none of us can stop believing (aka conjecturing, aka philosophizing). We are all knee deep in philosophy and some of us have waded into the deep end. Which I suppose means that we have lost the solid ground of evidence under our feet and have only reason to rely on.



The problem is everyone believes something. A deeper problem: some of us don't think we believe the facts we know are true.

I was thinking about the mathematical model E=mc^2.

From an engineer's perspective that model is useful and convenient in getting nuclear power plants to work.

From a philosophical perspective, (perhaps out in the deep end, but who knows?), this relationship between energy and mass suggests there may be a similarity and a non-dualistic (aka monistic) relationship between consciousness and matter. It doesn't help determine which side wins out, energy or mass, but at least the concepts of "energy" and "mass" are better defined than "consciousness" and "matter".

Science keeps upping the ante. We used to study the temperature at which water boils and the rate at which an object falls near earth's surface. Look what we have done with quantum applications though we barely know our way around. We traveled to the moon without knowing what 90% of the stuff we were traveling through was. Applications and answers are farther apart in understanding than many people realize.

Paradigm shifts may have a somewhat constant period, for as our tools increase exponentially so does the difficulty of the questions we tackle. I say twenty years but a hundred and twenty or more would not be surprising if this paragraph is true.

[Dreamwoven]

I liked this End of Days item: http://www.rt.com/news/315849-myster...ta-rica-cloud/

[YesNo]

I liked this End of Days item: http://www.rt.com/news/315849-myster...ta-rica-cloud/

There is a blood moon coming up as well in about a week. I saw the last one. I hope I remember to watch this one before I get zapped by the end of time.

I understand that if the Higgs field collapsed we would all be dematerialized at the speed of light. It wouldn't be easy to give us any warning. I don't think it would hurt.

[YesNo]

Science keeps upping the ante. We used to study the temperature at which water boils and the rate at which an object falls near earth's surface. Look what we have done with quantum applications though we barely know our way around. We traveled to the moon without knowing what 90% of the stuff we were traveling through was. Applications and answers are farther apart in understanding than many people realize.

Paradigm shifts may have a somewhat constant period, for as our tools increase exponentially so does the difficulty of the questions we tackle. I say twenty years but a hundred and twenty or more would not be surprising if this paragraph is true.

Are you referring to the Apollo US space missions in the early 1970's? Some people think they were unmanned.

[desiresjab]

Are you referring to the Apollo US space missions in the early 1970's? Some people think they were unmanned.

Some people also think OJ was innocent and the world is six thousand years old.

The laughable evidence for the moon flight being a hoax was the flag that looked like it was blowing in a moon breeze, until these idiots learned it was made that way so that it would not droop straight down. Like anyone, these fools need real evidence to make their cases compelling. Not having it, however, has never stopped them, for they have Faith.

[YesNo]

You're old enough to know about OJ? I can still remember: "If the glove don't fit you must acquit."

In the movie Interstellar there is a scene where the main character is informed by school authorities that the Apollo missions were staged for political purposes. When the idea hits the movies it has become mainstream. We'll find out in a couple of decades when the classified documents go unclassified. It wouldn't surprise me if they were faked, but I can still remember when I first learned that people considered this a possibility. It took me two days to get used to the idea.

Even Newton believed the world was about 6000 years old. That mathematical model I think it is safe to say isn't true anymore.

[Dreamwoven]

It is easy to forget how threatened the US president felt when it looked very much as though the USSR was way ahead, with the first sputnik, first dog in space and first man in space, Gagarin. This was really big stuff. I remember seeing Gagarin at one of the London exhibitions shortly after this.. First to the moon became an American obsession and was a campaign promise from Kennedy, by the end of the 1960s. When did it happen? July 1969.

[YesNo]

What Yes/No is calling the two sides of a coin with consciousness and randomness, I am trying to roughly visualize more as a simple function expressing a relationship between consciousness and randomness with reality, F(c,r)=Z, where the dependent value Z is reality and dependent on two variables which act on each other.

Dualism hopes that reality is, and not only behaves like, some F(c,r)=Z machine. One might be able to build a mathematical model that provides correct predictions about the behavior of reality (such as Ptolemy's epicycles) without the model correctly describing what reality is (the earth "really" goes around the sun).

I've been an idealist for only a few years. Before that I would have thought people like George Berkeley were incredibly unrealistic. Today I still have a hard time with my intuition but I'm working on it, like any true believer, some might say, with a new theory to internalize. For example, I still like to see the world around me divided into those things able to act based on their choices (conscious agents or the "c" in your function) and those other things, the non-agents (the "r" in your function): unconscious matter out of which we design and build stuff like tables and sidewalks. But I'm working on it.

[YesNo]

It is easy to forget how threatened the US president felt when it looked very much as though the USSR was way ahead, with the first sputnik, first dog in space and first man in space, Gagarin. This was really big stuff. I remember seeing Gagarin at one of the London exhibitions shortly after this.. First to the moon became an American obsession and was a campaign promise from Kennedy, by the end of the 1960s. When did it happen? July 1969.

I vaguely remember Gagarin. Some say that mission was faked as well, but I know little about it. I remember being in elementary school and the teacher had us sitting around a TV watching the liftoff of some (probably Apollo) space mission. I had to go to the bathroom and missed seeing the actual event and was given a lecture for not being in the room.

[desiresjab]

I vaguely remember Gagarin. Some say that mission was faked as well, but I know little about it. I remember being in elementary school and the teacher had us sitting around a TV watching the liftoff of some (probably Apollo) space mission. I had to go to the bathroom and missed seeing the actual event and was given a lecture for not being in the room.

I remember standing outside with my dad and seeing Gagarin's point of light move across the sky.

Not that I would put it past ourselves or the Russians to attempt the hoax for political reasons, I just don't believe it happened, based on logic. Too many thousands would have to be involved in the coverup for too long for it to succeed. And not that I doubt the expertise of our intelligence agencies and propaganda arms at twisting exposure's wrist until it says uncle and actually turns into a benefit by discrediting the whistleblowers themselves, I just think our technological advances are real, and the 1969 moon landing was not an impractical task for 1969 technology, so our truth-bending machines were not needed to create false space flights.

There is a lot of outlandish conspiracy stuff that has gone or will go mainstream, to answer something from a prior post. Someone told me I can go on google maps and see physical space stations of aliens sitting right there on the moon. I haven't tried it, but I believe them, because they were laughing at the idea and indignant at the same time. Anyone can write goofy blogs or post doctored and edited videos that sound and look like actual in-flight, official video records of the event. That's why our guys or their guys could have done it in 1969 if they had to, because regular folks with made up theories are even capable of it these days.

[YesNo]

Just to play devil's advocate, if the only claim is that the missions were unmanned, then you could have seen Gagarin's point of light and people would have seen the liftoffs (unless they were in the bathroom) of the Apollo rockets. I can image something that could serve as a retroreflector could have been deposited and moon stuff picked up without a human being actually handling them. The photos we are shown of fancy retroflectors as evidence we really, really went to the moon could have been taken on Earth.

But I don't care either way. I don't think there are aliens on the Moon's far side. Maybe on Ceres? (Just kidding. ) I would like to know what those bright spots are.

[desiresjab]

Just to play devil's advocate, if the only claim is that the missions were unmanned, then you could have seen Gagarin's point of light and people would have seen the liftoffs (unless they were in the bathroom) of the Apollo rockets. I can image something that could serve as a retroreflector could have been deposited and moon stuff picked up without a human being actually handling them. The photos we are shown of fancy retroflectors as evidence we really, really went to the moon could have been taken on Earth.

But I don't care either way. I don't think there are aliens on the Moon's far side. Maybe on Ceres? (Just kidding. ) I would like to know what those bright spots are.

Just to respond to devil's advocacy.

It just isn't that much harder to do the manned flight than what you suggest. In fact, robot technology to gather moon samples may have been slightly beyond 1969 technology. Might as well have a man aboard. It's easier.

Also. I assume that Sally Ride and all the other supposedly dead astronauts who died in falsely manned flights, are enjoying pensions under false names in something like the witness protection program scattered across the U.S.A.

We don't know what an alien is. It is hard to completely disbelieve in something which is scientifically quite feasible in every way. There are more things under heaven and earth, Yes/No, than your philosophy has ever dreamed of.

Taking one step to the left, I would be able to assume that life as we know it is a tiny strip of life's actual possibilities and manifestations. To me, any form consciousness would be life. If it is conscious, it is alive, whether it has a body or not. Not only is anything possible, anything will be, if you take Shakespeare the way I do on this point.

You want miracles? I would have to consider it a miracle if there were no other life in the universe. I say universe because we are sure that exists, whereas we don't know yet (or maybe forever) if the multiverse does. I think infinite enfoldment of emergent properties means as much to me as it can, and needs only a single universe to be so anyway. Some of it is mere definition. If we discovered new universes, they would simply be parts of a new and larger single universe with us. The new universe might include a host of new schools of physics instead of the single one we believe in presently. Maybe I should make that the two we presently believe in. The two we believe will presently be one. Look at all that belief.

Infinite enfoldment of emergent properties outstrips the most vigorous imagination in its real output. Sensitivity to initial conditions produces infinite variety. Infinite variety of life is the possibility.

To say I believe it, would be to go too far, in fact mad. There is just something awfully curious about our being here at all, in the first place, that gives one pause to adopt almost anything at moments of deep reflection. There may as well be forms of consciousness we have no chance of ever communicating with, and others we can but barely, and others more like us somewhere in the vast reaches. There may as well be. Shakespeare says there are. There is room for everything to be true.

If there is something like infinite enfoldment of emergent properties operating in the universe. Consciousness may turn out to be an emergent property from quantum mechanics that leaks into our scale. It may turn out that consciousness is irrepressible and breaks out many places on any scale, likes leaks in the Dutch boy's dike. Consciousness might have potential at any ordinality of scale or potency, from approaching infinitesimal to approaching infinity.

Given this, even our amazing film and science fiction industries would be helpless to compete with the possibiliies for life forms that actually exist or have potential to.

It is nice to dream and speculate. That is part of the reason I love literature as much as science & math. The human mind feeds on more than abstract rumination. Knowing the difference between belief and feeling is an important discrimination for the philosopher, though it will not necessarily make a difference to the effectiveness of the poet or even the mathematician. What I believe and what I feel share territory but are not one. Damn, I am not mad enough.

[YesNo]

Just to respond to devil's advocacy.

It just isn't that much harder to do the manned flight than what you suggest. In fact, robot technology to gather moon samples may have been slightly beyond 1969 technology. Might as well have a man aboard. It's easier.

Also. I assume that Sally Ride and all the other supposedly dead astronauts who died in falsely manned flights, are enjoying pensions under false names in something like the witness protection program scattered across the U.S.A.

The skepticism that I think has some validity is only directed toward the manned missions during the space race. It does not include what Sally Ride did.

We don't know what an alien is. It is hard to completely disbelieve in something which is scientifically quite feasible in every way. There are more things under heaven and earth, Yes/No, than your philosophy has ever dreamed of.

Taking one step to the left, I would be able to assume that life as we know it is a tiny strip of life's actual possibilities and manifestations. To me, any form consciousness would be life. If it is conscious, it is alive, whether it has a body or not. Not only is anything possible, anything will be, if you take Shakespeare the way I do on this point.

I do not think consciousness needs a body either. Also I assume there are other forms of consciousness, perhaps some monitoring us right now, out there. I don't think the Ceres bright spots are an example of them, but perhaps we will find out later this year.

You want miracles? I would have to consider it a miracle if there were no other life in the universe. I say universe because we are sure that exists, whereas we don't know yet (or maybe forever) if the multiverse does. I think infinite enfoldment of emergent properties means as much to me as it can, and needs only a single universe to be so anyway. Some of it is mere definition. If we discovered new universes, they would simply be parts of a new and larger single universe with us. The new universe might include a host of new schools of physics instead of the single one we believe in presently. Maybe I should make that the two we presently believe in. The two we believe will presently be one. Look at all that belief.

Actually, I don't want miracles. A miracle assumes there is an unconscious material substance under deterministic laws. These laws are violated by the miracle implying the existence of something superior to the unconscious matter. That is dualism. I don't believe in unconscious matter nor in determinism. So I don't need miracles.

The problem with emergent properties is that it implies reductionism. That would be my objection to Thomas Nagel's panpsychism. This is not to say that reductionist theories are not useful as models, but reductionism limits our possibilities to what can be found at the quantum level. Then one adds on a mechanism by which a new form can emerge from simpler forms. That mechanism, because it is a "mechanism", I find suspect.

Infinite enfoldment of emergent properties outstrips the most vigorous imagination in its real output. Sensitivity to initial conditions produces infinite variety. Infinite variety of life is the possibility.

I don't understand this, but it may not matter.

To say I believe it, would be to go too far, in fact mad. There is just something awfully curious about our being here at all, in the first place, that gives one pause to adopt almost anything at moments of deep reflection. There may as well be forms of consciousness we have no chance of ever communicating with, and others we can but barely, and others more like us somewhere in the vast reaches. There may as well be. Shakespeare says there are. There is room for everything to be true.

I agree with this especially about there being something "awfully curious about our being here at all". We take our existences far, far too much for granted.

If there is something like infinite enfoldment of emergent properties operating in the universe. Consciousness may turn out to be an emergent property from quantum mechanics that leaks into our scale. It may turn out that consciousness is irrepressible and breaks out many places on any scale, likes leaks in the Dutch boy's dike. Consciousness might have potential at any ordinality of scale or potency, from approaching infinitesimal to approaching infinity.

I like the idea about consciousness leaking through the dike of unconscious matter. I don't believe there is a dike there at all, but it does make one sense that there is a lot more hidden than we realize.

Given this, even our amazing film and science fiction industries would be helpless to compete with the possibiliies for life forms that actually exist or have potential to.

It is nice to dream and speculate. That is part of the reason I love literature as much as science & math. The human mind feeds on more than abstract rumination. Knowing the difference between belief and feeling is an important discrimination for the philosopher, though it will not necessarily make a difference to the effectiveness of the poet or even the mathematician. What I believe and what I feel share territory but are not one. Damn, I am not mad enough.

Neither am I mad enough. Maybe some day.

[desiresjab]

The skepticism that I think has some validity is only directed toward the manned missions during the space race. It does not include what Sally Ride did.

Some ride, some don't.

I do not think consciousness needs a body either. Also I assume there are other forms of consciousness, perhaps some monitoring us right now, out there. I don't think the Ceres bright spots are an example of them, but perhaps we will find out later this year.

Since we may not be able to recognize them, they can also be very near.

Actually, I don't want miracles. A miracle assumes there is an unconscious material substance under deterministic laws. These laws are violated by the miracle implying the existence of something superior to the unconscious matter. That is dualism. I don't believe in unconscious matter nor in determinism. So I don't need miracles.

I am reminded that earlier in the discussion I used the term dualism when the term I was grasping for was pluralism. Definitely different concepts under the assignments of philosophy. My bad.

I am afraid I was using the word miracle more poetically and for its hyperbolic value (I will probably think of a more appropriate term here, too). The crossover zone of the two disciplines always gets me in trouble in the philosophy room.

The problem with emergent properties is that it implies reductionism. That would be my objection to Thomas Nagel's panpsychism. This is not to say that reductionist theories are not useful as models, but reductionism limits our possibilities to what can be found at the quantum level. Then one adds on a mechanism by which a new form can emerge from simpler forms. That mechanism, because it is a "mechanism", I find suspect.

This takes a little more thought. I don't know if I get it...."but reductionism limits our possibilities to what can be found at the quantum level." How so?

I like the idea about consciousness leaking through the dike of unconscious matter. I don't believe there is a dike there at all, but it does make one sense that there is a lot more hidden than we realize.

I believe dykes exist. I don't know about these figurative dikes, though. Is poetry or a poor cousin unfolding in the discussion out of necessity? Metaphor and formula are strange bedfellows.