tana wrote:Thanks for responding DrW, you don't need to apologize, I was the one slow on the input.
What I have in my tool belt is common sense, (according to me) and thought experiment. What I don't have is a go to understanding of the laws of thermodynamics and Q physics. Is, ToE (simplified) A causes B, B causes C, C causes A? Also as Physics Guy suggests, not even physic's guy's know whats going on down there.... in the Q.
Tana,
If you want to encounter a QM demonstration on how to "change the past" - one that will keep you scratching your head for a while, have a look at:
Trim carpenter (physicalists, using classical, Newtonian mechanics) walks onto the jobsite and says, I don't know and I don't care where this foundation came from, but I can tell you everything there is about the structure and systems on top of it.
General contractor (physicalist, using Quantum physics) walks over and says, I know exactly where this foundation came from, and because the concrete contractor went insolvent the foundation is free to us.
Framer (Idealist) steps over and says, we need to know where this foundation came from, building codes/restrictions and all, and if you're going to say the thing just appeared, it's definitely going to get red-tagged.
I wonder if this analogy can be saved/fixed to anyone's benefit?
tana wrote:Trim carpenter (physicalists, using classical, Newtonian mechanics) walks onto the jobsite and says, I don't know and I don't care where this foundation came from, but I can tell you everything there is about the structure and systems on top of it.
General contractor (physicalist, using Quantum physics) walks over and says, I know exactly where this foundation came from, and because the concrete contractor went insolvent the foundation is free to us.
Framer (Idealist) steps over and says, we need to know where this foundation came from, building codes/restrictions and all, and if you're going to say the thing just appeared, it's definitely going to get red-tagged.
I wonder if this analogy can be saved/fixed to anyone's benefit?
Looks as though something is definitely going to get red tagged to me.
David Hume: "---Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."
DrW: "Mistakes in science are learning opportunities and are eventually corrected."
Trim carpenter, physicalist, independent of QM or classical, walks onto the jobsite and says, "everything on this jobsite is made of matter", if a guy called Tana shows up, don't let him ask you where it came from, because what it's made of and where it came from are two different questions. Where the universe came from = cosmology; what everything is made of, including God, non-physical ectoplasm, and the universe = ontology.
Framer, idealist, who has long hair in a pony tail shows up and says, "nothing on this job site is real. That foundation you think you're standing on is just your disembodied mind interpreting a signal from The Big Computer (google it) that is making you think there is a foundation here. Don't ask me where the Big Computer and all the disembodied minds came from, that's not my field. Also, if a guy called Tana shows up, tell him that one guy, the pantheist who says consciousness is produced by quantum mechanics, and that stars and planets can be alive if they are complex enough is a physicalist, not an idealist, and that's because consciousness depends on physical quantum states.
(actually this isn't totally accurate, I will refine the idealist position later but this is good enough for now)
Last edited by Guest on Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
DrW wrote:Some scientists may tell you that this kind of ToE is probably unattainable. And I will be the first to admit that we have a long way to go. I will also admit that whatever we eventually come up with as a ToE may have aspects that are entirely non-intuitive and don't seem to make sense. However, if the math works and the models are predictive and accurate, then we will have made it.
So in essence you move forward in faith/hope that at some future 'date' you will see/understand the ToE. With the knowledge that there is a long way to go and that some scientists are doubtful that this will ever happen. And that there are some giant 'IF's' between now and then.
I wonder if the individual cells in our body ever wonder "I wonder if I'm apart of something bigger that has consciousness. I'm not sure if cells can "wonder", but even if they could, the gap in intelligence would be too great to have any sort of communication. I sometimes wonder if humans are just like that - individual cells on/in the body of something else far greater in the universe. But something so vast and beyond us that we can't communicate with it.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
DrW wrote: Some scientists may tell you that this kind of ToE is probably unattainable. And I will be the first to admit that we have a long way to go. I will also admit that whatever we eventually come up with as a ToE may have aspects that are entirely non-intuitive and don't seem to make sense. However, if the math works and the models are predictive and accurate, then we will have made it.
So in essence you move forward in faith/hope that at some future 'date' you will see/understand the ToE. With the knowledge that there is a long way to go and that some scientists are doubtful that this will ever happen. And that there are some giant 'IF's' between now and then.
Regards, MG
MG,
I would not use the terms 'faith' or 'hope' to characterize my opinions as to the probability of a future ToE. To begin with, faith is unfounded belief. My belief that a ToE will eventually be developed is well founded. It is based on a great deal of evidence that the elements of a ToE are out there, and the fact that progress is being made.
As to 'hope'; again, I would not use that term. The term I would use is 'confidence'. I'm confident that a ToE will eventually be developed.
David Hume: "---Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."
DrW: "Mistakes in science are learning opportunities and are eventually corrected."
Tana, I'm not sure I'm understanding the sense in which you are using the term "idealism." I don't think an idealist would ask where the building came from, because he would assert that it all came from the mind. As long as everyone on the project understood that the building's existence came from the mind, I don't think he'd object to swinging hammers.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
