Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time • Hacker News Board

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#51

Post by redial » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #40

redial wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd also put consciousness up there, because it's fundamentally distinct from measurable things. No one knows that it is not measurable. Is love measurable? is hunger? happiness? they seem to be as measurable as consciousness, that is to say we can at least measure them in binary as either present or not.

How do you know everyone else is not a "p-zombie", indistinguishable in any external way from a human such as yourself, but devoid of internal "consciousness"/"subjective experience". Even the mere logical possibility of p-zombies indicates that consciousness is unmeasurable.

Solipsism is basically the only defense against the conclusions from the evidence of the "real" world. But if you argue for solipsism then I say you have much bigger problems than consciousness because you basically rejected everything that has ever been "known" or experienced. If you reject our "shared reality" then anything is possible, including paradoxically, the "shared reality".

If you accept the shared reality on the other hand, consciousness is measurable to some degree. So the real question is do you or do you not accept we share experiences?

As an addendum, if it is all up to me as you suggested, I just made consciousness measurable so there is no need to keep arguing about it.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#52

Post by pmoriarty » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

redial wrote: post #44

pmoriarty wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Are there any blue reds? We can spend a millennia thinking about it." It's pretty obvious that you can have blue reds: they're called purples or violets. Just squeeze some blue out of a tube of paint, and then some red, mix them together and you get a blue red. You can also have a black white: it's called gray. Anyway, I'd agree that one could ask any number of metaphysical questions, but it could be argued that onl…

Violet is not blue and it is also not red. I'm not asking for a bluish red but for a 100% blue color that it is also red. You are misusing the language, or rather I am in this case, to ask a paradoxical question. Where are all the cat dogs? This is a never ending game because we don't agree on the language. This is exactly the realm of metaphysics. And greatness is in the eye of the beholder. To me greatness could be…

"Violet is not blue and it is also not red. I'm not asking for a bluish red but for a 100% blue color that it is also red."

If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time).

"You are misusing the language, or rather I am in this case, to ask a paradoxical question. Where are all the cat dogs? This is a never ending game because we don't agree on the language. This is exactly the realm of metaphysics."

It's the realm of semantics (ie. definitions), but I'm not convinced that every metaphysical question could be reduced to a semantic one.

If you take the question of whether one has some sort of existence (like, say, as a "soul") before birth, I think that question would still exist even after we'd agreed on the constituent definitions. Also, I don't see anything paradoxical in that question. Even were it paradoxical, its paradoxical quality would in no way disqualify it for me. Perhaps I'd be even more interested in examining it, as examining paradoxes has been a very fruitful approach throughout human history.

"To me greatness could be quantified by how much progress has been made in answering the question. After a thousand years and possibly millions of lives wasted trying to answer "is there existence before this life?" we are not one single iota closer to an answer."

There have been answers, they just haven't satisfied everyone. The same could be said of pretty much every other great question, no matter whether the answers come from science, religion, philosophy, intuition, or elsewhere.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#53

Post by pmoriarty » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

redial wrote: post #51

andrepd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know everyone else is not a "p-zombie", indistinguishable in any external way from a human such as yourself, but devoid of internal "consciousness"/"subjective experience". Even the mere logical possibility of p-zombies indicates that consciousness is unmeasurable.

Solipsism is basically the only defense against the conclusions from the evidence of the "real" world. But if you argue for solipsism then I say you have much bigger problems than consciousness because you basically rejected everything that has ever been "known" or experienced. If you reject our "shared reality" then anything is possible, including paradoxically, the "shared reality". If you accept the shared reality…

"Solipsism is basically the only defense against the conclusions from the evidence of the "real" world."

Far from it. There could very well be an external world, and one populated by plenty of other and fully real human beings even, but your own personal view or understanding of it could be distorted or false.

This could be simply because you're hallucinating, or insane, or your brain could be injured, or could be living in a virtual reality (which itself exists in some other "real" reality), or you could be the proverbial brain in a vat, or aliens (or god or a demon/devil) could be deceiving you, etc.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#54

Post by _8j50 » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #50

_8j50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An object's property had a specific value. That value became different. Can we agree on that definition?

"An object's property had a specific value. That value became different." How is something that's different different from something that's changed? It sounds like it's one and the same to me. Also, you used the word "became". That word has temporal connotations. So if you define change in terms of time, you can't then go on to define time in terms of change without it being another circular definition.

I was defining time as the measurement of change. Change does not depend on measurement therefore there is no circular definition.

For example, a star is different from star light. When I look at the sky through a telescope I don't see a star,I see star light. Same can be said for any object as well,we see light emanating from an object therefore vision is perception of an object as measured by our optics.

Time is how me perceptually measure change. This distinguishment can potentially prove valuable much like how distinguishing perception of star light and the star itself is important(not so important for close objects but important at a grand scale.)

Modification,change and other words used to describe when something becomes different do not imply human measurement.

We can for example talk about a tree that fell in a forest with no human to measure that change. Did it happen? Yes. We can only say it didn't happen if we exclude all events beyond our perceptive ability from reality. In the same way,change does not depend on time but time is a measuremet of change.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#55

Post by redial » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #52

redial wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violet is not blue and it is also not red. I'm not asking for a bluish red but for a 100% blue color that it is also red. You are misusing the language, or rather I am in this case, to ask a paradoxical question. Where are all the cat dogs? This is a never ending game because we don't agree on the language. This is exactly the realm of metaphysics. And greatness is in the eye of the beholder. To me greatness could be…

"Violet is not blue and it is also not red. I'm not asking for a bluish red but for a 100% blue color that it is also red." If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time). "You are misusing the la…

> If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time).

You found the loophole! Sad to see you abandoned so swiftly your own logic when the time came to evaluate your own statement. This is exactly why the metaphysical deals in the realm of ambiguity: once you define it in a clear and concise manner all the mystery disappears, and that to some, is no fun.

That is also why a question like “is there life after death?” is uninteresting: by definition life comes before death.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#56

Post by blueprint » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

dyukqu wrote: post #35

Some tangential thoughts: even though I like these popular science (physics, to be precise) books, I have hard times to imagine their writers as a real scientists . Tyson, Greene, Carroll, Kaku, Rovelli... So many writers author so many books about these hey-look!-so-fascinating! things. It looks like a bandwagon and more and more scientists (yes, physicists especially) are getting on it - like they don't have any im…

It's funny because as much as you recognize this, the people you describe as being needed are treated terribly not only by the establishment but those who think they are outside of it. Perhaps that explains this state.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#57

Post by redial » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #53

redial wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solipsism is basically the only defense against the conclusions from the evidence of the "real" world. But if you argue for solipsism then I say you have much bigger problems than consciousness because you basically rejected everything that has ever been "known" or experienced. If you reject our "shared reality" then anything is possible, including paradoxically, the "shared reality". If you accept the shared reality…

"Solipsism is basically the only defense against the conclusions from the evidence of the "real" world." Far from it. There could very well be an external world, and one populated by plenty of other and fully real human beings even, but your own personal view or understanding of it could be distorted or false. This could be simply because you're hallucinating, or insane, or your brain could be injured, or could be li…

All those options are the same: they are either part of a shared experience or they are not. Nothing is preventing a demon from deceiving me right now, in fact one can come anytime I'd love to meet him, preferably her.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#58

Post by dmfdmf » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

dyukqu wrote: post #35

Some tangential thoughts: even though I like these popular science (physics, to be precise) books, I have hard times to imagine their writers as a real scientists . Tyson, Greene, Carroll, Kaku, Rovelli... So many writers author so many books about these hey-look!-so-fascinating! things. It looks like a bandwagon and more and more scientists (yes, physicists especially) are getting on it - like they don't have any im…

The crisis in physics is due to Kant. As long as physicists are disdainful of philosophy the crisis and deterioration will continue. They are Kantians and don't even know it.

Ayn Rand identified Kant's error in his Critique of Pure Reason and destroyed his program, she rejected Hume's rank skepticism (which Kant was answering) and showed Descartes how to validate reason (i.e. to be certain) without being omniscient. Descartes was the intellectual who started this ball rolling by turning reason unto itself and asking how does it work. He was not up to the task and injected a crude circularity at the base of reason, i.e. "I think therefore I am", which Rand identified and fixed but she is now completely ignored.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#59

Post by blueprint » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 2:58 AM UTC

gowld wrote: post #25

_8j50 wrote: post #20

I think I'm a simpleton because I could never imagine time being it's own thing. I see time as simply the amount of change in reality we can perceptually sample. Much like how an object in motion will continue in it's motion until it meets resistance,reality in my opinion is in continuous motion that has yet to meet resistance. Time (imo)is our measure of this change divided by our ability to sample it(where this abi…

Sounds good. Next, please define "change", and explain why or how "change" exists and is detectable by humans. That's what Rovelli is investigating/theorizing about.

Easy. Change is when equivalence of state information is broken. It is "detected" by everything around it. If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, it absolutely does happen, because it's in a forest.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#60

Post by pmoriarty » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

redial wrote: post #55

pmoriarty wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Violet is not blue and it is also not red. I'm not asking for a bluish red but for a 100% blue color that it is also red." If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time). "You are misusing the la…

> If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time). You found the loophole! Sad to see you abandoned so swiftly your own logic when the time came to evaluate your own statement. This is exactly why…

"a question like "is there life after death?" is uninteresting: by definition life comes before death."

You're not being charitable to the questioner by interpreting it as a paradox.

Clearly, what most people intend to ask by that question is whether one can exist in some form (as a "spirit" or as "soul", or maybe come out of the VR that is the world, or in heaven even in a body like the present one or a more perfect one, or in hell, or maybe reincarnated in as another lifeform, etc) after your physical body stops functioning. There is no paradox in that.