141–147 of 147 posts
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The shortest distance between two events in space and time, when there are time quanta, then there must be space quanta as well.
What do you mean? We do already have space quanta: Planck Length.
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I don't know, but here's some food for thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortalit...
people will really adopt convoluted schemes to convince themselves their supposed eternal soul will survive
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> Physics is, in fact, stuck I'm trying to explain that it is not "stuck" in the sense in which the casual readers tend to perceive it. The scientists actually have what to do, and will have what to do, no problem with that. It's just that it's harder to get the budget for the kinds of investigations that extend the area of our knowledge. And that some "pet hypotheses" of some scientists remained unconfirmed. What is…
Hey, thank you for your time and effort for putting all the links and information on your comments. Firstly, I'm not against experimentalists and/or experiments and the money spent for them - it's not even "peanut" compared to military projects all around the world, as you stated. What I wanna say is that (to a curious outsider) it looks like there are so many experimentalists (and physicists-turned-to-pop-sci-writer…
Analyzing that claim of yours that you specially marked:
"there are so many experimentalists" ... "than theorists so physics suffers from the lack of" "power of imagination."
It is simply a "non sequitur."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy
There's no any support for any claim that "more theorists" than "experimentalists" are even needed for anything, especially that such a ratio means anything about presence or "lack" of "power of imagination" in physics.
> but I'm not completely uninformed one too, I guess.
Nobody ever said "completely." However I sincerely wish you to be a little more informed about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I really believe that once you understand that you will have more chance for your own personal improvement and I wish you luck in that. Maybe you'll even make a contribution to some important discovery. But you'll surely have to have more insight that others, being satisfied with being "not completely uninformed" to think that you even understand the basics of something won't bring you much, at least in the areas that we touch in our discussion.
Regarding the state of physics, I've already explained that nobody can even claim that there has to be anything "revolutionary" possible (in the naive sense, the way you expect it) based on the information available to us as the result of all experiments done. From my perspective, there were a lot of amazing discoveries in the last any N years of physics, and they are always result of the new information we experimentally obtain. But we already know so much, and measured so much with such an astonishing precision that there is not even place for some "big" changes affecting the formulas we already have. All better measurements will need always more investment from us, and will involve always the areas of the universe that are less affecting us directly (in the physical sense, I don't speculate about the state of mind).
Just to get you started thinking: some ancient Greek and Hellenistic scientists (who at that time weren't called so) already quite correctly knew how distant is the Moon measured in the number of Earth radii more than 2000 years ago. Do you know that simple number? Were you aware that if was possible to measure that at that time? Would you be able today to repeat that measurement? How much effort would you have to personally invest to repeat all the steps? Second, one Hellenistic scientist again more than 2000 years ago measured the radius of Earth also amazingly precise. Would you be able to repeat all the steps of his experiment? Are you able even to figure them out just by your own thinking?
The humanity knows about the telescopes only for 400 years. Galileo was one of the first scientists using it to figure more about the universe, but he also made the experiments on Earth, being among the first who properly described the properties of gravitation. Newton published his "Principia" only 100 years after Galileo's "On Motion" and only 80 years after the discovery of telescope and based on the enough observations happening even before the telescope existed: Tycho Brahe was the first scientist on the west who measured precisely enough the movements of the planets to make Newton's conclusions even possible, and his measurements were again available only some 80 years before Newton's "Principia." Not to mention that Kepler was already able to figure out the formulas nobody before him had based on these very measurements.
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I agree that Descartes, Hume, and Kant were wrong. However, modern scientists are not influenced by them. Their own views are much closer to Pragmatism (which is not surprising given that two of the three founders of Pragmatism, namely Peirce and James, were professional scientists).
Popper/Kuhn are both derivatives of Kant and very popular in physics when physicists grasp for a philosophy to justify their epistemology. Mach, also a Kantian, was Einstein's pole star but to Einstein's credit defended realism contra Mach's ideas.
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The problem is one of humility. If you admit that something is at this point inexplicable then that is where you should stop explaining it. Sometimes I don't know is the only real answer. Because if you want to make this statement: > It doesn’t seem to occur to people that consciousness itself is completely inexplicable and therefore all bets are off regarding its true nature. You have to, ahem, explain it.
Sure, but the problem is that many people don’t demonstrate this humility when they act like it’s ridiculous to wonder if consciousness exists prior to conception or after death. Ruling these out requires an unwarranted assumption about the relationship between consciousness and the brain. I agree that people should show some humility and admit that we have no idea if or when consciousness begins and ends. Anyone who…
> I agree that people should show some humility and admit that we have no idea if or when consciousness begins and ends.
I think our understanding of it is not as vague as you claim. We can see consciousness develop in all kind of animals; infants are less conscious than adults and elders show a higher degree of loss of consciousness. Furthermore, it is linked with brain activity somehow, as damaged brains show erratic consciousness related behavior. There is a lot more to learn, a lot, but to say that we know nothing is very dishonest in my opinion.
That is assuming we are talking about the same kind of consciousness you and I. But I've got a feeling we are not.
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Popper/Kuhn are both derivatives of Kant and very popular in physics when physicists grasp for a philosophy to justify their epistemology. Mach, also a Kantian, was Einstein's pole star but to Einstein's credit defended realism contra Mach's ideas.
That's because they haven't studied philosophy. I have a background in the sciences, and what I observed is that, in terms of how they think when they are actually doing science, as opposed to explaining it to people who are not scientists, they work out of a set of assumptions pretty much the same as Pragmatism.
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That's because they haven't studied philosophy. I have a background in the sciences, and what I observed is that, in terms of how they think when they are actually doing science, as opposed to explaining it to people who are not scientists, they work out of a set of assumptions pretty much the same as Pragmatism.
I agree that Pragmatism is also fairly common in the sciences. But I don't considered Pragmatism to be a philosophy, it is a rejection of principles on principle so it is a dead-end. What is "shut-up and calculate" if not Pragmatism which has dominated physics for 100 years and has run its course. By holding philosophy in disdain and not studying it the physicists leave themselves vulnerable (due to ignorance) and ab…
Huh? Philosophy books all list Pragmatism as a major philosophy, and it is far more elaborate than that. "Shut up and calculate" is not at all what the philosophies of Dewey, Peirce and James are about, it is far more elaborate.
>By holding philosophy in disdain and not studying it the physicists leave themselves vulnerable (due to ignorance) and absorb the bad philosophies I mentioned by osmosis.
I am referring to how they actually practice science, not their possibly quite inaccurate philosophical explanations of what they are doing. I am sure you are familiar with the phenomenon of someone loudly claiming they follow a certain set of principles, but then when you observe them you see they are actually doing something quite different.
What I am saying is that if you observe how scientists actually do science, it fits the philosophical principles of Pragmatism, whether the scientists realize it or not. And I am saying that as someone with a background in both the sciences and philosophy.