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Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

math.columbia.edu

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Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#41

Post by hcknwscommenter »

wallace_f wrote: post #30
baddox wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when people express concern over climate change denial, the concern usually isn't over the fact that climate change denial is physically and legally possible. The concern is usually more about the consequences of denial and the fact that denial seems to have a disproportionate influence over political outcomes.

Part of what I was trying to articulate in my comment is that I don't even know what you are accusing these people of denying. So I guess the first part to trying to communicate my comment's meaning is to understand that as far as I can tell, it just comes across as a smear.

It is a smear because climate change denialism simply ignores that the best available science points to humans as the cause of global warming, that global warming is a huge threat, and that we need to start doing more now. Moreover, the best available science has been heavily attacked by all manner of extremely well-funded skeptics and held up. This funding to comes from 100B+ multinational corporations as well as state actors. Yes, the climate models could be wrong, but denialism in the face of the facts on the ground has reached the level that it is more likely that tiny underground monkeys on mars are beaming thoughts into our heads than that the deniers are right. Thus, those who continue to pose as "I'm just asking questions man" are either disingenous or gullible. Yes it's a smear, and deservedly so.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#42

Post by tsimionescu »

raspasov wrote: post #36

After reading a few blog posts and interviews with Peter Woit, I think I can say he's definitely a little bit "fringe" as far as physics is concerned. He does try to stick to the science (of sorts) but using some philosophizing he makes critiques like here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-string-... "This is however a straw man argument: the problem with such research programs isn't that of direc…

> Sure, we might not have a plausible way of testing it today but that doesn't mean there won't be in the future. 2000 years ago people were on the right track that the Earth is round but couldn't "test it" but going around it. I'm sure the prospect of going round the earth back then seemed as distant as testing a multiverse today.

But there lies the problem: people 2000 years ago had a very clear idea of how they could test their round earth idea, it just wasn't technically feasible. Even worse for your point, they did quickly come up with experiments and proved pretty definitively the shape and general size of the earth, based on ships going past the horizon and others.

There have been many physical ideas with no hope of testability throughout the ages, and many of these have turned out wrong. Aristotle believed, and physicists agreed, that all objects have a natural place which they tend to move to, so apples falls down, but steam rises up.

As far as I know, there are not even thought experiments about how we could tell whether there is a multiverse, or for many (but not all) aspects of string theory. This is not an engineering problem (its way out of our league to implement), it's a theoretical physics problem (we don't know whether there is a way to tell, there may very well not be one). It's like the difference between people in ancient Greece imagining a high-speed car, versus building faster-than-light travel.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#43

Post by wallace_f »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #41
wallace_f wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what I was trying to articulate in my comment is that I don't even know what you are accusing these people of denying. So I guess the first part to trying to communicate my comment's meaning is to understand that as far as I can tell, it just comes across as a smear.

It is a smear because climate change denialism simply ignores that the best available science points to humans as the cause of global warming, that global warming is a huge threat, and that we need to start doing more now. Moreover, the best available science has been heavily attacked by all manner of extremely well-funded skeptics and held up. This funding to comes from 100B+ multinational corporations as well as st…

I don't even know what a Climate Change Denier is. As far as I can tell it's basically anyone who questions anything about the politics, economics, science of this issue. I don't see how it's basically anything more than smear label on any non-believer, or heretic, including Nobel Prizer Winners to Pulitzer Prize Winners.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#44

Post by ithkuil »

perl4ever wrote: post #27
ithkuil wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No machines _we know of_ _in the present_ are conscious. Our ignorance about whether that's possible or not is not a proof it's not possible. Besides, why would it matter if the observer is conscious or not? Our psychology is biasing our reasoning about these thing, leading us to attribute something magical to the process that make us "us". It's understandably utterly disconcerting to lose the ground under the sense…

Why would a shared past equal a shared future? I mean, you don't treat twins as though they are a single person, right?

I'm fact they don't share the future, they only share a starting point, after which they diverge immediately based on influences of the external world, like in this thought experiment the room the particular instance of the clone happens to wake up in.

The sequence of thoughts from the moment each clone realizes it woke up in room X, depends on the value of X, which potentially has lasting psychological effects that boost the divergence of the two clones. For example: imagine you've been told that cloning doesn't "split" you in two equally "genuine" clones, buy instead that the first one is the "original" whole the one in room 1 is the "clone". When you wake up and realize you are the clone, your thought process will probably diverge from the original.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#45

Post by retsibsi »

djaque wrote: post #19
AareyBaba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection' She ended the video saying the opposite [0]. She said she personally does not doubt that the signals are caused by gravitational waves but points out that "in science evidence counts'. They, according to her, haven't conclusively eliminated other terrestrial sources that could cause the signals. [0] https://youtu.be/WWTvNlfkvo…

When somebody pretends to be neutral and unbiased and then goes on to give a one sided narrative containing information that they know is false and leaves out the many valid counterpoints to those claims and brands the people who would defend them as morally compromised, then it's pretty obvious what's going on.

> a one sided narrative containing information that they know is false

What specifically are you accusing Hossenfelder of lying about? I read your linked comment[0] and the Hossenfelder transcript[1], and your characterisation of a lot of the things she said doesn't match my reading of them. But even taking your reading as correct, I don't see where you've identified cases of Hossenfelder giving "information that [she knows] is false".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21448974 [1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/11/have-we-really-mea...

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#46

Post by raspasov »

h0l0cube wrote: post #40
raspasov wrote: post #36

After reading a few blog posts and interviews with Peter Woit, I think I can say he's definitely a little bit "fringe" as far as physics is concerned. He does try to stick to the science (of sorts) but using some philosophizing he makes critiques like here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-string-... "This is however a straw man argument: the problem with such research programs isn't that of direc…

> 2000 years ago people were on the right track that the Earth is round but couldn't "test it" but going around it. Fun fact: Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth and the tilt of its axis around ~200 BC, by comparing the angles of shadows at two locations. Perhaps not definite proof, but certainly a test of an assumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes This is not to disagree with the thru…

I was aware of this one :).

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#47

Post by retsibsi »

wallace_f wrote: post #43
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a smear because climate change denialism simply ignores that the best available science points to humans as the cause of global warming, that global warming is a huge threat, and that we need to start doing more now. Moreover, the best available science has been heavily attacked by all manner of extremely well-funded skeptics and held up. This funding to comes from 100B+ multinational corporations as well as st…

I don't even know what a Climate Change Denier is. As far as I can tell it's basically anyone who questions anything about the politics, economics, science of this issue. I don't see how it's basically anything more than smear label on any non-believer, or heretic, including Nobel Prizer Winners to Pulitzer Prize Winners.

Can you give some examples of people being (widely) labeled climate change deniers for 'questioning anything about the politics or economics' of climate change? In its standard use the phrase refers to people holding or spreading doubt about consensus or near-consensus conclusions of climate science.

It's arguably a necessary 'smear' because we've seen the same pattern play out as happened in the case of tobacco: there's a lot of money at stake, and people and organisations with a lot to lose and a lot to spend are not above spreading FUD, laundered through any scientists or 'public intellectuals' who either already hold a conveniently contrary view or are willing to be convinced by $. We'd be naive and foolish to let this happen without pointing out the pattern and calling into question the reputations of the contrarians.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#48

Post by raspasov »

tsimionescu wrote: post #42
raspasov wrote: post #36

After reading a few blog posts and interviews with Peter Woit, I think I can say he's definitely a little bit "fringe" as far as physics is concerned. He does try to stick to the science (of sorts) but using some philosophizing he makes critiques like here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-string-... "This is however a straw man argument: the problem with such research programs isn't that of direc…

> Sure, we might not have a plausible way of testing it today but that doesn't mean there won't be in the future. 2000 years ago people were on the right track that the Earth is round but couldn't "test it" but going around it. I'm sure the prospect of going round the earth back then seemed as distant as testing a multiverse today. But there lies the problem: people 2000 years ago had a very clear idea of how they co…

I am not a physicist, but one can definitely come up with thought experiments about testing the multiverse. One could imagine creating a universe in a lab "from nothing" since there's a hypothesis that the energy of a universe could be zero (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)).

Now, we might not be 2000 years but perhaps 20,000 or 20 million years away from coming up with the technology and breakthroughs required to do this. In the grand scheme of things, even 2 billion years is not that much.

One big difference with Aristotle's apples, steam ideas, etc is that there's very solid mathematical foundation under string theory/multiverse that to a great extend agrees with existing well tested theories like quantum mechanics and general relativity. That does not make string theory/multiverse true but it at least leaves the possibility open. Aristotle's ideas that turned out definitely wrong were born out of pure philosophizing and were little better than pure fiction.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#49

Post by ithkuil »

yters wrote: post #34
ithkuil wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No machines _we know of_ _in the present_ are conscious. Our ignorance about whether that's possible or not is not a proof it's not possible. Besides, why would it matter if the observer is conscious or not? Our psychology is biasing our reasoning about these thing, leading us to attribute something magical to the process that make us "us". It's understandably utterly disconcerting to lose the ground under the sense…

Doesn't this thought experiment illustrate the absurdity of consciousness cloning? Consciousness cloning is a logical implication of conscious machines. Hence, by modus tollens, machines cannot be conscious.

I thought I set up the thought experiment in such a way to separate the question of whether machines can be conscious from the question whether you'd feel any different if multiple concurrent and non-communicating "yous" would exists, with the purpose of engage in a discussion about Wigner's friend scenario.

From your answer it seems you're also ruling out, a priori, the possibility that cloning a conscious being is not only impossible in reality, but absurd, regardless of any concession that would allow consciousness to still transcend matter (provided it allows for cloning).

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how you derive such strong conviction about the non-cloneability of conscious beings.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#50

Post by wallace_f »

retsibsi wrote: post #47
wallace_f wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what a Climate Change Denier is. As far as I can tell it's basically anyone who questions anything about the politics, economics, science of this issue. I don't see how it's basically anything more than smear label on any non-believer, or heretic, including Nobel Prizer Winners to Pulitzer Prize Winners.

Can you give some examples of people being (widely) labeled climate change deniers for 'questioning anything about the politics or economics' of climate change? In its standard use the phrase refers to people holding or spreading doubt about consensus or near-consensus conclusions of climate science. It's arguably a necessary 'smear' because we've seen the same pattern play out as happened in the case of tobacco: the…

The examples you ask for would obviously be the topic of this conversation, which you can be reminded of by reading from the start again. Other popular examples of 2019 Gallileo's might be people like Ivar Giaever or John Stossel.
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