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Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

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Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#101

Post by borlanco »

dventimi wrote: post #95
borlanco wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say means you're a philosopher too! Seriously, philosophy is a personal endeavor. You derive your own, make your own deductions, and you believe in them. That makes it valid for you. But ... if your philosophy is about how the world works, about some aspects of reality, and you want to ensure that both your philosophy and reality agree, then you can choose to do science: 1. From your philosophy, derive some…

Not to me, it doesn't. To me, philosophy is a profession inhabited by trained professionals working in academic departments, teaching students, and publishing in journals. That's not me. I'm just a human doing human things. We've existed for millions of years before philosophers and their departments and their journals came along. More important, following this thread upward we see: 1. The urge of some scientists to…

You mention two different topics.

Professional philosophers do essentially the same thing we do, they derive a set of personal beliefs that they see as trustworthy. The difference is that they go out and try to sell their philosophies to the public as if they were universal, but they aren't, so they almost always fail. Their books and publications tend to be filed under the heading "OPINIONS".

The second topic you mention is about the role of epistemology, in theory the study of knowledge but in practice an amalgam of (once again) opinions from different philosophers. It's difficult to explain epistemology without referring to those opinions, and those may be wrong anyway. Several pieces of the puzzle are still missing.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#102

Post by dventimi »

borlanco wrote: post #101
dventimi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to me, it doesn't. To me, philosophy is a profession inhabited by trained professionals working in academic departments, teaching students, and publishing in journals. That's not me. I'm just a human doing human things. We've existed for millions of years before philosophers and their departments and their journals came along. More important, following this thread upward we see: 1. The urge of some scientists to…

You mention two different topics. Professional philosophers do essentially the same thing we do, they derive a set of personal beliefs that they see as trustworthy. The difference is that they go out and try to sell their philosophies to the public as if they were universal, but they aren't, so they almost always fail. Their books and publications tend to be filed under the heading "OPINIONS". The second topic you me…

I mentioned two different topics because two different topics were brought up in this thread by other people. That tends to happen in threads.

On the topic of philosophy, if there's two kinds, the kind which comprises opinions sold by professional philosophers to the public as if they're universal but aren't, and the kind which comprises the activities we all do in life, then I'm pretty sure the former is the one being held up to scrutiny as Bergson and Canales try to elbow onto the podium alongside science.

On the topic of epistemology, I don't know a thing about it and I don't think I need to in order to believe the results of experiments or go about life, which pretty much is what also was claimed further up the thread.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#103

Post by dventimi »

mellosouls wrote: post #61
bee_rider wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s scientism?

It has a couple of definitions but the relevant one here is a blinkered, complacent over-confident belief in the power of science to explain everything, often accompanied by an ignorant dismissal of philosophy. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Can you give any examples?

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#104

Post by borlanco »

dventimi wrote: post #102
borlanco wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention two different topics. Professional philosophers do essentially the same thing we do, they derive a set of personal beliefs that they see as trustworthy. The difference is that they go out and try to sell their philosophies to the public as if they were universal, but they aren't, so they almost always fail. Their books and publications tend to be filed under the heading "OPINIONS". The second topic you me…

I mentioned two different topics because two different topics were brought up in this thread by other people. That tends to happen in threads. On the topic of philosophy, if there's two kinds, the kind which comprises opinions sold by professional philosophers to the public as if they're universal but aren't, and the kind which comprises the activities we all do in life, then I'm pretty sure the former is the one bei…

Yes, I agree with you. These debates, controversies and confusion are a consequence of trying to discredit some philosophies and to advance others as "the true ones".

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#105

Post by zhangjunphy »

likeabbas wrote: post #98
lisper wrote: post #4

> We have first order knowledge of things No, we don't. We only have first-order knowledge of our perceptions of things. And quantum mechanics shows us that those perceptions can be radically different from the underlying reality. Of course, Einstein can be forgiven for making this mistake because he didn't know about the Bell inequality and the subsequent experiments, so it is understandable that he would cling to t…

>But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved No, but they can go on a 40 year goose chase trying to reconcile the many different string theories that don't have any physical evidence to substantiate. QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the n…

QFT is too successful that experimentalists stuck for half a century with no meaningful surprise. But theoreticians got to maintain a publication streak if trying to stay in academy. Thus string theory becomes the perfect field. Most ones doing it seem to know it is a goose chase but no one dare to admit it publicly as your colleagues stripped of funding would tear you to pieces.

I feel we really should sort these papers into a category "physics in imaginary universe", so other people do not get confused.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#106

Post by andyferris »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #99
foobar1962 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. Please don't use the word "wrong". Alchemy is wrong. Astrology is wrong. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics get many things right but are probably "incomplete" in the same way Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, only incomplete.

Newton mechanics was wrong: because it didn’t account for the relativistic terms, all the equations are off by some amount. It turns out that we can ignore the error in practical contexts, but that’s still being “wrong”. Another example: the math of a geocentric solar system is often precise enough for practical purposes and so, when it’s simpler, it can be useful to use it instead of Newtonian or relativistic models…

I would say Newtonian mechanics is a good approximation (as it is accurate in its domain, plus easier to conceptialize and compute with than either QM or GR).

Approximations aren't "wrong", they are just simplifications of something less wrong, usually in certain corner cases. Sometimes approximations are derived from the broader theory, and sometimes the broader theory comes later. (And of course, sometimes old theories are proven plain "wrong" by evidence and new theories, but those are things more like alchemy, or mistakes in math proofs, and less like Newton's laws).

Finally, iff we follow your logic then we can say nothing is ever "right". Philosophically it may be useful to realize we may never know the ultimate truth with 100% certainty, but in everyday English "right" can simply mean "appropriate".

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#107

Post by analog31 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #37
lisper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? What is the nature of consciousness? What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Why any of this exists at all? What is the purpose of this existence? Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. … science is not a bo…

And what are the answers from philosophy? Last I looked, all that philosophy could offer to questions like that was an enumeration of multiple conflicting answers.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#108

Post by mellosouls »

dventimi wrote: post #103
mellosouls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a couple of definitions but the relevant one here is a blinkered, complacent over-confident belief in the power of science to explain everything, often accompanied by an ignorant dismissal of philosophy. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Can you give any examples?

Sure, just look at the dismissive, anti-philosophy tone of some of the comments in the discussion here.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#109

Post by klysm »

foobar1962 wrote: post #96
jerf wrote: post #16

I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incomp…

> I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. Please don't use the word "wrong". Alchemy is wrong. Astrology is wrong. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics get many things right but are probably "incomplete" in the same way Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, only incomplete.

But they are wrong, that doesn’t make the not useful though

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#110

Post by lmm »

likeabbas wrote: post #98
lisper wrote: post #4

> We have first order knowledge of things No, we don't. We only have first-order knowledge of our perceptions of things. And quantum mechanics shows us that those perceptions can be radically different from the underlying reality. Of course, Einstein can be forgiven for making this mistake because he didn't know about the Bell inequality and the subsequent experiments, so it is understandable that he would cling to t…

>But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved No, but they can go on a 40 year goose chase trying to reconcile the many different string theories that don't have any physical evidence to substantiate. QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the n…

> QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the nature of reality

The evidence for QFT is orders of magnitude stronger than the evidence for GR, and the two are incompatible. The empirical evidence is simply the fact that gravity exists; if there's no graviton then how does gravity work? If the right model isn't one of the (obscenely many) possible string theories, then what?

I'm sceptical about string theory, but unless and until we come up with a better alternative, it's the only option. (People love to compare it with epicycles - but until you have the insight that lets you eliminate epicycles, you use them, because how else do you get on with doing science?)

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