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What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

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Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#141

Post by guscost »

ianai wrote: post #121
kabouseng wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Max Planck himself said: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." [1] [1] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck

As a human institution, science won't ever be perfect. The fundamental notions of science (reduction, documentation, reproducibility, etc) are drastically different from the fundamental notions of religion.

I think the word "science" is too general for this discussion. You're talking about the scientific method, which is a rigorous process for building consistent models of our shared experience. Godel's theorem suggests that we might never be able to complete any of these models, but the method has still lead to amazing new ways of understanding the universe.

If we're talking about the hand-wavey mysticism of Michio Kaku or Deepak Chopra, or researchers who have decided to believe a particular unfalsifiable interpretation of QM, and will not be convinced otherwise, that stuff is closer to what I would call religion.

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#142

Post by CuriouslyC »

Noughmad wrote: post #78
nobrains wrote: post #73

Those who say we live in simulation, are they saying that there is a creator(s)?

Yes. Except that we're probably not their chosen people, just one of the experiments.

Or, maybe it isn't a simulation but a game, and we are puppets of the creator.

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#143

Post by naasking »

andrepd wrote: post #133
monktastic1 wrote: post #2

Between modern physics suggesting time and space may be illusions, leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality, and many ancient traditions being certain that this is all an illusion, I may have to have to go ahead and take this seriously....

I wonder, which physics claims that space and time don't exist (how could it, "exists" is a meta physical concept, physics only cares about mathematically describing the world and making predictions), and how do ancient traditions making claims work as an argument to anything (seeing as ancient traditions have made every claim form the world being in the back of a turtle to a middle-eastern bronze age carpenter being…

> I wonder, which physics claims that space and time don't exist (how could it, "exists" is a metaphysical concept, physics only cares about mathematically describing the world and making predictions)

I think this is a common misconception. Scientific theories provide predictive power, but they also provide explanatory power. The latter has fallen out of favour due to quantum mechanics, despite plenty of good interpretations of QM that provide good explanations, but it has always featured prominently every other scientific theory.

And given explanatory power is important, every scientific theory also therefore defines an ontology (your metaphysical concepts). This too has always been part of science.

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#144

Post by gyey »

Noughmad wrote: post #77
Santosh83 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Science has become somewhat like a religion for those who like to think logically. In the end, they can no more step out of their logical thinking than the zealots can step out of their faith based thinking. Both become dogmatic and a crutch...

This is wrong, very wrong. There is a big fundamental difference between science and religion: Scientist can invent new theories and change their mind when new evidence is discovered. Religious people stick to their beliefs no matter what.

Science becomes religion when scientists ignore empirical evidence in front of them because their textbooks or theories point out that that evidence cannot possibly exist, and then proceed to call those presenting that evidence as unscientific or irreligious.

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#145

Post by demolish »

tomphoolery wrote: post #128
stale2002 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simulation argument comes from the fact that there a quite a lot of physics effects that are both surprising, and look an awful lot like dirty hacks that a programmer might put it. Quantum physics looks a lot like lazy evaluation (State doesn't exist until "observed"). The speed of light seems like a hack to prevent an n squared problem of everything in the universe effecting everything at the same time.

To me, it seems like evolution. Because when you get down "to the metal" of the universe, it's really just a bunch of dirty hacks that are thrown together and give off the illusion of uniformity and grace. The way things work at a macroscopic level seem so grand and ultimate, but on the microscopic level of all that it's utter chaos. Random acts of chemical bonding happened to create the life forms we interact with e…

> I'm a big believer in the "multiple nested universes" theory that our universe began as an offshoot of another, parent universe, and that some of the larger/heavier black holes in our universe could be gateways to other child universes.

but then there's the question of what came before the universe(s) ours originated from and what came before that and so on, since, following our current understanding, everything has an origin

even if we were to argue our universe is a simulation, who/what's running the simulation and where did that originate from? how did it come about?

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#146

Post by pluma »

ianai wrote: post #119
School-Cotton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing based on etymology is a logical fallacy.

says who other than you?

Anyone with any knowledge of linguistics? Even when the etymologies are correct (and they rarely are) they're entirely orthogonal to what words actually mean in practice today because language is only defined by its use (and is highly contextual).

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#147

Post by philipov »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #131
gus_massa wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quantum physics looks a lot like lazy evaluation (State doesn't exist until "observed"). This is a common misconception (¿among programmers?). Let's think about the double slit experiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment In a classical word, you must simulate only one path. In a quantum word, you must simulate both. You don´t need some magical conscious observer to force the collapse of the wav…

> In a classical word, you must simulate only one path. In a quantum word, you must simulate both. You don´t need some magical conscious observer to force the collapse of the wave function. A CCD detector of a camera or a simple wall is enough to force that the "wave" collapse into a "particle" and the detector or wall gets a small spot where the "particle" hits it. While the alternative seems a little too far out to…

It often seems to me that Godel's incompleteness is the same phenomenon as Heisenberg's uncertainty, just in different domains.

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#148

Post by naasking »

Jizzle wrote: post #89
laughingman2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of Bohm's interpretation ?

It's the most obvious counter-interpretation. I think it's become remarkably successful, but also suffers in its embrace of causality. While the Copenhagen interpretation can skirt the issue completely, Bohm's must wrangle with the implications of both relativity and non-locality and no one has been completely successful as such. Also, if it were the leading view, I don't think discussions of a simulated universe wou…

> While the Copenhagen interpretation can skirt the issue completely, Bohm's must wrangle with the implications of both relativity and non-locality and no one has been completely successful as such.

Some might consider that a feature. John Bell of Bell's theorem thought QM's non-locality was the most important unresolved issue, so placing it front and center where it couldn't be ignored was a great idea. Interpretations like Copenhagen simply let you paper over the problems which will inevitably just arise elsewhere.

Finally, I think there's been some promising work in deriving covariant Bohmian mechanics. For instance, a preferred foliation of spacetime can be derived from the wave function itself [1], which means a preferred reference frame is actually a part of every interpretation of QM. This is the kind of result that probably would have never been found without research into Bohmian mechanics.

> Also, if it were the leading view, I don't think discussions of a simulated universe would be as popular.

I don't see why. Simulated reality is a purely logical argument [2].

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1714

[2] http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#149

Post by pluma »

RichardCA wrote: post #37
DougN7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is ironic is the amount of blind faith required to accept some of these things that are so completely against everything we experience. It's very nearly a religion.

Well if you look at the question of why religion is such a prominent trait of the human species, we seem to have an innate bias in favor of the idea that the universe was created to allow for our existence. And it requires a certain amount of mental effort to resist that bias.

If you believe that the leaves were rustled by a predator and you're wrong, you only waste some energy.

If you believe that the leaves were rustled by something inanimate and you're wrong, you get eaten by the predator.

There's an evolutionary advantage in expecting agency where there is none. Whether it's rustling leaves, the weather, celestial bodies or life itself.

To put it another way: if you see Jesus in your soup doesn't mean there's some divine truth in soup, it's just an artifact of your brain having evolved to recognise faces in a way that encourages false positives over false negatives.

Understand the fallibility of every aspect of yourself and a lot of supernaturalist arguments go out of the window.

Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)

#150

Post by naasking »

j2kun wrote: post #64
monktastic1 wrote: post #2

Between modern physics suggesting time and space may be illusions, leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality, and many ancient traditions being certain that this is all an illusion, I may have to have to go ahead and take this seriously....

Try this physics paper[1] explaining how pretty much every model we have of physics is broken in fundamental ways. Things you take for granted because of what you've read in popular media (eg., heat death of the universe) are simply speculation based on stretching an incomplete mathematical model to its limits. The simulated reality nonsense is the same bad logic in a different guise. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.…

It doesn't sound like you've read Bostrom's simulation argument:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

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