Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your picture is itself quite impressive. Do you mind sharing more about the equipment and process it takes to capture something like that? Edit: Oh, you can click through the image and see technical details. Very cool.
You already noticed the technical card [1], but I can describe some of the details that go into this for those unfamiliar with the items on it. 1. The scope they used is roughly equivalent to shooting with an 800mm telephoto lens. But the fact that it's 8" wide means it can let in a lot of light. 2. The camera [2] is a cooled monochrome camera. Sensor heat is a major source of noise, so the idea is to cool the sensor…
Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
301–310 of 310 posts
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number of stars in the Milky Way: 100 billion Number of galaxies in the universe: 200 billion to 2,000 billion
*observable universe
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#303That's an incredibly detailed image. Every single time I see one of these amazing space pics, it's hard not to get all philosophical and wonder about the size of space & time on cosmic scale, how small our earth is and how insignificant our regular problems are. I don't care if I don't get to see flying cars or AGI in my lifetime but I will be very disappointed if our knowledge of space remains more or less the same…
We are lucky that we live in a sweet-spot era where the universe is old enough that we have 13 billion years to look back on, but young enough that all the galaxies haven’t receded behind the cosmic horizon yet due to the accelerated expansion of the universe. In some billion years, intelligent beings will only have historic records, if anything at all, to look back to how the observable universe used to be filled wi…
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there were highly advanced beings that constructed the universe, and designed it to obfuscate that very fact, what would evidence of that look like?
If they are perfect at hiding their hand, we wouldn't be able to tell. But that kind of thinking is akin to solipsism, a mental dead end. What if you're the only real person and the rest is simulated or a dream? Would you be able to tell? What if god left all those dinosaur fossils as a joke, and big dinos never really existed? Well, it's possible , but it's a thought-terminating idea, so best not considered.
What if it wasn’t perfectly obfuscated? Is there any evidence at all you’d consider to be in favor of the world being not as it first appears? Not something that’s way more easily explained otherwise, like fossils.
There are things that come to mind for me. One is the brain’s ability to experience hypergeometry and additional dimensions on psychedelics. I don’t see how a brain that has the capability of being enhanced in that way happens through evolution alone. I don’t think geometry scales in the way that running does, for example.
Similarly is are the many cases of people experiencing beings outside of consensus reality. People see people talking to them clear as day, that no one else sees. You can write this off as either a drug-induced hallucination or mental illness, but that’s deciding the cause a priori. It’s circular reasoning.
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's interesting (though not surprising) that your long response avoided every single piece of your text that I quoted, as well as my question and other text (ie: the unknowable) of my critique.
I wasn't quite sure what you were saying. Trying again: > Is this yet another one of those scientific facts that does not require a proof? Quantum mechanics is full of unintuitive, amazing effects, that get hyped by non-experts into imagined meanings. The latter isn't science. But the actual quantum field equations themselves are as hard science as it gets. > I'm sorry to be such a party pooper, but when religious or…
>> Is this yet another one of those scientific facts that does not require a proof?
> Quantum mechanics is full of unintuitive, amazing effects, that get hyped by non-experts into imagined meanings. The latter isn't science.
Once again, you do not answer the question.
Are you asserting that your claim above is a fact? Yes/No
>> "science" claims to welcome criticism
> Science welcomes well thought out analytical or experimental challenges. Not criticism without merit, contrariness based in ignorance of the subject, ideological attacks, or simple negativity - all those just waste time.
> Think informed critique, not just any "criticism".
a) Please state unambiguously (Yes/No) whether you consider my criticism valid, or whether it falls into your "other" category.
b) Who decides what qualifies as valid, and is that done in a non-biased, non-ideological manner?
c) By what means did you come into possession of knowledge of the entirety of what all scientists do, and how they do it? (Here I am presuming that you consider scientists to be a part of science....and if you don't, I would then wonder how things like "Science welcomes" is implemented).
> Science only works to provide the best...
Please reveal the source of your omniscient knowledge. The supernatural is certainly allowed, but I've been led to believe that science folks "don't" believe in the supernatural.
> In stark contrast, Scriptures claim to be the stable truth without need for justification. Scriptures often frame "doubt" as undesirable, and their authority as above evidence. Unbelievers are often cast as morally compromised. Religions are rarely known for encouraging the discovery and sharing of contra-evidence, or the search for alternate and better viewpoints.
I'd say this is at least "mostly true".
> Very different.
True - but do you also know this much less famous part: they are also very similar, simultaneously.
> Not sure what the cake and eating it too is? Science for being hypocritical like religion? (Not my view, but trying to understand yours.)
Bullseye. Scientific ~believers/followers are indeed hypocritical, like religious people[1], and in many ways even above and beyond religious people (in that: if one has superior especially in specific ways scriptures, as science does imho, then violations of them are more egregious, in certain dimensions).
[1] I suppose I should reveal that the root cause is inheritance from People, though an ideology taking root in the mind is necessary to exploit its capabilities to their maximum.
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think any view of life consistent with its emergence by evolution isn't consistent with reincarnation, Why?
Evolution is environmental selection, in a context of reproduction with error. We have chemical, geological, genetic and morphological evidence of its history. And the history of the things it produces, our bodies, and then nervous systems, and our minds. Our minds being constructed biologically, implemented with neurons that maintain its activity and memories. So we know how our eyes, brains and hair came to be with…
All the questions you pose do carry the intention you mean IF you abide by that assumption. That mind stems from matter.
If we recognize that material science is purely speculative when it comes to explaining the intricacies of the inner world of the mind, we could make a list of similar questions.
For example:
> What part of continuity does it maintain? Why does it happen? How does it happen? How and why would it appear and evolve? What was the initial process? In what initial form? How would it progress? What maintains its existence as a phenomena?
You could ask this same question about feelings and thoughts and intentions. If you could answer it, if you could track down and correlate all those details from thoughts to neurons, you'd be able to read minds and predict people's behaviors mechanically.
In a materialist conception of the world, there is something binding the assumption that mind arose from brains to our current scientific understanding. There's a bridge of "we'll figure out the details if we stay on the train of scientific progress". But that's a promise.
That vagueness that you call out, standing from a scientific mindset, that same vagueness appears when you stand grounded in direct (non conceptual) experience, and you ask to science "what is a thought?".
There's no precise definition in science as to what makes up a thought, and science is born out of thought. That is worth contemplating (which is not the same as thinking).
What you're objecting is not unreasonable, but you're describing why reincarnation is incompatible with materialism, not with evolution. If you don't share the assumption of matter over mind, then there is room for compatibility, of mind working in tandem with matter in a process that we don't fully understand, in which reincarnation occurs in ways that we don't understand materially, and in which evolution occurs biologically in ways we kind of understand.
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there were highly advanced beings that constructed the universe, and designed it to obfuscate that very fact, what would evidence of that look like?
If they are perfect at hiding their hand, we wouldn't be able to tell. But that kind of thinking is akin to solipsism, a mental dead end. What if you're the only real person and the rest is simulated or a dream? Would you be able to tell? What if god left all those dinosaur fossils as a joke, and big dinos never really existed? Well, it's possible , but it's a thought-terminating idea, so best not considered.
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you (or does anyone) know about how zoomed in the video is at the start? Like is that the milky way and are there some things in that starting frame that I could identify with the naked eye? It seems like it is already quite zoomed in to start with, but I can't tell how much.
At the start of the video you are looking at a good potion of the whole visible sky. If you look at the very center of the frame, there is Orion, and you can see the three close bright stars together that we zoom in towards are Orion's belt.
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they are perfect at hiding their hand, we wouldn't be able to tell. But that kind of thinking is akin to solipsism, a mental dead end. What if you're the only real person and the rest is simulated or a dream? Would you be able to tell? What if god left all those dinosaur fossils as a joke, and big dinos never really existed? Well, it's possible , but it's a thought-terminating idea, so best not considered.
But you’re the one doing the thought terminating. These things don’t have to be a dead-end. What if it wasn’t perfectly obfuscated? Is there any evidence at all you’d consider to be in favor of the world being not as it first appears? Not something that’s way more easily explained otherwise, like fossils. There are things that come to mind for me. One is the brain’s ability to experience hypergeometry and additional…
> I don’t see how a brain that has the capability of being enhanced in that way happens through evolution alone
Regardless, it's exactly how evolution works. Evolution allows for irrelevant and harmless traits with no purpose to exist. It even allows for somewhat harmful traits to exist, as long as they are balanced by a competitive advantage they piggyback on (e.g. what if hallucinations and listening to voices are a side effect of creativity and imagination?).
What would a constructed universe look like? I dunno. I would like to see contradicting evidence and timelines, maybe even obvious "coverups", maybe if a hyperadvanced civilization appeared across the whole globe (no secrecy) saying "hey it was us!" (but maybe they'd be lying, so who knows).
Skepticism is one of our most important tools. It tells us to triple check any extraordinary evidence and rule out all possible natural/ordinary explanations first.
You would have to pass a pretty high bar to consider a constructed universe... and remember, it would have to be strong evidence, because like you objected, "well God/Genuine faked all the fossils" is uninteresting.
Re: Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they are perfect at hiding their hand, we wouldn't be able to tell. But that kind of thinking is akin to solipsism, a mental dead end. What if you're the only real person and the rest is simulated or a dream? Would you be able to tell? What if god left all those dinosaur fossils as a joke, and big dinos never really existed? Well, it's possible , but it's a thought-terminating idea, so best not considered.
I didn't say they are perfect, I asked what do you think evidence of that would look like.
Possibly timespans for interesting things to happen would be way shorter (compared to sentient animal lifespans). Less wasted time. Fewer deadends. No/fewer extinction events (possibly, or maybe our aliens designers like seeing stuff die or explode like with do playing SimCity?).
Things would make more obvious sense. There would be fewer contradictions. The purpose of life would be clearer, since it was designed. The physics and "rules" of the universe would have fewer special cases and would be easier to model. There would be no paradoxes. We would be able to explore the whole universe more easily.
I'm sure you can think of objections to each of my arguments, but really, some evidence would be there. Everything currently and firmly points the opposite way, except we don't know what happened before the Big Bang... but that's "pink invisible unicorns" stuff which I don't think we will be able to ever answer conclusively.