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A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

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Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#311

Post by memling »

jakzurr wrote: post #307
yesenadam wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrases like "Scientists, including Price", you'd think he's a scientist. He's an Australian philosopher. He was my professor for a couple of philosophy-of-science-related courses at Sydney Uni 20 years ago. He started the Centre for Time there I believe. He's a gre…

Thanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Also, gotta say many of the top comments are pretty interesting here.

> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years.

Scientists professing not to be philosophers has been troubling me more and more the past few years.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#312

Post by marcus_holmes »

electrondood wrote: post #240
marcus_holmes wrote: post #37

Interesting because it messes with the school of thought that everything is determined already and we're just following a sequence of actions that arise from the starting conditions of the universe. If causality is broken then maybe we have free will?

Causality isn't broken; the universe is "simultaneously causal and teleological," because it's superdetermined. There also isn't any free will, because there isn't actually any agent who could have it. Actions we perceive as volitional actually arise in the brain up to 7s before we "choose" them. The sense of a "me" is a post hoc add-on that claims credit for everything, in order to unite the disparate phenomena that…

Again this seems like a "God of the gaps" thing - if this universe isn't strictly deterministic then it's superdetermined by a meta universe, and so on

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#313

Post by musicale »

krsdcbl wrote: post #276
richardw wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

the comment may be superficial and dismissive without pointing out factual issues, but ad hominem attacks are still a very different thing than dismissing the credibility of a publication that has a track record of misleading pop science sensationalism

> dismissing the credibility of a publication that has a track record of misleading pop science sensationalism

Attacking the publication's track record, rather than the article's content, is clearly covered by PP's cited definition:

"a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself"

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#314

Post by skinner_ »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #153
imsaw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting concept. I wonder if it's compared with spatial 3D space, then how large would the 4th dimension of time be if it were to fit the timeline of a human lifespan

A natural interpretation leads to time being very large and us moving very very fast through it. It's convenient to model our movement through space-time as occurring at the speed of light. Thus, the faster we move in space, the slower we move in time all the while the length of our space-time velocity vector is invariably c. We can then imagine 1 second of time being interchangeable with 299,792,458m.

...which means that a Tralfamadorian would see an average human as a 6*10^17 meters long snake.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#315

Post by culi »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #94
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of personal growth as a conspiracy between present me, past me, and future me. Where our motives are aligned, good things happen.

This is good! And ask for help from the future :)

sometimes I feel like I've already asked for too much from the future

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#316

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

jakzurr wrote: post #307
yesenadam wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrases like "Scientists, including Price", you'd think he's a scientist. He's an Australian philosopher. He was my professor for a couple of philosophy-of-science-related courses at Sydney Uni 20 years ago. He started the Centre for Time there I believe. He's a gre…

Thanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Also, gotta say many of the top comments are pretty interesting here.

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447

"There's nothing more annoying than people believing the same thing you do for dumb reasons", ouch ...

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#317

Post by causality0 »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #119
causality0 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun being classified as a yellow dwarf does not mean it's "only yellow hot". You can observe that by going outdoors and holding up a white piece of paper and noting it is not yellow in sunlight. powered by a nuclear explosion Not quite accurate. The nuclear fusion going on inside the sun's core is not an explosion. In a nuclear explosion, a significant fraction of the fuel in a given area is consumed in an instan…

The sun is the color it is because its surface is 5500 Kelvin, which we have defined as white. The sun is cooler than most visible stars, so it can be called yellow by comparison.

The sun is cooler than most visible stars, so it can be called yellow by comparison.

Incorrect. The out of atmosphere color temperature of Sol is ~5900K. The average color temperature of the Milky Way is 4700-5000K.

https://www.news.pitt.edu/milkywaycolor

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#318

Post by flippinburgers »

yesenadam wrote: post #284
ChancyChance wrote: post #195

It's an article about QM. On Vice. About a QM thought experiment. On Vice. Why would there be any expectation of scientific rigor whatsoever? "retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance" Stop there, vice.

The main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrases like "Scientists, including Price", you'd think he's a scientist. He's an Australian philosopher. He was my professor for a couple of philosophy-of-science-related courses at Sydney Uni 20 years ago. He started the Centre for Time there I believe. He's a gre…

I would imagine that the vast majority of people working at a place like vice don't understand the distinction between soft and hard sciences, don't care about the distinction, or are bitter about the distinction.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#320

Post by anenefan »

richardw wrote: post #305
anenefan wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out or calling out people posting BS, that is clearly BS, does not fall into any category of logical fallacy - those arguing the case that it does on the other hand ... I've heard people in that field talk about the possibility of loops in the time dimension, but infinitesimally short period of time is involved and local. Not enough to call it the past though.

It’s playing the man and not the ball. Argue the point not the publisher. You’re arguing the point here, which is correct. Thinking that you can reject the point by diminishing the publisher is definitely a logical fallacy.

I do not know Vice's track record as per the credibility of their science write ups, nor if the General Editor is more concerned with filling white space while ensuring even if fluffy explanations make muster, fluffy fluff does not. Still the blame for fluffy fluff falls at the feet of the author and or their research team. I don't see the General Editor rejecting a story submission because it's true or has good grounds to arrive at given conclusions.

As far as rejecting the point outright, well for myself, I'm not in the string field or quantum physics, but I used to read some pretty reliable sources, and bleed back was put to bed a while ago (years) ... non event now as far as I know apart from a few people who missed that memo - but would consider the possibility there's been new discoveries the last few years and with new theories, the possibility is tangible once more.

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