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Thomas
Trad climber
The Tilted World
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 8, 2007 - 11:42pm PT
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What do you folks think of Dr. John Hagelin?
I recently came across a video on a dude's My Space page where he is relating the Unified Field Theory and its equation (I was not aware that scientists had arrived at a single equation yet--wasn't that supposed to be published on T-shirts?) to consciousness. He states: "The unified field is consciousness...Consciousness is the unified field...there is no other consciousness than the unified field."
Much of the physics that he describes appears to be legit, but some of the connections that he makes seem kind of far out. Any comments?
Just curious. I had never even heard of the guy until about 30 minutes ago.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=613593
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Dude ran for President.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 12, 2007 - 05:18pm PT
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JS Hagelin had published legitimate physics through the 90's. He is a smart cookie who has become more and more involved understanding "conciousness."
He has a professional understanding of quantum mechanics (QM). Unfortunately the existence of "conciousness" has no simple explanation and probably not a consequence of the correctness of the physical theory of QM. The philosophical foundations of QM are notoriously difficult. Since it is the basis of the most accurate physical theory we have (Quantum Electro-Dymanics (QED), there is little doubt among physicists as to whether or not the theory is correct, it is.
Bohr's "Copenhagen" interpretation is the most widely discussed "foundation" of QM. But Pauli worried in letters to Heisenberg that there needed to some alternative explanations, they didn't come up with anything. There is a "many world's" view point, and other strange interpretations (see Bohm's book on QM), and reformulations (like using path integrals).
You can look at Wiki, which is pretty good description
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics
Many, probably most, physicists don't need to have an interpretation.... some actually think there might be something interesting there... put what ever that is, it is probably not physics.
If you ask me, I think it is easy to get too wrapped up in the whole issue. The use of QM to explain everything mystical is incorrect though. While it is "spooky" to use the characterization of Einstein (but not with the TM Herbert hand wobble), it works... at least in terms of explaining physical phenomena.
It's not the only place there is strange stuff going on... where does inertia come from?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Aug 12, 2007 - 05:47pm PT
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Another question what do you fizzysist guys think of Oleg D. Jefimenko?
What about Carver Mead? Collective Electrodynamics
Roger Pendrose? The Road to Reality (now there's a book with a pompous sub title," A complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe" does seem to be a rather complete math book though) I can only soak it up in small doses but it does seem to be an understandable book so far.
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jstan
climber
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Aug 12, 2007 - 06:17pm PT
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Speaking only as a bystander:
It is Roger Penrose. QM is enough of a problem by itself. Good to be precise whenever nature allows us to be so.
When a grad student the only QM philosophy we heard was. "Shut up and compute." Unsatisfying but one sometimes must be practical. Fascinating, now that QM underpinnings have begun to be bandied about so widely, I have read highly placed challenges to the belief that the Copenhagen school argued for practicality as stated above. Frankly, I wouldn't know. I had zero idea where I was at the time, which I took as a good sign. It meant I was in fact getting someplace.
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Thomas
Trad climber
The Tilted World
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 12, 2007 - 08:34pm PT
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Thanks for taking the time to reply, Ed. Your insight is always appreciated.
jstan, what and where did you study? I can definitely relate to the "shut up and compute" order, even though it was usually in my geophysics class.
Cheers to all--enjoy the Perseids tonight!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 12, 2007 - 09:50pm PT
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Roger Penrose is a first class mathematician and a physicist... but I think that a theory of consciousness will not be as clean as some fundamental theories in physics... conciousness emerges from the collective behaviour of groups of cells through an evolutionary process... and evolutionary developments are seldom clean designs.
Carver Mead - not sure why a different approach to QED is necessary, but who knows how it might be used... the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics was essentially a curiosity when it was first developed, but provided essential insight when Quantum Mechanics needed it... also General Relativity... and the beautiful insight of Noether's theorem... all this to say that it is sometimes difficult to have historic perspective too soon.
Don't have any experience with Jefimenko... Heaviside gravity has testable consequences... which I'm not sure require the theory. On the other hand, I'm sure Jefimenko's formulation is consistent with observations, but once again, it seems somewhat irrelevant at the moment.
In some book or another Feynman writes down the formula for the universe:
⇑U = 0
Feynman goes on to say that all we need to figure out is U.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Aug 12, 2007 - 10:23pm PT
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Thanks!
To an old 'lectrician that wants to really understand what he's been working with all these years, Mead on a gut level makes sense. (till he gets into the vector notation and looses me) But, I don't really have the theoretical background to know if he's bark'in up the wrong tree.
I dont realy think QED has all that much relivance in the discussion of conciousness other than maybe provoking some novel approaches in biology, Strovener, "The Quantum Brain" etc.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Aug 13, 2018 - 08:32pm PT
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wie interessant
Heisser and Patil used the device to bend and twist hundreds of spaghetti sticks, and recorded the entire fragmentation process with a camera, at up to a million frames per second. In the end, they found that by first twisting the spaghetti at almost 360 degrees, then slowly bringing the two clamps together to bend it, the stick snapped exactly in two. The findings were consistent across two types of spaghetti: Barilla No. 5 and Barilla No. 7, which have slightly different diameters.
One million frames per second - could have even captured The Airplane doing
3/5's of a Mile in 10 Seconds
Do you suppose someone counted them?
As the frame rate increases, more and more of all human (and supra- and sub-human) experience can be recorded on film. As it approaches infinity? Only time will tell.
Don't forget your ©
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Aug 13, 2018 - 08:47pm PT
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While the spaghetti focus seems pretty whimsical, it would seem to be an important result that in hindsight is intuitive, and would have applications in structural design to have systems that break and fail in controlled ways to preserve life and property.
edit: I just set off my own b.s. meter... I have no experience-based idea whether this would have interesting structural applications (unless there are structural materials that have properties like spaghetti, which would seem to be a bad idea?)
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Aug 14, 2018 - 05:01am PT
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If you’re looking for interesting puzzles, no need to tackle the meaning of the universe. Spaghetti will do.
I had a masters student base his thesis on stitch ripping devices, aka, screamers. We did experimental tests for rate dependence (none) along with hot, cold, wet, etc. Some funky things go on in friction systems. The shorty screamer concept came out of the work too.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 14, 2018 - 07:31am PT
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Crackling Dynamics in the Mechanical Response of Knitted Fabrics
Samuel Poincloux, Mokhtar Adda-Bedia, and Frédéric Lechenault
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 058002 – Published 30 July 2018
Crackling noise, which occurs in a wide range of situations, is characterized by discrete events of various sizes, often correlated in the form of avalanches. We report experimental evidence that the mechanical response of a knitted fabric displays such broadly distributed events both in the force signal and in the deformation field, with statistics analogous to that of earthquakes or soft amorphous materials. A knit consists of a regular network of frictional contacts, linked by the elasticity of the yarn. When deformed, the fabric displays spatially extended avalanchelike yielding events resulting from collective interyarn contact slips. We measure the size distribution of these avalanches, at the stitch level from the analysis of nonelastic displacement fields and externally from force fluctuations. The two measurements yield consistent power law distributions reminiscent of those found in other avalanching systems. Our study shows that a knitted fabric is not only a thread-based metamaterial with highly sought after mechanical properties, but also an original, model system, with topologically protected structural order, where an intermittent, scale-invariant response emerges from minimal ingredients, and thus a significant landmark in the study of out-of-equilibrium universality.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 14, 2018 - 07:49am PT
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mathematics offers ZERO access to vast realms of human experience
Yes, as mathematics is impersonal.
Life itself is full of dynamic variegatedness, and dynamic personality .....
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 14, 2018 - 08:10am PT
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The point being, pure math can be used as a language to describe the physical world,
The description is NOT the reality itself.
Largo has been continually making that point in the mind thread all while you people constantly keep trying to make descriptions a reality itself.
This IS why the gross materialists live in illusion and in a dream ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 14, 2018 - 09:00am PT
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Largo has been continually making that point...
using language to describe his experience, the description, he would argue, is not the experience.
Perhaps he is only describing his own experience, others might have different experiences.
To me, there is no division between "language" and "mathematics," they are both symbolic systems of stating propositions regarding our experience of the world, both external and internal.
You could throw music in there too, and art, and all symbolic forms.
These forms are not the what they depict, that is a trite realization you might have had when you were in middle school.
What is more interesting to me is that using this symbolic system so much can be truly understood about the world.
Largo doesn't deny this, he loves to regale us with stories of his "inner adventures," and we love to be so entertained, but not many of us equate his stories with his experiences, those are his alone.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 14, 2018 - 09:05am PT
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How is it that one can say "I don't understand mathematics" and then say "it has nothing to do with art/literature/whatever"
Say you would like to go out and take an "Ansel Adams b/w image"
without understanding the physical medium that Adams used you would be hard pressed to stumble onto such an image. His mastery of the technical aspects of photography, and especially the emulsions used to create the negative, are a huge part of his art. Like many master artists, he makes it look easy, effortless, when it was anything but.
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Aug 14, 2018 - 09:47am PT
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One difference between language and math is that language IS the top level thinking process going on in your brain. Brain parts like amygdalas are just microprocessors in comparison, and there are many of them competing for attention.
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Aug 14, 2018 - 10:30am PT
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What is more interesting to me is that using this symbolic system so much can be truly understood about the world.
Eyebrow raised
Anyone see a resemblance to Honnold? (good at math, knows how to shut stuff down if it gets too hot, he gets teased enough though)
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Aug 14, 2018 - 07:27pm PT
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Regarding language, art and meaning, I was transported into an unexpected realm when I learned calculus and probability and found myself understanding my father's sensibilities, personality, and profound insight into human existence. He was a mathematician. I can remember him saying, as he was working out some very human issue, "holding all else equal," a common place in both language and the derivative of a function.
I wouldn't be to quick to draw bright lines between math, chemistry, and the languages of science and the languages of human experience. They all describe in one fashion or another reality.
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