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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Aug 13, 2018 - 10:21am PT
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JStannard no hard feelings here. I do not understand what it is about quantum mechanics that would support the Big Bang theory. My pre law education was in materials science, and to me qm is not very satisfying because it generally lacks a physical model. I believe in it though, since it explains many things. Note that nearly all semiconductor physics was developed by materials scientists, lol.
By the way, what the heck is a "field" anyway?
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jstan
climber
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Aug 13, 2018 - 10:49am PT
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My pre law education was in materials science, and to me qm is not very satisfying because it generally lacks a physical model.
I knew there had to be some sort of experience like this in your background! You make a lot of sense generally.
One gets the feeling we are at a turning point. Krauss has gone from straight forward dismissal of the parallel universes of String theory to bet covering. And Carroll is willing even to talk about whether General Relativity is a more fundamental theory than QM. Do you suppose Einstein will be found right yet again, and we will have to rationalize QM if it is be joined with GR? Certainly everyone will be holding their breath until the LHC starts finding supersymmetric particles.
This is such an exciting time, even for ignorant persons like myself.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 13, 2018 - 11:28am PT
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field
I'm not sure multiverse speculations really qualify as theories if there is no existing way to test the notions. Metaphysics to me. Like no-thingness.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 13, 2018 - 12:30pm PT
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Certainly everyone will be holding their breath until the LHC starts finding supersymmetric particles.
Better make that a really, really deep breath as the odds are increasingly slim.
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jstan
climber
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Aug 13, 2018 - 03:51pm PT
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Don't miss the fact we found gravitational waves only after forty or fifty years of work.
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nafod
Boulder climber
State college
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Aug 13, 2018 - 04:43pm PT
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There are millions and billions of universes with trillions of planets and suns, stars, and moons in the cosmic material manifestations with life and living entities in every one of them.
That thought makes my forgetting of my wife’s birthday so much less of a big deal.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 13, 2018 - 06:03pm PT
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IMO, as interesting as it is, physics is only peripherally involved with the subject of what is mind. It's too much in the weeds. It's a red herring in that respect; complicating something that can be easily grasped by someone with limited knowledge of physics. If you understand ancestry, you basically understand evolution. The intellectual leap is only to carry out ancestry to its natural conclusion. Mind is a product of evolution. Thousands of disparate pieces of evidence point to this conclusion. It is independent of anybody's subjective experience.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 13, 2018 - 06:18pm PT
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as interesting as it is, physics is only peripherally involved with the subject of what is mind. It's too much in the weeds. It's a red herring in that respect; complicating something that can be easily grasped by someone with limited knowledge of physics
Of course.
In my GroupX, ne Dead Atheists Society, we call this the abstruse physics sandtrap principle. Apart from scientific illiteracy, it's the number one reason the so-called Scientific Story doesn't have more substantive presence in the general public. By the time the reasonably educated dig themselves out of this sandtrap, e.g., as part of their studies in science, they don't have the time or energy for anything else.
Abstruse physics can overly rarefy/overly steal away one's attention; it can suck the O2 out of the room, so to speak, leaving little time or energy for anything else. Shows us where the public's attention is and how easily distracted it is from the real meat and patatoes.
As I've tried pointing out here numerous times, there's a great deal to physics apart from this abstruse, recondite, extreme physics. Cams, skyscrapers, bridges, planes and trains are all based on physics.
Physics is important. Physics and engineering curricula/majors have at least two or three years in common on the way to an undergraduate degree. But to read many articles or posts nowadays a noobie or "tourist" might think all there is to physics is quantum mechanics, general relativity, particle physics or cosmology.
Abstruse physics can overly rarefy/overly steal away one's attention...
it's a red herring...
Of course certain deniers, detractors and deflectors - like postmodernists or supernaturalists or their sympathizers - like this, they value this. It aids their partisan ideologies.
All we can do is keep the charge. :)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 13, 2018 - 06:38pm PT
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^^^ please leave the physicists out of this... certainly I have been posting in response, if you don't ask me a question, I won't answer...
besides, the physicists are a notoriously picky lot who may insist on some rigor, better not to get bogged down, certainly easier to live a life rigor free.
I don't believe I'll start a post on "belief" though I believe you (among others) would prefer me not posting to this thread. You should just say it...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 13, 2018 - 06:41pm PT
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Nothing personal, Ed.
"Acknowledge and move on."
...
EDIT/IN RESPONSE TO ADDITION
I believe you (among others) would prefer me not posting to this thread.
That's not true. Not at all.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 13, 2018 - 06:53pm PT
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Fruitloop is too much of a coward to start a thread on belief that's why he wants Ed to do it.
YOU start it HFCS because you wanted it to begin with and quit trying to hide behind Ed .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 14, 2018 - 07:12am PT
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No worries.
Except for WB, we are pretty civil here, relatively speaking. Have you seen the latest tweets, i.e., today's tweets, from the office of the president?
"crazed crying lowlife." "Dog."
Sheesh.
Imagine if he had tweeted "ape" instead of "dog".
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Aug 14, 2018 - 10:01am PT
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I don't believe I'll start a post on "belief" though I believe you (among others) would prefer me not posting to this thread. You should just say it...
I don't typically follow this thread but check in from time to time.
Perhaps what makes abstract topics like Mind so tantalizing, is the lack of clear ability to measure an outcome and declare whether someone is right or wrong. This creates an opportunity for more folks to feel like they are intellectuals having an intellectual conversation. When a person enters the conversation who is trained with a level of rigor for achieving real-world outcomes with measurable success and failure, it is sort of a "rain on the parade" of pseudo-intellectualism.
For lack of proper training and discipline, I count myself firmly in the camp of pseudo-intellectuals ;)
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Aug 14, 2018 - 10:30am PT
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In Hindu culture one is said to imagine that the answers are already "hidden within the culture". In India religious leaders are now said to praise religion and culture as the cause of scientific discoveries. The answers are already said to be there within the culture, one only have to ask the right questions and then the answers will follow. In this connection culture could be seen as "the culture-bound ability to tune in to the grand server of life" (to use some well known words).
Very stupid, but possibly politically smart within the culture... By saying this the religious leaders are praising themselves but also all Hindu believers, scientifically ignorant or not.
Which makes it easier to understand WBrauns framing when he always claims to be in the know...
A thought experiment:
If all books and with them all knowledge about science and religion were gone, how could we start knowing again?
Religion, if it should be once more, would have to be reinvented and written once again... and our current plurality of religions and 3000 gods would then possibly be supplemented by "new-religions and new-gods".
Knowledge about the external world and how it works could be acquired empirically by using the senses - observing, interacting with the external world and experimenting to see what happens. Which would mostly bring us the same old insights about how things work.
Unless MikeL was left for king, of course... ^^^^
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 14, 2018 - 11:19am PT
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For lack of proper training and discipline, I count myself firmly in the camp of pseudo-intellectuals ;)
For lack of any important consequences, I count myself a trained and disciplined pseudo-intellectual. Maybe even a pseudo pseudo-intellectual.
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Aug 14, 2018 - 11:25am PT
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Marlow, Modi is a Hindutva. The BJP is a Hindu party. As you may know India is the land of many religions. They even have different laws for followers of different ones.
PS I think the correct spelling is suedo-intellectual lol
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Aug 14, 2018 - 11:32am PT
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Don Paul
... thanks for filling out the picture...
... or correcting it if you prefer...
:o)
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clode
Trad climber
portland, or
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Aug 14, 2018 - 11:37am PT
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I never thought I'd post a reply to this thread, but I've got something I'd like to add that I have not yet seen here:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 14, 2018 - 04:11pm PT
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Sheesh, I hate when I piss off Ed. He's one of my intellectual heroes. Let me restate. What I am trying to say is that belief in evolution and belief that mind is a product of evolution does not require anything but common man's logic. I believe that getting into the physics too much makes the science of evolution and mind seem too much like you have to be as smart as Ed to understand it (and he is one smart cookie). As a geologist and student of evolutionary biology, I see the related science as mainly a set of easily understood facts that all have to be accounted for in any theory. That's all.
An example; studies have shown that certain animals, including humans, recognize themselves in a mirror. Any theory of mind should account for this.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 14, 2018 - 04:31pm PT
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the science of evolution and mind seem too much like you have to be as smart as Ed to understand it (and he is one smart cookie).
No, .... one needs to be intelligent.
Smart doesn't do it, although Ed is intelligent enough as it is.
Complete intelligence comes from the source and NOT from any individual ......
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