General Philosophy

Trouble with physics: The roots of reality What makes us so sure that mathematics can reveal nature's deepest workings, asks cosmologist Brian Greene. find out in this copyrighted article I plagiarized.

Introduction to quantum mechanics From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is an accessible, non-technical introduction to the subject. For the main encyclopedia article, see Quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics Introduction Glossary · History Background[show] Fundamental concepts[show] Experiments[show] Formulations[show] Equations[show] Interpretations[show] Advanced topics[show] Scientists[show] v t e From above and from left to right: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, Richard Feynman. Quantum mechanics is an area of physics dealing …

In the famous movie called "2012", there is a particularly striking and utterly revealing scene, that goes FAR beyond what even Quantum Theory or Quantum Physics, indeed, for that matter, can even begin to speculate upon, in my personal and judgemental view, let alone prove, that "The Teacher is showing to his Student, and is over filling a cup of tea to the point, where it begins to fall out of the cup and all over the floor, and the Student stares and says in amazemement and shock to the Teacher, about what is it that he is doing wrong, and the Teacher kindly and politely tells him, that Your Mind and Your Brain are just like this over flowing cup of tea, over flowing w…

Trouble with physics: Seven experiments to change it all With theory stalled, the next breakthrough in physics is likely to come from an experiment. We introduce seven potential game-changers With theory at an impasse, the next breakthrough in physics is likely to come from an experiment. We introduce seven potential game-changers, starting with the behemoth that's soon to get bigger The Higgs boson is (probably) in the bag, but the Large Hadron Collider has plenty more to give. Starting late in 2014, the plan is to double the energy of the proton collisions at CERN's particle smasher. That should be enough to produce particles predicted by next-generation th…

Trouble with physics: The roots of reality What makes us so sure that mathematics can reveal nature's deepest workings, asks cosmologist Brian Greene In the late 1800s, when James Clerk Maxwell realised that light was an electromagnetic wave, his equations showed that light's speed should be about 300,000 kilometres per second. This was close to the value experimenters had measured, but Maxwell's equations left a nagging loose end: 300,000 kilometres per second relative to what? At first, scientists pursued the makeshift resolution that an invisible substance permeating space, the aether, provided this unseen standard of rest. It was Einstein who in the early 20t…

Because I attempted a last note in the thread of Peter J on the slit thread continuum of the Higgs field, I'll post a reaction to Split infinities post here: Posted Today, 07:22 AM kristalris, on 28 Mar 2013 - 12:06, said: For some reason I missed your reply to my post and since you obviously took some time and alot of thought typing this...I figure better late than never to reply. LOL! I would ask you to think about this as it pertains to the possibilities you have outlined here...as I feel you have not included this concept I am about to state into your thoughts. If we are living in one universal state within a Multiverse...and I believe this to be …

Ah. Not just me then. This naive question has bothered me for a long time. It's not particularly associated with the Higgs field, Any theory that has space as a collection of points seems to run into this problem. Logically, it seems to me, spacetime must be a continuum, but a continuum would be a unity, and as Leibnitz points out a unity cannot have parts and so cannot be extended,. Maybe this seems like idle hair-splitting or useless philosophising in this context, but I feel it may tell us something very profound about spacetime.

Science The sun rises in the sky. We do not doubt our brain and eyes in accepting this, since living becomes very difficult if we doubt them. We accept the observations which are reliable for life, irrespective of the facts. We trust our sense organs and brain. When an observation is reliable, it is not mandatory to know the facts of that observation. An observation is reliable unless there is an alternative observation. ‘Sun travels from east to west of the earth in the sky’ was a reliable observation until it was observed that ‘the earth spins’. It cannot be disproved that your brain is under the control of a data injecting system, where your environment is only an ima…

Is it possible to define asininity? There are no limits.

So i was thinking, Lets say for example, Somebody believes in karma. They think of the bad things they have done, they start to focus on the bad things that happen to them and attribute it to having bad karma because of whatever they did. Then they might either start trying to live a certain way to avoid "bad karma" or become obsessive about it and constantly live their life in a way which they normally would not, Would it become like a penance maybe? Sort of like "oh i got attacked in the street, That's what i get for ....." What about religion? People might live a certain way to avoid afterlife consequences or in order to gain entry to "heaven" etc. Im not specific…

Michael Jordan once said, “To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don’t isolate.” I recently read the quote above and then remembered the quote below. So.. Do you need to be selfish to be successful? “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” - Lao Tzu

Im sure most of you heard about some of this research some time ago, But i have been looking into it on a more scientific level , And The whole process seems fairly do-able. I think it would take quite some time though to get to the right ancient genes. I for one would love to see it happen, But What consequences do you think it could hold bringing extinct species back to life? Maybe there was a reason reptiles declined from the top of the chain.could there be potential ramifications as humans in the long term, Maybe we would be allowing them a second shot, at life, and therefore allowing them to evolve into creatures with characteristics to survive from predators, (us) B…

My point is that cavemen technically had all the same resources to make everything we have now, they just weren't evolved enough to do it. How many more types of materials or minerals that can be used to make new types of metals or different things along those lines could there be left to be discovered ? In my opinion the possibilities could be endless. every single material you see around you has been created from things that were found on this earth, and with various different things mixed or altered with heat or with other chemicals we get different materials with which we can create more. It is incredible when you think about it, Imagine if we ever made it to anothe…

I am interested to find out if: Stable regions of chaotic behaviour can be influenced by a harmonic input to create a region/s of order - whether these individually induced regions of order are always contiguous - how independently induced regions of order interact with each other despite boundaries of chaos betwixt Observations such as these would fascinate me as a scientist and as an amateur philosopher. The age old questions of freedom in a chaotic world and the imposition of order on it to bring stability are ones that society is constantly asking of itself. It would be interesting to build physical analogues of these questions. Can different regimes (har…

In my mind, suggesting that there cannot be any objective fact in turn suggests that the only objective fact is that there are no objective facts, which is contradictory. Could this just be seen as semantics?

How are we conscious now and not then.If the future hasn't happened yet then the probability of being conscious would be much greater for the timeline of human existance is much longer than the day we were born.Also if there's a possibility of being born in the past then our existence now is impossible.If we were born in the past then the same problem would occur.Since we are here and there is a past and future then this could point to cycles of time.So we are destined for this time and destined to live it forever.This then makes freewill impossible.But,there is the Uncertainty Principle proving we might have freewill anyway.Post your thoughts and ideas on this.

In the past, people would say that everything is based on god, as they could not explain it in any other way. They made elaborate stories about god(s) and this created a sort of culture and identity of the people. God for people was a way to express their ambitions and desires as a society of controlling nature. I see a parallel between that and the modern day notion on aliens. They have come to signify our fears as a technological race as well as our hopes of better tech and intergalactic travel. Also, many unexplained things are blamed on aliens. Just like the notion of God, aliens have seeped into our culture, and we are creating modern day myths such as chupacabra, l…

Unless we are getting more intelligent as a species, there will surely come a time when our processing power as humans can no longer move science forward assuming that we will not be intelligent enough to think beyond the boundaries that are presented. The assumption is based on the idea that at some stage someone with an IQ of 170 will not be able to go beyond the current theory even if it is understood to be flawed in some way but would require an IQ of 180 to do this. If you agree with what I am saying, how far away from this do you think we are? If you oppose, perhaps you could explain why? If someone would like to introduce the role of computers in this plea…

Listening to songs of the past remind me of my past. I remember a day where my emotions were felt. I was close to the world because I could accurately feel and react. However, as I move on in my life I am constantly losing my emotional attachment to the world. Does this mean I have detached myself from reality? In any case it has not driven me insane, but rather impertinent and stone like in relevance to emotional status. It's not that I don't feel emotion. The emotion is just "numbed" for lack of a better term. But this does not make me lifeless. I know this because I still have motivation, motivation driven by the spark to create better lives for others. I sometimes for…

My list: 1. The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War, Jacque Fresco 2. Tyranny Of Words, Stuart Chase 3. Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski 4. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, R. Buckminster Fuller 5. Science And Human Behavior, B.F Skinner 6. The Mind in the Making the Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform, James Harvey Robinson 7. Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward: 2000-1887": A Study Guide from Gale's "Novels for Students" (Volume 15, Chapter 7) 8. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins 9. The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford World'…

Please consider these three posts as the start of this thread; they were copied from the "Are all religious people hypocrites?" thread. (One little mechanical comment: I have trouble quoting quotes on this forum.) ​You rather seem to have missed the point that the theists don't have one either. Well, theist believe they do, but you don't believe they do. You're obviously someone who doesn't believe, so you don't know how believing can so strongly motivate a person. Let me say then that theists thoroughly "believe" they have an invariant source of moral code with inevitable and eternal consequences. Let's say a man finds a money…

If there is no free-will, is it right for an individual to blame others for his or her problems in life?

In education, should we give more importance to learning the facts or teaching morals such as how to behave with others, how to control anger, how find a purpose in life, etc. I feel we should teach morals more, because that gives the child a base to do good to the society.

Hi. Exist any scientific approach to disentangle the possible inmortality of mind in an atheistic context? From a scientific point of view [only theoretically] is much more accesible to theorize about inmortality of mind [i.e. some computerized simulators pretend to 'reproduce' the personality of John Lennon - a sort o Madame Tussauds of A.I.-, etc] than to theorize on the ethereal, and extremely abstract concept of God.

Does anyone know what exactly the three laws of logic - Identity, Non-Contradiction and Excluded Middle - are? To be clear, I am not referring to the statements, but rather the 'things' that those statements are referring to? What do you call something which all of existence is contingent on? Is there even a word for what they are? Or does it fall into the category 'they simple ARE'?