Eise

I am getting more and more confused by this discussion. I wonder if there is a confusion of meanings of concepts you are using. E.g. could you all please be as precise as possible. ' What is Bell's theorem, and Aspect's experiment proving: that there are no local hidden variables, or even none-local variables? Just 'no hidden variables' is not clear enough. I (tried to) read Bell's paper, and found following passage: Of course I am not happy with the expression 'action at a distance', (am i critising Bell? Ups...), where it is 'only' correlations we are talking about. I think you (and I) all agree there is no action in the classical sense, i.e. some for of causation: this would imply FTL communication. And I (as I assume any other physicist) fully accept special relativity. Another point I do not understand: Since when is global local? I agree with your last sentence, because we are talking correlation, not causation. There definitely is some none-local aspect in QM, as is said already a few times, because we cannot reproduce this phenomenon based on classical physics. Further I am suspicious about two referenced articles (one by Joigus and one by MigL) that both base their argument on the MWI. MWI is a metaphysical stance, that heaves the wave function to real, physical existence. MigL's idea that it is just an interpretation, i.e. because (nearly) all QM-interpretations are empirical equivalent, its conclusions should be empirically equivalent seems not valid to me, because any kind of solution of Bell-like experiments is also an interpretation (super-luminal communication, super-determinism, etc). In my eyes, MWI is a nice way to wipe the problem under the carpet. Bohm also is an interpretation, and his quantum potential is definitely none-local. And last but not least, Anton Zeilinger, in his Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation, says it clearly: local realism is not a valid description of our world, i.e. either locality must be given up, or realism. The latter is also given as a potential way out in 'Bertlmann's socks': Addition: Funny fact: I read the German version of Zeilinger's book, which was published by C. Bertelsmann... Not a perfect correlation, but close...

Veritasium has Youtube videos about modern analogue computers. Maybe you should have a look?

Careful: the citation did not seem 'einsteinian' to me, and I did not say he did not say it. I just did not find it with google. But that the only citation I found was in an article of 'Solomon' is highly suspicious.

He mentioned it: It did not sound very 'einsteinian' to me, so I tried to google if I could find a reference that Einstein really said something the like. I found exactly one reference... An article by a certain 'Solomon'... If somebody has still has some curiosity left, he can look up everything there. It is the usual crackpotism. Obviously not. And your reaction: I assume Studiot thought more about Marcel Grossmann and David Hilbert. Historians more or less agree that Mileva's role was mainly that of a highly intelligent 'resonance board'.

'Slave of free will' is a contradiction.

Thanks, Markus, for your answer. OK, looked it up. Seems that they had the order of magnitude correctly, but they seem to have come at a value that was even lower of that of a white dwarf. So still pretty rough, yes. But that is rather hypothetical too, isn't it? GUT is more a GUH (hypothesis) than a theory. AFAIK GUTs predict that the proton is not stable, but experiments already pushed the lifetime of the proton higher than predicted. That's why I referred to a bottom/top quark star... Both are heavier than the proton. But I know this is 'extreme speculation'. And of course there would be a degeneration limit for them too.

I assume you mean 'these must contain singularities according GR'. Which is the reason to say that, as is often said, 'GR breaks down' in the centre of a black hole. What I am wondering is how Oppenheimer & co could be so sure about the 'total' gravitational collapse, without knowing all ins and outs of the strong nuclear force. How could they be sure, that gravitation would even overcome neutron degeneration? I mean even now, knowing that neutrons are made of quarks, the Pauli exclusion principle is also valid for quarks, in the end, these are also fermions. Maybe a '(top/bottom?) quark star' is hiding immediately behind the event horizon? How can we exclude such a scenario? So I assume I am just asking 'which limits, and how do we know these limits?'.

I think it is one step deeper. A black hole limits the knowability of science: it is principally impossible to have empirical knowledge of a black hole behind the event horizon, at least not in a way that it can become part of science (of course you possible could dive in a super-massive black hole without spaghettification, but you cannot come back to inform scientists about what you saw or measured...). My recent readings on the interpretation of QM seem to make a similar point for Einstein: he could not accept the 'spooky action at a distance'. For him there had to be some hidden variables that would explain it. Something has to be there, but that it is empirically outside our reach was not acceptable to him.

No, it isn't. If a number is less than infinity, than it is finite. If you add 1 again, then you still get a finite number. That is a contradiction, so infinity -1 is still infinity. The warnings you got that 'infinity' does not behave like any other number are perfectly valid: it is not just 'a big number'.

Because all stars from the vantage point of a black hole would be blue shifted. And not 'everything' is red shifted. This is for sure for many stars in the galaxy, and it is also true for galaxies that are relatively close by, which velocity to us is bigger than the expansion of the universe. E.g. the Andromeda galaxy and our galaxy are approaching each other, so Andromeda is also blue shifted from our view. There is no need to come with fantastic propositions, where astronomy already has very viable theories. Dark Matter is still a kind of riddle, but we mostly postulate its possible existence from the movements of or in other galaxies, gravitational lensing, and the details of the Cosmic Background Radiation. If DM really is the answer to the 'anomalous' phenomena we observe is still an open question, but at least it would work as an explanation pretty well.

Before I throw a long posting on this topic, I would like to say that we should realise that a lot of these expressions are colloquially used in daily language. Critising people for not using these terms in their (philosophical) technical meaning is often not useful. If somebody presents some reasons why she thinks something, and calls it 'logical' I normally do not have any problem with that. If the viewpoint expressed is not correct, I will just give arguments against it, not caring about the 'misuse' of the word 'logical'. Only when somebody thinks she has given a logically impeccable argument, i.e. she is really referring to the power of formal logic, I will confront the misuse. When I look at the list that Studiot has given, I would say it is a nice list, with a slowly less convincing 'feeling' about it: 'logical' being something like 'having strong arguments in favour' of a viewpoint, till 'sensible' which is already approaching 'intuitional' or based on similarities with other argumentations/phenomena/processes/things... that the speaker sees. So the context in which words from Studiot's list are used is important. If I may use a not so philosophical concept...: it is not always necessary to be an ant fucker on the (mis)use of these expressions. Maybe I will post some more later, on the exact question of the question in the topic. Formally, there is definitely a difference between 'logical' and 'rational', and some of the postings here have correct pointers at this difference. I like DrmDoc's posting here very much. I might have not even much more to say if we stick precisely to the question of the topic. (Ok, there we go.. +1 )

Sorry, this is nonsense Ni Mimi. In modern times, most of science is too complicated today that somebody who is not totally uptodate to the level of present knowledge can contribute to basic scientific theories. First you have to really understand the empirical holes and possible inconsistencies in established science. For that you need a thorough knowledge of the science in question. Nonconformists without such knowledge always produce BS, like Immanuel Velikovsky himself. Bold by me. Your kind of misunderstanding of the situation is much worse than Martillo's. Martillo does not know how modern (again, established science!) explains atoms and chemical bonding. You obviously have not even the slightest idea about science, its methods, and how it progresses.

Hi Martillo, What I do not understand, is that you don't start to read. Several experts here have told you, that electron configuration in atoms and molecules, and chemical bonds, are thoroughly understood, and already belong to established science. Of course, there are still problems enough, but many (most?) of them are practical: even if we have the basic theories, the calculations become next to impossible when many particles are involved, and therefore approximations or experiments are needed. (just imagine: there is still no general analytical solution for the 3-particle problem , i.e. 3 particles that move under simple Newtonian gravity! How more difficult is it when you want to describe multiple particle problems for atomar conditions!) The problem you have seems to me that what you understand about these topics so far, does not fit the concepts you use to approach atomar and molecular processes and configurations. I can only say: believe the experts here, and the established science, that there is no problem. There simply is no need for a new basic theory, so don't spill your time on it. Use your time to get into the present scientific understanding. Read about quantum theory, quantum electrodynamics, and chemical bonding. Try to find the books that fit to your present understanding, and bring you to a higher level of insight about these topics. I am sure that some of the participants in this thread will help you to find the right books (or maybe even good web pages). I assure you, great new vistas will be opened in your mind. Let us know, if you need any help to find the right texts for you. Cheers, Eise

Yes, I know. Here the details of this picture: From here. And really, very relative: Bold by me. In fact, for a bubble chamber liquid hydrogen is less dense than anything else that can be used for a bubble chamber... And in case you wonder why I know your picture so well: I am wearing this T-shirt at the moment: Of course I looked up where the picture was coming from. I was pleasant surprised that the picture was made in my birth year... For you, I drew the path of the neutral Lambda particle in red.

This is wrong. Neutral particles make no visible tracks. The V-formed track somewhere in the middle is a neutral Lambda particle that decays there into two charged particles, that seem to pop up from nowhere. The tracks that seem to go in straight lines are just very fast charged particles, so you do not see that they have also curved paths in the magnetic field.

Y apologize, I was wrong stating atoms are neutral at 0ºK only. As I said after: Sorry for being unclear: it is not just your statement about atoms at 0ºK, it was about your complete position as stated in your OP.

Nope. Triboelectric effect Bold by me. Source? Your position would invalidate all of chemistry, physics, and daily experience (especially at children's parties). This is worse than 'Einstein was wrong'. Only 'the earth is flat' tops you here.

To strive for fulfillment in togetherness with all other living beings. No. We will never know. Last time I looked Philosophy 1 was still alive and kicking.

Oh, but there were already many experiments with electricity: Why do you think we don't see such devices anymore?

Well, my fingers are burning to show how wrong you are. But when you do not want to discuss on a discussion forum, I am wondering what you are doing here. Giving arguments is the alpha and omega of philosophy, and the alpha and tau of science (and the tau and the omega of science is experiment and observation).

I disagree, physics derived from questioning things just like this, and to just shove aside questions like these in the physics community only shows the lack of answers. If questions to unanswered problems is philosophy then what do we really understand, if every thing just creates another problem that cant be answered. Where I do not quite agree with Bufofrog that philosophy is the trash can for all questions that sciences cannot answer, he definitely has a point. In philosophy, we say that your kind of question contains a category error. Causality can only meaningfully be defined in space and time. E.g. following statements should clarify this: a cause always precedes its effect Two events can only be directly causally related when they are in their immediate vicinity But such propositions only make sense in space and time, they are meaningless when talking about space and time. Causality does not apply to space and time themselves. The relationship between spacetime, energy, and gravity is a conceptual one, not a causal one. By giving the conceptual relationships between these three, one could say that the job of the physicist is done. As a philosopher, of course one can ask all kind of petty questions ('is space really curved?';'What is ontologically first: gravity or time dilation?'). Physicists can do very well without such questions, and their possible answers. Some of these questions can be fascinating (e.g. PBS spacetime has an interesting episode about the latter question). Exactly these kind of questions show that 'causality' does not apply to spacetime itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eise_Eisinga a great-great-<n>-great cousin of mine. A debunker 'avant-la-lettre'.

I have the same problem. But I noticed it makes a difference if I am signed in or not. When I am signed in I get at the last posting; when not it jumps to the beginning of the thread.

No, philosophy can help to increase the quality of discussions about 'what is good', but not to answer the question directly. Where it is true that questions about science do not belong to that science itself, you expect too much from philosophy to provide the answers. The output of philosophy is clarification, digging up hidden assumptions, unmask logical or argumentative fallacies, etc. Depends on what mean with 'mere' in this case. If you mean hypotheses from lay people, then you are right; but such hypotheses aren't philosophical either. But for a scientist, who is working in his field of expertise, hypotheses are the ground for theory building. Scientific theories do not come from nature: they come via the creativity of scientists. But only these theories are accepted, that stand empirical tests. For critical thinking, philosophy builds quite a good basis. That is useful for scientists too. Being aware of societal and moral consequences is also useful.

'Binary numbers' do not exist, neither do 'decimal numbers'. Numbers exist, but we can use different notations for them. Take the number 153, in decimal notation. This means: (1 x 100) + (5 x 10) + (3 x 1). With exponents you could write it as: (1 x 10²) + (5 x 10¹) + (3 x 10⁰). So the number is expressed as sums of multiples of powers of 10. So the base number is 10. In binary, 153 is written as 10011001, which means: (1 x 2⁷) + (0 x 2⁶) + (0 x 2⁵) +(1 x 2⁴) +(1 x 2³) + (0 x 2²) + (0 x 2¹) +(1 x 2⁰) Which is in decimal: (1 x 128) + (0 x 64) + (0 x 32)+ (1 x 16) + (1 x 8 ) + (0 x 4)+ (0 x 2) + (1 x 1) = 153. Every number can be written in every base.