Eise

At least for Pakistan I know the answer. Abdul Khan was a Pakistani who worked at Urenco in the Netherlands in the 70's. This company built ultracentrifuges to enrich uranium. Back in Pakistan, they were able to build them themselves. The greatest technical obstacle for building a bomb is not to construct a bomb, but the capacity to enrich uranium enough for the bomb. Really? So poor that they always already had to import their food? Don't do so ridiculous. @zapatos is perfectly right in his reaction. For modern technologies you might be right, but not for producing their own food. I would suggest, instead of just venting some opinions based on a few (alternative...) facts, read some books about the history of WW-II and about the development of the atomic bomb. Your posts show a gigantic lack of knowledge about, and understanding of history.

I use the browser 'brave', when on Windows. I see no advertisements at all. 'brave' is a fork from Chrome, but specially written to block as much advertisements and pop-ups as possible. Pity enough this browser does not exist for Linux. With Chrome on Linux I see an awful lot of advertisement.

Leibniz. See Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy.

Well, it is a replica. You wouldn't like to visit in a cellar with a lot of radioactive material literally hanging around. AFAIK the Americans dismantled the experimental reactor, and took it to the US. The idea of the reactor was of course to lower the 'fission cubes' into the heavy water in the tank below it. If it really worked I do not even know. There are several not so nice stories about the heavy water. It came from a factory in Sweden. One time the English sent a commando in order to sabotage the plant. They succeeded, but damage was repaired in due time. And then there is the sinking of a ship to transport the heavy water from the plant. It was a sabotage act by the Swedish resistance. Innocent civilians were also on board, and drowned.

Wow, so much to unravel here. Yes. The scientific background was in the open. So it would be just a matter of time. And then the point Swansont mentioned: That is true, more or less. But Japan simply did not capitulate. So the war could have taken much longer, taking many lives of American soldiers. Yes, but only after Germany was defeated. Heisenberg was in charge. The infamous meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr in 1941, gave the latter the impression that the Nazis were making serious work of the atomic bomb, and brought this impression to the US. Yep. I have seen the 'atom cellar' in Haigerloch: Does not quite compare to Los Alamos, is it? I would not put my hand in the fire for this, but it surely was a reason: Truman said something like this about the Soviets and the atomic bomb: "Now we have a real hammer on those boys". Another reason might have been to have a 'real live test'. A hint for this is the second bomb. One of the A-bombs was a U-235, the other a plutonium bomb. Wouldn't it be interesting to compare their effects 'in the field'? About the capitulation of Japan: there was a struggle between the civilian government and the military. The government wanted to give up, the military wanted to fight until the bitter end. One of the struggling points was the position of the emperor. The US wanted an unconditional capitulation, the Japanese government found that the position of the emperor could not be discussed. In the end the Japanese government made a very unusual proposal: let the emperor decide. In the meantime the first atomic bomb was dropped. If this fact had an influence on the decision of Hirohito is not known, fact is that he chose to capitulate. His speech in which he called for the capitulation was recorded, to be brought to the Japanese radio studios. Radical militaries tried to steal the recording on its way to the radio station, but they did not succeed. Hirohito's speech was broadcasted, and Japan capitulated. And the US more or less let the emperor untouched. Had the US made it known that the emperor could stay earlier, Japan might also have capitulated earlier. Maybe the A-bombs would not have been necessary. Main source: Bert Röling, who was a.o. member of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also called the Tokyo Tribunal, similar to the Nürnberg Tribunal in Germany). Hmmm. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch were hardly Nazis, they were Jewish and fled Germany in 1938. Otto Hahn: Fritz Strassmann: So four of the 'main characters' were definitely not Nazis. Equating 'German' and 'Nazi' is simply wrong, also during WWII.

Nicely put. I also do not know of masses that do not have a gravitational field, resp without 'curving' spacetime. And that is an important reason for me not to see a causal relationship between mass and curved spacetime.

Hi Naitche, I sometimes have such kind of problems too. For me a reload of the web page helps. Maybe you too? Cheers, Eise

Just as a side note: 'without examination' does not mean necessarily 'wrong'. It means for me that even in the 'hard sciences' there are philosophical assumptions, that even (some?) scientists might not be aware of. I chose this disclaimer because of the disdain that scientists often have of philosophy. Don't be afraid: philosophy is much harder with pseudo science, quasi scientific speculations, free riding ideas with no basis on (observable) reality, or metaphysical fantasies.

Hmm. I don't think naming it a cause, and even a mechanism, is a good way expressing the relationship between mass and spacetime curvature. In my opinion that would mean that physics would be able to describe the mechanism, and that implies new laws of nature. I think that we recognise mass because of its curvature (or inertia). Nobody asks for how a charge 'causes' an electrical field. So why should one do it for a gravitational field, even if we now know that this field is a geometrical curvature of spacetime? So if these are the only two possibilities, I opt for option 1.

Really? Bold by me. If a 'scientific article' cites Deepak Chopra as serious witness, then it is not serious scientific article. Maybe you should read Susan Blackmore: in her student days she had an OBE, and she started a career as 'believing' parapsychologist. But her serious empirical investigations turned her into the end being a sceptic, and leaving the field of parapsychology. I can highly recommend Dying to Live: Science and the Near-death Experience and The Adventures of a Parapsychologist. From the Wikipedia article:

Yep. The mind is an activity of the brain, just as a whirlpool is an activity of water. Or, @Maartenn100, is there a separate (physical?) space for whirlpools?

Ah, Descartes 1.1. 'Res extensa: 3 spacial dimensions. 'Res cogitans': mind. Calling it a dimension is just obfuscating method of hiding substance dualism. 'Substance dualism', because something has to exist in this 'dimension', otherwise it is just empty. Nope. To use your metaphor: our mind is a whirlpool in the brain, not in your imaginary dimension.

Yes. And? If you want to stick to old fashioned meanings then physics is philosophy. Newtons 'Principia' is clearly a work of philosophy: it is even in the complete title. So. Can we just look what is done under the header of 'philosophy' in academia today? Or maybe I do not even understand what you are trying to say.

Philosophy is not a pseudoscience. Yep. Philosophy is not even science. It is reflection on how we think, being it on the subject of politics, ethics, or ... science. See my disclaimer.

I would say even stronger: it is the factor needed to put space and time on the same footing. So to speak, the 'exchange rate between space and time'. This 'exchange rate' determines the causal structure of spacetime. It leads necessarily to the fact that there must be a maximum speed with which events can be causally related. Particles with mass can never reach this speed, as it would need an infinite source of energy. On the other side, massless particles can only travel at this speed. Thus the speed of light is not 'the speed of light': it is the speed of all massless particles. So the answer is: if the causal structure of your alternative universe is the same as ours, then the same relationship holds.

Just a side note: not 'centuries'. The latest gospel written was that of John, and historians estimate that it was written around the year 100 CE. I always supposed that Mohammed was much more historical than Jesus. The merchant being his uncle, such stuff. But maybe I have to correct that opinion. And was Mecca not already a place of religious worship: there stands the Kaaba, which is older than Islam. Could that have been a reason to conquer Mecca, to seize power over this important religious symbol?

It depends on the application, if a quantum computer is really faster than traditional digital computers. So if computers with enough qbits can be realised, some kinds of calculation will be much faster. But it is a big 'if'. I am afraid, quantum computers will go the same way as nuclear fusion reactors, unless some stable 'room temperature' realisation of qbits is found. But I expect that those researchers that work on quantum computers will always say that a breakthrough is around the corner, as in nuclear fusion. But that is just my gut feeling, reading about the progress being made with both technologies.

Strawman alert! If you are arguing against evolution, then argue against what evolution theory really says, not your uninformed interpretation of it.

Nope. I tried to bend the discussion in that direction, finding the most useful definition, but it seems everyone wants to stick to their definition. I think this is the main problem when discussing free will: people first decide if we have free will or not, and then rationalise their viewpoint. I gave it a try in the other free will thread: But it did not help. I have the impression, that nobody ever gave a good argument against the concept of compatibilist free will. All arguments given are against libertarian free will, which for me is like arguing that circles have no angles. The concept of libertarian free will is just as incoherent as a circle with angles.

Yes. But there is also the opposite: congestion influencing drivers. They get irritated, their cars use more gas, local pressure on the road is increasing where the congestions are, etc. So the congestion, as congestion, has impact on the components it is built off. Maybe an example of @TheVat's down causation? What you are suggesting is e.g. the impact of drugs on the brain. By changing something at a lower level (chemistry) one also changes mental phenomena.

I may need you to elaborate here. Obviously. I wrote 'the highest concentrations of cars' not 'the cars'. Look e.g. at this video (clearest from 0:50, using time lapse). There you can clearly see that no car is going backwards, but the congestion does. The backward moving congestion is an emergent phenomenon, that cannot be explained on the level of individual cars.

Yes. The reason is that you state that brain states cause mental phenomena, but the mental phenomena themselves have no causal impact. This 'construct' is exactly what epiphenomalism is. The perspective. Like my comparison with the book. On one side, you can study its physical and chemical properties, on the other side you can read it. But obviously, there is no contradiction. Both perspectives are valid, but somebody who studies the physical properties of a book is not in the position to claim that the book is 'just' paper, ink and nothing more. But you are saying this a lot: we are just wet meat robots. You are right that we are wet meat robots, but that is not the whole story: we, as wet meat robots, are so advanced that we are conscious, i.e. can experience ourselves, but not at levels below, like descriptions in terms of neurons, molecules, atoms etc. Watch it, if you feel the inclination to use the word 'just' (except you are talking about justice...). Most of the time, when people use the word 'just' in such a context, they leave out exactly what is essential. Once again traffic jams: it is obvious that all cars are moving forwards, slowly, and sometimes standing still, but never backwards. But what if I say that in a traffic jam something is moving backwards? Somebody who 'just' looks at the cars will declare me insane: no car is moving backwards! But if you look how a traffic jam develops, you can see how the highest concentrations of cars move backwards! The reason of course is that I look at another level, not on the level of single cars, but as the cars as 'collective'.

No. It is one brain state causing the next one. That is simplified of course: all kind of external causes also chime in, like the input of our senses. I don't understand your questions. I am just as a determinist as you are. Our difference lies in our different conceptions of what free will is.

I think I have written that already: All these mental phenomena are brain states. There are no mental phenomena that are not brain states. I would suggest to get back to the original question:

Nope. All these mental phenomena are brain states. You sound like a dualist here: mental phenomena 'influencing' brain states. (I put 'influencing' between quotes, because I think you are just trying to avoid 'causing'.)