Tub

On 9/4/2017 at 5:09 PM, Cap'n Refsmmat said:

Another update: We've gone from IPB version 4.1 to version 4.2, which fixes some security issues and bugs and tweaks the look just a bit. (Don't ask me why...) Let us know if there are any new bugs.

Hello, Cap'n. Since the latest update, my Windows8 smartphone can't stay logged into the forum website for more than a few seconds. I can log in but then, after those few seconds, the whole browser shuts down. Other websites aren't affected at all, and everything worked perfectly on this website before the update.  Any advice? Thanks. ( I'm logged-in on my PC at the moment ).

54 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed but one can't have consciousness in spades (if a being is self-aware how can it be more self-aware), but one can have intelligence in spades. 

Hello, dimreepr. I'm sure Area 54 doesn't need the likes of me to defend his position, or put words into his mouth, but what i gathered from his remark  about " consciousness in spades " is that he was suggesting that the content and achievements of our consciousness, as humans, is more varied than other species: apart from what Nature has blessed us with, we have all the sciences, technology, the arts, sports, advanced languages, medicines and hospitals etc. etc. In other words, we don't " live by bread alone ", whereas i don't think that most animals aspire to much more than food and shelter - of course, i might be wrong.

I do agree with your point about intelligence and consciousness being linked - intelligence needs consciousness in order to be able to function and........consciousness without intelligence - maybe that's Area54's politicians.   I agree, too, that native intelligence is not confined to humanity; unfortunately, we are the only species i am aware of that misuses that intelligence.

2 hours ago, Area54 said:

 

I do have difficulty with your apparent desire to place humanity at the top of evolutions path. I am reliably informed that hedgehogs, e. coli and politicians consider themselves at the pinnacle. (All except the latter have a good case to make.) In short, there is no pinnacle. There is not more evoloved, or less evolved. All organisms have enjoyed the same three and a half billion years of evolution from our last common ancestor. Certainly, in terms of consciousness, there are definite differences in the degree of consciousness displayed by different organisms, but perhaps our interest and emphasis on the importance of consciousness is only because we have it in spades.

Yes, maybe my remark needs qualifying: i should have said that relative to other life-forms on Earth, human beings may have the greater degree of self-consciousness compared with other creatures that may have self-consciousness: e.g I know i am a human being and i know that i am getting older and  one day i will die; i don't think a chicken is aware of its mortality. Again, i could be wrong.

 On reflection,i think you're right about evolution being all-inclusive: the whole of Life must be on the crest of the evolutionary wave that's flowing into the future.

P.S. If i was a hedgehog or some e.coli, i might be a bit insulted to be roped in with politicians!

18 hours ago, Gees said:

 Tub;

Welcome to my thread. I remember you from Ten oz's thread, and you had some interesting things to say, but I don't remember if I communicated with you directly. Your points are interesting, so please consider my responses.

 

 

 

Thank you, Gee. There's a lot to consider so please allow me a little time to gather my thoughts.

4 hours ago, Area54 said:

The very widely accepted consensus in the science community is that evolution has no ultimate goal. If we pursue this "cosmic consciousness" notion does that not mean we have moved from a firm base, grounded in science, to an unrooted speculation?

First of all, let me say that, being aware of the Sagan Standard, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard  ), i really wasn't making any assertions re " Cosmic Consciousness ", having no extraordinary evidence of my own to offer. Yet, despite the Latin phrase i recently discovered: " Quod gratis asseritur,gratis negatur ", ( in English : " Whatever is claimed without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence " ), i can't convince myself to dismiss completely out of hand those admittedly rare accounts of experiences of radically altered states of consciousness documented in times past and present, so i must say that even the slimmest of such evidence must be some proof against dismissal as a completely baseless speculation.

Perhaps " Cosmic Consciousness " is not a very good phrase to use - it may have a hint of hippy pseudophilosophy to it -  but if  we can correctly say that there are different states of consciousness " lower " than ours, can we confidently say that there aren't any states of consciousness " higher " than ours?  Perhaps even that speculative universal awareness of wholeness that isn't a by-product of evolution? I don't have the knowledge or confidence to disregard Panpsychism as insignificant.

All i know of evolution can be seen in this great little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl89HIJ6HDo&pbjreload=10 so perhaps i should have said that this so-called " Cosmic Consciousness " is perhaps the psychological culmination of human evolution and it would be very vain to assume that material evolution had reached its peak on our little blue dot. The long and winding road from molecule to mankind, and then beyond,  potentially still has billions of years to stretch, perhaps forever, so who knows what changes may occur - without any  ultimate material goal, just endless improvement.

12 minutes ago, Strange said:

No. If something "local" is accelerated then its increase in kinetic energy can be interpreted as an increase in (relativistic) mass, as described by SR. That does not apply to galaxies moving apart from one another which is not [local] motion and there is no increase in relative energy.

Yes, because expansion is a scaling effect, not a speed. So it is just simple arithmetic that the speed of separation is proportional to distance. For example, consider a number of galaxies separated by the same distance (far enough apart that the expansion of space is significant and the same between all of them).

At time 0, they are 1 unit apart:
A.B.C.D.E.F

After some time they are 2 units apart:
A..B..C..D..E..F

After the same time again, they are 3 units apart:
A...B...C...D...E...F

And so on:
A....B....C....D....E....F

Now, if we look at the distance between B and C, for example, it increases by 1 at every time step. But the distance between B and D increases by 2 at every step. So the distance between B and D is increasing twice as fast as the distance between B and C; i.e. the speed of separation is twice as great.

Choose any pairs of galaxies and you will see that apparent the speed of separation is proportional to the distance between them. Take two objects far enough apart and the speed of separation will be greater than the sped of light.

Thanks, Strange. Nice clear answer.

Just now, swansont said:

 

That's what happens, so yes. If space is being added at some small amount per light year of distance per unit time (I think it's 16 cm), then the more light years you are away from something, the faster the expansion speed.

Thank you too, swansont.

On 9/3/2017 at 3:12 AM, Gees said:

 

What I have seen is evidence that consciousness evolves, life forms evolve, and all life forms are conscious. This would seem to indicate that consciousness and evolution are not mutually exclusive, but are in fact related. Possibly even interdependent.

If I have missed some important information, please tell me what it is.

Gee

Hello, Gees. At my present level of understanding, i would suggest that it isn't Consciousness that evolves but what does evolve is the capacity to become more conscious of that of which we can be conscious. As life-forms evolve and nervous-systems and cerebral cortices become more sophisticated and sensitive, the spectrum of consciousness spreads from " simple ", primitive sense-consciousness to the present degree of self-consciousness which we have reached - which may be the pinnacle of self-consciousness but is most probably not the true pinnacle of Consciousness as a whole: mystics, philosophers and some scientists give credence to an actual, supreme " Cosmic " or " Universal " Consciousness which is primordial and timeless and which, in extreme circumstances, can overwhelm and displace self-consciousness. Perhaps this  " Cosmic Consciousness " is the ultimate goal of human evolution - if Consciousness can be said to have distance, direction and destination.

The link here is quite thought-provoking.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

1 hour ago, swansont said:

That's Hubble expansion: velocity is proportional to distance. Dark energy is causing that to accelerate, i.e. distant objects are moving even faster than Hubble's law predicts (and not slower, as was expected, from gravitational attraction)

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l10_p9.html 

Just a couple of questions:  as it accelerates, is the total mass of a galaxy increasing and, if it is, does this mean that the Dark Energy will also have to increase to provide more and more momentum to sustain that rate of acceleration? Also, if velocity is proportional to distance, does this imply that different regions of Space/Time are expanding at different velocities? Is that at all possible?

3 hours ago, Strange said:

The problems with this one are ethical rather than financial but ...

Bring up a group of babies in isolation for other humans. They would be cared for (by machines), fed and kept safe. They could have toys and pets to play with. The question is: would they spontaneously develop a language among themselves? If they did, would it be fully developed or some sort of pidgin? And if the latter, would the second generation turn it into a full language?

Actually, we can be fairly sure the answer to the last question is yes. But for the first two, we just don't know (for obvious reasons).

Believe it or not, someone tried this about 900 years ago! Maybe even before that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments M

38 minutes ago, Ted Robinson said:

 

zapatos said: T. Robinson said: “My staff practically made a profession out of insuring correctness in these matters and grammatical textbooks became our Bible.” -- What did your Bible say about using "insure" instead of "ensure"?

That’s the one thing that keeps me from being perfect.

Not so fast, Ted - you might still be perfect after all, lol. Here in Great Britain, we would always use " ensure " in the mentioned context but, in my ( American ) Webster's Dictionary, " insure " is defined as "... to make sure or certain "!      Pax, DrK!

Was it George Bernard Shaw who wrote something like: " Great Britain and America are two countries separated by the same language "? And, hanging onto the thread by a thread,  wasn't it Shakespeare who wrote " Much Ado About Nothing "?

Just now, Area54 said:

I store mine in a small satchel and take them out when I need room on a crowded train.

Ha,Ha. Hope it doesn't get too sticky for you!

2 hours ago, DrKrettin said:

The spacebar could do with a good clean as well. 

I'll get a new keyboard before my crest falls any farther - not further, lol.

Anyway, and before the Moderators pounce, back to " Nothing ": is "Nothing " necessary before " Something " can come into being? If there hadn't been " Nothing " before the BB, how could Space have expanded - just as you need an empty bucket before it can be filled with water?  Although we know that the Universe isn't really expanding " into " anywhere,  if " Something " was already in situ, could another " Something " have occupied the same volume as what was already extant?

On a lighter note, is the hole in a doughnut " Nothing " and part of the doughnut at the same time? And where does it go when the doughnut is eaten?

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Shift key needs cleaning underneath. I had to do mine yesterday.

Yes, that must have been my problem too,otherwise i wouldn't have made any mistakes at all. Thanks for clearing that up, SJ - i feel completely exonerated now, lol.

57 minutes ago, DrKrettin said:

But not, unfortunately, with English use of uppercase letters. 

Ha,Ha,Ha. Mea culpa.   

6 hours ago, Tub said:

 To clarify: zapatos thought that Ted's use of a comma inside quotation marks was wrong -  he thought the comma should have been on the outside. I thought so too, but checked the grammarbook.com website which agreed with Ted's usage so i said Ted was right .......     

 

 

5 hours ago, DrKrettin said:

I disagree

.........and you may also be right, DrK. That website is an American website and, though its Rule 4 on quotation marks says that periods/full stops and commas etc.always go inside quotation marks, it adds a caveat that other countries use different conventions so Ted, in America was correct; if you're in a different country you are correct too, if you go by those different rules. Everybody's happy.  

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp

Just to get back on topic, may i quote Oscar Wilde?  " I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing i know anything about ". (Punctuated in England).

Just now, zapatos said:

Shouldn't the comma have been placed outside the quotes?

I always thought so too, but i checked " quotation marks " on this great website and Ted's right. 

http://www.grammarbook.com/

2 hours ago, Dan B. said:

 

 How could it be that an infinite Universe had been set in only 13.8 BY? 

 

Hello,Dan. The distance of around 13.8 billion light-years is the current limit of the observable size of the Universe, relative to us here on Earth. It can possibly be seen as a sort of event-horizon,and an horizon is just the limit of our sight. Beyond this horizon, also called the Hubble limit, there could be countless stars, galaxies and other astronomical bodies that are so far away that their light hasn't had time to reach us yet - or may never reach us. Hubble's Law also permits sufficiently distant space to expand faster than the speed of light so, again, light from those far, far distant galaxies will never reach us here on Earth. Of course this doesn't mean that the Universe is definitely infinite....but it still could be.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-team-breaks-cosmic-distance-record

6 hours ago, Strange said:

The Big Bang model works with both a finite (but unbounded) and an infinite universe. If it didn't then the question would be considered closed.

Thinking that only a finite universe can expand seems to imply that it is expanding "into" something, which isn't the case. 

 

 

Thank you, Strange, that's what i was thinking -  that an infinite Universe would leave no " room " for expansion.

6 hours ago, Carrock said:

Depends what you mean by steady state. Non cosmologists use a definition like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_(electronics)

The steady state theory of Bondi and Gold was disproved mathematically and the steady state theory of Hoyle was disproved observationally. These are the only theories that most cosmologists would describe as steady state.

Basic lambda-cdm (and some theories modified for dark energy) predict that startup transients such as the cmbr and stars and cosmologists will eventually become unimportant as the universe continues expanding, becoming colder and emptier and approaching an unchanging state. No cosmologist will ever describe that as steady state for historical reasons.

An implication of my previous post is that that unchanging state must end after limited or unlimited time.

An infinite universe whose volume does not eternally increase or decrease exponentially is the only one which can exist for infinite time and be topologically consistent with current physics. A non cosmologist might describe that as 'steady state.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Thank you too, Carrock. I must admit that i didn't have Bondi/Gold/|Hoyle in mind when thinking of a " steady state " Universe. I didn't see an infinite Universe as being " in stasis ", only thinking that, if it was infinite, it couldn't  possibly expand " outwards " anymore, as it would have nowhere left to expand  " into ", whereas, if it was finite, it would be able to keep expanding  "into " empty space, which Strange has said is not what is  actually happening. I hadn't considered eternal exponential volume increase/decrease either, only a simple scenario  that would allow the Universe to continue to expand only if it had that " room " for expansion. As a non-cosmologist, then, i was  simply using " steady state "  to mean a Universe that couldn't expand any more. Sorry for the confusion.

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Is there a point, or set of odds, in the absence of an apparent cause, that we have to say that something might be paranormal?

Hmmm. Tricky; i imagine that, in the great scheme of things, and like the monkeys/typewriters, any two or more similar events could eventually coincide without it being considered paranormal or supernatural - after all, we are creatures of habit so many things must be continually replicated on a grand scale ,even daily.  Then again, are coincidences at all significant anyway? Jung seemed to believe they are and i,at least,can't argue with him in such matters. He introduced his concept of " Synchronicity " to address the idea of separate events having a meaningful relationship without having any apparent causal relationship. He defined Synchronicity as " ... a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved ". So is Synchronicity normal or paranormal?  Are all coincidences meaningful? Without having Jung's expertise, I suppose it boils down to a subjective reaction in each individual. I have had several  strange cases of coincidence, ( and serendipity ), in my life, just as in my post above, all with a happy outcome, fortunately, but i can't explain them myself so I'll leave it to Jung's claim that events can be connected by meaning as well as cause, and those events connected by meaning do not necessarily have to have a cause. Is that paranormal? I really don't know.

37 minutes ago, Carrock said:

Exponential expansion can continue for unlimited but finite time.

A/the universe has finite or infinite (i.e. aleph-null) units of volume. If this universe doubles in size an infinite number of times in infinite time it contains 2^(aleph-null) units of volume. This is equal to aleph-one units of volume (assuming the continuum hypothesis). That is, there would be as many units of volume in this universe as there are dimensionless points. This is topologically inconsistent with current physics.

 Philosophy of Science Vol. 32, No. 1 (Jan., 1965), pp. 21-31  has a good description of this. (The article was very aggressively peer reviewed but some on this forum are convinced it is too old to be correct.)

Of course the universe is not constrained by what seems to be (im)possible....

Thanks, Carrock. Can i assume, then, that an infinite Universe would have to be a steady-state Universe, or have i misunderstood your post? ( I'm not a mathematician. )

In my last post on Wednesday, ( in Speculations ), i quoted from " Alice in Wonderland ", saying " Curiouser and curiouser " ; the next thread i opened, that very same day,was this one and the first thing i saw, in those bold capital letters, was " Curiouser and curiouser " and, what's more, my surname and initial are an exact anagram of " Lincoln " ! Ha,Ha!

6 hours ago, Evgenia said:

 It was just a beautiful moment of seeing the smile of universe in action.

 

 

 

 Yes,that's a lovely way to put it. I hope the Universe never gets tired of smiling.

On 01/08/2017 at 2:32 PM, dordle-loddle said:

Is the Universe infinite or just really, really big?

I'd be happier believing that the Universe is infinite, that's a comforting thought, but i can't help feeling that it's finite, simply because what we can see of it is still expanding in space/time. If the Universe was already infinite,( and eternal ),wouldn't that prevent any further expansion of space/time?  I hope i can be shown to be completely wrong.

15 hours ago, Ted Robinson said:

  The problem being that it might be almost impossible to imagine nothing..........

......and, if i may add, by extension, " nowhere ". ( I'm assuming, perhaps mistakenly, that " something from nothing " includes " somewhere from nowhere " ).

It's easy to imagine " something " and " somewhere " as i can hold  "something " or go to/come from " somewhere ", but if i try to imagine " nowhere " or " nothing ", my poor brain just falls silent - is it possible to go to/come from " nowhere " and, if i put down my book, am i holding " nothing " in my hand?  And what about " never " and "none "? More questions than answers, sadly. In another thread, i suggested that " nothing " could be defined as that which has no  perceptible quality or quantity, so that's about as far as i can go for myself.

The only instance i know of " something " coming from " nothing " and " nowhere ", is Lewis Carroll's wise Cheshire Cat. As Alice said " Curiouser and curiouser ".

P.S. Who is your proof-reader, Ted? I have to admire your Orthography - defined, in Wikipedia, as " a set of conventions for writing, including norms of spelling, hyphenation,capitalization,word breaks. emphasis, and punctuation ". ( I bet you knew that already ). A lot of people, myself included, could learn from you - even at your age! 

3 hours ago, Prof.De Mendiz said:

Christianity is the most bad religion in world with sins. See how many animals die in Christmas 

Buddhism is something from all that gives true enlightenment

so talk with full with sin people is unnecessary thing

Namaste, Professor. May i suggest that you visit FreeSangha? It's a dedicated Buddhist forum and you can cast your stones there.

Thanks for all your help, Sensei. I have downloaded the free Audacity digital audio workstation and can use it to analyze the waveform and spectrogram of two ( or more ) wav files playing simultaneously. I have plenty of wav files on my PC so all i need to do now is find out when my radio is going to play something i already have on file: i can do this by monitoring my weekly radio-programme listings magazine which, for a specific radio station, ( BBC 2 ), lists forthcoming  choices of  10 " Tracks of My Years " that are played at the same time every weekday, and which are usually very common popular songs by well-known performers. The same station also has an " Album of the Week " feature so i know on two counts what songs/singers are going to be played so i can record whatever is appropriate. ( It won't be piracy as i would have already purchased those same songs that i'd be comparing ).

Thanks again, Sensei. Raw looks like the best bet.

Just to add a little to DrP's levity, i would define " nothing " as what my partner finds in her wardrobes when she's looking for something to wear, even though the wardrobes seem to me to be full of clothes.

That apart, could " nothing "  be defined as that which has no perceptible quality or quantity?