joigus

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Actually one would be real and one would be imaginary.

OK. Point taken. But that's just another fiduciary or referential choice. I'm not convinced it's that essential, although it could have consequences.

What I think Hanke is trying to say (maybe clumsily re-phrased by me) is illustrated with this parable:

A very advanced ultra-dimensional civilization makes contact with us. They know we're inquisitive organisms and are very interested in our opinion on foundational questions about physical reality. They somehow develop a code to communicate with us (I'm leaving to them all the hard work). And they ask us: Hi, lot, what does the universe look like for you? Starting with: What dimensions do you see?"

And we say, "well, it'll be difficult to explain what we see, but just for a start, we can see three spacial dimensions and one time dimension for describing change in this four-dimensional universe".

Reply: "Mmmm. That's funny. We see one spacial dimension and three of what you call time dimensions"

They exchange documentation in the form of theories, equations, experimental data, etc. And everything checks. It's only that what we call time, they call radius of a 3-dimensional time around the individual that's perceiving that time; and vice-versa.

Who would be any the wiser about what they are calling time or space? The words "time" and "space" would just be arbitrary tags, mathematical dummies.

I'm leaving the next idea for later.

8 minutes ago, geordief said:

""I am just going outside and may be some time"

I'm glad you mentioned time. We're still on-topic.

On 7/26/2020 at 3:40 PM, dimreepr said:

How does one determine repentance from self interest?

Good question. +1. I suppose modern psychometric techniques are getting us closer to it.

5 minutes ago, geordief said:

That is how Churchill quit smoking ,the story goes.

Once he said he was quitting he had little choice.

Maybe it's a British thing.  

14 hours ago, Ghideon said:

(hopefully the animation works):

It does. I'm getting dizzy.  

14 hours ago, Ghideon said:

I'm in group H:

H: The lazy group: not investing enough time to post anything of value, but having enough time to study and learn from the other members' interesting contributions.

We all want to have one foot on that group, I think. But, as Newton once said (or so they say he said), you become a prisoner of what you've said.  

1 hour ago, Ghideon said:

I have not used the ignore-list yet, I just skip reading the things I don't like. And sometimes when other members posts clever and interesting followups on some exceptionally stupid posts I prefer to see the full context.

This may well be one of the most sensible things I've read today. Still, I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

1 hour ago, andsm said:

The variant of the strong anthropic principle is the anthropic principle of participation stated by John Wheeler [4]:

 Observers are necessary   to bring the Universe into being.

John Wheeler was a great physicist, but not many people hold this view today. You should distinguish philosophical musings of physicists from robust physical principles. If you can't, I can't help you. Are you sure Wheeler said that? Let's see...

Here's the quote, on page 28, not 27:

https://books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kF1INlvLSlkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&ots=UjrGJqkzFz&sig=B4jeCsHB510EWT5axFKitak_4S0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Quote

"If the situation poses a challenge and a question, is not the central role of the observer in quantum mechanics the most important clue we have to answering that question? Except it be that observership brings the universe into being what other way is there to understand that clue?"

That sounds to me more like a rhetorical question than the statement of a principle. And have you based your whole theory on a rhetorical question from John Wheeler? Rhetorical questions tend to be the weakest points in any argument. Anyway, my answer to that rhetorical question, and the answer from most scientists today is "no". There are other ways.

So the quote is not "Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being". (with capitals in "Universe"). The quote "as is" seems to come from Barrow&Tipler:

http://www.dhushara.com/book/quantcos/anth/anth.htm

Who apparently took a rhetorical question from Wheeler, made it into a "physical principle" and a few people out there went nuts with it. No serious science is made from this stuff.

In any case, none of this has to do with the fact that you just copied and pasted standard equations from physics books to make your "paper" look like a genuine idea, as I pointed out. Neither Lorentz transformations, nor the geodesic equation, nor Einstein's equations derive from your idea. You just say the do.  

Thank you all.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

However, if this is because they are flouting the rules and not a matter of personal preference/style, we ask that you bring this to the attention of the staff via the report post function. 

I suppose it would take something really outrageous for me to use the report protocol. It's not me somehow. I even stopped giving people bad reputation points.

I've noticed that the moderators on this site, after rational arguments have been presented, shift to shorter formulas to try and re-focus the conversation. You people spend a considerable effort and patience before someone is suspended or their post is closed.

1 hour ago, Strange said:

Incidentally, on at least one forum I know, it is explicitly against the rules to say that you have blocked a specific member. I think it s an unnecessarily provocative statement so I think that is a good rule. We don't have such a rule here, but I am guessing we would take a bit of a dim view of it.

4 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I can't think of a thread where such a declaration wouldn't be off-topic. You can ignore what a specific person in a conversation about a subject says, but bringing it up that you're ignoring them is a change of subject. 

Those are good points. Ignoring other users should be a private, silent act. I'll try to remember that.

12 minutes ago, MigL said:

( I like to argue 'contrary' points of view, especially in the Politics section )

But of course. That's very clever. Genuine disagreement, offering of arguments and counter-arguments, is very useful. I'm not as lucky as @swansont, who, in his own words, gets to play with "very expensive toys". My only laboratories are immediate reality and reason. Disagreeing with people in good faith is like a laboratory of sorts for me. I must confess I sometimes hold an opinion more strongly than my actual level of conviction is, just in order to see where my argument leads...

That's part of the game. That's why we say "let me play devil's advocate here".

1 hour ago, joigus said:

Or signature-changing: (-1,+1,+1,+1) 

Sorry. I meant, obviously: (+1,-1,-1,-1). I hope I wasn't too confusing.  

I've put three people on my ignore list in the last 48 hours.

Am I a bad person?

Could I have done otherwise? --> Possibility for a merging with Free Will discussion

Am I missing the fun of discussing non-sense? Am I giving others more than their fair share of gibberish to deal with?

Does this thread belong in Ethics?

21 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Seriously?  You can't be bothered to type out your idea?  Well I can't be bothered to read it...

Well put. +1

1 hour ago, Strange said:

yes, I am thinking of the Time Cube guy

I was completely unaware of this. Thank you for opening that door into the weird for me. Sometimes I feel like I'm continually losing my innocence. I like to think that's a good thing.

47 minutes ago, studiot said:

So which of Markus' pearls have we missed?

Here it is:

21 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

P.S. Very interesting discussion so far, fair play to everyone  But wait...the real fun starts when we raise the stakes a little - what happens when we have a universe that consists of only time dimensions, e.g. a (0+3)-dimensional universe? And would you believe it when I said that such a universe might be entirely indistinguishable from a (3+0)-dimensional one

I'm a little bit confused by the naught. But... Maybe Hanke was trying to make a further point that went over my head.

I would rather say. Would a (-1,+1,+1,+1) universe be in any sense distinguishable from a (+1,-1,-1,-1), or a (-1,+1.-1,-1), etc.? Or signature-changing: (-1,+1,+1,+1) What makes the sign so special? And the particular parameter/coordinate that represents it? You can actually continually re-parametrize it and nobody would be any the wiser.

This principle of indifference is whispering to our ear: Isn't there a fundamental decision about which coordinate in this continuum is the "selected" time for whatever characteristic determines what conscience is? And if so, which one is it?

It must be one of them.

And if not, if there is not a fundamental decision, what is it that makes the "special coordinate" so special in an inevitable way? A reshuffling of the basis entitles me in principle to decide that it's x that represents time in my mapping. x is x because I say so. x doesn't mean anything. It's just a mathematical tag. The mathematics speaks very clearly here. Invariance seems to suggest the opposite: There's nothing special about the time coordinate you pick, except it must be the only one with that sign in the metric.

47 minutes ago, studiot said:

You might find this book from Cambridge University very interesting

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Time-Canto-Classics/dp/1107641683#reader_1107641683

This question (and others) is discussed in some detail by world famous experts.

Looks appetising. Thank you.

I think @Markus Hanke has made an observation that is just pure genius. All of us, except @MigL have overlooked it.

I'll bring it up to your attention ASAP and come back and try to take up the gauntlet he's thrown.

Edit1: I'll bring it back to your attention. Maybe it was just me who wasn't paying attention.

Edit2: Maybe it was just I. Dammit!!

57 minutes ago, studiot said:

Granularity v continutity.

Very interesting. Now I understand much better, because you've brought this up before and I wasn't sure I completely understood.

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

I agree with others. This was clever and funny, however, it’s also mistaken on multiple levels. 

The image you perceive is being processed by a brain in a different state than when you first saw it. Your body and neural substrate have changed quite a bit between experience 1 and experience 2 of receiving the image. 

Likewise, the image file has changed server locations, and experienced minute breaks and changes (an evolution of sorts) in the packets transferring it across servers and through the network to your screen versus mine. 

There are other similar changes which occurred over the course of that 18 hours, and this point is in a way tangential to the thread, but IMO it’s inaccurate to say it hasn’t changed a bit unless you’re looking at it from too high / too broad / too abstract a level. 

Good points. +1. Let me add another one:

1 hour ago, michel123456 said:

There are 2 colors (B&W).

There are more than two. Our mind tends to translate into binary if given the opportunity. Actually, there's a gradient of greys if you look at the picture closely enough. Our mind shapes what we see, and our mind likes to interpret the world in binary. Could that happen with time too? Our mind "likes" to shape the world as a continuous sequence?

13 minutes ago, Strange said:

How about "interested, open-minded but not really too worried about it" !?

(I wasn't bothered by "hardliner", BTW)

Ok. You got your passageway. +1

We would have:

A) The practical group: Why bother?

B) The interested but not conviced: Mmmm, tell me more about it

C) The 1st passageway: Goes from "why bother" to "tell me more about it"

D) The puzzled or deeply concerned people: There's something special about time

E) The 2nd passageway: Not convinced, but I have a funny feeling about time

F) The unrestricted passageway: Goes from "why bother" to "there's something special about time"

I'm selling out.

<joke>

You can add your own. For example:

There's something spacial about being special

</joke>

20 minutes ago, Strange said:

That isn't quite my view. But I do tend to adopt it it response to "time doesn't exist" or "time is just change" arguments.

Well, I must tell you my choice of word, "hardliners" was not very fortunate. I should have written something like "practical".

I would say you are practical, but then you seem to want to have a passageway to the stance "interested but not convinced".

Is that any closer?

2 hours ago, Eise said:

Same for me. Just to add (not for you, you already know that for sure), there is of course also a lot of suffering that does not start with bodily pain, but raises from our false understanding of what and who we are.

On 7/28/2020 at 1:07 PM, Eise said:

Where I fully agree with your citation 'Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional'.

Brilliant observations. +1. Count me in.

25 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

No there is no change in this picture. You posted it 18 hours ago and it hasn't changed a bit. There are 2 colors (B&W).

That was brilliant! +1

<giggle>

</giggle>

Nice post. +1

Here's mine:

If you set the ratio:

#(gauge bosons)/#(source fermions)=10⁹⁰/10⁸⁰=10¹⁰

which is approximately correct for the observable universe.

And then raise it to the power:

#(degrees of freedom of all known gauge sectors) = 1(EM)+3(EW)+8(QCD) = 12

You get:

(10¹⁰)¹² = 10¹²⁰

which is the scale of the overcounting of the vacuum energy from QFT.

Coincidence? I'll leave that one to @SergUpstart... LOL

6 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

To be honest, having slept over this whole thing, I am not sure whether I should. Since the tea cup universe has proven so controversial, the implications of a purely temporal universe might set off a riot
Perhaps a shout-out to the other participants here is in order - how do you feel about this discussion? Should we continue on, or agree to disagree (which is fine)? I think even from the little bits we have been talking about, it is quite clear that time does not just equal change.

 

I think I may venture a reason why the teacup example has proven to be so controversial: Human-made objects are generally designed with the hope that they last unchanged for as long as possible*. So you can go back to the handle, the spout, or whatever part and find it exactly the way it was before, except for a scratch or a slight discolouration.

Consider, OTOH, the example of a metamorphosing insect somewhere along the causal line: egg, larva, caterpillar, pupa, butterfly. It's almost impossible to look at a caterpillar without picturing in your mind the butterfly to be that it represents: Our experience of the past deeply affects our thinking, and I would go on to say that in many cases leads us to some kind of circular-time representation space. This is the realm of inductive thinking. Laws that seem to suggest cycling and re-cycling in continually perpetuating process seeding and re-seeding.

Cosmology imposes on us to stretch the concept of time to its very limits: Eternal inflation, accelerated expansion, thermal death. It's so tempting to try to make sense of time in this difficult context that many models try to embed them in some kind of cyclic time, which is the one we're so familiar with. Collapsing and recollapsing universes, multiverses, etc. The caterpillar-pupa-butterfly kind of universe.

I may have got all of you completely wrong, but it seems to me that those who are closer to seeing time as an aspect of thinking that's so intrinsically hardwired in our brains that sort of impregnates everything we think, are:

@Markus Hanke, @michel123456 , @MigL, and myself.

I'm not so sure about @Eise, @geordief, @studiot, @The victorious truther, and @vexspits. Seems to me like they are more inquiring about other people's views. In particular, whether we identify time with any kind of differentiation. To the risk of misrepresenting them, I would say they're interested but not convinced.

Then there's the "hardliners" if you will, represented by @Phi for All, @Strange, and @StringJunky who, to the risk of oversimplifying their views, go more like: I don't see what the problem is, what's soooo special about time. Time is just a factual aspect of physics. Get over it.

Then there's @iNow, who seems to line up with "us", the puzzled-by-time bunch, by quoting Sagan.

This is not to say that within these groups everyone agrees with everyone else. And again, I'm not sure whether I've represented you faithfully. Please, feel free to correct me.

---------------------

* Planned obsolescence aside

34 minutes ago, Eise said:

Isn't that a contradiction to your point 1)?

No. Suppose I completely reject any notion of free will (which I don't). It's possible to say:

1) There is no free will

2) The question of free will has nothing to do with determinism

Where is the contradiction?

I'll get back to your other points later. Although, I must tell you hastiness when dealing with a complicated problem has nothing to do with how much time you spend later insisting on your hasty proposition. That doesn't prove that Dennett's concept of free will is hasty, but possible it is.

I've heard Dennett say that he's deeply concerned about people running away with the idea that we're not free and the consequences on society. What I meant is that he's just a little bit too willing to approve a concept of free will that's a practical compromise that's useful in society.

34 minutes ago, Eise said:

I do not quite understand your remark between brackets, but I fully agree with your main sentence. E.g. better not publish a book that is printed with the same colour as the paper. That is a physical criterion for real books.

I suppose I will deal with your main points. Although I'd rather have more time to think about them.

If there were a graded notion of free will, going from the "bottom" made up of people with serious neurological disorders and the like (let's say a Charles Manson) up to the top, made up of people with high level of responsibility, honesty; both intellectual and behavioural (let's say an Eise, or a Dennett); where exactly would we draw the line? The spectrum would be complicated, more similar to what I think it is the isomophism with reality that good theories should be demanded to have. So criteria would be needed to decide, so to speak, how much free will you lose from suffering PTSD, for example.

The other idea, a switch to declare the split of humanity between free agents and non-free, based on whether they can take decisions based on just internal system of ethical checks and balances instead of external conditionings, is, to me, a bit "hasty". By that I suppose I mean: Not as satisfactorily thought out as other concepts by the same philosopher.

34 minutes ago, Eise said:

Here you go again! What does 'really free' mean? Why would you be interested in this mirage?

Humility for those who are free I think is the main point. Something like: Don't think so highly of yourself, your proteins are doing it. That's all. An ultimate frontier of intellectual humility for those who have been fortunate enough to become respectable members of this society. Something like:

Hey, don't boast so much that you're a free agent, had you been born as a sickly orphan, son of a poor Peruvian copper miner, with no money, no health, no wealth, no hope of any of it, you would probably be stealing apples in the market. Or worse.

2 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

You say stable systems don't exist ? The moon, left in the cold space, does entropy change. The fact that entropy always increased (I think I mixed up the law before sorry).. doesn't mean It "has" to increase. 

sorry I admit I go too fast. Anyway, I've said enough. The question is "what is time". You have my answer, if you can explain why I am wrong, do go one, but I don't need your answer.  

Being wrong requires making sense. Bye.

4 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

Entropy can stop changing. 

Not even plastic surgeons can do that.

12 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

I was explaining that if entropy (a property of a system can go backward) can go backward. Therefor it can't be time. That's it. You talked about entropy, you know why you do. I don't ! 

You're 1 non-sensical/non-sequitur comment away from my ignore list. Time is indeed precious.

2 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

I understand that entropy speaks about "closed system".. can't diminish (the laws of thermodynamics).. but when entropy stay the same (because the system is stable) does time stops.. ? and if it stops, what does make it start again ? 

Fine-grained, or microscopic entropy, never changes. It's a constant. It's the volume of phase space; a measure of how much information is in the system. That's called Liouville's theorem. Dynamical systems conserve the distinctions, the amount of information. It's just that evolution always de-correlates most of your system's dynamical variables with the "macroscopic handles" you may establish to study it (volume, pressure, fields). So most of this dynamical information is lost for your macroscopic "description handles", in my figure of speech.

Coarse-grained, or macroscopic entropy, always increases for closed systems.

Time? You're trying to take too big a leap here. Time has to do with entropy growth (its direction), but it's not defined by it.

Time doesn't stop. What makes you think it does?

The grandfather paradox has to do with geometry of space-time, not with entropy.

1 hour ago, Edgard Neuman said:

no information can't travel faster than life

What's that about???

1 minute ago, Edgard Neuman said:

So if entropy can be reversed, how could it define time..?

That's not what I said. "Reverse entropy" doesn't make any sense. You must mean "reverse entropy change". How could it define time? Entropy doesn't define time.