Severian

I personally think only in mathematics. 

On 10/06/2018 at 2:24 AM, StringJunky said:

If the expression  of the digitised personality is indistinguishable from an organic brain, does it matter, since it would express everything that we do?

Long time no see. Hope you are well.  

Yes, I think that is true (i.e. it doesn't matter). That is a long way past passing the Turing test though, which I am interpreting as an ability to fool a human over a short conversation.

The difficulty here is going to be how does one assess conciousness or sentience. If you can't do that, then you will have difficulty deciding who or what these rights should be assigned to. I really don't think we are very far away from a digital personality passing the Turing test, but I don't think I would necessarily use that to distinguish sentience.

On 10/11/2017 at 10:42 AM, DaniWhite said:

1.)   How can something be created out of nothing? When you say, there is no god, no creator, then matter needs to pop out of nothing into the world. How can this happen? Is there a scientific law that says, yes that’s possible? I mean isn’t it the biggest wonder of all, that there is something instead of nothing. That there is an existing universe at all?

We live in a world with a lot of beauty, complexity, things working hand in hand and consciousness. Isn’t this a bit too much for just a coincidence where matter created itself out of nothing, and no one (no creator) cares that this just happened? Where does this will to beauty, complexity, etc come from? It seems to me, that something wants to live. Something wants to be complex, etc.

2.)   If you say, yes there is a god or a creator, is this easier or harder to explain? I mean god needs to create itself out of nothing. Is it easier for matter to be created out of nothing, or god to create itself out of nothing?

3.)   Will science ever be able to gain knowledge about god and give a definite answer about its existence in the future? Is it possible through new technology or the next Einstein to gain something that we do not have today, that will make it possible for science to say something about god, or will this be impossible forever no matter what?

4.)   Why can’t god be supernatural? When there is a creator who created the universe and the laws of physic. Why does the creator then have to abide by his / her own laws? Isn’t the creator bigger than live and can be supernatural?

I am going to try and answer these from a completely sceintific perspective, because I don't think they have been very well answered yet, no offence.

1. Science has conservation laws that prevent some things being created or destroyed. Mainly these are a consequency of symmetries in the laws of physics. For example, energy can't be created or destroyed, which is a consequnce of time translation symmetry of the laws of physics (the laws today are the same as yesterday). Particle number is not necessary conserved, though fermion number is. So electrons, for example can't be created unless a positron is also created, and they must "use" energy that is already there - they can't just create it. Photons however can just be created as long as there is enough energy.

So the problem with the Big Bang creation is not really where does the stuff come from, but where does the energy come from. And indeed, was there a space-time background on which to build it? While we actually have no idea how the moment of the Big Bang happened (there is no data on this whatsoever) there is no reason to believe that it is not possible theoretically. Even if the moment of the Big Bang were the first moment in time, then one cannot apply a symmetry argument to time translations beyond this boundary and therefore (logically) can't insist on energy conservation.

One cannot say "why" the Big Bang happened, but sceince does not attempt to ask why - it only asks how.

2. I don't think it is any easier of harder to be honest. (But see 3.)

3. God (that is, some being with power to change the laws of physics) is by definition transparent to science. Science relys on observations and only declares an obervation as valid if it is reproducible. If you do an experiment twice and get different answers, you need to figure out why by making more observations. And if you get a particular result only once and cannot reproduce it, you throw it away assuming it is faulty. Any act of God would be an irrepreducible event and not be interpretable with science. Science wouldn't even consider it. (This is in much the same way that an individual's actions are themselves not valid scientific events - it is only why you analyse behaviours of groups that you can then say something about individuals in a statistical sense.)

4. Presumably He doesn't have to abide by the laws of physics. To my mind, this is pretty central to the definition of God in the first place.

I have never had any issue combining my Christian faith with science.

I don't think it has a wel defined limit. For large v, it will grow like v! (that is a factorial, not an exclamation).

Edit: Ack! I take that back. I missed the s^(-v/2) at the front, which is exponential decay. The exponential trumps the factorial, so I think the limit is 0.

Edit 2: Err... no, I think factorial trumps exponential, so now I am back to thinking it is infinite. Let's just check with mathematica..... and yes indeed it is infinite.

If you could write the equation down where it appears, we might be able to tell you. Otherwise it is like asking on a web forum if anyone knows what my friends middle initial "Q" stands for.

I hear that MIT is OK. Also Berkeley, Harvard, CalTech, Princeton, Cornell, Chicago, UC Santa Barbara in no particular order.

I see no reason why abiogenesis can't be divine creation.

No DM candidate that has been proposed has "no interaction" with matter. All of them do. But the neutrino itself is incredibly difficult to manipulate, so a very poor choice in using for DM discovery.

I struggle to think of anything better to do than to play Beethoven to a delighted and enchanted crowd.

 

+1 for the find Rigney

Playing Beethoven is fair enough, but why the mockery of pretending that it is somehow spontaneous?

[math] E=mc^2 + pc[/math] from [math] E^2 = m^2c^4 + p^2c^2[/math] by finding the square root of both sides of the equation.

so [math] m=E/(c^2+pc) [/math]

 

Since the photon exists only at the speed of light it is as improper to find the "rest" mass as it is to find your personal mass at c......

Both are meaningless. The only mass for a photon that has any meaning is the relativistic mass.

 

Paul

Firstly, your maths is wrong. Secondly, the rest mass of the photon is zero, so [math]E=pc[/math]. Thirdly, "zero" does have meaning.

Theoretically the mass of a proton could be deduced from the number of charges it contains less the binding energy, in a similar way that nuclear masses are the result of the number of nucleons less binding energy. Thus the mass of all particles are based on the mass of an electron/positron. In practice I cannot do this; partly due to the limitations of my theory, and partly because the masses of exotic particles are not known to sufficient accuracy. The simplest example of how my theory makes a testable prediction, is here http://squishtheory....-squish-theory/.

 

My full analysis is here http://squishtheory....research-paper/.

Well, are you able to predict any of the meson masses then?

That isn't a flash mob. It was clearly organised. Just because people don't all come at once doesn't make it a flash mob.

Seems a bit pointless to me. Don't they have anything better to do?

What makes you think the neutrino has anything to do with dark matter? It could be, since the sneutrino is a candidate, but it seems rather unlikely.

newts: Can your theory predict the proton mass or the pion mass?

If the God of religious traditions has to exist scientific realism must be false. Either the reality of God is real or the empirical reality of Science is real. Both cannot be real.

I have to ask again: why? I can see no reason why both cannot be real, and you have presented no reason why both can't be real.

In fact, the only thing that can be in conflict with current scientific findings is something that is measured under scientific conditions and is reproducable. Most religious traditions do not qualify, so can't be in contradiction with science.

From a traditional point of view both empirical objects and God are mutually exclusive, something gotta give, either people have to give up their belief in scientific realism or they have to give up their belief in God.

Why?

It is rather obvious that this result is not evidence of dark matter. But it is also not evidence that dark matter doesn't exist, even in particle form. There is still plenty of room in the parameter space.

I disagree. The existence of scientific objects and God (in a general sense) are entirely consistent with each other.

Do You agree with me that if we had the appropriate technology, the uncertainty principle would not be so important?

No - it is fundamental. You may as well claim that if we had the appropriate technology we could make [math]\pi[/math] smaller.

I think it is pretty conclusive. Maybe not just this one instance, but there are plenty of other cases of gravitational lensing from unknown, non-radiating and thus "dark" objects in the universe.

The uncertainty relation is purely a consequence of everything being composed out of waves (or more properly fields). A pure momentum state is like a sine wave, so infinitely spread out, while a purely localised wave is a superposition of an infinite number of plane waves of different wavelength (and thus momentum). The more localised in space the wave is, the more plane waves of different wavelength it needs, so the more uncertain the momentum.

Conflict is inevitable, violence is not.

That is what I was (perhaps unsuccessfully) trying to get at when I said "The important thing is to channel conflict into productive avenues." I do still disagree though, since I still think "harmony" is the opposite of "conflict". Surely if you are in harmony, then you are doing something together, so can't be in conflict?

There is tons of evidence for dark matter, from gravitational lensing, to WMAP, to galaxy rotation curves, to velocity dispersions, to supernova distances. I think the gravitational lensing and the relic density from WMAP would be enough evidence for me, never mind all the rest.