What is matter?

[DBT]

All that is superstition. Just like primitive man, if something is unexplainable by present knowledge, there is a need to fill the vacuum with some unnatural or supernatural irrationality.

Not the same. Not at all. Nobody is dogmatically asserting that retro causality is a fact....just that there are experimental results that offer hints in that direction. Further experimentation may lead to either rejection of the idea, or confirmation of the idea, or perhaps just a misinterpretation.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting hypothetical to consider....that all of the past states of a particle may have been created by the act of observation. Not to mention the implications that has for us (the observer) believing ourselves to be the agents of our present condition.

 

[untermensche]

I guess it's too bad that it just isn't true. It's almost like random people on the internet think that they are better at physics than physicists...

Physics has it's data, which hopefully, but I doubt, is perfectly objective.

Then it has it's interpretations of the data.

Which are always in question.

 

[fromderinside]

Physics has it's data, which hopefully, but I doubt, is perfectly objective.

Then it has it's interpretations of the data.

Which are always in question.

Actually its not so much in question since we still seem to be getting new stuff out in the marketplace because of it.
don't trust me. Trust that you are using your cellphone for a reason.

 

[Bomb#20]

Nobel Prizes just follow decadent fads, so name-dropping should not impress us, especially when fanboys cite a Nazi like Heisenberg. Fitting the incompetence of people who accept quantum theory, Heisenberg wasn't smart enough to develop the atomic bomb for his hero Hitler.

Heisenberg wasn't a Nazi. Hitler wasn't his hero. The SS called Heisenberg a "White Jew" for having pulled strings in the education ministry bureaucracy to protect his Jewish and leftist colleagues from Nazi purges. And if accepting quantum theory is a sign of incompetence, how do you account for the American and British physicists in the Manhattan Project succeeding? Heisenberg was certainly smart enough to develop the atomic bomb. The immediate reason he didn't was because German chemists couldn't make graphite pure enough for the physicists to get an accurate measurement of its neutron moderation cross-section, so they believed graphite couldn't work, so they used heavy water instead, and then the Allies bombed their heavy water plant back into the stone age. But the underlying reason Heisenberg didn't develop the bomb was because Speer asked him how long it would take, and Heisenberg told him, and the Nazis figured the war would be over by then and deprioritized the research.

More importantly, even if Heisenberg had been a Nazi, so what? There isn't an iota of difference between you rejecting scientific results because the discoverer was a Nazi and the Nazis rejecting scientific results because the discoverer was a Jew.

 

[untermensche]

Physics has it's data, which hopefully, but I doubt, is perfectly objective.

Then it has it's interpretations of the data.

Which are always in question.

Actually its not so much in question since we still seem to be getting new stuff out in the marketplace because of it.
don't trust me. Trust that you are using your cellphone for a reason.

You can do an awful lot with just Newtonian models but they are obsolete.

The models used today may be obsolete someday too, even if you can do a lot with them as well.

 

[fromderinside]

Actually its not so much in question since we still seem to be getting new stuff out in the marketplace because of it.
don't trust me. Trust that you are using your cellphone for a reason.

You can do an awful lot with just Newtonian models but they are obsolete.

The models used today may be obsolete someday too, even if you can do a lot with them as well.

Indeed. Improving the quality and completeness of material answers is what science is all about. If only that were true of engineering I might reconsider including it along side science with an asterisk.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Engineering is nowadays obviously increasingly necessary at least to physics but we could also say that it has always been necessary to any science at all if one considered the human brain as a piece of natural engineering and as a necessary to doing any science. Most hardcore materialists probably see Darwinian evolution as not substantialy different from an engineering process and so should go along with my take on this*.


However, others might object, but on what ground exactly? What would be substantially different between engineering and the kind of natural evolution that produced the brain.
EB


(*) If, that is, they can suffer the implication that engineering is therefore necessary to human beings doing any science at all.

 

[fromderinside]

Gee. Who is saying engineering isn't necessary and important? I'm just saying that at core engineering isn't science in thought or practice.

Thank you for that tour down memory lane on the brain though.

 

[Kharakov]

Gee. Who is saying engineering isn't necessary and important? I'm just saying that at core engineering isn't science in thought or practice.

The delineation between science and not science is between exploratory and applied sciences?

 

[Bomb#20]

What would be substantially different between engineering and the kind of natural evolution that produced the brain.

Engineering is goal-directed and natural selection isn't.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm just saying that at core engineering isn't science in thought or practice.

Ever try to debug a program without observing it malfunctioning, forming a hypothesis about why it's doing what it's doing, using the hypothesis to predict what will happen if you change the program or its input in a certain way, running it again to test your prediction, and discarding or modifying the hypothesis if the program doesn't match the prediction?

 

[skepticalbip]

Engineering is nowadays obviously increasingly necessary at least to physics but we could also say that it has always been necessary to any science at all if one considered the human brain as a piece of natural engineering and as a necessary to doing any science. Most hardcore materialists probably see Darwinian evolution as not substantialy different from an engineering process and so should go along with my take on this*.


However, others might object, but on what ground exactly? What would be substantially different between engineering and the kind of natural evolution that produced the brain.
EB


(*) If, that is, they can suffer the implication that engineering is therefore necessary to human beings doing any science at all.

Science is a quest for knowledge and understanding.

Engineering is design and construction with the goal of producing a specified result.

Evolution is random change with whatever works kept and whatever doesn't eliminated - no intent and no goal.

 

[DBT]

Evolution is not necessarily random. Epigenetics - environmental conditions acting upon genetic make up, switching genes on or off, accumulating changes....

 

[Speakpigeon]

What would be substantially different between engineering and the kind of natural evolution that produced the brain.

Engineering is goal-directed and natural selection isn't.

I guess that's very true.

Still, how substantial would you say goals may be?

One could say that the fact that engineering is goal-directed is the direct result of evolution and that a goal maybe is just a state or a process in one neuron or in some neuronal structure in the engineer's brain, which all result from evolution. So, in fact, human engineering is merely an extension of engineering by evolution. One could say that.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Science is a quest for knowledge and understanding.

Ok so the potential usefulness is only demonstrated by materialisation once engineering takes over?

Engineering is design and construction with the goal of producing a specified result.

Right, the products of engineering are all concrete material objects but science also includes the design and construction of objects that have a specified result. The difference is really that these objects are all essentially theories and therefore abstract. What's so different in principle between engineering design and the tailoring of a theory to the facts observed? You scratch you head a lot in both instances.

Evolution is random change with whatever works kept and whatever doesn't eliminated - no intent and no goal.

First I think that the idea that evolution is random is a misunderstanding. Sure, part of any evolutionary process involves random mechanisms. Yet, evolution also includes processes that effectively select among the results of these random events so that over time you can get organisms that are sufficiently adapted to their environment, at least for a while. That's not random at all. That's also why it is so tempting for the religiously incline to claim that living things could only have been produced by God, i.e. there's an obvious element of design in us (so they claim). They are wrong but the similarity between evolution and engineering is real and fundamental.

It is also I believe it is a misunderstanding to assume that thinking does not involve any random processes. Indeed, some neuroscientists have been looking for some time into the idea that thinking is somehow germane to evolution and philosophy, which can be regarded as the systematic generation of alternative ideas over time, without the benefit of a pruning mechanism, does end up with all possible ideas being formulated and I don't see how it's not randomness at work.

Finally, intents and goals may be conscious objects produced unconsciously with absolutely no operational value. You may believe you have some intent but the real process, the one which is operational, maybe beyond the reach of your consciousness. At least that what I understand that the denial that we have free will implied. It's all decided before you can even articulate what you want.
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

First I think that the idea that evolution is random is a misunderstanding. Sure, part of any evolutionary process involves random mechanisms. Yet, evolution also includes processes that effectively select among the results of these random events so that over time you can get organisms that are sufficiently adapted to their environment, at least for a while. That's not random at all. That's also why it is so tempting for the religiously incline to claim that living things could only have been produced by God, i.e. there's an obvious element of design in us (so they claim). They are wrong but the similarity between evolution and engineering is real and fundamental.

Right. Dawkins coined the word "designoid" for that which looks like it's designed but isn't.

 

[skepticalbip]

Ok so the potential usefulness is only demonstrated by materialisation once engineering takes over?

Unintelligible.

Engineering is design and construction with the goal of producing a specified result.

Right, the products of engineering are all concrete material objects but science also includes the design and construction of objects that have a specified result.

Designing and building the instruments is engineering. Using those instruments to test theories or to explore is science. Scientists sometimes work as engineers but them being scientists doesn't mean that everything they do is science.

Evolution is random change with whatever works kept and whatever doesn't eliminated - no intent and no goal.

First I think that the idea that evolution is random is a misunderstanding. Sure, part of any evolutionary process involves random mechanisms. Yet, evolution also includes processes that effectively select among the results of these random events so that over time you can get organisms that are sufficiently adapted to their environment, at least for a while. That's not random at all.

Right, that is the natural selection part of evolution or as I posted "whatever works kept and whatever doesn't eliminated - no intent and no goal"

It is also I believe it is a misunderstanding to assume that thinking does not involve any random processes. Indeed, some neuroscientists have been looking for some time into the idea that thinking is somehow germane to evolution and philosophy, which can be regarded as the systematic generation of alternative ideas over time, without the benefit of a pruning mechanism, does end up with all possible ideas being formulated and I don't see how it's not randomness at work.

Finally, intents and goals may be conscious objects produced unconsciously with absolutely no operational value. You may believe you have some intent but the real process, the one which is operational, maybe beyond the reach of your consciousness. At least that what I understand that the denial that we have free will implied. It's all decided before you can even articulate what you want.
EB

The mind and consciousness is still largely not understood. What we have that passes for explanation are largely similes, metaphors, and analogies. It is a mistake to take any of these as certain truth.

 

[bilby]

It's a VERY popular error for people to say 'evolution is random' (and variants thereof).

But is is a major error - a clownish pratfall that deserves derision and mirth.

A car is driven by pistons that move rapidly up and down. But if someone were to say 'cars move rapidly up and down' as though that was a useful explanation of what a car does, you would rightly think that he was a fucking moron.

Saying 'evolution is random' is in EXACTLY the same class of fucking stupid. It indicates with unerring precision that the speaker has no idea what they are talking about, and can safely be ignored.

Randomness has a part to play in understanding the way evolution works; in the same way that reciprocal vertical oscillations have a part to play in understanding the way cars work. But to imagine that this component of the theory is somehow representative of the theory as a whole is insane.

 

[DBT]

While it's true that 'the mind and consciousness is still largely not understood' - the words 'mind' and 'conciousness' commonly refer to our conscious experience of self (psyche/character traits/organism) in relation to our environment....all of this being the work/virtual representation/construct of the brain of the organism we call 'self' - but 'how this is done' is largely not understood.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's a VERY popular error for people to say 'evolution is random' (and variants thereof).

But is is a major error - a clownish pratfall that deserves derision and mirth.

A car is driven by pistons that move rapidly up and down. But if someone were to say 'cars move rapidly up and down' as though that was a useful explanation of what a car does, you would rightly think that he was a fucking moron.

Saying 'evolution is random' is in EXACTLY the same class of fucking stupid. It indicates with unerring precision that the speaker has no idea what they are talking about, and can safely be ignored.

Randomness has a part to play in understanding the way evolution works; in the same way that reciprocal vertical oscillations have a part to play in understanding the way cars work. But to imagine that this component of the theory is somehow representative of the theory as a whole is insane.

Right. I guess it's also an instance of the fallacy of composition: claim that the whole is random because some parts of it, however essential, are.
EB