Philosophy Now Forum

Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

The Inglorious One wrote:Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

Thanks for going.

The Inglorious One wrote:Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

Coherence comes to he who can understand.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

Coherence comes to he who can understand.

I knew bloody well he wouldn't get it because he's a theist. A universe sufficient to its own existence is beyond his conceptual grasp by definition. I even warned him.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

Coherence comes to he who can understand.

Self-determining mathematics makes sense?

The Inglorious One wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

Coherence comes to he who can understand.

Self-determining mathematics makes sense?

The way we do math is a human construct but the logic that underlies math is the natural logic which is reality and is reflected in the way the brain is wired. Modern language is an adjunct or formatting for the brain which is not natural. It's like a program that operates a computer but in this case the program just doesn't really match the computer except for grammar.

We no longer use a natural way to acquire knowledge or to organize that knowledge so we almost invariably construct models toreflect experiment which reflects reality. We then tend to mistake the model for the reality. We extrapolate aspects of the model to encompass everything and never notice that it fails. Each specialist sees the world in terms of the models with which he is most familiar. When specialists get together they simply assume that the considered processes are the best possible even though they each see the trees in favor of the forest. Inefficiency, miscommunication, and confusion rule. Physics is stuck in the 1920's and Egyptology is stuck in the dark ages. Everyone sees models. They see what they know. They see what they expect prefentially to the reality.

There are an infinite number of worlds with an infinite number of pyramids built with an infinite number of ramps. There are boxes with both living and dead cat in them. Meanwhile the economy hums along at 3% efficiency as we dig resources out of the earth and shovel them right back in again at an ever increasing rate and ever decreasing efficiency. Welcome to reality 2015 style.

cladking wrote: Physics is stuck in the 1920's

The fundamental problems of physics actually date all the way back to the a priori assumptions of its founder, Isaac Newton, but your point is well made with regard to 20th century physics. It became locked into a metaphysically unsound paradigm and then turned into a mathematical extravaganza of spectacular virtuosity from which its methodology can allow no escape.

However at the heart of all the confusion lies a very simple assumption which refers directly to this OP. Physics assumes that reality is made according to a suite of immutable physical laws whose origin lies external to the universe itself. This is bullshit because this defines the universe as insufficient to its own existence but this is the way that people thought back in Newton's god-infested times.

The truth is that what we as observers construe as the "laws of physics" is entirely a human construct. Undoubtedly there are patterns of organisation in nature which make it comprehensible to us but how we model these patterns is entirely arbitrary. There is no "right" way or "wrong" way to do this and some of the pioneers of early 20th century physics understood this very well. Physics is simply "what works" and when it no longer works it can simply be discarded, such as phlogiston and the luminiferous aether.

However in the 1920s the doctrine of logical positivism infested physics and it's never gone away. This chilling ideology assumes that the universe can only be understood in the language of mathematics and this is a grossly flawed assumption. Mathematics cannot model reality but only a particular narrative of reality and the number of possible narratives of reality is probably infinite. This is where all the multiverse bullshit comes from. Even in principle physics cannot answer the question why the universe should conform to one particular suite of laws rather than some other and thus concludes that all the universes which we are NOT modelling must also exist somewhere. We then finish up with such stupid propositions as the so-called "goldilocks effect" and the weak anthropic principle.

Do I find it astonishing that in their long-ago act of love Mr and Mrs Leo should have conceived me instead of some other bloke? Was this an event of such spectacular unlikelihood that all the people who I am not but could have been must also exist somewhere? This is effectively the sort of claim that physics is making with respect to the universe itself.

Inglorious may not like it but the universe is the way it is because that's the way it made itself and not because that's the way it was intended to be. It made itself the way it did because it is a blind automaton and could not do otherwise. The universe is a snowflake.

The Inglorious One wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:Leo, you're getting more and more incoherent. Good-bye.

Coherence comes to he who can understand.

Self-determining mathematics makes sense?

Yes they are analytically true.

cladking wrote:
We no longer use a natural way to acquire knowledge or to organize that knowledge so we almost invariably construct models toreflect experiment which reflects reality. We then tend to mistake the model for the reality. We extrapolate aspects of the model to encompass everything and never notice that it fails. Each specialist sees the world in terms of the models with which he is most familiar. When specialists get together they simply assume that the considered processes are the best possible even though they each see the trees in favor of the forest. Inefficiency, miscommunication, and confusion rule. Physics is stuck in the 1920's and Egyptology is stuck in the dark ages. Everyone sees models. They see what they know. They see what they expect prefentially to the reality.

Ancient or modern all languages can be broken down to the same underlying basis. And yes, it has to do with the way the brain is wire and how language reflects embodiment.

cladking wrote:

There are an infinite number of worlds with an infinite number of pyramids built with an infinite number of ramps. There are boxes with both living and dead cat in them. Meanwhile the economy hums along at 3% efficiency as we dig resources out of the earth and shovel them right back in again at an ever increasing rate and ever decreasing efficiency. Welcome to reality 2015 style.

I assume this is a reference to Schrodinger's cat. There is a very good scientific explanation as to why we don't often come across live/dead cats-inboxes or elsewhere.


P.S.

i don't think there was anything special about ancient Egyptian society. The reason why Egyptology is stuck in the Dark Ages is because the ancient world was stuck in its own the Dark Ages. Ancient Egypt was hierarchical, cruel and at times despotic. Come to think of it, a bit like some modern societies.

Ginkgo wrote:I assume this is a reference to Schrodinger's cat. There is a very good scientific explanation as to why we don't often come across live/dead cats-inboxes or elsewhere.

The Schrodinger's cat story has acquired an entire mythology of its own over the years but the story actually has its own interesting history. Erwin Schrodinger was a very enlightened man with a very sophisticated grasp of metaphysical principles. He actually told this story as a joke against himself and as a piss-take directed at the logical positivists who were determined to take QM literally. If we accept QM as literally true then it is an absolute FACT that a cat can be simultaneously dead and alive until somebody observes it. Schrodinger was simply trying to point out the metaphysical absurdity of this but for some reason history has painted him as somebody who believed this to be true. He actually intended the story to mean that QM is actually not a model of the physically real world but merely a mathematical representation of such a model. Einstein was also a man with a great capacity for taking the piss out of himself, particularly in this often quoted of his outbursts, "Bullshit, the moon still exists whether somebody is watching it or not!" Albert knew bloody well that the bizarre conclusion that the existence of the moon was contingent on the observer observing it was a direct consequence of QM and thus an indirect consequence of his own SR model, on which QM is predicated. SR quite literally implies that the moon does not exist unless somebody is observing it. However this other quote of Einstein's is regularly ignored.

"We must never allow ourselves to forget that spacetime is not physically real"....Albert Einstein (1915)

100 years later it seems that many of the illuminati have indeed forgotten what their own high priest was telling them.

cladking wrote:The way we do math is a human construct but the logic that underlies math is the natural logic which is reality and is reflected in the way the brain is wired. Modern language is an adjunct or formatting for the brain which is not natural. It's like a program that operates a computer but in this case the program just doesn't really match the computer except for grammar.

I agree with Lucy, from the movie Lucy: "One plus one equals two.' That's all we've learned. But one plus one has never equaled two. There are, in fact, no numbers and no letters. We've codified our existence to bring it down to human size, to make it comprehensible."

We no longer use a natural way to acquire knowledge or to organize that knowledge so we almost invariably construct models toreflect experiment which reflects reality. We then tend to mistake the model for the reality. We extrapolate aspects of the model to encompass everything and never notice that it fails. Each specialist sees the world in terms of the models with which he is most familiar. When specialists get together they simply assume that the considered processes are the best possible even though they each see the trees in favor of the forest. Inefficiency, miscommunication, and confusion rule. Physics is stuck in the 1920's and Egyptology is stuck in the dark ages. Everyone sees models. They see what they know. They see what they expect prefentially to the reality.

We all have core beliefs, and very, very few of us know what they are.

There are an infinite number of worlds with an infinite number of pyramids built with an infinite number of ramps. There are boxes with both living and dead cat in them.

Possible, but I dunno.

Meanwhile the economy hums along at 3% efficiency as we dig resources out of the earth and shovel them right back in again at an ever increasing rate and ever decreasing efficiency. Welcome to reality 2015 style.

I dunno about that, either. I don't pay attention to the news.

Obvious Leo wrote: Inglorious may not like it but the universe is the way it is because that's the way it made itself and not because that's the way it was intended to be.

That's funny. I've implied the very same thing on several occasions. I don't know where you get your funny beliefs about me, Leo.

It made itself the way it did because it is a blind automaton and could not do otherwise. The universe is a snowflake.

An unfounded assertion. "Indeterminate" is just that: indeterminate. You simply cannot say whether it is a "blind automation" for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it's logically incoherent.

The Inglorious One wrote:An unfounded assertion. "Indeterminate" is just that: indeterminate.

I've asked you several times what you understood by this term but you haven't seen fit to explain it. I'll try again.

Are you claiming that the universe is indeterminate and therefore non-causal?

Obvious Leo wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:An unfounded assertion. "Indeterminate" is just that: indeterminate.

I've asked you several times what you understood by this term but you haven't seen fit to explain it. I'll try again.

Are you claiming that the universe is indeterminate and therefore non-causal?

Try looking in a dictionary, for once. "Indeterminate" simply means that the answer to your question cannot be determined -- and it's certainly not from a lack of trying. (I swear, I can't for the life of me figure out why that is so difficult to grasp.)

Here's an interesting video: What Happened Before the Big Bang

Don't presume to instruct me in the meaning of words you sanctimonious half-wit and answer the fucking question. Do you or do you not accept that we live in a deterministic universe where effects are preceded by causes in an orderly and generative fashion?

This is the most important metaphysical question to be addressed in the entire philosophy of physics and if you can't or don't wish to offer an answer to it then please piss off out a conversation which is clearly above your pay grade.