"The idea of people helping one another" doesn't trouble me, but the idea of disrupting "the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement" does. — NOS4A2

Why? It doesn't disrupt it for you: you seemed to agree that people having such networks doesn't hurt your right to be left alone and let everyone else gft. It disrupts it for people for whom it's a problem, or is insufficient.

And it true that it is a little too commie for my blood. — NOS4A2

If your ideology casts helping one another as a sin rather than a virtue, you've got a pretty rotten ideology.

This entire thread has made me depressed. So many people citing losing religion as a profound defining moment.

Nonetheless, Darwin has still probably had the most profound effect on me. I never had the idea of a designer behind it all, but it did make me see the living world as more interconnected, and its present as a result of historical processes. A living thing isn't just a living thing after that: it's a story!

(I also believe that understanding natural selection played a crucial part in my academic career, where algorithms like natural selection rear their pretty heads often. This in turn solidified in my mind the inevitability of natural selection.)

I got into memetics about twenty years ago, which generalises natural selection to broader kinds of information replicators, and I think that had a massive impact on how I see things, largely due to the sheer breadth of its applicability. Structuralism overlaps with this and, together with Darwinism specifically, mostly comprises my philosophy of morality and determined my holistic stance. Post-structuralism put my inherent scepticism on stronger philosophical ground. These three have probably done more to my appraisal of the limits of the rational project as anything.

I found phenomenology via existentialism. I think existentialism is one of those briefly profound things that's difficult to stay excited about (it's not wrong, but there's no an obvious way to take it), but phenomenology put the subjective/objective divide on proper footing. My instinct when I see an abstract philosophical problem is to translate it to experienced phenomena.

I find it troubling that anyone would preach such piffle, when the opposite might be the better cause. Does that make sense to you? — NOS4A2

Well, no. I confess my first thought when I heard of George Floyd's murder was not: "This wouldn't be happening if black people cared less for one another."

But why does it make sense to you? Even if you believe that the individualistic nuclear support structure suits you, to the extent that you would not want any involvement in any kind of support network, why do you believe that it must be championed by everyone, including those in very different situations to you for whom a support network might be useful? What troubles you about the idea of people helping one another? Too commie? Black people might benefit from it? Not useful to you so shouldn't be allowed? Too reminiscent of the African village structures the idea is derived from? I'd list some positive possible motivations but I can't find any.

In the years since, we’ve committed to struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive. BLM website

Sounds like a utopian society to me. — Wheatley

By the looks of it, black people thriving is not everyone's idea of Utopia.

I don’t think BLM can operate as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, namely because it isn’t an extended family or village that collectively cares for one another. — NOS4A2

Okay so according to your information (whatever that is), the BLM virtual village isn't a thing. So why do you find it troubling if it isn't happening? This isn't amounting to a coherent position, even an ugly one.

None of the above. — NOS4A2

Then in what sense do you find such support networks troubling?

When self-avowed marxists start disrupting families through their make-believe “villages”, I see trouble. — NOS4A2

Seriously? You don't just have a problem with black lives mattering, you have a problem with an oppressed people having support networks?!? Or is this like a "gay marriage will ruin marriage" thing where you believe that black people having support networks will somehow make your white family (I'm confident that you're white) dissolve?

I don't 'think' that. It is a coordinate singularity, just like the one 16 billion light years away, and just like the event horizon of a black hole. — noAxioms

I have found this page: https://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Rindler/RindlerHorizon.html and wondered if this or something like this is where you've gotten your impression (it talks about spaceships and Rindler horizons). Note the following:

the dashed line in the figure above shows the world line of a flash of light emitted from x=0 at t=0
...
the dashed line constitutes a kind of event horizon, known as the Rindler horizon

If the above is indeed your source, I hope this convinces you that it is the entire x=0 (or t=infinity) line that is the Rindler horizon, not the X=x=0 point. Next:

Of course, this is not the same as a black hole’s event horizon in two very important respects. Firstly, it’s always possible to stop the spaceship accelerating, so this horizon’s persistence is a matter of choice, not physical law. Secondly, there is nothing corresponding to a black hole’s singularity to do any actual damage to anything passing through the horizon.

This is not a real event horizon like the boundary of the universe or that of a black hole. It is an artificial horizon based on the decision of the ship to constantly accelerate away from everything else. Things effectively cannot reach it (cannot reach x=0) because it moves away from them. However, things can get closer to it (move toward x=0) in its own proper frame. It still has a negative x-direction, and there is no singularity.

Because lightspeed is not observer-independent in non-intertial frames (trivial example: a rotating observer), while it cannot have zero speed, it can have a speed between 0 and c for an observer moving away from it. You seem to think this makes a profound statement about the space behind the accelerating observer, but it doesn't. It is equivalent, in inertial motion, to saying that an object that is following me with the same speed as me doesn't reach me. Or, in my rest frame, a static object to my left is not occupying the same coordinate as me.

The photon is still in the moving observer's coordinate system, it is just always in the negative x positive t quadrant. It isn't the case that space outside the moving observer's light cone is not inside their coordinate system. In other words, you can still create the Minkowski frame from a foliation of the accelerating observer's proper frame, it's just that you have a time-dependent length-contraction to deal with instead of a constant one. A black hole, on the other hand, is a worldline in the Minkowski frame that is genuinely inaccessible to the freefalling observer, i.e. it only exists as an event in the freefalling body's proper frame at eternity.

It might not have been corroborated but that doesn't mean there was no substance to it and so dismissed. — Michael

It's interesting what constitutes corroborating evidence to invested parties. US troops have testified to it. Afghan security council members have testified to it. Various Afghan tribes have testified to it. Captured Islamic militants have testified to it. The Taliban themselves have testified to it. We have intercepted large sums of money flowing from GRU to Taliban accounts.

But where's the corroborating evidence? I can only imagine this constitutes Putin saying, in English, "Yeah we totally did that and it was awesome", with Trump slamming him a high five.

I wonder whether Trump apologists would want the police to handle a local drug gang in their suburb the same way. "Sure, we can see those guys giving drugs to those other guys, and those other guys giving money to these guys, and these guys giving money to this guy, and literally every single person involved testifies thatthis is what's happening. But where's the corroborating evidence?"

Even Trump has moved his position from "It's unconfirmed" to "I didn't know." Imagine loving Trump so much you have to make yourself slower-witted than that.

I'm not sure what basis you could possibly argue that they are somehow less authentic purely because there may be a seemingly large intersection with other peoples values? (hence the importance of the many I mentioned before) — Risk

Because they are not derived from experience and consideration, but rather a pre-existing dogma of a religion that you're overwhelmingly likely to have inherited.

I don't perceive religious dogma as an entire package. — Risk

Dogma is a package: a set of incontrovertibly true principles according to an authority. Which bits people choose to adhere to, yes, not so strict. Okay, split the difference: a substantial chunk thereof. More so than can be accounted for by "Those were just the individual values she settled upon".

There is an extent to which this is not even philosophical suicide but philosophical infanticide: most people who hold strong religious beliefs were indoctrinated as children. I suppose it depends whether you consider the choices when faced with evidence against as real choices. Obviously being raised in a faith is a strong bias toward that faith that a lifetime atheist will never know or fully appreciate. That said, one in twelve turn away from the religion of their parents, so there's some element of choosing the package.

This isn't unique to religion, by the way. It's only because the thread is about religion that that came up. The same goes for any ideology where you identify yourself according to a pre-existing set of morals and beliefs, including Sartre's communism.

You're clearly setting up a false dichotomy in which an entire package must be subscribed to or else every view you have be utterly novel. That isn't the case. There is a world of difference between considering many different ideas, whatever their source, and selecting the ones you personally feel are right and subscribing wholesale to a pre-established mythos, pseudo-history and morality. I can have three eggs. It's not a choice between the whole dozen or none.

Your authentic self similarly would be off-the-shelf and prepackaged to many many others. — Risk

It might seem so, if you authentically arrive at a common position. But many many others is irrelevant. That's kind of the point of authenticity: you don't let others override your true self.

Religion offers a golden stamp of validity to many subjective notions. Whatever path you take to arrive at them and then act upon them, would be your authentic self. — Risk

No it wouldn't. It would be accepting someone else's meaning. Unless you happen to arrive independently at the conclusion that, say, the world was made in six days by a benevolent creator who believed knowledge was a sin so bad that you and all your offspring inherit it and the only way out is for that creator to send himself to be murdered by us -- which is a bit of a stretch -- then you're foregoing your own freedom to create meaning for yourself and wholesale buying into someone else's.

By accepting religion, you are prescribing to a dogmatic set of rules. These can't be arrived at rationally by any other means except for them being "just so". — Risk

But there's nothing stopping you arriving at a set of rules that overlaps with a given religion's. The golden rule, for instance, is as accessible to each of us. You don't have to accept the entirety of a creation myth, dodgy history lesson, outdated local laws, etc. to figure out that out rationally.

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Can you explain what you're asking? You've put a diagram of a wormhole up and a difficult-to-parse equation of unknown origin and derivation, but you haven't mentioned wormholes in your posts. A bit of context might make this easier to understand.

And you choose a picture correctly showing the worldline of our observer at X=1 (assuming we choose units where α is 1), curving to the right (positive acceleration AWAY from the Rindler horizon to the left at X=0. — noAxioms

Follow that worldline to the edge of the diagram. Now, tell me, is it closer to the horizon or further away? Yes, the worldline is bending to the right (increasing X). But the horizon is always moving to the right more quickly, except at eternity where all worldlines are parallel. Glad you see the relevance of worldlines now though.

acceleration is away from location X=0 where the Rindler horizon is. Your post contradicts your own assertions. — noAxioms

The Rindler horizon is not X=0. X=0 lies on the horizon at T=0.

You are unaware of acceleration not being constant along the length of an accelerating rigid object? This is a simple consequence of special relativity. Read up on Bell's paradox (the two ships accelerating while attached by string). It illustrates most of the concepts involved. — noAxioms

So what you mean is that we choose a frame of reference where the acceleration is not simultaneous Fine. That was the clarity I was seeking.

Your interpretation is still erroneous though, because you still think the Rindler horizon is a spatial horizon. It is not: it is a velocity limit that in turn limits how quickly and how much a body can accelerate (a rapidity limit). The length of the ship may for all intents and purposes be infinite in the origin's rest frame. As you move to more rapid parts of the ship through one part's frame of reference, you approach but never reach the rapidity of photon emission. And each successive part of the ship is length contracted with respect to the previous, so your ship beyond the origin fits in the space between X=0 and X=1 in that frame. The extent to which this is nuts is the extent to which an infinitely long ship undergoing acceleration is nuts.

This isn't different from what you started out with which my first response treated. Everything west of the Rindler horizon lies outside of the light cone of the part of the ship at the origin in its rest frame. You cannot map out an entire Minkowski space from the light cone of one event. That's fine because that's not what a Minkowski space is: it is a frame of reference containing all events, not just one.

Which is exactly the opposite of objectivity. The problem with those is precisely that they are non-objective; they only seem, subjectively, good to a few people, disregarding any concern for consistency or neutrality, i.e. objectivity. — Pfhorrest

I agree that it is contrary to objectivity. I just disagree that the opposite therefore implies objectivity. The discerning feature is in the evolved biology of mankind: it is statistical, self-assembling and contingent. (We might yet evolve stronger bases for dealing with strangers, for instance.) Bad here is the same kind of bad as a bad apple tree that bears no apples: it is a failure to be what you are. We are social animals, evolved to outcast individuals who hurt the group as a whole. (We now actually praise such individuals. We might, on the contrary to my last parenthetical, yet evolve to see antisocial behaviour as good.)

And I think the truth of this lies in the cosmic insignificance argument, that, ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're a bad person in the scheme of things. You can't say that about the objective reality of, say, gravity: "Well, we released that ball and it went up, which is gravitationally bad, but not important in the scheme of things." Things falling upwards would render the reasoning behind an assumption of objective physical reality itself invalid, and science couldn't exist. It is the scheme of things that is most affected.

So it sounds like we are in agreement. — Pfhorrest

I think not quite. A couple of counter-examples...

I said above that most questions of harm (e.g. invasion, slavery, rape) can be resolved in a certain way. There are some that cannot be resolved this way. A Christian raises their child in their faith. For them, this is a morally good, possibly obligatory action depending on their views. For me, this counts as doing harm, insofar as it puts the child at a disadvantage in discerning truth from lies, reality from make-believe, and so is a morally bad, impermissible action. But this is a case where, if roles were reversed, the Christian would attest that they would want the perceived harm done to them.

In your view there is one answer to this question: it has one particular position on each of the charts you presented. In my relativistic view, each of those charts belongs to an individual, with conformity between individuals giving statistical scales for a community. So while I bemoan the ignorance and harm, I do understand why it is right from the Christian's point of view to do what they are doing. It is a very good thing for them to do from their frame of reference, a very bad thing from mine.

Another is what I've mentioned before: insoluble moral questions, such as the train track question. Your schema dictates that there is an absolute answer, but we might not know it. Mine allows for the fact that the right answer for me is different from the right answer for you. A real-world example of this is the competing rights of women as described by trans-exclusionary feminists (TEFs) and of trans-women (TW). These arise out of mutually-exclusive concerns.

A TEF never has to consider what it is like to seem to yourself a woman trapped in a man's body by accident of birth. A TEF has always had to consider the danger of finding themselves along with a physically overpowering male stranger. A TW has less reason to consider the latter and more reason to consider the former. The problems that arise have binary answers. No midpoint between the two positions can be taken: either TW have access to female spaces or they do not; either TEFs accept TW as women (and become TIFs) which means, effectively, pretending that women born in men's bodies are typical women's bodies, or they do not.

Any answer to this binary question is nothing more than picking sides: "I hold the concerns of this group to be more important than the concerns of that group". That cannot concur with an objective moral position because it is in itself a bias. One could, and TIFs and TWs often do, argue that the TEF position is impermissible prejudice, but to do so would be to deny woman any safe space at all, including from cis men, which does harm. One could argue that cis women outnumber trans women and opt for the greater good, but that's qualitatively the same hypocrisy as slave traders and Nazis, i.e. to not extend altruism and empathy to smaller out-groups.

Moral relativism, based on the existential problem of applying biological moral capacity evolved in one environment to a completely different environment, allows for the fact that some moral questions only have frame-dependent answers. Moral objectivity does not: it is an assertion that one group's concerns outweigh another's in cases such as these through top-down morality in principle (if not in practise, lacking access to objective truths). But also in principle, either position could be legally enforced, and the course of moral trends would go one way or another. What's actually happening is that each property owner is responsible for insisting on their own moral position: if a CEO forbids TWs from using female toilets, that is their prerogative, and the TW is free to find a more sympathetic employer; if they permit it, that is also their prerogative and the TEFs are free to find a more sympathetic employer. Pluralism and relativism provide bottom-up solutions that actually make sense.

I may end up getting more wordy in my descriptions in the future, where "apple" is a complex model made up of many submodels which each predict some particular phenomena. — Adam's Off Ox

Assuming the existence of an objective reality underpinning the regularity of phenomena at various scales neither compels one to consider all objects at each of those scales nor dictates a limit on what can be considered objectively real. It is not a prescriptive statement to say that the simplest explanation for the appearance of objective physical reality is an actual objective reality. As I said, how you consider a particular apple is a separate, although related concern. (An objectively real apple is the simplest explanation for seeming consensus that this is indeed an apple too. However, it lacks the regularity of multiple events that is so compelling for a belief in objective physical reality.)

What?? The body is accelerating away from the Rindler horizon. It's not approaching it. That's why I call the direction of it 'down'. — noAxioms

You cannot, by definition, "accelerate away from the Rindler horizon". That horizon is an acceleration limit. Lemme dig out a pic to explain.



X here is position, T time in a Minkowski frame. The hyperbola are worldlines of bodies undergoing constant proper acceleration. t here is the proper time of the accelerating body.

As the body is accelerated for longer and longer, T and t increase. At infinity, all worldlines converge at the Rindler horizon, i.e. they have maximal velocity and converge to the worldline of infinite acceleration (the light-line).

So it's difficult to make sense of what you're saying. I get that you're trying to simulate gravity here. If you have a long ship pointed radially outward from a black hole, the bottom undergoes more acceleration than the top. I can't envisage, in the absence of gravity, how you can make a single object do the same. Perhaps a fleet of ships would be better. Non-rigid bodies were among the original hypothetical objects of the equivalence principle for this very reason.

However as evolution now amounts to a secular creation mythology it is now naturally assumed that the mind can be explained in naturalistic terms. The effects of this belief extend well beyond the sphere of philosophy. — Wayfarer

Good link, especially the bit that says:

Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry.

Not sure what worldlines have to do with this. — noAxioms

You brought up Rindler coordinates. There are two interpretations of these. The original is that they map the hyperbolic worldlines of accelerating bodies in an inertial frame. The second is that they map the length contraction of accelerating bodies in the bodies' non-inertial frames.

In the former, the Rindler horizon is the Minkowski worldline of a body with infinite acceleration, making it light-like, whereas in the latter it is the coordinate approached by an accelerating body as t goes to infinity. Either way, it's not something you can reach in a finite amount of time and with a finite amount of acceleration.

Yes, the (constant) proper distance to the Rindler horizon of a small object undergoing continuous proper acceleration is a function of the magnitude of that acceleration. — noAxioms

Actually it isn't. All accelerations lead to the horizon at eternity. None reach it in real time except, as said, infinite accelerations. How quickly they approach the horizon does depend on the acceleration, yes: x = 1/a.

Acceleration must be greater further 'down'. Less in the 'up' direction, so the 'ship' can be as long in that direction as required to serve its purpose as a coordinate system for an accelerated reference frame. — noAxioms

Nope, still not getting you. The only thing I can think is that this is a ship that is linear after Rindler transformation, i.e. that the coordinate x here is 1/a. Is that what you mean? I don't think this proves anything. It's effectively saying that after an eternity of travelling along the ship, the bit of the ship you're at will have reached its maximum acceleration and be at the horizon. Anything beyond that is unreachable purely from the fact that you can't reach, let alone pass, eternity. But that's just because your coordinate means the inverse of acceleration, not an actual event in spacetime.

To deny that is just complete moral nihilism, saying that no notion of morality is better than any other; that Hitler didn't actually do anything wrong, because nothing at all is "actually wrong", people just have different feelings about things.

As I recall you already deny that all moral systems are equally wrong, and think that some are less wrong than others. That's all moral objectivism is. — Pfhorrest

When our ancestors lived in disparate social groups, I don't think, for even the most philosophical among them, a philosophy of morality would have been possible. We are hard-wired for selfish actions, hard-wired for altruism and hard-wired for empathy. Moral decisions would have been personal and practical: do I steal the food from the neighbour and risk being chased out of the group? do I give half of my food to my starving neighbour and go hungrier for a couple of days?

Morality only really became a concern when people came regularly into contact with people they were not related to and might not benefit from in the future. Not extending altruism and empathy beyond our kin was the mode of the powerful and the thuggish. I want this land, I will kill enough of its inhabitants until no one questions that it is mine. I want vast, cheap labour, I will steal people from their homes and violently force them to work. I want to copulate with this woman I don't know, I will rape. Alongside the uglier history of moral behaviour, we have also had people who took the opposite or an intermediate stance, which is the view that has been winning out for a while, a stance that the powerful still resist: we should extend altruism and empathy to everyone as if they were our kin. And then there are the majority who genuinely don't care.

There is a fundamental reason why the first and last of these are morally inferior positions, and it has nothing to do with any mind-independent moral objectivity and everything to do with the real biological basis of our morality: those views are fundamentally hypocritical and antisocial. The capacity for empathy, necessary for socialisation, in turn necessary for our survival and even our evolution, is as present in a slave-owner as in an emancipationist, and the slave-owner can't possibly be of the opinion that, if the roles were reversed, he would be okay with that. His actions, as indicated by his lack of altruism and empathy, are the same kind of antisocial as the stone age ancestor who steals the food from his neighbour. We have a survivalist basis of morality: the slave owner should be outcast.

To that extent, there is usually a basis to choose.

Beyond that, morality is an existential problem. We are thrown into a world of strangers with a biological capacity to be kind and empathetic toward people but we also have the ability to not bother. Doing no harm is easy enough, but is it better to do good than do no harm, is it better to do good for 10 and harm 1 than do no harm, etc., etc. Moral philosophy. There is no biological, survivalist, social basis for these sorts of moral questions. It is the same as meaning in existentialism. You have existence, and you have freedom, and there is no telling what you should do with it. Likewise you have wants and needs, but also altruism and empathy, and there's no rulebook for how to apply these in what combinations for how long and how often. Your morality is what you do with the choices you're given. You can keep your head down. You can appease your conscience and whet your oxytocin appetite with occasional arbitrary acts of kindness. You can become an activist for an oppressed people or dig wells in Africa until you drop. And whatever you do, this is you, making you as you go along, and as long as you're not antisocial (and most people with power still are) and fall into the group above, there's no should. This, for me, is a proper description of hedonism.

And, as with existentialism, morality is shaped by particular, local, temporary socialisation. Where they differ is that a good existentialist will tell you to ignore everyone else and be authentic, whereas a good person is designed to be socialised: that's part of the package. But we are not designed for a particular socialisation.

I think the illusion of objective morality comes down to the fact that, in history, most moral progress is made on the first kinds of moral questions regarding genuinely antisocial behaviour. Moral philosophy often deals with the second kind and struggles to find a basis for choosing, because they are not questions of anti-social/social behaviour, but what particular uses I should make of my social capacity. It is presumed, from the illusion of objective morality, that there must be answers and we just don't know them. People from one region at one time swing this way, people from another region another time swing that. Who is right? There must be an answer. But there isn't one. Your morality was not evolved to face these kinds of problems.

Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement. — Adam's Off Ox

Nothing wrong with disagreement. Unless you disagree?

Are the objects at each level of inquiry the same kind of existing objects? Or rather, the words that make up an ontology of things of the same dimension (not just scale)? — Adam's Off Ox

If you mean what I think you mean, I'd say not. A model is not an exact description of an objectively real object. It is an approximate and incomplete description of phenomena from whose regularity we assume has a single underlying reality.

Brains also have models of apples. We can identify apples very quickly and anticipate their tastes. Things that look like apples but aren't can be mistaken for apples; things that don't look like apples aren't mistaken for them, unless the brain is at fault. Things that comprise my brain's model of an apple are: a generic apple shape, one of a set of generic apple colours or colour patterns (such that I can say: "This is apple white paint" or "The colour gradation is like an apple"), a generic apple size, a generic apple weight, a generic apple cross section with the membrane on the outside, the flesh most of the way through, then the core with its pips on the inside, several generic apple textures (waxy membrane, wet crunchy wall), and a narrow spectrum of apple flavours.

Newtonian mechanics has a much simpler approximation to the same apple. Mostly, it will be treated as a point particle with a generic apple weight. A more thorough model would be of a slightly irregularly-shaped body with an almost uniform density. Either way, it will be a generalised apple, as applicable to any apple as this one.

A biologist's model of the same apple will be more thorough than the brain's in some regards. They will see the different cells that make up the membrane, wall, core and pips. But they would have to defer to the chemist to account for the flavour, etc. Again, this will be a generalised apple. A chemist will also have a more thorough view of each of the kinds of cells that make up that apple, in particular a generalised model of the chemical constituents of those cells, but will be unconcerned with the macroscopic features of the apple.

The quantum chemist will focus on the chemical constituents of the cells and not necessarily even be concerned with the cells themselves. They are interested in how the structures of the molecules' atoms gives rise to electron behaviour that correspond to chemical laws.

At each stage, each person may be thinking about the same apple (the thing "under consideration"), but only I have a particular concern with this apple because this apple is not a regular, generic thing but a particular thing.

The sort of objective reality I have been talking about is not the objective reality of this particular apple. It is the objective reality of the universe having physical laws that mean: when I bite this apple I will taste apple flavour; when I throw this apple at a person it will hurt yay much; when I dissect this apple it will have these cells; when I perform chemical experiments on a parenchyma cell I will see these sorts of results; when I irradiate chemicals found in parenchyma cells I will see this emission spectrum.

Does that make sense? The objective reality of the apple itself is a slightly different concern. I can't build a theory out of a single data point, and I can't make a prediction from one apple alone (although a chemist could do a lot with a single apple). An apple is really a single phenomenon. I do feel justified in believing in the objective reality of the apple itself for similar reasons, but more phenomenological than scientific.

Being at the unattainable limit of that series, it is independent of anybody’s particular mind. — Pfhorrest

Understood, but an extrapolation from actual mental and cultural content still isn't independent of mind and culture. It does not contain identical content, but it contains extrapolations of real mental and cultural moral trends.

To put it another way, had the trend of moral history been to become more individualistic, more selfish, more cruel (holy f**k, that's the current trend!), the extrapolation and thus the quality of moral objectivity, would be different.

The assumption of the objective reality underpinning scientific models, which themselves also have a trend, is that it is truly independent of that trend. It is precisely the supposed objectivity that stops us going down e.g. deterministic models of elementary particles: we couldn't do that because the phenomena and our idea of objective reality would diverge. Equivalents of the sorts of utilitarian local moral developments of places like Chad, which will yield a better morality in Chad through socialisation, don't really work in theoretical modelling. Funding might be conformist, what you choose to study might be conformist, but the actual models themselves have to match how the assumed objective reality seems. If it exists, it informs us. The moral objective reality you describe is informed by us only if I have understood it correctly.

On a different level, but no less relevant, the way we model things like billiard balls, apples, and oranges (deterministically) differs from the way we model gas in a chamber and work (dynamically), which also differs from the way we model quantum mechanics (WTF?). Using the same kind of ontology for all these models seems misplaced considering there are different philosophies in place (indicated by the different mathematics) in the modeling. We no longer have one objective reality defined by all of science, but rather many kinds of realities all taking place at once. — Adam's Off Ox

So just to refine the names of these different classes if models, we have: deterministic (billiards), statistical (gases), probabilistic (quantum). In the first, the element behaves deterministically and we can know it. In the second, each element behaves deterministically, but we can't know it and instead treat a statistical ensemble. And in the third, a single element has to be treated statistically.

These are three levels of approximation at modelling the putative objective reality. The first works well at the macroscopic scale, but breaks down when describing macroscopic ensembles of molecular-scale objects. For this, statistical mechanics works fine, so long as we don't wish to model the element itself or it is is sufficiently large. For smaller elements, you need a more thorough treatment.

The putative objective reality remains the same, and the trend of more exact treatment is precisely the trend discussed above, that toward a best model of this reality. That is, we don't think there's a part of reality specifically dealing with things like apples and billiard balls, another part specifically dealing with fluids, etc.

My statistical mechanics lecturer actually took the approach of deriving the entirety of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics, where entropy is essentially the number of states explored by a system. Similarly, we derived all of the classical mechanics of billiard balls from quantum mechanics.

So we'd say QM is a better, rather than different, model of the objective reality we wish to explain.

Acceleration of the ship is greater the further 'down' the length you go, until a limit is reached (about a lightyear from the origin in this case) at the event horizon (called the Rindler horizon). — noAxioms

Can you unpack this? The Rindler horizon can be reached one of two ways. As the worldline of a body undergoing acceleration, it is reached as that acceleration becomes infinite. This is the light-line (e.g. photon creation). As the proper time of a body undergoing proper acceleration, it is reached at eternity.

Why is your apparently infinitely long ship accelerating more the further away from x=0 you go? And why do you think it is infinitely accelerating one LY from x=0?

The mathematics is agnostic to any putative existence of billiard balls as things, but only addresses the variables at hand. — Adam's Off Ox

That is correct; the mathematics itself guarantees no generality. But modelling is something people do with mathematics, not something mathematics does. The observer in question formulates theoretical general laws of billiards which may be falsified, but are not.

50 years later, those laws are still predicting outcomes of billiards events. Why is it so reliable? Is it because the mathematics is so clever? It it because billiardologists have a culture that produces reliable frameworks? Both are important to discovering general laws of billiards, but cannot explain why the model itself never, ever fails.

That is where the assumption of an objective reality which is partly and approximately reflected in the general model simplifies matters. If billiards has an objectively real counterpart which itself obeys something like the general law of billiards, then the success of the general law is explained.

Without this, it is a mystery why merely noting down observations should ever lead to a predictive theory. The model in question cannot account for the success of the model. An objective reality can, by having something similar to the model in its aspect.

The material/energy from which they are comprised very much did. — noAxioms

Yes, that's true. But when we gaze at a galaxy 13.4B LY away, we are not seeing the material and energy that would later form that galaxy, we are seeing the formed galaxy. Ergo the galaxy did not form close to us then "move" 13.4B LY away from us. It was 13.4B LY away from us when it emitted the light we are seeing now.

Exactly, which is why I say that inertial frames do not describe the universe. — noAxioms

For sure, LETs can't describe black holes. There's no aether definable at or within the event horizon, although people have tried. You don't need to foliate spacetime to get to this conclusion, nor consider events outside the light-cone as being outside the entire reference frame. Black holes are curvatures of spacetime, i.e. assuming they exist is assuming your conclusion. The natural questions would be: what is the closest thing to a black hole in LET (the static aether), and is it consistent with empirical evidence?

... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they are mathematically defined relationships between other phenomena. What is preserved in the discussion is the math, not putative reality. — Adam's Off Ox

That is not what is left in the Standard Model, though. I think what you've got here is an exclusive definition of "model" that only applies to whatever minimal thing you happen to be hypothesising about at the time, as use-once-and-destroy model. This does not match the definition of "model" in "Standard Model" though.

What the Standard Model does, the "why it works", is convert observable data (phenomena) into predicted phenomena. — Adam's Off Ox

Applying the SM to a particular question will give you predictions and, yes, you will only use the pertinent bits (e.g. ignore strong interaction in weak phenomena). But the SM itself is a model of an aspect of reality, derived from, but now independent of, particular problems in quantum field theory. It itself is not the minimal representation of the problem in hand and it exists whether you are performing a calculation or not. (Let's not go down the "Does the Moon exist when I don't observe it root :rofl: )

Do you consider yourself a physicist, by chance? Or perhaps a scientist in another field? — Adam's Off Ox

Yes, a physicist. Or rather a lapsed physicist. I was active in research until a couple of years ago but sold out mwahahahaaaa! I worked in many-body quantum mechanics.

A "good mathematical model" focuses only on the variables under consideration, and takes into account that an induction (not deductively logical) process is taking place in order to move from call to response. — Adam's Off Ox

That doesn't seem right to me either. The Standard Model, for instance, is not focused "only on the variables under consideration": it is a reference point for what is under consideration and exists (after consideration) whether we are considering something or not. "According to the Standard Model, the hypercharge is conserved under decay of blah blah blah." That is a reference to a model. The model itself is not defined by that reference. Not does the Standard Model go away when we stop considering the hypercharge under decay of blah.

What the Standard Model is is the best model of the elementary contents and interactions of a putative objective reality consistent with the totality of empirical facts.

Their belief whether God exists or not provides them with a sense of meaning and purpose in life and to tell them that their belief is philosophical suicide seems rather arrogant I think — Ross Campbell

But it isn't that person's authentic meaning, it's an off-the-shelf, prepackaged meaning that someone else thought up. To that extent, it is philosophical suicide: you are killing your authentic self in preference for an inauthentic one.

In my opinion, what "good science" does involves making observations of phenomena and then predicting additional phenomena. The concept of "putative reality" drops out from the process (as an empty variable) so that all the science is left with are phenomena and model. — Adam's Off Ox

I disagree with that. The putative reality is put in by hand in the act of modelling. What is a model a model of if not a putative reality? That is not to say that they believe their models are accurate representations of objective reality, but that, over time, if objective reality does exist, those models should increasingly reflect that objective reality that seems to exist (the putative objective reality).

I'm not particularly an expert on GR (my field was QM), so you oughtn't to assume an overriding authority from me. However I know enough to have lectured a syllabus and have an interest in it.

This question seems based on an error. It's worth reiterating though that the problems expressed here are not physical problems. The Einstein equations are notoriously difficult to solve exactly (there are only a handful of known exact solutions) and, as I said earlier, the easiest way to solve them is to treat spacetime as a series of locally flat spacetimes (slicing or threading). As with any such approximation, this brings with it certain problems (e.g. sensitivity to initial conditions not captured by the initial inertial frame) and has certain limits (where spacetime cannot be shown to asymptotically approach flat spacetime, such as at the centre of a black hole). Black holes are not features of special relativity, only exact GR.

So there is little profundity to be found from these problems. They have to be overcome not to get a better idea of spacetime directly, but to numerically solve approximations to the Einstein equation and (hopefully) gain insight about spacetime that way, i.e. they are pragmatic only*. Any generalisation about these problems to the physical universe is seriously flawed.

*They are more important to quantum gravity because SR is the only feasible consistent way of describing Einsteinian gravity (as opposed to e.g. gravitons) quantum mechanically. But, still, this is a practical problem rather than a fundamental mystery of the universe.

What are your thoughts on the general idea that black holes preclude a global slicing of spacetime? I always assumed it was just closed timelike curves would make them impossible but noAxioms apparently thinks otherwise. — Mr Bee

My experience is that slicing is not precluded. It depends on the origin of reference frame. If it's outside the event horizon, you can still slice, but if the slice intersects the horizon you have to treat the exterior and interior separately. This isn't particular to slicing. Spherically symmetric slicing for some model black holes with the origin inside the horizon have also been shown to work.

Actually it does stop it. It's not a mystery, it's a physical impossibility in an inertial coordinate system for something to move 13.4 BLY away and then send a signal back, all in 13.8 BYr. — noAxioms

That is a limitation of inertial frames, not of the physical universe. Also, you seem to think that if we see light from a star 13.4B LY away, there must have been a time when that star was very close to us. That is not right. It didn't have to "move 13.4 BLY away and then send a signal back". Stars did not emerge from the big bang.

I'm here to discuss my argument against absolute time, with people who know their physics sufficiently to comment productively on it. This is not that discussion. — noAxioms

You mean pretend physics, which requires a pretend physicist to discuss it with? Fair point, I am not that person. Gimme a holler if you need someone who taught relativity at university though. I'm sure it won't measure up to pretend physics but it has its place.

Cognitive science is not philosophy of mind. But this paper on the neural binding problem and the subjective unity of perception does explicitly mention David Chalmer's 'hard problem of consciousness', acknowledging that 'this version of the neural binding problem really is a scientific mystery at this time. ' — Wayfarer

As per my quote, my issue was with that statement that "no actual progress on how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness". I do not argue that those active fields are all wrapped up.

Objective reality/morality is the limit of a series of increasingly improved subjective opinions on what is real/moral. — Pfhorrest

I did think this was your idea of objective reality; you've said as much before, although also said things that caused me to doubt it. It doesn't seem to mean the same as definitions I've seen or used. By lieu of it being an extrapolation of subjective opinions, it is not mind-independent, for instance.

When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former.

After decades training with the world’s foremost doulas, midwives and practitioners of Transcendental Meditation I’ve come up with a method (patent pending) of progeneration that actually decreases suffering and I’m almost ready to license it to expectant mothers for a modest fee. — csalisbury

:rofl:

What he said! (I think we're largely in agreement, ourselves, schop; besides antinatalism, anyway) — csalisbury

Antinatalism?!? :scream:

Cooperatives have nothing to do with state socialism,btw. They haven't been formed by the state and given some monopoly decree. Cooperatives fit into a capitalist economy perfectly. — ssu

You mean the workers owning the means of production? Yeah, that's so Capitalism. Socialism WISHES it had thought of that.

That population boom doesn't happen anymore in the rich industrialized countries. — ssu

Japan aside, the populations of the biggest economies are still growing. The growth rate is diminishing, true. That happens after population explosions in all species. Increased life expectancy is a big factor. Medicine and sanitation, especially overcoming the health crisis of the Industrial Revolution, have done wonders. Contraception helped too. And also knowing your children have less prospects than you did.

What are you talking about? I have now no clue what you are saying. — ssu

I'm saying that there are many ways of increasing GDP while keeping people poorer. The gig economy, as favoured by the agriculture industry among others, is one of the biggies. Increased GDP does not equate to increased universal prosperity. It just means the poor are giving more money to the rich.

Here, for instance, is the percentage of national wealth owned by the richest 10% of the population in the US between 1910 and 2010:



Same picture in the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. All tell the same story: when the shackles came off capitalism in the '80s, it drove a trend of income inequality. On paper, most my generation and after have never been poorer, having no savings, massive debts, no property, no job security. But they do have NetFlix.

And this is your belief you have. — ssu

It's more a lack of belief. I don't believe in myths of limitless growth or trickle-down economics. These are beliefs that, like any other erroneous belief, do not concur with evidence. I am well aware that I have lived through increasing prosperity. I also don't believe the myth that my lunch was free.

On a broader tangent, I think a lot of conservative ideas are post-modern actually. Look at the defense of Trump. Many people well say, look "Bill Clinton and Joe Biden did x,y,z.. the system itself is already corrupted" thus Trump's very transparent narcissism and divisiveness is given a pass. — schopenhauer1

Or Bush Jr's "alternative facts" era. Or the Anglican church's "Teach the controversy!" I think the conservative post-truth MO was learned from the aforementioned inheritors and exploiters of pomo on the left, though. "Everything is a social construct" is a metanarrative. "Everything is equally true or not true, it's all just perspective" is a metanarrative. Alternative facts and fake news seem to me more cynical recyclings of that.

However, I am talking about technology and science en totale. That is to say.. You enjoy perhaps having air conditioning, electricity, refrigeration, running water, advanced medicine, engineering of all kinds, transportation and the like. That just can't be narrated away. — schopenhauer1

For sure, narrative truth should not squeeze out scientific truth. My point was that I don't think it was ever intended that such an anti-technological or anti-scientific stance should be taken from pomo theory, although it obviously was. Feyerabend, who was uncoincidentally a very religious man, is the only big hitter I know of who actually tried to undermine the role science plays in society. Latour, another very religious man, was compulsively critical of scientific culture, but his actual criticisms were sound and are taught today in at least one Physics department (my old one).

Finally OP-relevant: I genuinely do think that if people were less reactionary, postmodern criticism could be useful in other ways. When I was still active in research, my department started a graphene group years after other universities had had many successful publications on graphene. By this time, graphene was a thriving area of research but no longer the fave of the condensed matter community, which had turned its eye toward topological insulators. So why get in so late? Because that's where the funding was and that's what everyone else was doing. We weren't likely to add value, but God forbid we study one of the other, lesser-studied subjects! And we're not talking a two-bit former tech college, we're talking a Russell Group university.

This is exactly the sort of bullshit postmodern critics of science were banging on about. We have cultural inertias that actually stop us doing good science. It's a bit like cinema. Remember when Scream came out and then multiplexes were filled with cheap crappy horror films for years until the next thing became a fad? Same goes for science. People study and get funding for whatever most people happen to be studying and getting funding for, while interesting questions go unanswered.

This is the sort of level postmodern criticism was aiming at. It was quite legitimate and, had the Sokals of the world not been such a bunch of crybaby reactionists, would have been really useful to take on board. I do think it's a shame that, to the extent that pomo had value, we killed it off, and, to the extent that it survived, it had hugely negative value.

Hi 3017. That might be more on-topic here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8635/dark-matter-possibly-preceded-the-big-bang-by-3-billion-years