I've thought about the subject for a long time, I believe there are things you could learn from me on that subject, I might learn some things from you too, but then I'm more interested in a discussion where the other side is also willing to learn rather than a debate where you're only trying to prove me wrong. I'm not saying I never make mistakes, but up to now all my supposed contradictions that you have highlighted stem from you misunderstanding the context in which I said these things and from misinterpreting the words I use, so it's a bit tiresome to keep having to justify myself against someone who doesn't really seem interested in what I have to say.

Do you not see a difference between measuring an object, and measuring the distance between two objects? — Metaphysician Undercover

I meant why the distinction between static space and active space, since the shape of an object is not necessarily static.

You are saying that it is a thing, like a medium, within which objects exist, like they exist in water, or air. — Metaphysician Undercover

No I'm not saying that, I said that the definitions refer to it like a thing, some sort of container in which objects move. In physics space used to be thought as a medium (the luminiferous aether), then failures to detect it experimentally led to abandon the idea of it as a medium (as Einstein did with special relativity in which there is no more reference to an absolute space but instead to relative reference frames), and then Einstein reintroduced it as some sort of a medium in general relativity since in it space has properties such as curvature. But even though in his theory space has properties, Einstein was well aware that space is a "tool of thought" (that's his own words), in no way did he pretend that his theory somehow proved that space is an actual medium that really does curve, only people who misinterpret him and misinterpret the function of scientific theories say that.

It could be that there really is a medium that permeates everything, or it could be that there is pure void between things, both ideas are compatible with what we observe. If there is pure void between things then space isn't a medium, it isn't an actual thing.

But it doesn't make sense to say that the thing within which objects exist, and move around, is a concept. — Metaphysician Undercover

It does make sense if it is said conceptually and not literally. We can imagine that planets follow curved trajectories in a flat space, or straight trajectories in a curved space, or some other trajectories in some other space, the conceptualization itself doesn't imply that space is an actual thing that is flat or curved, otherwise that leads to senseless conclusions, space would be at the same time flat and curved when one person conceptualizes it as flat and some other person as curved.

Yourself you have even come up with a concept of space in which objects don't move even when we perceive them to move. Do you conclude from that that space is an actual thing that shrinks and expands whereas objects remain at rest, or that it's a concept you have invented?

If simultaneously one person can imagine space as flat, some other person as curved, some other person as shrinking and expanding, some other person as being displaced by objects, do you not see that space is a concept, and that people conceptualize it by analogy with what they do observe? People observe flat surfaces, people observe curved surface, people observe balloons shrinking or expanding, people observe water displaced by objects moving within it, then they conceptualize space by analogy with what they have observed, but they can conceptualize it however they want, all their conceptions are compatible with observations, the very same observation can be translated in one conceptualization as an object having a straight trajectory, in another conceptualization as the object having a curved trajectory, in yet another as being at rest, all are valid depending on the concept you use.

So if space can be anything we want it to be, what is it? It's a creation of the imagination, a tool of thought, a concept. Yes we perceive objects, yes we perceive change, but I think if you trained your mind you could come to see all objects at rest while imagining (or seeing) space shrinking or expanding between them. Maybe then you would come to see space as a real tangible thing, and motions of objects as an illusion. Sometimes the line between reality and imagination can be blurry, who knows if we aren't the ones who impose that delimitation ourselves.

So I won't claim it's impossible to see space as a real tangible thing, after all I'm not in your mind. But I'll keep saying that it's possible to imagine it as flat, or curved, or as nothing at all, and as such that it is false to claim that planets revolve around the Sun because they follow straight lines in curved space as if we had detected space to be something that curves, conceptually we can see planets as following straight lines in curved space, but conceptually we can also see them as having curved trajectories in flat space or as some other thing.

What does this indicate other than the fact that we really don't know what space is? — Metaphysician Undercover

I think really your question boils down to why is there something rather than nothing. Because as soon as you identify several things within what you see you can come up with a concept of distance, and then a concept of space. Only if your experience was uniform (say you didn't experience anything except the color white, no sound no smell no taste no touch, no screen around the white just white) then you wouldn't come up with the concept of space. The concept is used to relate things that are identified as distinct.

So I would say our thoughts create the concept of space. And then I wonder to what extent our thoughts create what we see, to what extent they decide what's reality and what's imagination, to what extent they have created what they classify as reality...

there are two distinct conceptions of space. One is derived from our measurements of objects, and this produces the "space" which is occupied by an object, and the other is derived from the measurements of distance between objects, and this produces the "space" between objects. As I explained, these two conceptions of "space" are incompatible, because the former sees space as static, and the latter sees space as active. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know why you make a distinction there. In both cases measurements are involved, in both cases the measurements can change (the shape of an object can change, so can the distance between objects).

There are other conceptions of space. The one customarily used in physics is something like:

a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction (Merriam-Webster dictionary)
the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move (Oxford dictionary)

Notice how these definitions do not refer specifically to measurements of objects or measurements between objects, they refer to a thing within which objects exist and move.

I don't think that anyone conceives of motions as objects moving relative to space — Metaphysician Undercover

As above, in physics the very customary thing to do is to conceive of motions as objects moving in space. In classical physics you have objects moving within Euclidean space. In general relativity you have objects moving within curved space.

For instance in classical physics, when two objects move towards each other they move in space, space doesn't shrink between them. Sure the distance between them decreases, the unoccupied volume between them shrinks, but the reference background relative to which objects are tracked, space, doesn't shrink.

Now of course that reference background is not something we observe or detect, it is a reference frame that is defined from things we do observe, which is why I say that this background is not something tangible, is not a material substance, it's a concept, a tool of thought, and to treat it as tangible like an object is the fallacy of reification.

You misunderstand the meaning of "substance" if you believe that substance must be sensible. What is sensible is the form of a thing, it's shape, colour, etc. We do not sense a thing's material substratum, what makes it a real thing, its substance. "Substance" is a concept introduced by Aristotle to validate our assumptions that the material world must be real. So it is not something whose existence we detect, we conclude through logic, that there must be "substance", or else the sensible world would be an illusion. So things which we assume to have real material existence, we say have substance. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do not misunderstand the meaning of "substance", rather I use a definition of "substance" different from yours, your definition is not the only one that exists, and it isn't the most widespread either.

The definition I use would be something like a material with particular physical characteristics (Cambridge dictionary), whereas your definition seems to be something like the essential nature underlying phenomena (Oxford dictionary). So obviously if we're not using the same definition we talk past each other when we talk about substance.


Now that you know in what sense I use the words "space" and "substance", and so as to not get too carried away, the whole point of the discussion is what does it mean to say that space curves? Plenty of people say that gravity is the curvature of space, that planets orbit the Sun because space is curved around the Sun and because they follow straight lines in curved space, people are made to believe that we have found the cause of gravity, that this cause is that space is curved, as if space was a tangible thing, a tangible material, a tangible substance that we have detected to curve, and as I keep saying this is false, we have detected no such thing, the curvature of space is an abstraction, a concept, a tool of thought, not something that is physically detected in any way, and to treat that abstraction as a material thing is the fallacy of reification.

People are made to believe that we can't model gravity precisely without invoking a curved space, as a supposed proof that space really is a tangible material that really does curve even though we don't directly observe it, this is false, we can model observations as precisely without invoking a curved space.


And when I say that space is not a tangible material that curves or expands like a sheet curves or a balloon expands, I'm not saying that we don't perceive objects that are visually separated. And when I say that time is not a tangible material that passes or flows like a train passes or water flows, I'm not saying that we don't perceive change.

I've provided arguments for my position, based on the definition of "space" which you gave, evidence that I'm not "talking past" you. If anyone is talking past the other, it is you, asserting that "space" as it is commonly understood, is not something substantial, in complete ignorance of what the models, and your definition of "space" indicate. — Metaphysician Undercover

Space can be defined in various ways, let's go with your definition (state it precisely so we can be on the same page).

Strictly speaking I wouldn't say there is space between objects and that objects occupy space, when I do that it's a figure of speech, just like I would say there is love between two people, I don't literally mean that somewhere between these people there is some entity or substance called love that I have observed.

We're also talking past each other because we don't seem to give the same meaning to the word "substance", by substance I mean some sort of liquid or solid or gas, something detectable in some way, space is none of that, to me space isn't a substance just like an idea isn't a substance. You seem to consider that anything that can be thought is substantial, that's not how I'm using the word substance here.

Placing object Y between object X and Z, is not a case of making a measurement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Plenty of measurements precisely involve placing an object between or along other objects.

This is a diversion, a ruse, or distraction created by you, in an effort to avoid the point of my argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, that's you believing I'm creating a diversion/ruse/distraction and attempting to avoid the point of your argument, whereas I disagree with your argument and I'm trying to make you see why while you don't see. Misinterpreting and misrepresenting my intentions and thoughts leads to talking past each other.

To place a ruler between objects X and Z, and say that the ruler fits between objects X and Z, is not a case of measurement unless the quantity, extent, or size of something is being determined. — Metaphysician Undercover

Measurements boil down to comparisons. At some point you're judging whether something fits, you're making a comparison when you make a measurement, you can't escape that.

When you place a ruler along two objects, you're judging how the objects fit next to the ruler, you aren't forced to invoke an underlying space that you are supposedly measuring.

Of course time is reified. Time is understood as a dimension of space, — Metaphysician Undercover

No, you and some other people reify time, and you and some other people "understand" time as a dimension of space. Time doesn't have to be reified, and time doesn't have to be treated as a dimension of space. You can do that if you like (as long as you understand it's a model, otherwise you're committing a logical fallacy), but stop pretending it's a necessity.

and space is necessarily reified according to the concepts we use to measure it, as explained above. Therefore time is necessarily reified as well. But it's not me who is reifying these, they are already reified by the concepts we use to understand time and space. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I explained why I disagree.

you seem to hold as an ontological principle, that space and time are not substantial. And, despite me demonstrating that this ontological principle is not supported by the concepts of "space" and "time" in common usage — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you saying that space and time are substantial because in common usage they are treated as substantial? So if something in common usage is treated as substantial then it becomes substantial? If in common usage pink elephants on the moon are treated as substantial then there are pink elephants on the moon? Either you're committing the very fallacy of reification, or you're playing with semantics.

Whereas you know why I don't treat space and time as substantial? Because I don't see space nor time, I see objects, rulers, clocks. The concepts of space and time stem from observations of these substantial things, not the other way around, and that you don't seem to get despite me explaining it to you again and again.

Suppose we measure the distance between X and Z at one time, and we measure the distance between X and Z at a later time, and find that the distance is less. If this is not a case of the space between them shrinking, what is it? Don't say that it is a case of the objects moving relative to each other, because that is exactly what movement is, a change in the space between objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

If I'm looking at two objects moving towards each other that's what I see, two objects moving towards each other, I can imagine putting a ruler next to them and reading a decreasing measurement, but I don't see any substance between the objects that shrinks.

Would you say that they move towards each other because space is shrinking between them? That would be again the fallacy of reification.

If I wasn't looking at them moving and I only saw them at rest and I made two measurements and the second one was less, I would say that the objects have got closer to one another, I wouldn't say that some space substance has physically shrunk between them.

If you like you can say that the distance between them has decreased, or you can even say that the space between them has decreased, as long as you understand space to be a concept, an idea, a tool of thought, and not a physical thing like the objects, not a substance. Just like a distance isn't a substance, it's a concept, a tool of thought.


Also, realize that if you consider that when objects move relative to each other it's because space is shrinking or expanding between them, then in your view objects never move relative to space, they are always at rest in space, and that's surely not the concept of "space" in common usage, it's your idiosyncratic one.

We're talking past each other because you are not listening to what I am saying. — Metaphysician Undercover

I hear what you’re saying, but I disagree, which is another instance of us talking past each other, and you’ll probably disagree with me disagreeing, which will be yet another instance, and so on.

When you measure the distance between objects that something is space.

So when we measure the distance between objects, we presuppose the substantial existence of "space", as the thing being measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree, when you put a ruler between two objects you’re not measuring space, you could simply say “this object that I call a ruler visually fits between these two objects”, no need to invoke a separate substance that is supposedly measured.

Objects move and change, because time is passing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Now you’re refying time. It’s the other way around, we observe change, and then we come up with the concept of time. There is no entity called “time” that we have identified that is responsible for the change we observe. We simply relate change to some reference change that we call a clock. We don’t observe “time passing”, we observe objects that we call clocks change.

In our attempts to understand and conceptualize these changes we've come to the conclusion that space curves, bends, and expands. — Metaphysician Undercover

That’s wrong, considering there is no need to talk of space curving or bending or expanding to describe precisely how planets and galaxies and light move. The same observations can be modeled as precisely in a space that curves and in a Euclidean space that doesn’t. Observations don’t lead us to the conclusion that space curves.

Your point of view implies among other things that if two objects get closer to each other it’s because space is shrinking between them. I disagree.

One might say "the sky is blue", and that's a model or representation, but 'the sky" is referred to as a real thing. You might say, that "the sky" is not a real thing, by your ontological principles, but in that model, the sky is a real thing, the thing referred to as being blue. — Metaphysician Undercover

You can define the sky as the area above the Earth as seen from the Earth. You do see blue when you look up. In what instances do you see space curving or bending or expanding?

We're talking past each other here. Sure if you want let's say that there is space between objects and that objects occupy space. You agree that this space is conceptual, that it comes from measurements, either measurements between objects or measurements of objects themselves.

So what does it mean to say that space "bends", or "curves", or "expands"? It simply means our measurements are changing, that is the distance between objects changes, or the shape of the objects change. It decidedly does not mean that space is not merely a concept but a tangible substance that physically bends or curves or expands and is responsible for the changing distance between objects. An object is a tangible thing, a measuring device is a tangible thing, space is not, you said it yourself it's a concept, you can't take a spoon of space, you can't boil space or cut it in half, you can't throw space, you can't lick space, ...

So, when people say that planets revolve around the Sun because they follow straight lines in a curved space, that's wrong, the curved space is not the cause, it is a model, a representation, we don't detect a space substance that is physically curved, and we are not forced to invoke a curving space to model the motions we observe. To say that curved space is a cause of the motions we observe is to give an illusion of explanation and to reify space as a tangible thing.

As I explained, a body is full of empty space, and that empty space is treated as part of the body, and therefore substantial. You might model the motion of a body without referring to its centre of gravity, but it is implicit within the way that the multitude of parts which compose "the body", is treated as one whole. — Metaphysician Undercover

And as I explained, that's the same as saying that a binary star is full of empty space, rather than simply saying that it is two stars orbiting one another. Just because we call two stars orbiting one another a "binary star" and can treat it as one whole, does not suddenly imply that space is a substance that can curve or expand and that it refers to anything more than the unoccupied volume between things.

How do you get from "space refers to the unoccupied volume between things" to "space is a substance that can curve and expand"?

The "space" within tangible objects is outside your proposed definition of "space". If we say that when we are talking about its constituent parts, the "space" within the whole is "space", and when we are talking about the object as a whole, it is not "space", then the same area is treated in one context as "space", and in another context not as space, and this is contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well on the one hand we have the space that we do see, the unoccupied volume between tangible objects, that's where our very notion of space comes from. And on the other hand at some point we come to model tangible objects as having mostly unoccupied volume within them, but that space we do not see. Let's call the first one space1 and the second one space2 if you like.

So what I was doing, is that I used the notion of space1 to explain that when the shape of space1 changes, it's merely that the tangible objects (which define the very shape of space1) are moving, so we don't need to say that space1 is a substance that curves or expands and that is responsible for making the objects move. When we talk of space1 curving or expanding, we're not doing anything more than describing the motions of the tangible objects, there is no need to reify space1 as a substance.

Then usually the notions of space1 and space2 are conflated, that is usually we imagine that the tiny invisible particles that make up a tangible object are real things and not just theoretical entities, so in that context we can apply the same reasoning as in the paragraph above to say that the space between these particles refers merely to the unoccupied volume between them, that it is not a substance that has any causal influence on the motions of these particles.

If you want you can define space in general as the unoccupied volume between things, whether these things are tangible objects or theoretical entities imagined to be real objects.

All it boils down to really is that the space between tangible objects and the space that is imagined to be within tangible objects does not need to be reified as a substance that has any causal influence on the objects. The shape of that space changes because the objects are moving, not the other way around. If we want to say that the objects are moving because space is changing shape, then we would have to show that space is a tangible thing that is dragging or pushing or pulling the objects, but we don't observe that.

One object hitting another is nothing but a transferal of force or energy from on solid body to another. But when we look at what constitutes a solid body, it is tiny parts, with space between them. So we need to account for how the tiny parts of one body interact with the tiny parts of another body, as if the two bodies are each a coherent, massive whole, instead of the tiny parts simply interacting with each other, as independent bodies.

Now, since the space occupied by a massive whole is mainly empty space, with tiny parts precisely positioned to make a whole massive body, all that "empty space" must be modeled as part of the body. This is why the centre of gravity (or, centre of mass) is an important concept in physics, it allows that numerous particles with various spatial relations, can be treated as one cohesive body. However, this way of modelling things necessarily reifies the space within that body, as part of the body. and clouds the issue of how the parts of the body interact with the parts of another body, in the transferal of force.

there is really no way to adequately or accurately model motions and interactions of bodies without representing "space" as a real underlying substance. As described above, there is no way to even account for the existence of a body without representing its internal "space", as part of the body, and therefore substantial. — Metaphysician Undercover

You can also talk of the center of gravity of two distinct bodies such as binary stars, and treat them as one cohesive body, but it's not necessary, you can simply model the motion of each star individually without referring to a center of gravity, which is a tool of thought and not a tangible thing. So I don't agree that talking about the center of gravity of a body implies that space is a tangible substance that can curve or expand, in principle we could also model each part of the body individually and never talk of a center of gravity.

If we define space as the unoccupied volume between tangible objects, then when the shape of that volume changes it's simply that the tangible objects are moving, we don't need to say that the volume is made of an underlying substance that is changing shape and dragging the objects with it.

The species are fucking dying off, that's what it has to do with climate change. Most species evolved to fit a specific environmental niche. When the niche disappears, the species often goes with it. Environmental change like early or late arrival of blossoming dates or migratory bird arrivals can be curtains. in North America and Europe bird and insect populations are falling. This is really, really bad news. — Bitter Crank

Yea, but this isn't due to climate change, this is due to overconsumption, intensive farming, deforestation, heavy use of pesticides.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47441292
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

For some reason people want to believe that CO2 emissions are the source of all those problems, they aren't, reducing CO2 emissions without addressing all the other problems won't save the environment, we are destroying it because we're consuming too much and destroying too much.

The focus shouldn't be on the CO2, it should be on those things. Even if the CO2 is as big a problem as some people make it out to be (let's remind ourselves that plants breathe it), we would emit much less CO2 if we addressed these problems (and absorb more CO2 without the deforestation), while we could develop technology to emit much less CO2 and still not address these problems.

There is a growing concern that there is a political agenda behind presenting CO2 emissions as driving us towards extinction, I don't have a definitive opinion on that but I wouldn't be surprised. And I wouldn't be surprised either if the climate models that are presented as "true" today and on which there is a "scientific consensus" turn out to be seen as flawed a few decades from now.

You can't exactly model it "however you like", as some models work better than others. It is difficult, for example, to understand why interference patterns develop on the screen in the double-slit experiment if you model everything as particles. — petrichor

Well you can, it's just some models are simpler than others. But "simpler" is subjective, and it doesn't mean "closer to truth". The double-slit experiment can be understood in terms of particles, for instance with the pilot wave theory in which particles are guided by a wave. Yes there is a "wave", but a wave can be seen as made of a lot of smaller particles, so that experiment and others can be explained purely in terms of particles. I was working on something like that, I will publish it some day when I get the time to finish it, the upside is that you can explain experiments much more intuitively than the usual interpretations of quantum mechanics, you don't have to talk of a thing going through both slits at the same time or not having a definite location or trajectory and all that quantum weirdness. To me, more intuitive is "simpler", while for some other people neat and elegant mathematical equations are "simpler" even if they imply a completely non-intuitive picture of the universe. In the end what matters is whether the model works.

Is there actually a round Earth out there in the objective world? Going along your lines, all we can say is that this model has a lot of explanatory power, but in the end, it's just a model. It allows us to make successful predictions about what we'll see next when we fly in an airplane or launch a rocket, but this never demonstrates that the Earth is actually round. There could conceivably be a another model that explains all that we observe equally well, one that paints quite a different picture of what's out there. A round earth could be like epicycles. There might even be a simpler but much different model, one that we just haven't thought of yet. — petrichor

Yes precisely, this is actually an example I mention every now and then, it's possible to come up with non-round Earth models that work just as well and allow to fly an airplane or launch a rocket successfully because they make the same observable predictions. For instance these models would predict that the Earth would appear round from space (same observable prediction) but they would treat it as an optical illusion (one doesn't have to assume that light travels in straight lines in space, it's not something that can be proven without making other unprovable assumptions).

Strictly speaking, round earth is just a model, but I think we can all agree that the model works so incredibly well and is so parsimonious and elegant an explanation for what we observe that it is probably how things actually are. — petrichor

I agree that it is the simplest we have, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it implies it is "probably how things actually are". Could be that "how things really are" is something that would appear very complicated to us, or could be that there is no such thing as "how things really are" independently of us.

Your objection is something we ought to keep in mind much more when we are dealing with the barely known, like the very, very small, the very, very large, the deepest fundamentals of nature, and so on. — petrichor

I think we ought to always keep it in mind, for instance I see people getting attacked harshly for believing that the Earth is flat or that the Sun revolves around the Earth, well their beliefs aren't proven false, they can be made compatible with observations, yet these people are treated as heretics by the scientific establishment.

I don't mind that most people use some model, but they ought not to treat it as truth and dismiss other models that can explain the same observations differently. And in the case of the model of space curving and expanding, I actually think that focusing on this model alone while dismissing alternatives has prevented a lot of progress, as it created numerous misconceptions and put physics on a path of ever-increasing complexity privileging mathematical elegance at the cost of intuitiveness. I strongly believe there is a lot to gain by allowing alternative models to flourish, instead of presenting one model as "truth" or as "closest approximation to truth" and having everyone work on it or believe in it.

Physics has become more focused on the realm of theoretical entities than on actual observations. Again look at the example of space curving and expanding, instead of seeing it as a tool of thought people have come to see it as an actual thing that was observed or detected in experiments, and then through that reification they reach conclusions that contradict what the theory actually says. That hinders progress in many ways.

I find that attempting to understand a theory to understand how the universe works is doing it backwards. The theory didn't come out of thin air, it stemmed from observations and experiments, and it makes assumptions that aren't necessarily true. There is more to understand in learning how the theory was developed than in learning the theory itself. Then when you do that you realize that things could have been done differently, different paths could have been explored and weren't, while the succeeding generations only learnt the theory and built on top of it. In my view physics and science in general would be more effective if scientific education was more focused on learning about observations and experiments that were made, and how theories were developed to account for them, rather than on learning the theories and how to apply them. And then physicists would be more open to alternative models and not so dogmatic about the one that they use.

It is self-evident - that is, evident to our reason - that thoughts, desires, observations and such like - require a mind to bear them. — Bartricks

It isn't. One could very well define the mind as precisely the thoughts/desires/observations/... that are experienced, rather than as some separate thing that bears them.

As to the quote "The observer is the observed", it can be read metaphorically rather than literally. Hopefully you do not dissect that way every metaphor you encounter, for instance if I talk of a white blanket of snow covering a field, you don't need to tell me that I talk nonsense because a blanket isn't made of snow and because what's covering the field isn't a blanket.

The way I interpret that quote is that the observer and the observed are not two clearly separate things: the observer is always involved in the act of observation, he doesn't observe what the world is like independent of him, rather what he observes depends on him, how he feels and what he thinks and what he desires has an influence on what he sees, so in a sense what he observes about the world is a reflection of himself, and in that sense the observer is inseparable from what he observes.

If you start from the premise that an observer is a physical body in the world that you observe, you're not gonna understand him. You're an observer, your thoughts/feelings/perceptions are part of the observation, you can see them metaphorically as a window to yourself, or even as defining yourself.

I tend to think space has to be something. And I strongly tend toward a belief that all forms of causality must be local and work by contact action. This, for me, makes the notion of spooky action-at-a-distance problematic. I strongly sympathize with Newton in the quote I gave earlier. — petrichor

You can have contact action without assuming space to be a concrete substance. As an analogy, if I throw a ball at you and it hits you there is no spooky action-at-a-distance, the contact action occurs when the ball hits you. In the case of gravity we can assume there are things traveling between bodies attracting one another, which have an influence when they reach the bodies.

These things traveling are theoretical entities, like space, they aren't things that we actually observe. But we can say that the things we do observe behave as if there are invisible things traveling between them and having a specific influence, or if you want you can model that influence as a propagating perturbation of an underlying space. Both views are theoretical models, and in both there is no action-at-a-distance.

But it is wrong to say that just because we can model what we do observe as perturbations of an underlying space, then that implies that space really is a substance curving or expanding or stretching, it's a theoretical model out of many possible, it's not something we actually observe or detect, and it's not the only way to explain what we do observe.

Fundamentally what is physics? We observe change and we attempt to model that change. Then you can model that change however you like, by invoking invisible particles, or invisible waves, or an invisible space, or an invisible network, ..., no matter what these remain theoretical entities, tools of thought used to model the change we observe.

So I don't disagree that we can come up with a consistent model that invokes an all-pervading changing space. But I'm saying that this space is not something we observe or detect or prove to exist beyond our imagination, and that popular analogies of space expanding and curving lead to false interpretations of what the theory actually says, and lead people to have a flawed idea of what we know and what we don't, of what we observe and what we imagine.

The problem is that if you give him every time he asks, he will start thinking (more or less subconsciously) that whenever he fucks up financially you'll be there to save him, and so he will likely be more careless with the money than if he had worked hard for it. You have to make him understand that it is problematic both for you and for him, that he cannot always rely on you to give him money to get him out of a difficult situation.

That being said, if what he asks for is a small percentage of what you have, and if it wouldn't make a huge difference for you but it would make a huge difference for him, and if you trust that he's not going to gamble that money away and ask you again soon, then if I was in your position I would help him, after making him understand that you have to plan for your future too and you can't keep giving him again and again.

Keep also in mind that investments are risky. What if you don't give him the money and your investments crash and you end up losing more than the amount he was asking for? Either the investment is really safe but then you wouldn't earn much from it so it wouldn't change much to lend him the money if you trust that he'll pay you back, or the investment is risky but then you might very well lose. If you believe that your investments are really safe and that you will earn a lot from them, consider that you might be wrong (for instance if you invested in cryptocurrencies that's really risky).

I think it all really comes down to me not being able to understand what the point of being alive is. I don't want to die, but I can't seem to understand why I am here (on a deeper level than just being born). Because the world would have been here even if I wasn't born. I just think existence is so weird, both for me and everybody else. — raindrop

It seems your concern boils down to the realization that if each person has their own reality then there is no absolute reality you and everyone else are seeing, no absolute standard outside of yourself that is there to tell you what the point of your life is. Because indeed the point of your life doesn't come from some absolute reality out there, it comes from yourself.

Deep down, what is it that you want? Finding the point to your life is not what you want deep down, because it is precisely once you reconnect to what you want deep down that you will have found the point. There is no purpose without a desire that creates the purpose. Life is not inherently pointless, it is pointless in the absence of desire. Those who despair at the meaninglessness of life are really despairing at having lost touch with their profound desires. So what do you want deep down?

For one, the world wouldn't have been the same without you being here, your existence influences the existence of other people, so you aren't insignificant and you aren't worthless. Once you realize that you have the power to influence the life of other people, what do you want to do with that power?

So why are you interested in this subject. You comment on here about my supposed depression.. What draws you to this subject? Is there something specifically about this that appeals to you to make sure that I make sure that I'm wrong?

Anyways, at the least, I think antinatalism brings up the broader idea of why we have children. I think that in itself is a benefit, whether you agree or not, there is something to be said to actually question what we are trying to do as humans, bringing new people into existence. What do we want them to accomplish? What is it that is so necessary to the universe about humans living out their lives?

What can we agree on? Can we agree that life is not a paradise? Can we agree that harm exists on varying levels for individuals? Can we agree that bringing people into the world is often not reflected upon very much as to what they are hoping the progeny gets out of existence? — schopenhauer1

I want you to see that you're wrong not because I want to boost my ego or win an argument, but for your own good, because I care about you. I care about people in general, but on this forum you stand out to me as someone who suffers a lot, so I try to help you. My comments to you aren't meant to attack you or belittle you, they are meant to provoke you to help you open your eyes. Specifically I try to help you see that your bleak vision of the world is not objective, it is a subjective view that stems from your own suffering, which is why I try to draw your attention to the actual reasons why you suffer so much, and away from the imagined reasons (such as that all desire is suffering and supposedly that's why you suffer the way you do).

When I talk of depression I don't mean to say that the root cause of how you feel about the world is a chemical imbalance in your brain and the solution is antidepressants, indeed we can agree that life is not a paradise for everyone, that individuals suffer on different levels, and that if you suffer it's not all your fault. You suffer because of experiences you've had, because of the beliefs you've formed, and while you are not entirely responsible for the experiences you've had, you can still change how you look at them and you can still change your beliefs. I have hope that you can get better, and I care about you, and if you want we can talk in private about your life so that I can help you more effectively.

Regarding the topic of why we have children, I would say for most people it's a drive that they feel, like people who feel thirsty are driven to water. Is there much point in discussing why we drink water, what's so necessary about drinking water? We do it because we feel the need to, the feeling is what moves us, the feeling could be seen as the life force itself. Sure we can temporarily ponder why we follow our feelings instead of just staying still and slowly die, and then at some point your feelings come back and you realize that you simply don't want to die, and you don't need to formulate a reason why you don't want to die, when you experience the feeling you see clearly the reason why, and the essence of the feeling cannot be put into words, we can talk about feelings but we're not conveying what it's like to experience them, their essence.

Depending on how you feel a given sentence can make sense to you or not, depending on how you feel you can see the same series of words as meaningful or meaningless. Feelings are fundamental to existence in a profound way, how you see the world depends on how you feel, and you won't understand why people have children if you abstract out the essence of feelings, the essence of life itself, by focusing solely on words and reason. Some people pretend that they focus only on reason and logic and don't let feelings get in the way when presenting an argument or reaching a conclusion, yet their most fundamental premises stem from how they feel and not from reason or logic.

The fact that we are in a deprived state = suffering. It matters not what people evaluate about this or that actual experience. — schopenhauer1

One does not have to see a desire as a "deprived state", that's your own personal interpretation. One can desire something and not see what is desired as something that is lacked. One can feel content about life and desire new experiences and not feel in a deprived state. Why would your own feeling that that person is in a deprived state trump that person's feeling that they aren't in a deprived state?

You brought up Buddhism that supposedly says that desire is suffering, but that's not what it says, what it actually says is that attachment to desire is suffering. Buddhists decidedly do not agree with you in saying that desire is suffering.

And obviously if you see desire as suffering then it's no wonder life reduces to suffering to you, considering that desire drives our whole lives. But again, in my view you seeing desire as suffering is simply a symptom of your depression, which has causes that you do not want to look at or address. And the cause of your depression is not that "desire is suffering", you seeing life that way is a consequence of your depression.

I am no Einstein expert, and I don't pretend to deeply comprehend his theory, but what you are saying runs contrary to the impression I've gotten. Can you point me to a place where he expressed such thoughts? — petrichor

I gave 3 quotes of his in my previous post, the first one is from his book Ideas and Opinions, the second one from his book The Meaning of Relativity, the third one is from a letter to his friend Maurice Solovine.

For one thing, Einstein's theory is often appreciated for restoring a local picture of gravity, of solving this problem that Newton expressed

But this influence can only be communicated if the trampoline surface (spacetime) is "something", if it has a fabric, if you will. One part in it pulls down on an adjacent part, which pulls down on the next adjacent part, and so on. It is like a chain, with each link pulling the next. If I pull on a chain you are attached to, this is not spooky action at a distance. It is entirely local. Every causal influence involves contact action. — petrichor

You probably know that customarily electromagnetism and other forces aren't represented as a curvature of space or spacetime, they are represented as a propagation of fields or force carriers. There is no necessity to model gravity as a curvature of space, it's simply what Einstein chose to do.

As to why he chose to do that, at the beginning of the 20th century Minkowski came up with the concept of spacetime to formulate special relativity in a mathematically elegant way, then when Einstein came up with the equivalence principle (which he called the happiest thought of his life) he came to realize that he could fit it into Minkowski's construction by making that spacetime curve. I think it's fair to say that if no one had come up with the concept of spacetime back then then Einstein would have formulated general relativity without a curving spacetime. The useful predictions of general relativity fundamentally do not necessitate a curving spacetime, rather they follow from special relativity's postulates and from the equivalence principle.

Also, notice that we recently measured gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime. Can we make sense of this if space is as Terrapin Station describes? — petrichor

"Ripples in spacetime" is how the media describe it, it's how many physicists describe it too, but if you look at the experimental set-up they measured no such thing. Basically they send light traveling on two different paths of equal length, and they measure precisely the difference between the times of arrival, which are supposed to be the same. Tiny vibrations such as from cars traveling on a nearby road cause a detectable difference, so they attempt to filter out all such vibrations.

Then when they do detect an oscillating signal, they don't detect "ripples in spacetime", what they detect is an oscillating difference between the times of arrival of light following two different paths of equal length. And there is no need to invoke curved spacetime or ripples in spacetime to explain that.

Fundamentally a gravitational wave is not a "ripple in spacetime", it is a gravitational influence of oscillating intensity that propagates. So for instance if a gravitational wave passes through your room, what that means is that the gravity in your room changes in an oscillating manner. And since gravity has an influence on the propagation of light (as evidenced by phenomena such as gravitational lensing and the Shapiro time delay), this is what they assume their experiment detected: gravity changing in an oscillating manner, in other words a gravitational wave.

As further evidence that gravitational waves are not "ripples in spacetime", any theory in which gravity propagates at a finite velocity implies the existence of gravitational waves, and pretty much any such theory in which gravity has an influence on the propagation of light can explain the results of the LIGO experiment. Curving spacetime is not a necessity to explain what we do observe.

Speaking of degrees of freedom of space, what about standard big bang theory? Scientists speak of the space itself between galaxies expanding, even accelerating in its expansion. It apparently isn't simply a matter of them having been close together and then moving apart. The analogy often given is of drawing dots on balloon and then blowing it up. This is why galaxies far apart can be "moving" away from one another faster than the speed of light, and thus falling behind the cosmic event horizon. The objects can't move faster than light. But space can expand fast enough to make distances between objects grow at such a rate that light cannot cross it fast enough to bridge the gap. How would you understand any of this without thinking of space as "something" which changes its form? — petrichor

Yes many talk of space expanding between galaxies, and that's again the fallacy of reification. If two projectiles move away from one another, that doesn't imply they move away from each other because there is some substance between them that is expanding. The balloon analogy is misleading. This is a good paper that explains the issues with thinking there is a concrete thing expanding between galaxies : https://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.0380.pdf

"Galaxies move apart because they did in the past.
The expansion of space does not cause the distance between galaxies to increase, rather this increase in distance causes space to expand, or more plainly that this increase in distance is described by the framework of expanding space."

For instance consider the following thought experiment: let's say we hold a galaxy at a constant distance from ours, and then we release it, what happens? If space was really expanding between galaxies, then that galaxy would start moving away from us, but that's not what the theory predicts: rather the galaxy starts moving towards us because of gravity.

And that's a perfect example of the problem with bad analogies: people (physicists included) come up with an analogy to explain a theory, yet that analogy makes predictions that contradict the predictions of the theory. Seeing space as something concrete that is expanding between galaxies is a bad analogy.

The idea that "space can expand faster than light" is misleading too, this is also addressed in the paper. Of course if we extrapolate Hubble's law to arbitrarily large distances then at some point we have galaxies receding faster than light, but us making that extrapolation doesn't imply that this is what actually happens, we don't observe galaxies receding faster than light in any way, if you run faster and faster I can extrapolate that at some point you'll be running the 100 metres under one second, but me making that extrapolation doesn't imply you'll ever run it under one second.

There again "space expanding faster than light" is a bad analogy that contradicts the theory, what the theory actually predicts is that if you send light towards a galaxy that is supposedly receding faster than light, the light eventually reaches it.


Personally this is why I think it would be better to do away with the concepts of curving spacetime and expanding space, because they lead to bad analogies, which are spread by popular physicists and by the media, and then people come to believe things that contradict what the theory actually says.

Where is your explanation for the reason the "trajectory of light" bends? You accuse me of reification and yet you are treating a "trajectory" like it is a thing. It is not. — staticphoton

When I say the trajectory bends it's a figure of speech, it's the same as saying that light doesn't travel in straight lines. Whereas you're saying lights travel in straight lines in curved space or spacetime.

And the reason Newton predicted light bending is because he believed light to be strictly a particle. — staticphoton

Whatever light is, when it passes by a massive body it doesn't travel in straight lines and its two-way velocity is not constant. You can say that it really travels in straight lines at a constant velocity but it doesn't appear to because it travels through some 4-dimensional medium that is curved in an undetectable way, or you can simply say that it doesn't travel in straight lines at a constant velocity in the presence of massive bodies.

If you see the 4-dimensional medium as a mathematical tool then that's okay. But if you pretend it's a real thing out there that really curves, that's wrong. There is zero evidence of that, any observation can be explained without invoking a curved space. And it's misleading to say that it explains gravity, it's misleading to say that planets move around the Sun because they follow straight lines in curved spacetime.

The theory of general relativity offers a wonderful explanation of how matter and energy move around other matter, it is not "the truth", but a well crafted model that works extremely well within its limits. — staticphoton

Why do planets move around stars and things fall to the ground? We don't know, they just do, and we describe that through mathematical equations under the moniker of gravity. We can describe their trajectories in Euclidean space, or in other geometrical spaces.

Einstein wanted mathematical elegance, he wanted to generalize Newton's first law of motion by including gravity (in other words he wanted things to have a uniform motion in straight lines even in the presence of gravity), in order to do that he had to invoke a 4-dimensional geometrical space that curves.

Einstein's model does not explain any more why planets move around stars and objects fall to the ground. They don't move that way because they follow straight lines in curved spacetime, rather they move the way they do and one way to represent that is to imagine they're following straight lines in a curved spacetime, that's a representation that's not a cause. Another more intuitive way is not to invoke any space curving or bending.

The effects of time-space shrinking as you approach a massive object are well demonstrated. Time dilation is real. — staticphoton

Clocks run at different rates in different places sure, that's not in any way evidence that they run at different rates because they are embedded in a 4-dimensional manifold that curves.

May I ask how familiar are you with General Relativity? Are you mathematically trained to understand Einstein's application of differential calculus, tensors, and geodesics to develop the concept of space-time curvature? Because if not then you are just repeating somebody else's interpretation. — staticphoton

Sure, I have also read Einstein's historical papers on special and general relativity, have you? I'm not repeating somebody else's interpretation, you know very well what the popular interpretation is, that's the one you're repeating, but sadly it's wrong. It took me years to grow out of it myself, it's not easy when everyone keeps repeating it, everywhere, in books, textbooks, news articles, ...

And I'm sure you understand Einstein really well, maybe as not to derail this thread you can start your own thread to school me about the real Einstein. — staticphoton

No need for a thread, I'll just leave a few quotes from the man himself:

We have attempted to describe how the concepts space, time and event can be put psychologically into relation with experiences. Considered logically, they are free creations of the human intelligence, tools of thought, which are to serve the purpose of bringing experiences into relation with each other.

The only justification for our concepts and system of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.

You imagine that I look back on my life’s work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.

And somehow people have come to believe that Einstein has proved that gravity is curved spacetime, that planets really follow straight lines in curved spacetime, that we live within a 4-dimensional spacetime that is really curving and expanding. Einstein knew very well spacetime is a human creation, a tool of tought, that curved spacetime doesn't explain gravity, it's just one complicated but mathematically elegant way to describe it.

As to why I care, I care about understanding, not blindly believing what I'm told.

Anyway I'll leave it at that, if you aren't convinced there isn't much more I could say to convince you, and most people just want to stick to the popular story even if it is incorrect.

Leo as in lion.
But you're not around producing animosity or prideful roaring. — Shamshir

That's what I guessed, but I wasn't sure because a lion doesn't necessarily have animosity. Leo is simply my first name.

As to why I'm rarely seen, that would be because I participate much less, and I suppose since I don't have an avatar I don't stand out.

That's quite ironic, considering you're called 'leo' and rarely seen. — Shamshir

I don't see what you mean.

Why does anyone need to go through the "growth-through-adversity" game in the first place? Seems to be that people think they have some sort of right to impose this on others, as if the universe cares that more humans play this game. "Ah yes" they might say "we need to create people to be challenged so they can be strengthened through it, and hopefully find the joy in it". — schopenhauer1

You're the one reducing life to a "growth-through-adversity" game, I understand that's how you see life, but understand that that's not how many people see life.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6434/the-mild-torture-of-do-something-about-it-assumptions/p1 — schopenhauer1

You want to live, right? And you want to enjoy your life but you don't enjoy it much, right? So indeed, why don't you do something about it, instead of spending so much time complaining that you have to do something about it? If you don't want to do something about it then why do you keep living? I suppose you don't want to do something about that either? You just want to stay in limbo complaining about life?

What is your dream world? One where the whole of humanity shakes your hand and say "yes schopenhauer1 we agree, we all agree with you, let's all stop having children and let's watch humanity go extinct"? Will that make you content?

Personally I participate much less mostly because of the animosity that is quite prevalent, when we say things that others don't agree with we get quickly attacked, instead of having a respectful discussion. There is a lot of talking going on but very little listening. I also find that my thoughts often get misinterpreted, that wouldn't be a problem if the responses were peaceful, but when they're not it's not a nice experience to have to justify oneself again and again against the hostility.

I have the feeling that if we were all moved mainly by the desire to understand then there wouldn't be this animosity, but instead it feels like many simply want to boost their ego and put others down.

So that thing that creates the separation between objects is only a mathematical tool. — staticphoton

I was talking about spacetime, the 4-dimensional manifold of general relativity.

Regarding space itself, it doesn't create the separation between objects, you could say that it is the volume between objects. Now when you say that this volume bends or curves, all you're saying is that the relative positions of the objects have changed, there is no need to reify the volume as an actual substance or entity that has bent or curved and that is responsible for the motion of the objects.

Otherwise you might as well say that a rock falls to the ground because the space between the rock and the ground shrinks. See the fallacy?

And whatever it is that magically bends the light is more detectable than the curvature of "non existent" spacetime. — staticphoton

Not "bends the light", "bends the trajectory of light". When you launch a ball horizontally its trajectory gets bent right? Same idea. Even in Newton's theory of gravitation it is predicted that light gets deflected by gravity, its prediction is simply less accurate.

Yeah Einstein was an idiot — staticphoton

Einstein agreed that spacetime is a tool of thought, not an actual thing, it's people like you who don't understand him.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. I must have misunderstood people talking about space curving. — elucid

Spacetime isn't an actual observable thing either, it's a mathematical tool, to say spacetime curves is not to say there is something actually curving out there, well those who do say that commit the fallacy of reification. Gravity can also be modeled precisely without invoking a curved 4-dimensional mathematical manifold. For instance the phenomenon of gravitational lensing can be explained by saying that it is the trajectory of light that bends, rather than some undetectable space or spacetime.

Thank you everyone for your responses. I would only like to know how Newton knew his laws are true. What were the experiments he performed? — Fernando Rios

Newton's laws of motion aren't true, they can't be proven logically or experimentally, they are a framework, useful to some extent.

Newton's 2nd law is a definition of the concept of Force. Newton defines Force as the product of mass and acceleration: if some object of mass m accelerates at the rate a, it is said by definition that there is a force F = m*a acting on it. It would be more accurate and less confusing to call it a definition rather than a 'law'.

From this definition it follows that if an object doesn't accelerate, that is if it is at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line, then there is no force acting on it: this is Newton's 1st 'law', merely a consequence of the above definition. Newton stated it first because he took it from Descartes:

Descartes’ first two laws of nature: the first states “that each thing, as far as is in its power, always remains in the same state; and that consequently, when it is once moved, it always continues to move”, while the second holds that “all movement is, of itself, along straight lines” (these two would later be incorporated into Newton’s first law of motion)

These two Descartes 'laws' were also a framework, not statements which could be proven logically or experimentally. It's not hard to imagine why he formulated these laws. Most things do not move along straight lines and do not always continue to move, but for instance when we let a solid ball roll on a flat surface it seems to keep moving in a straight line unless its course is stopped or changed by an obstacle or by the wind or by some other thing, so there is the desire to see uniform motion in a straight line as the state of natural motion, the simplicity and beauty of it is attractive. Descartes believed that the universe was created and preserved by God, so he looked at the universe through that lens.

It would be equally valid to come up with ugly 'laws' of nature instead, saying that the natural motion of things is chaotic, that things do not remain in the same state, and then only in rare circumstances do these chaotic motions combine to create a temporary uniform motion in a straight line. That's a different framework, a different way to look at the world, equally valid. But Descartes wanted to see simplicity and beauty as the basis of the universe, as signs of God's perfection, rather than chaos. Same goes with Newton.


Once Newton's 1st and second laws are taken as a basis, then by definition when an object stops moving uniformly in a straight line there is a force acting on it, of magnitude m*a. We can't know what force is acting on an object without measuring its acceleration, because Force is not defined independently from F = m*a, and that's precisely why F = m*a is the definition of Force in Newton's framework. When students are told to calculate the acceleration of an object knowing the force that is acting on it, this is stupid because in practice in order to calculate the magnitude of the force acting on it we had to measure its acceleration in the first place.

So what's the point of these two laws? Well we could do away with them, but here's an example to show how they can be a practical tool. Let's say you carry out a specific experiment on some object (let's call it object 1), and each time you repeat the experiment you measure that the object always accelerates at the same rate. Then you take some other object (object 2) and carry out the experiment on it, and you measure that it accelerates at half the rate of the other object, every time. Then you take a third object (object 3) and you measure that it accelerates 3 times faster than the first object, and 6 times faster than the second one.

One useful way to look at this is to say that there is a constant force applied on these objects, and that the different acceleration is due to the objects having a different resistance to acceleration. For instance you can say that object 2 resists acceleration twice more than object 1, and 6 times more than object 3. This resistance to acceleration is what is called 'mass'. If you define object 1 as the reference (mass m1 = 1), then you define object 2 as having mass m2 = 2, and object 3 as having mass m3 = 1/3.

And that's where F = m*a becomes useful, because as it turns out in many experiments these objects will have the same relative acceleration. For instance if you carry out another experiment with object 1 and measure its acceleration, you can predict how fast the other two objects will accelerate before carrying out the experiment with them, you can predict that object 2 will accelerate twice less and object 3 three times more. It doesn't work for all experiments, but it works often enough that Newton's framework is useful. Although in my view it would be less confusing to do away with Newton's laws completely, because you don't need the concept of force nor even of mass to make the same predictions.


Newton's 3rd 'law' can be seen as a definition of Mass. Mass is a relational quantity, to say that an object has mass m2 = 2kg is the same as saying that in many experiments it accelerates twice less than a reference object that is defined to have a mass m1 = 1kg. So the ratio of their masses is by definition the inverse ratio of their accelerations: m2/m1 = a1/a2, or m1*a1 = m2*a2. In experiments where they interact with one another (through an elastic collision for instance), they accelerate in opposite directions, so a1 and a2 have opposite signs, so m1*a1 = -m2*a2, which is Newton's 3rd 'law'.


Newton's laws are basically definitions of the concepts of force and mass. Mass is defined as relative resistance to acceleration, force is defined as mass times acceleration, and in that framework when objects don't move uniformly in straight lines we say a force is acting on them. The reason this framework works to some extent, is that in many different situations different objects have the same relative acceleration. Which leads to the concept of mass, which leads to the concept of force.

Examples of experiments that have led to this framework are observations of collisions, experiments with pendulums, with springs, observations of celestial bodies, more generally observations of motion, ...

Regarding the claim that it is default wrong to do something to someone without their consent, I don't see it as wrong to push someone so that they don't get hit by a truck, or to surprise someone for their birthday, or to leave food and clothes next to a homeless person who is sleeping.

If instead it is claimed that it is wrong to do something to someone against their will, a non-existent being doesn't have a will. By the time the being has a will, they can decide on their own whether to keep living or die.

Doesn't everyone deep down want to live? I believe people kill themselves when they don't see another way out of their suffering, when they don't see how to stop their suffering while staying alive, and their will to stop that suffering becomes greater than their will to stay alive.

So if everyone deep down wants to live, then the issue doesn't lie in life itself, it doesn't lie in the act of procreation, the issue is suffering itself, not life. And then the solution is to find the reasons why people suffer and to help them ease or stop their suffering, rather than convincing people to stop having children so that humanity goes extinct. If life is most often worth living even with the suffering, then stopping life to stop the suffering is quite the overkill.

I said it before but I'll say it again, in my view antinatalists are people who suffer a lot, and subscribing to antinatalism and attempting to spread it is one way for them to cope with their suffering. Instead of focusing on the precise reasons why they personally suffer, instead of attempting to address them or asking for help, they avoid the problem by saying that the problem wouldn't be there in the first place if they hadn't been born, in other words in their view if they suffer it has nothing to do with them but everything to do with the world, the world is responsible, other people are responsible, not themselves, they don't want to feel responsible for how they are. They want to live, but they don't want to solve their own problems, so they stay there in limbo, whining that they wouldn't have problems if they hadn't been born, instead of looking at the root causes of their suffering, instead of asking for help.

You have 3 starving people And 2 solutions. Which do you employ

A: feed them
B: materialize 100 satiated and happy people so that you create more pleasure/happiness than in A

I’m pretty sure you’d say A is the better option right? Because B doesn’t actually help anyone. Doesn’t that show that creating happy people has no value in and of itself. Or at least negligible value. — khaled

I can both help starving people and have children. I won't have 100 children and I won't decide for others whether they should have children, it's a personal decision based in part on whether the parents believe they can take care of them and make them happy.

If I see starving people around me I would think about helping them before having children, because I wouldn't want my children to grow up in a society that lets people starve.

Now hypothetically, if I believed I could have happy children on some distant planet far from the problems of this society, I would probably go there and let this society deal with its problems. In some way I would see taking care of my children as taking care of a part of me, and I have spent too much time already taking care of others without taking care of myself, and I exist too, not only others exist.

That implies that not keeping a child happy is bad, not that keeping the child happy is good. — khaled

When the parents can take care of the child, I see not keeping the child happy as bad, but I still see keeping the child happy as good.

Does that justify rape, theft, murder, etc? — khaled

It doesn't, I wasn't saying it's OK to make someone have a bad experience just so you can have a good experience (which is usually the case in rape, theft, murder), but that if a human being has both good and bad experiences, then the existence of bad experiences doesn't imply it would have been better for the human being to not exist in the first place.

Through having a child we create the conditions for both positive and negative experiences in the child, through rape/theft/murder we usually create only negative experiences in our victim. If we take care well of our child we can also usually make it so that the child will have mostly positive experiences.

Do you happen to see the rapist’s desire a good reason for rape? I don’t think so. — khaled

Indeed I don't, but then again I don't equate having a child with raping someone. And it's not that what the parents are doing "isn't that bad", I don't see having a child as bad in itself.

Your child might not. So why are you taking the risk for them? For “the world”? Would you be fine if a religious zealot raided your home for “God”? If you’re not fine with that, why risk putting a child in a position where similar to you they’re told that their suffering is for “the world”? Do you think they’ll be fine with that? — khaled

Again, I don't equate having a child with raiding someone's home. If they agree that their existence serves a greater purpose then they would be less negatively affected by the suffering they encounter. If they don't see it that way, we can still make them happy as much as we can, I wouldn't force spiritual beliefs onto them no matter what.

Does that make it ok to genetically engineer babies to suffer on purpose? They can’t say no can they? — khaled

No, but again, I don't equate having a child with genetically engineering a baby so it suffers on purpose.

Also the point is that they WILL become an existing being with opinions and their opinions of the world may be highly negative. So simply don’t take the risk for them when you can avoid it. — khaled

Indeed they will become an existing being with opinions, and by then they can decide for themselves if their life is worth living or not, if they want to keep living or not, and then they might tell you "thank you for having me dad/mom, if you had been antinatalists I wouldn't have had these experiences that make life beautiful and worth living".

I'm coming back to this because your arrogance is insufferable.

neither you nor anyone actually believes creating happy people is good in and of itself — khaled

I do.

And risking harming other people without their consent for no good reason IS A LOSS. — khaled

I disagree, because inherently a bad experience isn't worth avoiding more than a good experience is worth having.

I don't see anything that appeals to the parent's desire to have children as a good reason — khaled

I do.

And I don't see anything appealing to greater entities such as "the world" or "God" or "the natural order" as a good reason — khaled

I do.

I guess we just don't care about the kid's opinion then — khaled

A non-existing being doesn't have an opinion.

1. The ability to make choices is a necessary condition for the evaluation of evidence.
2. Evaluating evidence is a necessary condition for science.
3. Without free will there is no ability to make choices.
4. Without the ability to make choices, evaluation of evidence is impossible.
5. If evaluation of evidence is impossible, science is impossible.
6. There is no free will.
7. Therefore, science is impossible. — RogueAI

I generally agree with this, most of the objections you've got stem from an interpretation of the word 'choice' different from yours (you're obviously referring to free choices here, which a deterministic machine isn't able to make).

However as someone mentioned, if people's actions were predetermined then it was also predetermined that what we call science would evolve the way it does, so science "moving forward" does not imply free will, however in order to believe in the absence of free will we have to leave plenty of coincidences unexplained.

The view of today's physicists is probably summed up by Feynman 'Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.'. An example would be what is energy. Philosophers probably argued that one for yonks really getting nowhere. But along came Noether and all was clear, but in a way no philosopher would ever have thought of - its merely a consequence of symmetry in time. — Bill Hobba

Well, it doesn't take a genius to realize that if relative acceleration is a function of distance that doesn't depend on time: dv/dt = f(r), then vdv = f(r)dr, then v²/2-F(r) is a constant that doesn't depend on time.

Which can be generalized to say that if we assume things follow laws that don't depend on time, then there is a quantity that is conserved through time. We call that quantity energy, in reference to the historical concept according to which mechanical motion could be converted into other kinds of motions (such as heat).

It's quite funny that you would quote Feynman on how philosophers are naive and wrong, say that philosophers went nowhere on the question of what energy is, then say that after Noether everything became clear among physicists, when there is this other quote from Feynman that you haven't mentioned (over 40 years after Noether):

"It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is."

its merely a consequence of symmetry in time. — Bill Hobba

It is an example of poor philosophy to say that "energy is a consequence of symmetry in time" is an answer to the question "what is energy". Just like saying "a sunburn is a consequence of overexposure to UV radiation" is not an answer to the question "what is a sunburn", an answer would rather be something like "sunburn is an inflammatory response in the skin triggered by direct DNA damage by UV radiation".

Another example of poor philosophy is to say that energy is a consequence of symmetry in time. Rather, the existence of a conserved quantity through time (which we call energy) is a consequence of the assumption that physical laws do not change through time. Nothing forces us to geometrize time and talk of symmetry in time, that's just one way to look at it, if you want you can say that in a particular mathematical model energy is seen as a consequence of symmetry in time, but in saying that one risks committing the fallacy of reification, treating time as a physical thing rather than a concept.

As a matter of fact we now know much of physics is about symmetry - but most philosophers don't know it, and of those that do they probably argue about it like what was done about energy. — Bill Hobba

That's one particular way to interpret the phenomena, simply because physicists of the 20th century have focused on formulating theories in terms of symmetry and symmetry breaking doesn't imply that physics has to be "about symmetry". Just like we can assume physical laws do not change through time without talking of symmetry in time, and we can formulate physical laws without invoking symmetry as a fundamental concept. I recall some well-known physicists mentioning that focusing on symmetry might turn out to be a dead-end, I can't find the quotes now, but symmetry-based reasoning hasn't been much fruitful these past decades, and it isn't clear that alternatives wouldn't be more fruitful.

The laws are replaced by a critical assumption - The Principle Of Least Action. — Bill Hobba

Physics would be clearer if we did away with this principle. Yea it's mathematically elegant, and increasingly physicists have given up intuitiveness in favor of mathematical elegance, and now we have a physics whose motto is "shut up and calculate" because it cannot be understood, and somehow we're supposed to see that as an achievement. The achievement would be to have a similar predictive power without all that nonintuitive complexity that stems from layers and layers of mathematically elegant principles.

To say that things move the way they do because they move in such a way that they minimize a mathematical function is adding an unnecessary layer of complexity, as opposed to focusing on how things move and describing that.

But then again Newton's laws were unnecessary layers of complexity too, seeing how for instance Newton's second law is a mathematical definition of the concept of force. One could instead focus on how things accelerate one another and do away with the intermediary concept of force.

On the other hand, now is probably a good time for me to stop. I'll give you the last word if you'd like it. — T Clark

I don't see it that way.

I know, I just think it makes you look more and more dogmatic as you keep going, but I guess you don't see it that way?

I know, all you see is "dark matter exists, so everything you say against that is wrong, ergo you're wrong, ergo you don't know what you are talking about".

Of course you don't. Meanwhile, you kept claiming that dark matter has been detected, even EricH disagrees with that. But I suppose you don't want to argue with him about that because he's wrong too and you're right.

I find this state of mind is quite fitting to the subject of this thread. Scientific circles have a bias against philosophy because they're dogmatic. And you don't realize that you are dogmatic about the existence of dark matter. It's not something you're even willing to begin to question, you're blind to everything I say about it, including to what some professional scientists say about it, like the one I quoted above. Maybe you can send him an email and discuss it with him, he may attempt to explain to you why dark matter hasn't been detected, but I suppose you'll tell him he's wrong because you're right.

It's common to be dismissed on scientific forums when we question dogmas of the prevalent paradigm, but I find it sad (or ironical) to be dismissed in the same way on a philosophy forum, on a thread that is precisely about the bias of scientists and science followers against philosophy.

I find it sad that you don't realize I speak on this subject knowledgeably, and that you don't realize your impression that I do not know what I am talking about stems from your own lack of understanding on this subject.

How much work has been done on a model is irrelevant. If person A spends 10 years working on a hypothesis and person B spends 10 minutes, the only thing that matters is which hypothesis better fits the data. — EricH

Of course, but if person A spends 10 years working on hypothesis H1 and person B spends 10 minutes working on hypothesis H2, and H1 better fits the data than H2, it would be wrong to say that the only hypothesis worth developing is H1 because it better fits the data.

Well dang it man! If it's easy, then why are you posting here? Go come up with that better model. Fame & fortune will be your reward! :smile: — EricH

You know why it's easy? Because every time an observation doesn't fit the model, you can add a degree of freedom in the model to make it fit the observation.

Observations do not match the model? OK let's say there is invisible matter with simple properties that is responsible for the discrepancy, now the model fits the observations. New observations do not match predictions of the model? OK let's say the invisible matter has more complex properties that depend on several variables, and we can make the model fit the observations. Some new observations do not match predictions of that model? OK let's give even more degrees of freedom to the properties of that invisible matter, and the model fits all observations again. And so on and so forth, now our dark matter model fits all the data! We can also do that by having a gravitational model with a bunch of degrees of freedom but without dark matter.

And you know why the models that have a bunch of degrees of freedom and that successfully match all the data are not better models? Because the point of scientific models is the ability to predict. If every time an observation doesn't match the model you add a degree of freedom to make it fit the model, you have a complex model that fits all past observations but that isn't good to predict future observations.

It's like the epicycles of the Ptolemaic model, you can add more and more epicycles to make the model fit observations as precisely as you want. Does it mean it's a better model than one that can explain most planetary motions with a single equation that depends on two parameters? You can make successful new predictions with the latter model, not so much with the former.

But kidding aside, it sounds to me that your gripe is that the dark matter hypothesis has been over-hyped, and that more work/attention should be paid to the alternative models. — EricH

Indeed, the dark matter hypothesis is like a religion in some scientific circles, they don't treat it as a hypothesis they treat it as fact, I have personally interacted with some of these people (professional scientists), they don't see it as a hypothesis, they clearly say that dark matter exists. Every time there is an observation that is problematic they assume it will be solved, the problems pile up and at no point they even begin to think that, maybe, the dark matter idea is not the right path and, maybe, it could be worth it to seriously research other alternatives. And the problem with that of course is that we have a monolithic science that is stuck while it could be a much more fruitful enterprise if it was more open to alternative ideas.

Thankfully there are a few astrophysicists who are clearly aware of this state of affairs, here is an eye-opening interview with one of them https://medium.com/@aramis720/the-system-of-the-world-a-dialogue-with-prof-stacy-mcgaugh-fa1b3945f194

Some excerpts:

When I first became skeptical, I started asking my colleagues what would shake their faith; i.e., what would falsify [L]CDM? I almost never got a straight answer. One of the few I did get was from Simon White, who said the cusps had to be there. They’re not. Did this lead the field to abandon the paradigm? No, it just led to the invocation of complicated mechanisms that “fix” things. These are band aids that patch a superficial symptom without addressing the underlying malady.

The hard-core cosmologists are more convinced than ever that LCDM has to be right. It has obtained the status of a religion.

Once dark matter is confirmed in one’s mind as having been established to exist, it is incredibly hard to dislodge it. Should it turn out to be wrong, how do we tell? The concept of dark matter is not falsifiable. It cannot ever be excluded as a logical possibility. So once it is established as the preferred choice, how do we get out of that?

It is hard to question one’s own belief in dark matter. It was the hardest thing I ever did to wrap my head around the possibility that maybe I was wrong to believe that there had to be dark matter. I don’t see many of my colleagues engaging with this problem in a serious way.

Food, shelter, comfort, all of these things can be found in nature. We distribute these according to money. In nature, all of these are also unevenly distributed. Your problem with money is just the same problem we would have without money. — TogetherTurtle

I disagree that the problem I'm talking about would exist without money and bartering. The problem is not the uneven distribution in itself, it is that those who have the most resources actively act against those who have little resources, to prevent them from having more, in essence those who have little resources are enslaved to those who have more, they do not have the freedom to acquire them by themselves. In order to gain their freedom, they have to work much harder than they would otherwise, or they have to be lucky, or they have to be criminals, and even then they're still all enslaved to money.

In nature, what's working against you is the predators, but you don't have an army of predators enslaving you, you can fight them and win, or you can avoid them much more easily than you can avoid the whole of law enforcement and the military.

My point was that they literally believe that the greater good is serving themselves.

I think world leaders believe that people are foolish without their guidance, and so they attempt to stay in power. — TogetherTurtle

By definition if you only care about yourself you don't care about the benefit of others, you don't care about the greater good. I'm not talking about leaders who believe people are foolish without their guidance, I'm talking about people who actually don't care about hurting others for their own personal gain. You seem to believe such people don't exist, I disagree.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and I assure you those cave paintings weren't painted in a day either. That was likely the product of multiple lifetimes of free time. — TogetherTurtle

There is evidence that they did have a lot of free time. See the book Stone Age Economics for instance. There are some who say that agriculture was invented to fill the needs of a rising population which was itself the result of a lot of free time. It's surely not obvious at all that back then they had little free time, contrary to popular belief.

And why would people believe in you, when it is only in our nature to believe things that benefit us? Nobody ever gets the benefit of the doubt for this reason. — TogetherTurtle

The people who get their research funded are believed by whoever funds their research.

Imagine living in the city your whole life, and then being forced into the wilderness. How stressful would it be to not know which berries will kill you? How stressful would it be to encounter even a small animal without a means to protect yourself? How stressful would it for your shelter to collapse because you didn't know how to build a sturdy one?

People operate best when they are in familiar surroundings. People fear difference. That is the source of their fear. — TogetherTurtle

I've lived in the city most of my life and it's the city that stresses me out, not nature. I feel at home in nature, I enjoy trying to survive on my own. Many city people find the city stressful and feel the need to be connected to nature. You're basically saying that we adapt well to whatever environment we grow up in and find difference always stressful, I disagree.

Then you didn't address my other point, that they had to work much less to get food in nature than to get money to get food in the city. If your employer forces you to work 9 hours a day to give you your paycheck, you can't compress that time even if you become great at your job, whereas if you learn to hunt you can get food much more quickly.

Furthermore, I would add that these Amazonians did have a sort of civilization. Surely they organized their labor, some going to hunt while others cooked, no? That organization is the basis of civilization. — TogetherTurtle

Civilization is usually defined as "the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced". Even if in their group some went to hunt and others cooked, that doesn't mean they were forced to work 9 hours a day to get food or cook it.

If you really believe you can live on your own somewhere, I think you should try it. There is unused land out there that no one checks on. In fact, I think in Alaska the government still just gives it out. — TogetherTurtle

I'm not a US resident, and in my country as far as I know there is no land the government gives freely. Many people successfully live on their own in the wild. Obviously it's easier to live in the wild when education is focused on living in the wild rather than on living in the city. But if you're a bed potato I can understand why you would find that to be unimaginable.

If you make it out there and make any scientific progress, I would like to know. Well, if you can connect to the internet. — TogetherTurtle

It would be possible to have some sort of internet in a world without money. People would simply build and take care of the infrastructures that they find useful. And research could be carried out in the plenty of free time that people would have.

numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain the discrepancy, and that most of these involve changes/enhancements to the existing theories of gravitation. However, every alternative hypothesis - at least up to now - has made predictions which are not matched by the data.

Currently, dark matter is the hypothesis which best matches the data, but it is still only a hypothesis - it is not established theory. If you could present an alternative explanation that successfully matches all the data and does not involve hypothetical invisible particles — EricH

You agree that dark matter hasn't been detected, contrary to what some people on this forum say (that dark matter has been detected), and contrary to what many physicists/cosmologists say (that dark matter exists, that it's real, that it's a fact, ...)

The dark matter hypothesis doesn't successfully match all the data, there are plenty of problems with it, see here for instance https://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.3960.pdf (pages 12-34)

And it's arguable whether dark matter is the hypothesis that inherently best matches the data, after all a lot more efforts have been spent in researching and developing the dark matter hypothesis and attempting to make it fit with observations, than in developing alternative models, it's not an indication that alternative models wouldn't have been more successful if they had been worked on as thoroughly.

Also there is a lot of fine-tuning in the dark matter model, the dark matter distribution within a galaxy is inferred from observations of that galaxy, there are lots of degrees of freedom to make the model fit with observations, whereas there are no degrees of freedom in some alternative models which work well in many situations. The more degrees of freedom there are in the theory, the easier it is to make it fit with observations.

How much work has been done on a model, and how easy it is to fit the model with observations through fine-tuning, are two variables that have to be taken into account when we compare different models. For instance it's easy to come up with a model that successfully matches all the data while having a bunch of degrees of freedom.

I don't remember saying your argument was flawed. — T Clark

See:

I made my best effort to point out the flaws in your argument last time we talked. I failed and gave up. I don't see any reason to try again. — T Clark

Unless you want to argue that saying there are flaws in my argument is not saying that my argument is flawed.

Yes, you are correct. Still arrogant. Still laughable. — T Clark

Is it arrogant to say an argument is flawed when we notice a flawed argument? You said my argument is flawed, so by that token you're arrogant too.

As I've said numerous times now, I'm not interested in going any further with this discussion. I see it as futile. — T Clark

Okay, I just wish you realized that there is something you don't understand about how dark matter was inferred. I have studied the subject for years, I presume you haven't, but maybe you'll say it's arrogant to say that too.

Galactic rotation curves that are observed do not match the ones predicted by theory. Either it's because there is invisible matter, or because the theory is flawed. The discrepancy between observation and theory is not a detection of invisible matter, because we don't know that the theory is not flawed. I can't make it simpler than that.

Saying that my arguments are flawed because they failed to convince you is ....arrogant certainly. I'll go further - laughable. — T Clark

I said that they failed to convince me because they are flawed, not the other way around.

I made my best effort to point out the flaws in your argument last time we talked. I failed and gave up. I don't see any reason to try again. — T Clark

And I addressed every one of them. Here is my argument again, where is the flaw?

Seeing that observations do not match Einstein's general relativity is not detecting dark matter, it is assuming that the difference between observation and theory is due to invisible stuff rather than due to the theory being flawed. "But the theory is so well-tested!", yea plenty of well-tested theories were found to be flawed and replaced by other ones. Dozens of experiments have failed to detect dark matter, they're doing these experiments because they are looking for independent evidence for dark matter, because they have a tiny bit of integrity left, otherwise every time a theory doesn't work we could just invoke invisible stuff to make it work again, no need for Einstein if we invoke invisible stuff Newton's gravitation works just fine! — leo