Well, it seems like you took objection to something I said, not vise versa. So if you cannot provide an argument to support your objection, then please be still. But I really wish you would provide such an argument, so I could find out why you think as you do, concerning this matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you won't find out why I think as I do, until you study special relativity well enough to know what you are talking about. So get back to me if that happens.

Have you ever done the math?
— wonderer1

You haven't provided an argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

And you haven't answered the question.

It's not called relativity for nothing. Yet it isn't hard to determine that a lot of thing are at rest with respect to my initertial reference frame and I can discuss the shape of many such things as they are in my inertial reference frame. If I, for some reason, need to calculate how they might look from a different inertial reference frame I could do so. It's not a big deal.

Anyway, why would I bother providing an argument to someone who wants to argue about something he doesn't understand? I don't see the point in doing so.

No it is not "appearance" only. — Metaphysician Undercover

Have you ever done the math?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/691825/will-you-see-distance-contraction-inside-the-space-ship-at-near-light-speed

That the boulder truly does not have a shape is supported by Einsteinian relativity, as shape is dependent on the frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are mistaking the appearance of shape from different reference frames with each other.

It is similar to saying a pencil isn't straight because when dropped into a glass of water the pencil appears bent.

But we can't ever compare 'the real world' with 'the representation of it'. — Wayfarer

Sure we can. We just can't achieve a perfect match between our representation of the world and the full detail of the way the world is. Every day, billions of people are comparing their representations of the world with reality. Some manage to increase the accuracy of their representations.

In other words, freedom must be, by definition, impossible to explain, otherwise it is not freedom. — Angelo Cannata

This seems to suggest that the notion of freedom depends on ignorance.

Our brains model the world in ways we are largely ignorant of, and therefore our brains' modeling of the world allows us the ignorance to simplistically see our modelling of the world as causal. Furthermore, it isn't unreasonable for us to recognize that our brains' (weakly) emergent modelling of the world does, for practical purposes, play a causal role in our behavior, in light of our inability to be conscious of the complex underlying physical causality.

There's no fundamental reason why the cause of synchronised heart beats couldn't be physical. — flannel jesus

A Youtube video presenting various sorts of natural synchronization.

So much grandiosity.

:up:

Without some angel in the shell we are nothing but meaty robots, or an animal not much different than all others—just an object, like a stone.
— NOS4A2

Thereby absolving us of all responsibility as moral agents. — Wayfarer

In whose eyes?

...just an object, like a stone. — NOS4A2

There are a lot of difference between objects, and as likenesses go, "like a stone" leaves a bit out.

The energy comes from the erasure of information but is this reducible to the physics of running inputs through non-reversible logic gates? The input of energy of erasure is proportional to the energy lost as heat. This energy loss doesn't apply to reversible computation since information isn't lost. — Nils Loc

:up:

What exactly is wrong with the puddle's thought in Adam's analogy? The idea that the hole was made for the puddle is the most obvious target. But the puddle is still in the hole because of what the puddle is and what the hole is, and those seem like phenomena a sentient puddle might well strive to understand. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Going back to Wigner's argument, and considering how reasonable or unreasonable the effectiveness of mathematics is...

Our being here (from a naturalistic evolutionary perspective) is only possible because there are regularities in the universe. The theory of evolution only makes sense in a world with regularities. So the anthropic principle applies. If our thinking is the result of biological evolution, then it is not unreasonable to find that we are in a world with regularities. With that in mind, it is not so remarkable that we have found a way (mathematics) for utilizing our symbolic cognitive capacities, to discuss such regularities with some degree of accuracy.

So why think it is anymore remarkable that mathematics is in the world, than that a puddle has the shape of the hole it is in? What is wrong with the puddle's argument is that it doesn't consider the possibility of having the causality backwards.

And do puddles make holes (which, to stretch the analogy to the breaking point, puddles do indeed make potholes for themselves to collect in when they freeze, in a sort of self-reinforcing mechanism)?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, we still might want to take a closer look at the causality. Do puddles cause heat to be removed from themselves in order to freeze, or is the hole the cause of the movement of heat?

That's not entirely true. Brainwaves are energy, and hearts produce electrical atmospheres that others can detect. — Bret Bernhoft

Brainwaves are patterns in measured voltage. The voltage is not energy and it is the pattern of voltages that sync to the music.

Phase locking may not happen apart from dissipation of energy, but that is a somewhat different matter.

This is a recent example of what I was referring to regarding the synchronization of heart beats and brainwaves among audience members of the same musical experience. — Bret Bernhoft

Phase locking is not energy. It is something which occurs in physical processes.

Are you sure it relates to what you were discussing earlier?

I think it's a bit of an historical accident that evolutionary biology has become so tied to battles over religion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It looks to me like a historical inevitability. Religions tell stories that our relatively uninformed ancestors came up with, to explain the nature of ourselves. Scientific investigation into the nature of ourselves yields something quite different. A lot of people like those old stories a lot better than they think they would like the view from a scientifically informed perspective.

A declaration without supporting explanation is hardly philosophical at all is it. — Benj96

It sounds like you are saying that providing remedial physics lessons is part of philosophy. Is that right?

Intereference can't occur between photons travelling at the same velocity. — Benj96

No more scientific assertions for you.

Move over Einstein. — Nils Loc

:snicker:

Race statistics are fruitless because the distinctions are arbitrary. — NOS4A2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health

Race and health refers to how being identified with a specific race influences health. Race is a complex concept that has changed across chronological eras and depends on both self-identification and social recognition.[1] In the study of race and health, scientists organize people in racial categories depending on different factors such as: phenotype, ancestry, social identity, genetic makeup and lived experience. "Race" and ethnicity often remain undifferentiated in health research.[2][3]

Differences in health status, health outcomes, life expectancy, and many other indicators of health in different racial and ethnic groups are well documented.[4] Epidemiological data indicate that racial groups are unequally affected by diseases, in terms or morbidity and mortality.[5] Some individuals in certain racial groups receive less care, have less access to resources, and live shorter lives in general.[6] Overall, racial health disparities appear to be rooted in social disadvantages associated with race such as implicit stereotyping and average differences in socioeconomic status.[7][8][9]

Health disparities are defined as "preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations".[10] According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they are intrinsically related to the "historical and current unequal distribution of social, political, economic and environmental resources".[10][11]

The relationship between race and health has been studied from multidisciplinary perspectives, with increasing focus on how racism influences health disparities, and how environmental and physiological factors respond to one another and to genetics.[7][8]

How is what you refer to as "Color-blindness" different from ignorance?

Did you ever have that 70's perennial The Road Less Travelled? — Wayfarer

Did you read The Different Drum?

If we are to have any value come out of the sciences, other than technology, it would be getting a better synthesis of what could have happened, or is the case, in regards to nature based on the evidence we have, and honing that or creating a better interpretation. This endeavor is likely to not end in some absolute consensus of interpretation any time soon, however. — schopenhauer1

I'm inclined to think gaining better understanding of our own natures would be more beneficial than more accurate understanding of our history, although the latter would surely contribute to the former.

No, you are merely missing the philosophical point . . . . again! :sad: — Gnomon

Whatever.

What does "qu-orever" mean? — Janus

I think it means, "Until you drop dead while adding 320 to 180 and only manage to say '5' before you keel over."

We will all stand around saying, "See, he was using quaddition!"

I'm not at all certain that many of those supporters are even able to comprehend all the relevant facts that may influence their worldview... — creativesoul

Isn't that asking a bit much for anyone?

Your postulated alternative is not really an alternative. — Gnomon

You aren't being consistent. You start by recognizing a distinction between matter and energy, and when shown that you have posed a false dichotomy, you deny the distinction.

I think this guy probably took a large amount of LSD before he started writing. — frank

So perhaps the answer to understanding chapter 11...

As ↪Benj96 worded the issue : "So either energy carries an inherent conscious currency/property, or matter does". — Gnomon

On the topic of fallacies, that is a false dichotomy. Is it energy, or the matter from which your car is constructed, that enables your car to take you to the grocery store?

Can you provide any evidence that consciousness exists apart from dynamic (energetic) processes occurring in matter?

:smirk: — schopenhauer1

Feel free to elaborate.

The interesting aspect of this type of thread, is that there is a significant number of hard realists who flatly refuse to acknowledge this need to put back the subjectivity, as required to have an honest approach to reality. Since these people think that "the real" can be arrived at simply by following the conventions, they are in great agreement with each other, and you'll see them on these threads, slapping each other on the back, giving thumbs up and high fives etc.. On the other hand, those who apprehend and agree with this need, "to put back the subjectivity" as a requirement for an approach to "the real", can never agree with each other as to how this ought to be done. This is because the very thing that they are arguing for, the need to respect the concrete base of subjectivity, as very real, and a very essential and true part of reality, is also the very same thing which manifests as the differences between us, which make agreement between us into a very difficult matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you mean by "put back the subjectivity"?

Heh the morning routine has worked so far, but this morning I think I have an idea about E4, but GSB really is drawing on his extensive knowledge of electronics. I find myself going back to ↪wonderer1 's explanation of one-bit adders, and looking over electronics websites, but instead of bits E4 is changing the wave-form as it is "processed" through E4. — Moliere

It has been interesting to read along with this discussion. I get tantalizing hints at what the topic under discussion might be related to, but not enough to be able to say anything helpful for the most part.

I suppose it is a bit like trying to decrypt a foreign language.

But Wittgenstein seems to wilfully ignore what the ordinary man knows. — RussellA

Willfully ignore, or be autistically oblivious to?

...what hope is there for Trump to win in 2024? — GRWelsh

As my (preacher's wife) mom said after the 2020 election, "Republicans need to get better at election fraud themselves." I suppose that is a sort of hope.

It's wanting to be "profound" without doing the work. — Banno

Or, perhaps more importantly for some, to appear so.

Not in my experience, but it might be selection bias. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Definitely selection bias on my part.

The best example of this view I can think of is Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos," which looks at significant problems in the "life is the result of many random coincidences and looking at them as anything other than random is simply to give in to fantasy," view. But Nagel is an avowed atheist. Likewise, Glattfelter's "Information, Conciousness, Reality," Winger's "Unreasonable Effectiveness," etc. don't seem particularly theistic to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As modern philosophers go, Nagel is a bit too far to the scientifically naive side, for my taste. Wigner's argument is what I've encountered the most, but it seems like puddle thinking to me. I'll have to look for Glattfelter.

IMO, there is nothing particularly theistic at expressing awe at the regularities in the world. We appear to have a universe with a begining. So at one point, there was a state at which things had begun to exist before which nothing seems to have existed. This forces us to ask the question "if things can start existing at one moment, for no reason at all, why did only certain types of things start to exist and why don't we see things starting to exist all the time? Or if things began to exist for a reason, what was the reason?"

I don't see how this is essentially a theistic question though. It seems like a natural outgrowth of human curiosity, God(s) or no. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

Well, not really. Physics, with one of its principal subjects being the relations of one thing to another, motions, is actually designed for understanding complexity. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems that your history of trying to keep scientific understanding from entering your "fortress" has left you with so many misconceptions that it doesn't seem like a very good use of my time to try to disabuse you of those misconceptions. However, feel free to explain who designed physics and quote their explanation of what they designed physics for.

Those with the philosophical mindset, the wonder and desire to know, will inquire as to why it is the case that physics tells us little if anything at all, about things like jealousy and love. — Metaphysician Undercover

Those who include scientific inquiry within the philosophical mindset are apt to recognize that the immense complexity of the brain very well explains the fact that physics tells us little about things like jealousy and love.

I know it's a hard idea to get your head around! — Wayfarer

It might be, if I hadn't read a lot of Suzuki and such, 40 years ago.

So do you think ordinary languages, like French and German, would have facilitated equal progress in physics and cosmology since the 17th C, in the absence of mathematics? — Wayfarer

No. However, I don't see what that has to do with the sense in which mathematics can be said to be in the world.

I don't see how it applies. The form of idealist philosophy that I'm advocating does not say that 'the world only exists in your mind'. I'm referring to the mind - yours, mine, the mind that we as a species and culture share. The mind is not an objective reality, it's not a material thing - yet we can't plausibly deny it! That's the elephant in the room, the fly in the ointment, for naturalism. — Wayfarer

I just googled "Buddhism existence of self" and the first thing that came up was:

From the Buddhist perspective, the idea of “individual self” is an illusion. It is not possible to separate self from its surroundings. Buddha in Lankavatara Sutra states, “Things are not what they seem… Deeds exist, but no doer can be found” (Majjhima Nikaya, 192).

The Buddha, the first eliminativist?

I trust that the system is based on measurements that replicate because things keep working, which they wouldn't of the measurements used to create them were arbitrary. — Kaiser Basileus

Sound like you are saying that you aren't rigorous yourself, but you trust that other people are. Is that correct?