Saidin said:
I found this article a bit disappointing because it was often wooley, full of waffle and worse still unexpained leaps of faith presented as fact.
We have failed to protect science against speculative extensions of nature
A funny thing to say when you then go on to make speculations and present them as fact.
Without perception, there is in effect no reality.
If I die, I presume you will all continue to exist. What justification is there to state that this model would change such that if all living things died, reality would cease to exist?
Most of these comprehensive theories are no more than stories that fail to take into account one crucial factor: we are creating them.
Not necessarily, surely a correct theorem is not created, but is a mere description of that which already occurs.
I think that paradox of the arrow is flawed. Here's what I think. Forget time, and think of change in its place. Seconds, minutes and hours etc are our own standardised measurements of change. If you could stop 'time', you would of course stop change. Motion is one type of change. So, it is not motion that is impossible. It is the stopping of change/time that is impossible. So, the conclusion of the paradox is the wrong way round. If it WERE possible to stop time, then motion would indeed be impossible, at least while time was stopped... because time is change and change involves motion.
There is no past nor future, just ever-present change.
Has anyone ever said that before, or am I a genius?
It's pretty obvious really I think.
You can kind of go 'back in time' theoretically... if you could get everything to change back to how it was to put you back in the same place as you were before. Of course in reality this is a logistical impossibility at the very least. And you wouldn't really have gone 'back in time' as we like to think of it: you would have just moved on, then resumed a previous position, with the forward and rewind bit occuring in between showing that you hadn't really 'gone back in time' in the science fiction sense. Time is relative of course as experiments have shown Einstein to be right in that respect, but I don't think this counts as time travel.
Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist.
Why can't it just be coincidence? And maybe life would have formed in a different way if the laws of physics had been different (not that that's really relevant).
Imagine all the days and hours that have passed since the beginning of time. Now stack them like chairs on top of each other, and seat yourself on the very top. Science has no real explanation for why we’re here, for why we exist now. According to the current physiocentric worldview, it’s just an accident, a one-in-a-gazillion chance that I am here and that you are there. The statistical probability of being on top of time or infinity is so small as to be meaningless.
Once something has happened, it is a certainty (probability=1, certain), so the statistical probability of an event happening is not affected by all that has gone before. If the author disagrees with this, he should dispute it, otherwise I have to assume he is unaware of it and mistaken.
Listening to an old phonograph doesn’t alter the record itself, and depending on where the needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we call the present. The music before and after the song you are hearing is what we call the past and the future. Imagine, in like manner, that every moment and day endures in nature always. The record does not go away. All nows (all the songs on the record) exist simultaneously, although we can only experience the world (or the record) piece by piece. If we could access all life—the whole record—we could experience it non-sequentially... That there is an irreversible, on-flowing continuum of events linked to galaxies and suns and the earth is a fantasy.
What evidence is there that we could do this? If anyone knows why it is that some people claim that all things actually happen simultaneously, please explain. The author should have explained this really. The record player analogy is not good enough, nor is one Einstein quote- neither turn the stated belief into fact.
And remember my previously stated opinion that 'there is no past nor future, just ever-present change' which clashes with this record player analogy of the past and future actually existing.
Einstein admitted, “Now [Besso—one of his oldest friends] has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us . . . know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
If anyone can elaborate on why he thought this or knows of credible criticisms of this view (which I think the author should have done), please let me know.
It has been proven experimentally that when studying subatomic particles, the observer actually alters and determines what is perceived... An electron turns out to be both a particle and a wave. But how and where such a particle will be located remains entirely dependent upon the very act of observation.
Well, I can't comment on this as I'm not an expert and it seems to me that even the experts argue about whether or not this is true, so how can it credibly be presented as fact?
The Eleatic school of philosophy, which Zeno brilliantly defended, was right. So was Heisenberg when he said, “A path comes into existence only when you observe it.” There is neither time nor motion without life. Reality is not “there” with definite properties waiting to be discovered but actually comes into being depending upon the actions of the observer.
Well I disagreed in my earlier thoughts on the arrow paradox. And if you're going to write an article claiming this, why not offer some proof before making statements like this with such certainty?
Instead, the entities we observe are floating in a field of mind that is not limited by an external spacetime.
Field of mind? Another leap of faith in any case.
Scientists have discovered that if they “watch” a subatomic particle pass through holes on a barrier, it behaves like a particle: like a tiny bullet, it passes through one or the other holes. But if the scientists do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of a wave. The two-hole experiment has many versions, but in short: If observed, particles behave like objects; if unobserved, they behave like waves and can go through more than one hole at the same time.
I would like to know if this is actually true. I am already suspicious of the author so I can't take it as truth. Can anyone comment?
As John Wheeler, the eminent theoretical physicist, once said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”
If anyone knows whether or not this quote is used in the correct context or knows of credible criticisms of this view, please let me know.
New experiments carried out with huge molecules called buckyballs show that quantum reality extends into the macroscopic world as well. Experiments make it clear that another weird quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, which is usually associated with the micro world, is also relevant on macro scales.
I would be interested to hear opinions on this from people in the know.
Without consciousness, we can take any person as our new frame of reference. It is not my consciousness or yours alone, but ours. That’s the new solipsism the experiments mandate.
So does the author think that the universe not exist without at least one conscious being to observe it? In this scenario beings did not evolve from unconscious chemicals into virusy things into amoebas into people. Beings existed the whole time, otherwise the universe would not have been able to exist. This runs contrary to evolution theory. Unless the consciousness was somewhere else before it begun to inhabit beings. I.e., there was 'god' who started it (or at least always existed) because the universe had to have consciousness in order for evolution to begin, and this consciousness slowly inhabited beings as evolution occurred.
There are surely other information systems that correspond to other physical realities, universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time.
Why so sure?
scientists have discovered that the universe has a long list of traits that make it appear as if everything it contains—from atoms to stars—was tailor-made for us... the discovery is causing a huge commotion within the astrophysics community and beyond.
Really? I commented on this belief before. This sentence is weasley, it seems carefully worded to imply that scientists believe that it's tailor made without directly saying so. Is the discovery really causing 'a huge commotion within the astrophysics community'?
We think the world churns along whether we happen to open the door or not. Quantum mechanics tells us it doesn’t.
The trees and snow evaporate when we’re sleeping. The kitchen disappears when we’re in the bathroom. When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting—the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness—or into waves of probability. The universe bursts into existence from life, not the other way around as we have been taught. For each life there is a universe, its own universe. We generate spheres of reality, individual bubbles of existence. Our planet is comprised of billions of spheres of reality, generated by each individual human and perhaps even by each animal.
Really? Care to offer some proof?
You may question whether the brain can really create physical reality. However, remember that dreams and schizophrenia (consider the movie A Beautiful Mind) prove the capacity of the mind to construct a spatial-temporal reality as real as the one you are experiencing now. The visions and sounds schizophrenic patients see and hear are just as real to them as this page or the chair you’re sitting on.
Just because we view the world through an mind-manifested image, that doesn't mean that we are creating it. Just because our brains can construct illusions as well either deliberately during sleep or accidentally during malfunction, that doesn't prove that what we call reality is similarly deceitful.
But before matter can exist, it has to be observed by a consciousness.
I thought he meant this... see my thoughts on how evolution fits into his theory.
Trying to trace life down through simpler stages is one thing, but assuming it arose spontaneously from nonliving matter wants for the rigor and attention of the quantum theorist.
You make less scientific assumptions, I think, so this is hypocritical. Can anyone comment on the actual scientific rigour of the theory that life did emerge from evermore complex chemicals? I don't know how much work has gone into that part of evolution.
Robert Lanza is Vice President of Research and Scientific Development at Advanced Cell Technology and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has written 20 scientific books and won a Rave award for medicine from Wired magazine and an “all star” award for biotechnology from Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology.
So do the scientists on here think that this author is credible? I'm not saying that he's wrong. I am just saying that I personally don't find the article rigorous or credible. I was a bit disappointed.
Finally, what is the agenda of The American Scholar? I noticed that it's banner shows a document entitled "The other Christianity" coming through a letterbox. I couldn't shake off a sneaking suspicion that this document was covertly pushing forward a Christian Science agenda. There were pseudoscience alarm bells ringing in my head, certain hallmarks were present (stating belief as fact, leaps of faith, not explaining properly, even references seemingly opposing God and Intelligent Design that for some reason gave me the hunch that the author is nevertheless religious).
I hope someone reads this, the article raised some interesting points that I'd love to be informed further about.
