The nature of things

[lionking]

Actually one of the two tags on this thread is "Just having some fun" and the other does not seem to apply.

Thanks. I should check tags more often. "Just having fun" is equivalent to trolling, no?

 

[tsig]

I'm not interested in playing games.

You will make whatever points you are intent on making regardless of what the rest of us do.

I won't encourage or enable your activities.

These forums are full of your type of posts - learn to search.

Looks like another Knight Of Wooful Countenance.

 

[Loss Leader]

Actually one of the two tags on this thread is "Just having some fun" and the other does not seem to apply.

Thanks for pointing that out. Tags have been changed to improve relevancy in the cloud.

"Relevancy in the cloud." Now, THAT is how you talk metaphysics.

 

[Tricky]

Ya know, we really shouldn't be too harsh on folks who have "heavy thoughts". I had a few doozies in my youth. One I rembember when I was just embracing atheism, but didn't want to cut ties to the church, was that Jesus had come from the future. Hell, it explained everything! I mean, the virgin (implanted) birth, the miracles, the prophesies, the transportation from the tomb... Really I thought I was on to something. I was smashed flat by my girlfriend (who was Christian, but who I was trying to impress with how I'd thought things out) who told me that my ideas were an abomonation before the Lord. I was pretty crushed.

So I ask my fellow skeptics not to lean to hard on an idea that has been thrown into the ring, even if it falls a little short of either science or logic. Remember that this is the James Randi Educational Foundation. And while being smacked down by people with more knowledge and experience might be "educational", it doesn't exactly engender fond feelings toward the educators.

I am willing to accept that LTABN is truly wanting sincere feedback on his ideas, and while there's nothing wrong with pointing out what's wrong, it doesn't have to come with a sneer. That kind of "teaching" teaches people not to open up to skeptics for fear of being ridiculed.

 

[Olowkow]

Ya know, we really shouldn't be too harsh on folks who have "heavy thoughts". I had a few doozies in my youth. One I rembember when I was just embracing atheism, but didn't want to cut ties to the church, was that Jesus had come from the future. Hell, it explained everything! I mean, the virgin (implanted) birth, the miracles, the prophesies, the transportation from the tomb... Really I thought I was on to something. I was smashed flat by my girlfriend (who was Christian, but who I was trying to impress with how I'd thought things out) who told me that my ideas were an abomonation before the Lord. I was pretty crushed.

So I ask my fellow skeptics not to lean to hard on an idea that has been thrown into the ring, even if it falls a little short of either science or logic. Remember that this is the James Randi Educational Foundation. And while being smacked down by people with more knowledge and experience might be "educational", it doesn't exactly engender fond feelings toward the educators.

I am willing to accept that LTABN is truly wanting sincere feedback on his ideas, and while there's nothing wrong with pointing out what's wrong, it doesn't have to come with a sneer. That kind of "teaching" teaches people not to open up to skeptics for fear of being ridiculed.

Great story. I am really bad at math, but I love to play with numbers in my head when I'm trying to get to sleep. I came up with what to me was an amazing discovery, namely the following:

Take any two adjacent numbers, square each, subtract the smaller from the larger. The result is always equal to the sum of the two original numbers.

In other words

(x+1)² - x² = x + (x+1)

To a non mathematician, it is kind of remarkable that this should be true, and I set about to try to figure out why this should be the case. I wasn't sure what an explanation should look like, but I kept thinking about it and finally the answer was so trivial that I felt pretty silly.

Well, somewhere in this time frame I was at a party of retired mathematicians, the wife of one happened to be a good friend of my wife's. One guy was explaining something about the Golden Ratio to me, and I was transfixed by his eloquence....I couldn't believe I was actually understanding this. After quite a while, and several glasses of wine, I said, "Oh, by the way, I just thought up a strange thing with numbers, have you ever heard of this one?" And I laid my genius idea on him. "That's an identity." I suddenly realized that to him, he thought I was asking him for a term to describe it, not for his reaction of how brilliant it was. I sat back, and he started on another of his pet mathematical monologues. I learned a very valuable lesson that evening. Experts are a lot of fun, don't try to be clever in their midst, and you'll do just fine.

 

[Dancing David]

Well some of us non-physicists would say they are different forms of the same thing. I would hope you'd cut us lay-folk some slack there.

[hiding from Tricky]
Psst: Well actually it is 'energy' all the time, everywhere and every moment. The most accurate description of the behavior of particle all the time is the waveform, they are accurately characterized as waveform before , during and after all interactions.

Certain subsets of interaction may be classified as 'matter' i.e. 'scattering', 'collisions', 'inability to interpenetrate', 'persistence of motion', 'mass', 'inertia'. And yet every one of those appearances and descriptions is actually a property of an energy waveform...

Oh Hi Tricky, no I am playing cards here... I am certainly not disagreeing with you...
eeek ... Help ... please don't turn the Flame-O-Ray onto me, please stop!

ZORCH

:humorously lampooned pile of poster dust:

 

[Dancing David]

The self is a byproduct of the normally functioning human nervous system.

It is frequently mistaken for small animals, cabbages and god.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Any number or mathematical equation you can randomly pull from the air.

2 + 2 = 4

There, you have just observed it.

For verification purposes, I motion to engineering.

Ooh, let me try!

For exsanguination purposes, I navigate to philately.

Hey, this is fun!

 

[aggle-rithm]

Which continues to seek more. That's what I think is so interesting, how it is a system of endlessly taking in more.

It takes in energy.

It expends the energy it takes in.

It takes in more energy.

That is no more inexplicable than the fact that you must refuel your car on occassion.

That's why I qualify it differently then non living matter which merely reacts. Perhaps submits is a better word.

Living matter merely reacts as well, just in a more complex manner. It makes sense that it behaves this way, because it tends to have a more complex structure.

Don't believe me? Put out the sun, and watch life react. Or perhaps submit is a better word.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

He is an excellent read.



What in particular do you like of his?

Monism. Which is the point you are getting at.

 

[tsig]

Ya know, we really shouldn't be too harsh on folks who have "heavy thoughts". I had a few doozies in my youth. One I rembember when I was just embracing atheism, but didn't want to cut ties to the church, was that Jesus had come from the future. Hell, it explained everything! I mean, the virgin (implanted) birth, the miracles, the prophesies, the transportation from the tomb... Really I thought I was on to something. I was smashed flat by my girlfriend (who was Christian, but who I was trying to impress with how I'd thought things out) who told me that my ideas were an abomonation before the Lord. I was pretty crushed.

So I ask my fellow skeptics not to lean to hard on an idea that has been thrown into the ring, even if it falls a little short of either science or logic. Remember that this is the James Randi Educational Foundation. And while being smacked down by people with more knowledge and experience might be "educational", it doesn't exactly engender fond feelings toward the educators.

I am willing to accept that LTABN is truly wanting sincere feedback on his ideas, and while there's nothing wrong with pointing out what's wrong, it doesn't have to come with a sneer. That kind of "teaching" teaches people not to open up to skeptics for fear of being ridiculed.

We all have our own styles.

If someone runs off because their feeling were hurt then I then I think they weren't very sincere about learning anything but were here to preach.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not a physicist myself, but the point is that just because the basic building blocks are the same does not mean they are the same. That is the Fallacy of Composition.

It's not a fallacy, it depends on what one is comparing. You arbitrarily chose different aspects to compare.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

[hiding from Tricky]
Psst: Well actually it is 'energy' all the time, everywhere and every moment. The most accurate description of the behavior of particle all the time is the waveform, they are accurately characterized as waveform before , during and after all interactions.

Certain subsets of interaction may be classified as 'matter' i.e. 'scattering', 'collisions', 'inability to interpenetrate', 'persistence of motion', 'mass', 'inertia'. And yet every one of those appearances and descriptions is actually a property of an energy waveform...

...

I am fascinated by the quantum properties of matter. This sounds like string theory. Is it something more certain than string theory?

 

[The Man]

I am fascinated by the quantum properties of matter. This sounds like string theory. Is it something more certain than string theory?

Yep, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Field theory to be more specific or just Quantum Elecotrodynamics (QED). if you don't want to get into all those other forces (weak and strong). Very well tested. Certainly it "sounds like string theory" as it is the basis of string theory. Which is trying to unify gravity with those other forces (two now combined as Electroweak theory ). The strong force is now modeled similar to QED as QCD (also a quantum field theory), so gravity is all that is missing from the unification at this time. Enjoy.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Well, somewhere in this time frame I was at a party of retired mathematicians, the wife of one happened to be a good friend of my wife's. One guy was explaining something about the Golden Ratio to me, and I was transfixed by his eloquence....I couldn't believe I was actually understanding this. After quite a while, and several glasses of wine, I said, "Oh, by the way, I just thought up a strange thing with numbers, have you ever heard of this one?" And I laid my genius idea on him. "That's an identity." I suddenly realized that to him, he thought I was asking him for a term to describe it, not for his reaction of how brilliant it was. I sat back, and he started on another of his pet mathematical monologues. I learned a very valuable lesson that evening. Experts are a lot of fun, don't try to be clever in their midst, and you'll do just fine.

I had a similar experience here on the JREF forums. I started a thread where I asked about this extraordinary paradox I had dreamed up having to do with special relativity. It turned out that I was simply stating the Twins Paradox.

The embarrassing thing is that I had heard of the Twins Paradox, and thought I had understood it. But I hadn't. That's why I thought MY new idea was something new and different.

All in all, the responders to my OP were pretty patient and gracious about it.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Ooh, let me try!

For exsanguination purposes, I navigate to philately.

Hey, this is fun!

Looking back on it...sorry, this was uncalled for.

I should have simply said what I was thinking, which was: "What?"

 

[Dancing David]

I am fascinated by the quantum properties of matter. This sounds like string theory. Is it something more certain than string theory?

Wow, and I could not even list all the cool things about QM, perhaps the most famous is the Double-slit experiment^WP or Youngs experiment, but it is pervasive in all of physics and answeres questions like "If Coulomb's law^WP states that protons will be repeled from each other at the inverse square of the distance between them, how they heck do they fuse together in the sun?"

The history of the development of QM is facinating.

I also like Bose–Einstein condensate^WP demonstrated here: http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/

 

[LTABN]

Okay, I think I've got a handle on this.

I believe LTABN is arguing thus:

1. All matter grows more and more complex - from atoms, to molecules, to life, to sentient beings.
2. Matter and energy are the same.
3. Thus, energy grows more and more complex until it results in a sentient being.
4. That sentient being of pure energy is coextensive with what we would expect from God.
5. Therefore, God.
6. Also, some brain/mind duality stuff that shows that we're all spirits inhabiting bodies and that's also a lot like what's in the Bible so, yeah, that too.

That's pretty spot on- though I don't know about the therefore God part.

If there are things which exist an things which don't exist, what is it that prevents those things from existing? Is it because they simply aren't possible? That's where I start to get confused, on why things can't be possible. We may be limited conceptually in what we can create or reproduce, even with umpteen thousand years more of scientific advancement, but what about the rules of the universe prevents raw energy from forming in ways which would be seemingly inconsistent with the rest of the universe? Or, have they simply not occurred yet?

I don't know, but trying to boil down some identifiable properties or patterns that were consistent not only at the most basic level, but through out the chain of creation seemed a good place to begin a string of theories, or even simple SWAGs off of.

The step from matter to life is certainly a big one- but (might) occurs far more frequently (maybe?) then the step from life to sentient life. At any event, the step to sentient life is a big one, and it seemed reasonable at the time to try and accredit it to what seemed the process of adding complexity to energy via the concurrently (by necessity) developing matter.

 

[LTABN]

Looking back on it...sorry, this was uncalled for.

I should have simply said what I was thinking, which was: "What?"

It was a long day. No worries.

 

[LTABN]

We all have our own styles.

If someone runs off because their feeling were hurt then I then I think they weren't very sincere about learning anything but were here to preach.

No way man, just living life. Don't expect to see me more then two or three times a week.