Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Stops Here

JoeBentley said:
*Whistles blows as a little cloth flag lands on the field*

Special Pleading. Invoking of "magical imaginary other place where physics doesn't work." 10 Yard Penalty. Repeat 2nd Down.
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I'm sorry, but could you just state what you're saying in plain English, because I'm new here and I don't quite get the lingo.
 
Do people here usually quote something from someone's post and then ignore the person who posted it and have conversations with other people over that person's head?

Also, am I wrong in that the hypothetical concept of an afterlife as generally perceived is based on it existing separately from the physical world, with its own laws and functioning?
 
Ed Glosser said:
I'm sorry, but could you just state what you're saying in plain English, because I'm new here and I don't quite get the lingo.
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He was using a football metaphor to say heaven,hell or any other kind of mystic plane do not exist and until you can prove they exist you can not add them to the discussion.
 
Ed Glosser said:
Do people here usually quote something from someone's post and then ignore the person who posted it and have conversations with other people over that person's head?

Also, am I wrong in that the hypothetical concept of an afterlife as generally perceived is based on it existing separately from the physical world, with its own laws and functioning?
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No you are not wrong about being able to imagine a magical place and have that magical place do or be anything you can imagine.
So.
Hypothetical does not count in this discussion.
 
Brattus said:
He was using a football metaphor to say heaven,hell or any other kind of mystic plane do not exist and until you can prove they exist you can not add them to the discussion.
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Thank you! That makes sense.

Why is that, by the way? Why can't you add a hypothetical "mystic plane" to the discussion, seeing as the video we were asked to watch and that I just spent 49 minutes of my life on ended by explaining why a place like that doesn't exist?
 
Ed Glosser said:
Thank you! That makes sense.

Why is that, by the way? Why can't you add a hypothetical "mystic plane" to the discussion, seeing as the video we were asked to watch and that I just spent 49 minutes of my life on ended by explaining why a place like that doesn't exist?
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Are you, in fact, offering an explanation of how this "mystic" plane does, or even could, exist?

There is evidence for the tenets of QFT (as laid out by Carroll, in the video), including evidence for why, if the "mystic" plane exists, it would either be capable of interacting with our particles-and-fields reality, and therefore be detectable; or, it would be indetectable by our fields-and-particles senses and instruments, and therefore be incapable of interacting with reality.

What counter-evidence do you offer?
 
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Ed Glosser said:
Thank you! That makes sense.

Why is that, by the way? Why can't you add a hypothetical "mystic plane" to the discussion, seeing as the video we were asked to watch and that I just spent 49 minutes of my life on ended by explaining why a place like that doesn't exist?
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Because regardless of videos watched or unseen hypothetical, imaginary places do not exist no matter how hard a person may wish them to.

In other words we can only work with what we have to work with in the reality of the physical world.

It makes no difference what my personal beliefs, leaps of faith or opinions are regarding trees. Trees are what they are with or without me doing anything. That is because they are a real physical thing in a real physical world.

Hope that helps.
 
Donn said:
I suppose if a field from a different scale shrank-down and visited the human scale, it would have to fit in the range of fields we already know, ergo it would not be a unique black swan on a visit.

Metaphors suck. I wish I had a better brain!
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There is a hypothetical point to be made, here, and you illustrate it nicely.

If there were a "mystic plane" outside of, or orthogonal to, particles-and-fields understanding of reality, it could not interact with what we know except in a way consonant with our fields-and-particles understanding.

It is, in fact, theoretically possible that our particles-and-fields model is fundamentally wrong, and that a proper understanding or reality would required replacing fields-and-particles with fields-particles-and woo!; however, such a rebuilding would have to be built upon new understanding of new evidence.

"I beleive in ghosts" is not a reason to state that the P-&-F model is wrong. Neither is "there has to be more", or "Whaddabout 'god', eh?"

I will cheerfully admit to the existence, as they say, of anything for which concrete, empirical, objective, congruent, fruitful, and luminous evidence is produced.

Until then the onus is on anyone claiming that a "different plane" exists.

.
 
Brattus said:
Because regardless of videos watched or unseen hypothetical, imaginary places do not exist no matter how hard a person may wish them to.

In other words we can only work with what we have to work with in the reality of the physical world.

It makes no difference what my personal beliefs, leaps of faith or opinions are regarding trees. Trees are what they are with or without me doing anything. That is because they are a real physical thing in a real physical world.

Hope that helps.
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It certainly helps, insofar as it clears up what your personal point of view on this matter is. Although, I have to say, I wasn't tearing my hair trying to figure that out. Still, I have to disagree with you that science only deals with "what we have to work with in the reality of the physical world", because our understanding of the physical world is defined by whatever hypotheses survive experimental testing, and that means a lot of things need to be imagined to exist before we can tell whether or not they actually do exist. For example, magnetism proved to be a real thing, while animal magnetism did not, but at some point both things were only hypothetical, or imaginary, powers.

But I don't mean to intentionally misunderstand you, so I'm going to assume that what you're really saying is that this discussion is about something else. Since I don't want to further muddle the real issue here, perhaps it's best if I wait for PixyMisa to return and explain what the debate was intended to be about.

My bad.
 
Slowvehicle said:
I will cheerfully admit to the existence, as they say, of anything for which concrete, empirical, objective, congruent, fruitful, and luminous evidence is produced.

Until then the onus is on anyone claiming that a "different plane" exists.
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But doesn't the video tell us that whatever evidence anyone comes up with, it is trumped by the Standard Model, meaning that even if both things appear to be true, only the Standard Model can actually be true, not the other thing that seems to contradict it, whatever that thing may be?
 
Ed Glosser said:
But I don't mean to intentionally misunderstand you, so I'm going to assume that what you're really saying is that this discussion is about something else. Since I don't want to further muddle the real issue here, perhaps it's best if I wait for PixyMisa to return and explain what the debate was intended to be about.
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I doubt that PixyMisa actually intended for there to be a debate, though PixyMisa was, doubtless, at least somewhat prepared for one. PixyMisa seems to have presented a resource that strongly supports the position that it is not reasonable to accept a number of religious and pseudo-scientific attempts to evade accountability and supposedly gives a solid case for why it is reasonable to currently accept that known quantum physics are sufficient to explain the evidence at our disposal.

As always, it cannot falsify fundamentally unfalsifiable propositions, but such propositions are, as a rule, unreasonable to accept in the first place.
 
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Aridas said:
I doubt that PixyMisa actually intended for there to be a debate, though PixyMisa was, doubtless, at least somewhat prepared for one. PixyMisa seems to have presented a resource that strongly supports the position that it is not reasonable to accept a number of religious and pseudo-scientific attempts to evade accountability and supposedly gives a solid case for why it is reasonable to currently accept that known quantum physics are sufficient to explain the evidence at our disposal.

As always, it cannot falsify fundamentally unfalsifiable propositions, but such propositions are, as a rule, unreasonable to accept in the first place.
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I'm just frustrated because I just watched (a few hours ago) a fifty-minute lecture of something I didn't get any of, and then with five minutes left I'm informed that this is how we know there is no life after death. It just seemed to me that there was nothing there in support of that claim.

I'm not saying there is nothing in quantum field theory that supports ruling out astrology, reincarnation and black magic, I just didn't really get how the impossibility of introducing new particles, fields or laws means that the supernatural cannot exist. Exactly why can't it exist within the limits of the Standard Model? That's not a rhetorical question, BTW.
 
Ed Glosser said:
Thank you! That makes sense.

Why is that, by the way? Why can't you add a hypothetical "mystic plane" to the discussion, seeing as the video we were asked to watch and that I just spent 49 minutes of my life on ended by explaining why a place like that doesn't exist?
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I want to add a hypothetical "mystic forum" where everything I post is treated as gold plated words of wisdom.
 
Ed Glosser said:
But doesn't the video tell us that whatever evidence anyone comes up with, it is trumped by the Standard Model, meaning that even if both things appear to be true, only the Standard Model can actually be true, not the other thing that seems to contradict it, whatever that thing may be?
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No, and what a curious interpretation.

We accept the standard model as true because of evidence.

Evidence that we have misunderstood a facet of our understanding of the standard model would, or course, require reformulating it, as, for instance relativity required (and may yet require) a reformulation of our understanding of the mechanics of gravity.

OTH, at this point, all the evidence we have points to the standard model being "closed"; any "black swan force" or "black swan plane of existence" would need to be supported by evidence.
 
Ed Glosser said:
Why is that, by the way? Why can't you add a hypothetical "mystic plane" to the discussion, seeing as the video we were asked to watch and that I just spent 49 minutes of my life on ended by explaining why a place like that doesn't exist?
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There's a reason Special Pleading, especially of the level you were doing, is not allowed in intellectual discussions.

"But how do you know this thing that doesn't work in this universe doesn't work in this special other universe that I'm completely making up and providing no evidence for and am only putting in the converstation so I can provide a backdoor justification for Woo" is not a rational, logical argument. It's not a hypothosis. It's just randomly making stuff up. It's invoking magic. It's mental masturbation.
 
Ed Glosser said:
I'm just frustrated because I just watched (a few hours ago) a fifty-minute lecture of something I didn't get any of, and then with five minutes left I'm informed that this is how we know there is no life after death. It just seemed to me that there was nothing there in support of that claim.

I'm not saying there is nothing in quantum field theory that supports ruling out astrology, reincarnation and black magic, I just didn't really get how the impossibility of introducing new particles, fields or laws means that the supernatural cannot exist. Exactly why can't it exist within the limits of the Standard Model? That's not a rhetorical question, BTW.
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OK. Let's unpack that.

In your opinion, what is "life"?
 
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