BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 17 Mar 05 - 04:02 AM

Well done Terence, I hope you read ALL this thread first!

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: heric
Date: 22 Mar 05 - 11:20 AM

This is fun:
13 things that do not make sense

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: freda underhill
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 09:45 AM

List of 25 questions Science journal considers could be solved in the next 25 years:

- What is the universe made of?

- What is the biological basis of consciousness?

- Why do humans have so few genes?

- To what extent are genetic variation and personal health linked?

- Can the laws of physics be unified?

- How much can human life span be extended?

- What controls organ regeneration?

- How can a skin cell become a nerve cell?

- How does a single cell become a whole plant?

- How does earth's interior work?

- Are we alone in the universe?

- How and where did life on earth arise?

- What determines species diversity?

- What genetic changes made us uniquely human?

- How are memories stored and retrieved?

- How did cooperative behaviour evolve?

- How will big pictures emerge from a sea of biological information?

- How far can we push chemical self-assembly?

- What are the limits of conventional computing?

- Can we selectively shut off immune responses?

- Do deeper principles underlie quantum uncertainty and nonlocality?

- Is an effective HIV vaccine feasible?

- How hot will the greenhouse world be?

- What can replace cheap oil and when?

- How can a growing world population live sustainably on the planet?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 11:03 AM

I would suggest that asking "what is the biological basis of consciousness" is a pretty biased question. It assumes its own answer. It is perfectly possible that the question should be "what is the consciousness-based source of biological manifestation?".

I know that will not sit well with the bottom-up materialist section, and I am simply bringing it up to point out that (as far as I know) this issue has not been clearly decided by replicable science one way or the other.

The fact that you can change some aspects of consciousness by altering brain circuits is interesting but inconclusive. You can distort communication by snipping some of the tiny wires inside a phone, too; but that doesn't prove that the phone is the source of communication. Some would argue that in a broad sense it was communication that brought the phone into existence.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 07:42 PM

?? kinda stretching the metaphors there, Amos...*grin* -'phone wires'?? No doubt that IF we had no need to communicate, Alexander Graham Bell might have taken up......no.....I can't even speculate, but we wouldn't have needed phones, I guess....But that is sort of a tautology - and suggesting that the desire to communicate is a 'cause' of phones is a bit hollow, even if logically true.

If unwarrented assumptions are to be questioned, how about the ones that posit some universal 'consciousness' as a given?

At least the materialists can point to most of their referents. I still wonder how the word 'is' can be applied to NON-material referents, except as shared linguistic/semantic concepts..(truth, beauty, happiness)...

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 09:49 PM

I never said it was the desire, Bill; you are scrambling the logic of what I am saying in order to stay in your shell.

However, if you approach what I said from "all thought is local material phenomena" of course your assumption proves itself.

The day you show me how understanding in the full and lively sense that we all experience daily can be produced by molecules, I'll buy you a keg and a bag of chips.

I did not posit universal consciousness; I said consciousness. It might be individual consciousness multiplied by the number of conscious viewpoints in the current space-time continuum, for all I know. I think we both agree, at least, that consciousness does exist.

Use a wireless phone, if you like that metaphor better -- if you are having a conversation, and then fuse a couple of the leads, the conversation will garble. But that won't prove it was the communicating to you. With no wires, if you only believed in solid connections you'd have to believe it was the phone. The idea of a source outside the immediately apparent material system would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 10:38 PM

my shell? Why, Amos....I prefer to think I sit, perched on an outcropping of Whitehead's actual entities, open to all input and attuned to the nuances of the cosmos!...do I have one of those zapped circuits that prevent me from receiving on a bunch of wavelengths? *shrug*....I dunno, if I don't 'hear' it, I don't hear it.

yeah, yer right...I did add something to your 'conciousness' concept, and in these exchanges we'd best be careful what we attribute to each other...

" I think we both agree, at least, that consciousness does exist."..

indeed- but then it gets interesting. I once posted on the Dept. of Phil. bulletin board, two quotes, one from Kant and one from Hume, almost identical in phrasing, agreeing that 'all knowlege begins with experience'....then below, I wrote, "Well, so far, so good..."

I'd REALLY like to win that keg & chips from you, but I suppose that any purported proof I might suggest could be disputed (or refuted), much as Dr. Johnson refuted Berkley's solipsism ...by kicking a stone. But then, perhaps MY theory could refute yours the same way.*grin*

It just boils down to what one accepts as basic truth and first principles. When a Christian says "I believe that the Bible is literal truth and Jesus was sent to....etc, etc..., there's really no way to tell him he can't believe that...and no way to 'prove' it isn't so.....except by dying, and if you're right, you don't even get to say "I told you so!"

I have **NO** trouble accepting that " ..all experience daily can be produced by molecules.." (or atoms, or quarks...whatever)....it's a very complex production, to be sure, but if I don't believe that, I might as well accept the religious doctrine of "intelligent design".

When you get right down to it, you and I both must 'act' in a similar way when eating those chips and drinking and enjoying that keg..(I guess we'll see in Oct., huh?) If anything really different goes on inside our respective heads/brains/conciousnesses, I don't know how we'd tell.

After all these years of debate and mumbling, the question that fascinates me is....How can two (or more) people look at the same data and arrive at totally different conclusions? I suppose the answer is that it is impossible to present identical data/input to different conciousnesses....and that situation allows us to agree about G.W. Bush, but disagree about the basis of reality...*grin*

not boring, is it?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: dianavan
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 10:45 PM

Since I will need a new roof and a new furnace in about five years, I wonder when it will be ready to heat my home. I like the idea but I am also wondering about its texture. Any hints?

Reading all of the above makes me realize my daughter was right to question the primary, science curriculum in B.C. Why do we continue to teach about matter (solids, liquids and gasses)? Is there an easier way to explain the transfer of energy? Must I continue to boil water to make vapour and then freeze water to make ice?

Somehow, it all seems insignificant. Perhaps the process is far more important than the content. Thats my best hope.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Wolfgang
Date: 29 May 06 - 11:31 AM

What was before the Big Bang?

Some physicists consider that a metaphysical question that should not be asked and studied by science. Other physicists try to find an answer to that question:

Quantum Nature of the Big Bang

Roughly: There was no Big Bang, but 'only' a Big Bounce when a previous universe collapsed and bounced back into becoming our universe. They think that not all information about the former universe may have been lost in the Big Bounce.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 29 May 06 - 11:46 AM

Isn't that the way the "Cities in Flight" Sci-fi series by James Blish ended? A bunch of guys floating in 'space' thought the next universe into existence? BOOM!

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 29 May 06 - 12:18 PM

That paper is amazingly denser, Wolfgang; thanks for extrapolating the underlying concept. It does seem to make sense, but the math is a jungle to me.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Further on the Multicerse
From: Amos
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:51 PM

Some scientists are approaching the multiverse theory seriously and looking for the anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background which would support the notion of collisions or intersections between universes. This may the answer to the alien conundrum. :D

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:05 PM

The notion that other universes may be somehow 'out there' (in here?), and 'sort of' interacting with ours is really difficult to wrap one's head around. If another universe is capable of interacting, it seems like it would be, by definition, part of THIS universe....and if it is, by definition, defined by different spatio-temporal parameters, it seems as if we could not 'know' anything about it or interact with it.

I suppose I am not familiar enough with the math and hypotheses well enough to see why they are taking this seriously, but it seems as if this might be just another attempt to resolve problems like 'missing matter' from the Big Bang.

The alien conundrum (if I understand what you refer to) doesn't bother me at all. If aliens exist and we 'can' communicate with them, we are rather in the position of someone like Vikings...or better, Chinese, in 1000 AD, wondering if there were 'others' out across the oceans.....we simply haven't the technology to go look, or we haven't looked in the right places with the right tools yet. It is pretty smug to imagine that OUR magnificent achievements are sufficient to see/hear 'em if they're there.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:53 PM

I was thinking more of the conundrum of testimony like Whit Streiber, for example who has written several books about interactions with aliens (one of them was quite a hit). The conundrum is that (a) he gathers vivid subjective anecdotes from many poeple (including himself) (b) who have never met each other or shared and information and (c) whose stories are remarkably similar in their descriptins of certain realities yet (d) no empirical evidence has been firmly identified of such realities and a lot of people including me have never experienced them.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 10 May 07 - 10:56 PM

I think a lot of those 'similar' anecdotes stem from the early news stories of aliens and descriptions of them--plus the almost generic shape and size of most of the descriptions...much as a child might draw. Small...no sex organs...simplistic faces...etc.

I believe someone has actually made a timeline of 'alien' images, showing how almost all after a certain point follow the pattern. It's really amazing how much the stereotyped 'aliens' resemble human fetuses, standing up straight with semi-expressions.

It's almost as if no one can imagine other possible configurations now....(well...except Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 11 May 07 - 05:09 AM

Convergent evolution can throw up some remarkable similarities- like between fish, plesiosaurs, cetaceans and phocids for example- but that is because of the similarity of the environment- the physics of swimming haven't changed in half a billion years. As far as we know (working from a sample of one) there's no specific evolutionary pressure that engineers intelligent beings to be of a particular shape. So it would be an astounding coincidence if extra- terrestrial intelligent beings were humanoid in form.

Let's try to "design" an alien from scratch. Anything that has to face up to gravity (how much gravity?) needs a supporting scaffolding. Ours is internal and built like a sailing ship's rigging (spars tensioned by muscular "ropes"), arthropods have external tubular supports. Those are the only two designs that have made it to any size out of water, but there could be others- an internal or external space-frame, for example.

The segmented form shared by almost all animals big enough to see is not a given, but is an easy thing for evolution to work on- grow in complexity by adding segments, use specialised modified segments for particular purposes- so it's a probable form for an alien. And similarly bilateral symmetry is likely though not certain.

The alien will need sensors of various sorts. The sensible place to put at least some of them is at the front- you want to sense what's coming- and the sensible place for the processing unit is near them. And it's precious, and represents a huge and probably ireplaceable investment, and so needs to be protected. So our alien will have a hard head at the forward- going end.

Eyes- photosensors- have evolved in many patterns, and they are an obvious evolutionary move, so the alien will have them. The frequency response will be designed for the planet where they originated, but there is an astounding choice of possible structures, from insect- style compound eyes, through pinhole cameras, to several different sorts of lensed designs. And although vertebrates normally have the two that we inherited from fish, that's just contingent. Aliens will probably have a minimum of two, but there could be several more.

They will have in some degree most of the other senses we have, as information is evolutionarily useful. They might not have all of ours, just as some of our senses are vestigial compared to other animals. And they might have others- electrostatic or magnetic sensors.

Locomotion is necessary. Legs are better than wheels, as they work on more surfaces. There needn't be only two, and one or none is a possibility- but an intellient being will need manipulators as intelligence evolves out of curiosity and the ability to alter the world. And arms are an obvious form. They needn't be modified legs- they could be modified mouthparts for example, and elephants have trunks.

Communications- we use sound, air pressure variations- most of us, that is. Deaf people use manual signs, and that seems to work very well. An alien could also use, for example, colour changing (their colour) light patches to talk to each other. Or have a magnetic generator that works with their magnetic sensor- we would think they communicated by telepathy.

They would probably reproduce sexually- this has great, though not absolutely overwhelming, evolutionary advantages- see bdelloid rotifers. Or they might have a different way of sharing their genetic information (which probably wouldn't be DNA). They might even do it like kids used to swap cigarette cards.

So here's my alien- a tube with an internal space-frame a bit like a sponge but jointed for flexibility, with a domelike head at the front end with two flexible trunks and six lensed eyes. They see in the near infra- red. It has six legs and two arms with graspers. They appear to communicate telepathically.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 May 07 - 11:48 AM

Whitley Strieber is a writer of fiction. Some of his novels have been advertised and sold as reports.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 11:51 AM

Wolf:

Is that your assessment, or is it his acknowledged role?


A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 May 07 - 12:44 PM

My assessment.

How to survive in a black hole?

Now that's real life advice. The good thing is we will live forever in that case for those who watch us.

Wolfgang