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[Serious] Is the Past Real?
#41
RE: Is the Past Real?
(October 16, 2022 at 12:10 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Physicists don’t seem to agree the many world interpretation is extravagant.   In fact many seem to regard it as elegantly parsimonious in terms of new unknown underlying principles that must be assumed

If time travel is possible, and nothing in physics says it ain’t, then it seems to me all future event must have already happened in another past reference frame.

This is what happens when PhD = village elder, not just someone who's studied science for a long time. People make up untestable bullshit, and say, "Harrruummmmph. . . in my considerably erudite opinion, 50 million fairies could dance on the tip of a pin" and dum dums say, "Well. . . a PHYSICIST said it, so it must be a valid scientific idea."

If only people were honest enough to accpet "I don't know, and we probably never can know" as a valid position on physical reality.
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#42
RE: Is the Past Real?
(October 16, 2022 at 2:26 pm)bennyboy Wrote:
(October 16, 2022 at 12:10 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Physicists don’t seem to agree the many world interpretation is extravagant.   In fact many seem to regard it as elegantly parsimonious in terms of new unknown underlying principles that must be assumed

If time travel is possible, and nothing in physics says it ain’t, then it seems to me all future event must have already happened in another past reference frame.

This is what happens when PhD = village elder, not just someone who's studied science for a long time.  People make up untestable bullshit, and say, "Harrruummmmph. . . in my considerably erudite opinion, 50 million fairies could dance on the tip of a pin" and dum dums say, "Well. . . a PHYSICIST said it, so it must be a valid scientific idea."

If only people were honest enough to accpet "I don't know, and we probably never can know" as a valid position on physical reality.

no, it is much better to dismiss what physics says about physics in favor of folksy put downs  because, oh, untutored intuition is so much more reliable and making common cause with anti-intellectual morons afford so much more promise as a path forward.
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#43
RE: Is the Past Real?
(October 16, 2022 at 2:30 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:
(October 16, 2022 at 2:26 pm)bennyboy Wrote: This is what happens when PhD = village elder, not just someone who's studied science for a long time.  People make up untestable bullshit, and say, "Harrruummmmph. . . in my considerably erudite opinion, 50 million fairies could dance on the tip of a pin" and dum dums say, "Well. . . a PHYSICIST said it, so it must be a valid scientific idea."

If only people were honest enough to accpet "I don't know, and we probably never can know" as a valid position on physical reality.

no, it is much better to dismiss what physics says about physics in favor of folksy put downs  because, oh, untutored intuition is so much more reliable and making common cause with anti-intellectual morons afford so much more promise as a path forward.

I think that applies to any field of study.  

'Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.' - Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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#44
RE: Is the Past Real?



Moderator Notice
Post placed in hide tags in case anyone needs to quote this insanely long drivel in a reply.

Boru
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#45
RE: Is the Past Real?
Jack Chick tract?
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#46
RE: Is the Past Real?
[Image: 5cf2050f008a1c1592561a0a2c664e57ca9b7cc2...e50f_1.jpg]
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#47
RE: Is the Past Real?
Quote:no, it is much better to dismiss what physics says about physics in favor of folksy put downs  because, oh, untutored intuition is so much more reliable and making common cause with anti-intellectual morons afford so much more promise as a path forward.

Yes, actually.  It IS better to dismiss what people-who-can't-know make up on the basis of so-called expertise, particularly in the scientific realm.

And nobody said to dismiss them in favor of "folksy put downs" or "anti-intellectual morons," or that there was a better path forward.

You show me how MWI is testable, or can be shown to have any effect on physical measurements or experimental apparatus in the real universe (i.e. the one we can observe, i.e. the object of all science), then I'll be more than happy to consider MWI a scientific hypothesis. Until then, it's just Scientist Mythology.
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#48
RE: Is the Past Real?
(October 16, 2022 at 4:36 pm)scamper Wrote:



Moderator Notice
Post placed in hide tags in case anyone needs to quote this insanely long drivel in a reply.

Boru

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”

Wiser words were never spoken. 
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#49
RE: Is the Past Real?
(October 16, 2022 at 12:00 am)Angrboda Wrote:
(October 15, 2022 at 11:28 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Here is my secular argument:

There is nothing outside actual physical reality.
Physical reality keeps overwriting itself in the present like a claymation model.
Since actual physical reality is everthing there is no independent remaining record of what actually was remains.
As such, there really is not  a definite way things were.
The garden of forking pathes opens in both directions. Possible futures spread before us. At the same time, the number of possible pathes leading to now also expand.

What about numbers?

The question of mathematical realism seems independent of one's time theory. Even in presentism there is still the idea of conditions that must always present in all possible worlds. Perhaps numbers fall into that category of being even under presentism. Or maybe I am moderating the presentist position.
<insert profound quote here>
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#50
RE: Is the Past Real?
In general relativity, ALL of time and space are a single four dimensional geometry. In this theory, there are simply points in space time. Each point also has a past 'light cone' and a future 'light cone'. Anything in the past light cone will be 'in the past' for all observers at that point. Things in the future light cone will be 'in the future' for all observers at that point. But things not in either will be 'in the past' for some observers and 'in the future' for others.

In this description, both the 'past' and the 'future' are real and exist. Causality goes from the past light cone into the point and from the point into the future light cone. We have memories of the past and not of the future simply because of this aspect of causality.

Things get a bit strange when quantum mechanics enters the picture. We don't have a good theory of quantum gravity, so we cannot say exactly what happens to the geometry of spacetime when subject to QM. It likely becomes probabilistic, as all things quantum tend to be.

In any case, in QM, the future, at least, is indeterminate. That doesn't mean it isn't real. SOME events are determined (like the eclipse in 2024), while others are not (like the time when a uranium atom decays).

But it also isn't clear to me whether the *past* is determined in QM. If the information from the past mixes with the environment to a sufficient extent, it seems that the past becomes just as probabilistic as the future. When the information is impossible to retrieve, the past would be undetermined.

As an example (there are many), the statement that 'a T-Rex stood in this location precisely 67 million years ago' may simply not have a fixed truth value. If there is no way to retrieve that information from the past using what exists in the present, then there simply is no truth of the matter.
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