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First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
RE: - (Ask a particle physisicist)
(June 6, 2015 at 6:24 pm)Alex K Wrote: What I say above is just my standard opinion which I have voiced many times IRL


(June 6, 2015 at 1:48 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: I .do have a question:  What would finish the sentence you started at the end of your post, which is quoted in full above?

Generally, I think that good philosophy of physics is important, because we do want more from our science than a black box of equations which reproduces certain experiments - because as David Deutsch rightly asks in "fabric of reality" (*), what would we have gained in understanding over someone who merely executes the experiment, if we did limit ourselves to such a concept of science as a predictive black box. We want more from our science - we want it to provide intuitions, explanations, we have a natural urge to see truth in our theories. To what extent we can have this and what it means, those are, in my opinion, questions of philosophy, not science, and questions one would not want to do without.

(*) I may be paraphrasing...

I don't think we can have it.  I don't even think we had it when Newton's ideas were thought to be correct.  It had a more intuitive feel and seeming "rightness" to it, but I don't think it ever adds anything to pretend (and I think it is only ever pretend) to have an ultimate explanation.  The desire for ultimate answers should, in my opinion, be resisted, for it is the same desire that leads to religious nonsense.  Or if you prefer, unverifiable gibberish.

We should be content to know what we can know, and recognize our limitations.  That ultimate explanations are not needed is proven by the fact that we presently don't have them, and yet science continues to progress anyway.

Yes, I have a very strong skeptical streak.  There are too many people who claim to know things that not only they do not know, but that they cannot know.  If you want to talk about philosophy and why I am skeptical, you might want to read David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.  It is online here, and that is a copy of what was the standard edition for many years, though Oxford has released a new edition that they evidently wish to become the standard edition.  I have the Selby-Bigge version (both the second and third editions), which is the old standard edition.  I will be happy to discuss it with you as you read it (or afterwards), either in a thread for that purpose, or in PMs or email.

Of course, I do not expect that you will regard my opinion as being of any great importance.  But I have a quote from someone who you might regard as a better source of recommendation.  Albert Einstein, in his essay "Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge" (which I first read in Ideas and Opinions), wrote:

Quote:Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection ,cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.

http://www.ece.umn.edu/users/cherkass/ee...wledge.pdf

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy!
(June 6, 2015 at 10:31 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: We should be content to know what we can know, and recognize our limitations.  That ultimate explanations are not needed is proven by the fact that we presently don't have them, and yet science continues to progress anyway.
My bolding.

My agreement is boundless and, I hope, my intellectual humility is prominent and appropriate.
I find the problems of solipsism and the failure of inference to be, at least currently and probably eternally, insoluble.
If there is a way to tell that the outer frontiers of the known have nothing beyond, I cannot see what it could be.
Even were that the case, then reflection would have to be turned inward to see if repeated examination of the 'known' yielded the same results as previously or have things changed.
So I am resigned, comfortable and even somewhat encouraged to there always being new knowledge to seek.
My fear of heaven is that at some small fraction of eternity progress would stop and nothing new would ever be found despite sound argument that it could be there.
This is my horror of omniscience and the basis for belief that a hypothetical all-knowing God would create man out of an agony of boredom.
We're fun to watch.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? Huh
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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
Pyrrho,

I'm not saying we want ultimate truth. But do the explanations which we take from theories not tell us something true about the world. I think even you make that assumption regularly and that one can't do entirely without.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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RE: - (Ask a particle physisicist)
(June 7, 2015 at 4:44 am)Alex K Wrote: Pyrrho,

I'm not saying we want ultimate truth. But do the explanations which we take from theories not tell us something true about the world. I think even you make that assumption regularly and that one can't do entirely without.

I think it depends on what you mean.

To give a philosophical sort of problem, somewhat suggested by JuliaL above, let us consider the old idea of a brain in a vat (which is easier for modern people to understand than the otherwise better example of a disembodied mind or the possibility of everything being a dream).

Suppose you go to sleep tonight as usual, and go into a coma.  You are found to have some sort of terrible disease infecting your body, but some genius doctor has come up with a plan to remove your brain and has figured out a way to not only keep your brain alive, but to hook up a computer to all of your brain's inputs and outputs, and to recreate your entire world.  So that when you try to raise your arm, the computer receives that input, and outputs such that you get the sensation of lifting your arm, etc.  If this were done perfectly, for you, your life would be indistinguishable from having an actual arm, etc.  The start, for your new experience of being the brain in a vat, is you waking up in your bed the next day, as if nothing happened.  We can add more fun to the example, and imagine your brain is in a bomb shelter, with the computer and your life support powered by a nuclear reactor, or geothermal power, or some other such independent power supply.  Imagine the U.S. and Russia finally use the weapons that they have spent so many billions (is it trillions?) on and detonate all of their nuclear bombs, and imagine all other human life is destroyed.  Only you remain.  Your life in the bomb shelter goes on, unaware of what has happened to everyone else.  You interact with the computer, which has simulated your wife and everyone else in your life, so you are blissfully unaware of this, and continue on as normal.

Now, imagine that this happened last week, so that right now this is your life.  Or imagine that it happened to you as a fetus, so that your entire life outside the womb has been computer generated.  In that case, it may be that the writer of the program thought it would be good fun to change you into a primate, when really you are a lizard which normally has 8 legs and 10 eyes.  Maybe the programer has totally altered the laws of physics for your universe, and all of that is completely different from the way the real world is as well.  So what you are doing, Alex, is just reverse engineering the computer program's version of physics, and not discovering anything about the way the universe actually works.

Now, what is the point of this sort of story?  The obvious point is that one cannot know that this is not the case (if taken as given).  The less obvious point is that it does not matter.  This second point is worth drawing out a little bit.  Suppose you are the brain in the vat.  You put your imaginary hand into an imaginary flame, and it hurts terribly, just the same hurt as it would be if you had a real hand that you put into a real fire.  The program is well-written, so that the "next day" you have imaginary burns on your imaginary hand, and if you had it in the imaginary fire too long, your imaginary fingers were destroyed, just the same as if you had a real hand kept too long in a real fire.

Notice, it does not matter whether you believe you have a real hand or are just the brain in a vat; you still want to avoid sticking your hand in a fire.  Unless, of course, you want the pain, and want the consequences, of that action.

Most people prefer the story of having a real hand and there being real fires, and so they tend to believe that story.  But the story does not matter for any purpose one might have.  The story of a real hand does not add value to anything, it does not explain anything, it is totally irrelevant to everything that you know or do.  It is completely and totally irrelevant to anything you can do.  It makes no difference at all in your life.


Here is another story, one that I rather like more.  (I am hiding it because some people don't like long posts and may want to scroll down past this.  They are likely to miss the point of this post if they ignore it, but people may do as they please.)



"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy!
(June 7, 2015 at 12:49 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: The less obvious point is that it does not matter.
That might be true and in your hypothetical you can force it to be true.
But in our possibly simulated life, there are some unknowns which could be critical.
Suppose the computer is about to run out of batteries or fail in some way that you could avoid if you just knew how.
This is the scenario that the Matrix movie fleshed out in which the 'real' world was one where machines ruled and it was in Neo's best interest to wake and revolt.
What they missed was that this only popped the reality stack one level.  I see no way to determine how deep the turtles go.  My avatar is a screenshot from that movie in the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the Red or Blue capsule.  Red to be shown the truth, blue to remain ignorant.  In my graphic, there is a crude edit to show a brush painting the red capsule which had previously been blue.

In your 'she loves me - she loves me not' story, the difference in the two scenarios lies not in yourself, but in your wife.  To you there is no difference.  To her there is.  Now the question becomes whether you can grant agency to your collection of experiences, intuitions and emotions labelled your wife.  In some scenarios your wife could be real and independent in others she could be simulated.  A question rapidly approaching is, "If simulated, does she still have agency?"

Replace the programmer with God. Now it is of critical importance to know if the victory conditions for life do include Her good will.  Again, we only experience one level in the reality stack.  I don't see any evidence there are others though I can't preclude the possibility.  It is a matter of laziness and parsimony that I don't seek evidence of more. No one has presented me with an acceptable argument as to why God would not be the next level in the stack and for ultimate reality, we'd have to continue to seek .  Hence my sig.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? Huh
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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
The conversation is getting too intellectual to make lame jokes Undecided
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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
A neutrino and an anti-neutrino walk into a bar...
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
I tried googling neutrino, but my brain blacked out after two sentences
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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
So you don't know what a neutrino is? We have to remedy that!
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
EXPLAAAAIN

but in a way that doesn't make my brain explode
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