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Originally Posted By: redewenur
kallog, why be such a bore? I'm afraid you're developing an attitude signature

- which is a pity, since you make some interesting contributions.


I wasn't having a go at anyone. I've just seen so many discussions degenerate into things like that which can go nowhere. It's a bit like trying to deduce the color of the eyes of aliens living in another galaxy. I suppose if you enjoy philosophy then that could be fun too :P

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Originally Posted By: abacus9900
[quote]
I think science and philosophy have always been intertwined and without philosophy how would science know what to study? I don't think any unresolved question is pointless to discuss because if you take that road progress stops.


Absolutely. But the thrashed to death part means ordinary people without any special discoveries/etc. havn't got a hope.

It kind of irritates me that people are talking about conciousness as if there was any evidence it might be a special thing for the operation of entanglement experiments. It's as good as trying to figure out if God exists or not. Sure people try it all the time, and they all get the same result - nothing. That's why they invented FiLCHeRS, to keep us on productive or at least interesting paths.

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You don't think scientists should have wasted their time setting up experiments like this?

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Originally Posted By: abacus9900
You don't think scientists should have wasted their time setting up experiments like this?


No, that's not what I said.

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Originally Posted By: abacus9900
If the experiment was performed and then all human life was suddenly wiped out would the meaning of the experiment any longer have any meaning? I can't persuade myself that it would.


If one accepts that in this scenario the meaning is lost, would you re-establish the meaning in the future if beings capable of interpreting the meaning evolved and found the experimental results?

If reality depends on consciousness, do we say that reality is suspended during this interim period, or that reality continues because, somehow, the cosmos "knows" that the necessary level of consciousness will re-emerge?


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Originally Posted By: Bill S.
Originally Posted By: abacus9900
If the experiment was performed and then all human life was suddenly wiped out would the meaning of the experiment any longer have any meaning? I can't persuade myself that it would.


If one accepts that in this scenario the meaning is lost, would you re-establish the meaning in the future if beings capable of interpreting the meaning evolved and found the experimental results?

If reality depends on consciousness, do we say that reality is suspended during this interim period, or that reality continues because, somehow, the cosmos "knows" that the necessary level of consciousness will re-emerge?



Impossible to say Bill, and if I gave an answer I would just be speculating.


Now, the Large Hadron Collider is up and running and, in time, might produce some results of experiments that provide information about various aspects of the universe. If this information is useful it might, one day, allow science to make great strides into gaining a much deeper insight into nature and reality but let us pretend that the LHC was never built, OK?


In this scenario science would not be able to progress because science needs to do experiments in order to gain knowledge. So, assuming at some point in the future (and I realize this is just an assumption) the whole nature of human civilization had been changed by the discoveries of the LHC in ways we can only speculate about would this not represent an alternate reality to the one in the scenario where the LHC never existed? In fact, it might be a drastically different alternate reality to the one without the LHC, not just more or less the same!

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Quote:

If reality depends on consciousness, do we say that reality is suspended during this interim period, or that reality continues because, somehow, the cosmos "knows" that the necessary level of consciousness will re-emerge?



It's difficult to say, but the way I would put it is that no information is lost because it is the potential of the universe in terms or producing consciousness, sooner or later, that ensures the universe itself 'evolves' to recover information. We are that part of the universe that is 'knowing' and this seems to be an inevitable development in universes like ours.

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Originally Posted By: abacus9900
In this scenario science would not be able to progress because science needs to do experiments in order to gain knowledge.


Scientists need to do experiments in order to progress something they call "science". It is difficult to imagine science as some objective thing that might be out there stagnating if there were no scientists.

This is a little bit like the exchange that Kallog and I had over the difference between mathematical facts and reality.


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Quote:


This is a little bit like the exchange that Kallog and I had over the difference between mathematical facts and reality.



Here, though, aren't you making a false dichotomy between maths and reality as if maths can never really be a part of reality? To me, what maths represents is 'observed' reality, so here, are we really talking about the difference between 'observed' and 'unobserved' reality and if we are, which is the 'real' reality?

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Originally Posted By: abacus9900
Here, though, aren't you making a false dichotomy between maths and reality as if maths can never really be a part of reality?


I have never thought of maths as being anything other than part of reality. You are probably aware that the main thrust of our discussion was the distinction between mathematical infinity and physical infinity, which will probably take "infinite time" to resolve.


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I just wonder if infinity is a useful concept.

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Originally Posted By: abacus9900
I just wonder if infinity is a useful concept


If you accept that there can never have been a time when there was absolutely nothing, then infinity is an indispensable concept; but perhaps you don't accept that.


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Originally Posted By: abacus9900

I just wonder if infinity is a useful concept.

According to QED when electron interacts with
vacuum its parameters becomes infinite.
It is possible only when vacuum is itself an infinite space.
So, we can be wondered or not, but vacuum as infinite space exists.
Questions:
Can infinity be a useful conception?
Does vacuum ( with its infinite space) have any utility?
And if vacuum is an useful space then . . . .
How can electron be reborn from infinite vacuum?
============
S

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Originally Posted By: socratus
According to QED when electron interacts with
vacuum its parameters becomes infinite.


Are you saying that its parameters are finite, then they become infinite?

This may be mathematically possible, but I see no way in which any finite thing can become infinite. It may continue to increase endlessly, but there can never be a point at which an observer could say "that is now infinite".


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Originally Posted By: Bill S.
Originally Posted By: socratus
According to QED when electron interacts with
vacuum its parameters becomes infinite.


Are you saying that its parameters are finite, then they become infinite?

This may be mathematically possible,
but I see no way in which any finite thing can become infinite.
It may continue to increase endlessly,
but there can never be a point at which
an observer could say "that is now infinite".

Parameters of electron are finite and then they become infinite.
Nobody knows that to do with infinite sizes and
therefore physicists have invented mathematical method –
‘a method of renormalization ‘, a method
‘ to sweep the dust under the carpet ‘ / Feynman./
#
Is it possible what electron in interaction with vacuum
becomes infinite? No, it is impossible. It is against
‘ The law of conservation and transformation energy ‘.
It is only from our human physical point of view the
electron’s parameters become infinite.
What it means?
It means that we cannot reach the vacuum’s condition T=0K
and we cannot reach the vacuum’s background energy and
we cannot reach vacuum’s density.
And we cannot reach the density of particles there.
Therefore we give them different names:
virtual, dark mass and dark energy, antiparticles, . . . etc
Different names . . . but all agree that in vacuum space
must be something . . .
#
So,
can we have finite particle – electron from infinite space?
Dirac said that we can have it.
How can this be?
Maybe Higgs boson will give answer.
================.
S

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Originally Posted By: socratus
but vacuum as infinite space exists.


Isn't it difficult (impossible?) to talk about infinity without constraining it within finite terminology. To convey our meaning we have to use terms like "infinite space" and "infinite time"; yet space and time are incompatible with infinity. We try to get our heads around the concept, but we will always be like flatlanders trying to describe a passing spider.


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Originally Posted By: Bill S.
Originally Posted By: socratus
but vacuum as infinite space exists.

Isn't it difficult (impossible?) to talk about infinity
without constraining it within finite terminology.
To convey our meaning we have to use terms like
"infinite space" and "infinite time";
yet space and time are incompatible with infinity.
We try to get our heads around the concept,
but we will always be like flatlanders trying
to describe a passing spider.

Of course, to explain infinity we need finite terminology
#
We have two conception on space and time:
Newtonian and Minkowski.
The space around us is Newtonian –
Descartes coordinates plus time ( 3D+ time).
Minkowski space is negative 4 – dimensional,
( Pseudo – Euclidian space ).
This space is absolute different from Newtonian space
because there the time cannot be separated from the space.

Herman Minkowski said about this spacetime continuum:
“ Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself,
are doomed to fade away into mere shadows,
and only a kind of union of the two will
preserve an independent reality.”
#
So, ‘ space by itself, and time by itself ‘
( it means Newtonian space and time) are shadows.
Why?
What ‘only a kind of union of the two’ is reality?
What does union of spacetime mean?
Why only this union of spacetims is real factor in Universe?
Nobody knows what Minkowski space really is,
nobody has answers to these questions.
Maybe because we cannot answer to these questions our
finite terminology, trying to explain infinity, doesn’t work.
===.
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Originally Posted By: socratus
Nobody knows what Minkowski space really is,
nobody has answers to these questions.
Maybe because we cannot answer to these questions our
finite terminology, trying to explain infinity, doesn’t work.


This sounds more like dogma than science. Could it be that a scientist who is not able to explain a concept to a lay person does not really understand that concept?

I agree that trying to explain infinity in finite terminology does not work. There are plenty of examples of that on this Forum.


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Originally Posted By: Bill S.
Originally Posted By: socratus
Nobody knows what Minkowski space really is,
nobody has answers to these questions.
Maybe because we cannot answer to these questions our
finite terminology, trying to explain infinity, doesn’t work.


This sounds more like dogma than science. Could it be that a scientist who is not able to explain a concept to a lay person does not really understand that concept?

I agree that trying to explain infinity in finite terminology does not work. There are plenty of examples of that on this Forum.

This sounds more like dogma than science.
???
Could it be that a scientist who is not able to explain a concept
to a lay person does not really understand that concept?
!!!
‘ The trouble with physics’
/ Lee Smolin /
==.

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Space in SRT.
===.
Sometime Minkowski space is described as a ‘Light Cone’.
Nobody knows if this ‘ Light Cone’ really exist.
Sometime Minkowski space is described as a
‘ Pseudo – Euclidean space’.
Euclidean space is two dimensions space.
Pseudo – Euclidean space is negative two dimensions space.
Why is it negative?
Because Euclidean space has only two space dimensions.
It has not conception of time in its structure.
The Pseudo – Euclidean space is absolutely different.
Why?
Because physicists / mathematicians put negative time ( -t )
into Euclidean space and then named it ‘Pseudo – Euclidean space’.
Later this space was named as ‘negative Minkowski 4D spacetime’.
Where is this spacetime in the Nature, in the Universe?
Nobody gives exact and concrete answer.
===.
S

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