What is the nature of the universe??

I don't claim to be a naturalist. I may do in a few months though, after I've written my dissertation. But I thought that you claimed that religion etc does not play a mystifying role naymore, not saying I agree with that. But, wtf, 'Being' is a major part of philosophy.

No, this has nothing to do with the philosophy of science. I think, anyway.

Actually the universe could be infinite. I think the theory (or at least one theory) is that space itself is expanding, rather than the contents of the universe expanding through space.

The universe could be uniform in all directions, with galaxies uniformly distributed in infinite space. But most of the space in the (infinite) universe would be far enough away that light from it has never and will never reach us, because those distances are expanding faster that light can cross them.

If you trace the evolution of the universe backwards, it doesn't go back into a single point, it's still infinite space, but higher density, because space has expanded since then.

Yep. Though it's not that they're moving away from each other, it's that the space between them (all space) is expanding. Which is different somehow...

There was a good article in Scientific American in the last year or so on this...

LW:
"As to the nature of the universe, this or that model has only as much value as the goals it achieves. Given they predict actual behaviour equally well, two contradictory models are simultaneously correct."

Actually, no. Let's suppose you have two theories, T1 and T2. And let's suppose that T1 and T2 equally well predict and explain some set of behaviors, or everyhing, for that matter. Are they "equally correct"? Not necessarily. There are other reasons to prefer one theory over another besides their confirmation by things we observe. Theory T1 might be very complicated, and make all sorts of assumptions. Let's say T2 is simpler, makes fewer assumptions. In this case, T1 is a better theory. That's because, the more complicated a theory is, the more different assumptions it makes, the greater is the risk of being mistaken.

Consider, for example, the following two "God" theories.
Theory one says God is a non-material being external to the physical cosmos, but with personal features like consciousness, and is the all powerful and all knowing creator of everything, an utlimate force that exists by its own nature.

Now, compare this to God theory two: This view says that the physical cosmos is God in the sense that the physical cosmos exists by nature, is an all powerful force in the sense that it can do whatever is possible, is the ultimate creative force, generating the history of the cosmos. But this theory is agnostic about any personal characteristics like consciousness. God might simply be an impersonal force.

Theory two has certain advantages over theory one. It is simpler in that it doesn't assume the existence of some strange being outside the physical cosmos, is more spartan in the assumptions it makes about the nature of God, but it equally well accounts for the idea of there being an ultimate create force that generates everything that unfolds, and thus is equally good as an "ultimate force" to explain the existence of history.

I'm not here saying one should buy either view. This is just for purposes of illustration of the principle of simplicity, also known as Occam's Razor.

t.

yer right. I was responding to LR.

Hi

Oh I don’t know, any old thing really. How about, say, Classical vs Relativistic mechanics or various models of the sub atomic structures; or economic models in the Bank of England. You name it really.

Stuff like “if I shoot this object in this direction and at this speed what will it hit and when?”, or “if a run this object over this bridge, will it get safely to the other side?”.

Setting measures of triviality aside for a moment, I’d query the above assertion even we could arrive at an objective understanding of what “true” really means. If it remained beyond Wittgenstein and Turing, it’s likely to elude us for the foreseeable.

The complexity or risk inherent in T2 may not render T1 better. For instance, the problems that a detached engineer spots in a process may be the very things that reduce its onerous nature to the point of it becoming possible.

Whatever. But if someone should find that they get more sex when they espouse the more difficult theory, even if it’s complexity for its own sake or plain sophistry, then that God theory is more “correct” regardless. Anything is “optimally correct” as long as you’re able to set the goal retrospectively.

Ho ho. Discussing the Razor as a maxim is a thread-in-itself comrade. Perhaps it’s really a question of “what is value?” or worse still, “what is quality?”, that’s what my motorcycle-maintenance enthusiast friends always tell me anyway.

Love

LR

revol? :?

Nah. That would be

ah bien sur mon amie Foucaultien

speaking of ol' baldy, care to cast your eye over the foucault quotes in this thread to see if i'm talking shite?

No. Because you might be linking to the homeopathy thread in an attempt to get me to read it.

if only i wasn't so hungover i might have thought of that

ok: http://libcom.org/forums/thought/rousseau

Yeah, it's all good stuff. Society must be defended is probably quite a good place to start with old baldy, for the marxist types, anyway.

I'd post something on the thread, but I wouldn't want to end up helping Tacks with his homework.

here's a query:

if all the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other(and remember there's billions of them) how come they manage to collide?

and it's not so uncommon either apparently:

http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~patton/openhouse/collisions.html

(could it be the result of multiple "big bangs"? ie the space currently "occupied" by "our" universe" is overlaying spaces with other "universes" which were generated at other times (probably earlier?)

apparently not:

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/galaxies/colliding.html

anyway something for our ancestors (if any) to look forward to!)

I think the easiest way to imagine it is to picture the universe as the surface of a balloon that is gradually being inflated. In this case space would be 2-dimensional (the surface of the balloon) and space-time 3-dimensional, so the fact that things can slide about on the surface of the balloon and move towards each other doesn't affect the fact that things in general are all moving apart (the inflation of the balloon). All you have to do to get a reasonable picture of the expansion of our 4-dimensional space time is to add an extra dimension of space, so three-dimensional space is expanding in 4-dimensional space-time, in which it's equally easy to see how galaxies (and any other kind of objects) can move towards each other in 3-d space whilst 4-d space-time as a whole is expanding.

2-d balloon-surface-dwellers would no doubt find it just as hard to envisage the 3 dimensions of their space-time expansion as we find it to visualize the 4-d expansion of our own universe. One of the weird implications of the accelerating rate of universe expansion is that galaxies will eventually pass over each other's cosmic horizons so that the rate of expansion between them will be faster than the speed of light, meaning no information could ever again reach one from the other. This is only possible because the expansion of the universe is an expansion of space rather than into it.

Weird huh.

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

or maybe how long before the balloon goes pop?

No, I asked you to name it, as I suspected that you were bullshitting

This example doesn't work by the way.
Classical mechanics works in one regime (snooker balls, cars crashing) but doesn't make correct predictions in another regime (e.g. mass increasing as velocity approaches light speed- a measured effect incidentally).

This is what I meant about triviality- you are just picking two theories that apply in different regimes- as such they cannot be compared in a meaningful sense. Similarly, wave-particle duality describes different behaviours in the same regime (e.g. a photon/wave packet of light passing through Young's Slits etc.)- neither theory fully explains the same regime and so both are retained.
These theories do not "predict actual behaviour equally well", they predict different behaviours.

dealt with above

philobabble.

philobabble

LR:

me:

"There are other reasons to prefer one theory over another besides their confirmation by things we observe. Theory T1 might be very complicated, and make all sorts of assumptions. Let's say T2 is simpler, makes fewer assumptions. In this case, T1 is a better theory. That's because, the more complicated a theory is, the more different assumptions it makes, the greater is the risk of being mistaken."

LR:

"The complexity or risk inherent in T2 may not render T1 better. For instance, the problems that a detached engineer spots in a process may be the very things that reduce its onerous nature to the point of it becoming possible."

Very unclear. But if you mean that there is complexity in the OBSERVED DATA, the data of practical test, that is better accounted for by T2 than T1, then it's no longer a question of two theories that are equally good at practical prediction, which was the situation that you initially seemed to be talking about. But your language is so unclear it's often hard to tell what you mean. And that makes it hard to test whether what you say has any value or truth or not.

LR:
"But if someone should find that they get more sex when they espouse the more difficult theory, even if it’s complexity for its own sake or plain sophistry, then that God theory is more “correct” regardless. Anything is “optimally correct” as long as you’re able to set the goal retrospectively."

What do you mean by "correct"? You can't mean: closer to the truth, more revealing of the actual reality. If believing some theory makes someone feel better, that is not necessarily a sign of the theory's accuracy in regard to the actual world.

t.

Hi

Interesting point to begin a personal attack. Want to get something off your chest comrade?

Interesting use of “work” versus “correctly predict” there. The real killer against the position, though, is that relativistic mechanics works fine in both domains and therefore must be “superior”. I’ve actually forgotten what my point was anyway, so good on you.

Different, but actual and at least “equally well” when you factor in computational cost. Relativistic mechanics has a overhead at least large enough to warrant its avoidance when choreographing a moon shot, say.

Sorry about that. Wittgenstein’s failure to develop a general action theory is a total bummer though.

Hey, it works for me, that’s all I’m saying.

Ha ha. I really appreciate your input.

Well spotted. I introduced a new and only vaguely related point for the sake of it.

Love

LR

I also like Iain Bank's notion that there's only one story really, which goes bang....ssss....crunch. Although in the light of the universe's continued expansion that might need to be modified to bang...ssss....pffft.

I didn't say that, I said I don't see the point of talking about things which obviously don't make sense - like I said, and as pingtiao suggested "can a flower love" or something.

I don't see much point exchanging ideas with perspectives that are wrong, like ascribing human characteristics to objects.

Not to the point where the boards cease to be useful, no.

Animals are very different from, say, radiation. For unified field theory models I believe people are mostly looking at string theory. Strings would basically be subatomic quasi-particles. They could not have consciousness or intelligence any more than a quark or a proton could, or most things many times bigger like bricks, tables, telephones, etc.

I know that lw, I never said anything to contradict it.

Well, people are welcome to if they want to. It's not that the parameters are "unfamiliar" to me that I don't think it's worth talking about theoretically conscious subatomic entities, I mean it just doesn't make any sense. Could you explain how subatomic entities could have consciousness?

Okay fine. I notice some people refer to rational discussion as "onanism" or "cockwaving" or some other basically male term, it just seems to perpetuate sexist socialisation.

No, LW, I didn't edit out any post. But I'm not thick, I might not have finished my physics degree but I picked up just enough to know that energy exists. The Unified field theories you mention, posit theoretical forms of energy, like strings, which haven't been demonstrated to exist yet.

no, they just don't make sense. The idea that subatomic particles are conscious is nonsense. Particularly with relation to UFT - why does UFT suggest to you that particles are conscious whereas current ones don't? Why would the maths being conflicted for the strong as opposed to the weak nuclear force, for example, mean that particles weren't conscious, but if they could be reconciled mean that they are?

Explain how an object without a brain is conscious then. Is there a good argument or strong supporting evidence (or any at all?) for your assertion?

Firstly, you said consciousness, not intelligence, and secondly, there's a huge difference between say a dolphin, and a subatomic string.

What are politics based on then if not on anything that has evidence to support it's right? If I can't say that saying bricks are conscious is WRONG (when there's lots of evidence to the contrary), how can I say that racism, or capitalism is WRONG (when there's a lot *less* evidence demonstrating that)?

No I didn't.

:? It's not even a "notion", you're the only person I've ever heard say anything like that. Is anything you assert true until proven otherwise?

I - and luckily the bulk of the scientific community - think it should be the other way around - you have to prove (have strong evidence) something is true in the first place. Do you think you should start giving people untested drugs to treat illness, until someone else "proves" that they're no good, or dangerous??

See above.

I'm happy to leave this now so more people can say what they think about the nature of the universe btw...

I finally made it to the end of Hegel's Phenomenology a month or so ago, so I have now seized the Notion, I have arrived at Absolute Knowing, and I am now at one with the mind of the universe. I just rock so much

No, you told me at least twice that "energy is not a theoretical thing..it has a reality..it exists.."

LW, I didn't make any typo, or say anything wrong at all. I referred to "theoretical things like a form or energy [strings]". Because strings or other things posited by potential UFTs are theoretical. I'm being picky but it annoys me when people tell me I said things which I didn't, especially repeatedly.

Are you joking? Why are you telling me this? As I've said several times, of course I know this.

Nope, it was quite clearly related to a theoretical form of energy, such as that posited by potential UFTs.

No I didn't because I thought it was obvious. It didn't have to be there though for the sentence to make sense, it's not my fault if you misunderstood it.

No I appreciated that, thanks, but after that you still then said I'd said something wrong (made a "typo"), when I hadn't.

I'm happy to admit my mistakes; I didn't make one then though.

:?

I don't know if some animals, like monkeys, are conscious, but I do know that subatomic particles can't be. And like I put in my example above (mentioning strong and weak nuclear forces) which you didn't address, the idea that UFT means there's "universal consciousness" is meaningless, because there's no difference from that pov whether there's a unified theory or not.

Like I said, if it was wrong I'd admit it. But I would never say that energy doesn't exist, because i'm not thick.

Er, no you didn't - you just said that "energy is not a theoretical thing..it has a reality..it exists.."

Covered above.