Faster than light Neutrino.
I'm all for reconciling General Relativity with QED, and I find so much of Weird Science absolutely riveting. It's fascinating to read various recounts concerning conformation of observations to various models (String, Super String, Mother String, Quantum Loop Gravity, etc.). Equally as fascinating is how man forgets, over and over, his own delimited circumstance akin to a sociological Godel's Theorem, whereby the axiom of existence bars probing much about why there is existence in any case.
Perhaps all of what we call "information" is really only conformation. Perhaps, as in enfolded dimensions or Bohm's implicate order or holographic theories of being (the latter of which works quite well with the fractal maths and applications to the natural sciences), it's all quite Zen after all...it is there and it is not there.
Perhaps all of what we call "information" is really only conformation. Perhaps, as in enfolded dimensions or Bohm's implicate order or holographic theories of being (the latter of which works quite well with the fractal maths and applications to the natural sciences), it's all quite Zen after all...it is there and it is not there.
I’d just like to add a fundamental point of understanding, which too often is not held with its due awe by particle and theoretical physicists alike. It arises when you fully appreciate what the discovery of the photoelectric effect did for our comprehension of matter and movement in toto, which in turn leads us to all the weird and wild results hence in pursuit of reconciling relativity physics with quantum physics.
Here’s the simple beauty of it: Einstein’s Special Relativity (SR) says that time ceases to pass at the speed of light (SOL). This means that for photons, literally there is no time. SR also proposes that a photon can traverse the entire universe (or set of universes, if that’s your bent, analogous to embedded orders of infinity, saying something like the infinity of real numbers contains the infinity of integers and all that, by which it’s no large stretch of the interpolative mathematical mindset applied to the natural world to conclude there are many worlds, etc.) while that same get-about photon maintains its original energy state. This means that for photons, literally there is no space. And so voila, it’s no big mind-blower to understand, then, how in so many cases, electrons absorb photons without apparent change to the electrons.
Keeping these fundamental points in mind, we see that light is more fundamental than spacetime, mass, spin, and matter. (Quantum Mechanics states that photons possess neither mass nor charge.) Furthermore, even though the notions of SOL and Planck time, etc. are all quite useful for manipulating equations and smashing particles together, understanding these points quickly makes you see how terms like “SOL” are actually oxymoronic.
But placing due awe upon the implications of the photoelectric effect doesn’t mean superimposing some kind of wacked belief system onto it. One of my physics professors was/is a raving Tipler fan and spent a week droning on about references to “Let there be light” preceding “creation” in various religious texts. Thus began my long journey of being suspicious of authority.
And so I decided to take this C++ programming class mainly to keep myself humble enough to avoid the pitfalls of the human tendency to assert beliefs as knowledge. Though, epistemologically speaking, human beings are incapable of knowledge proper and can only approach sufficient levels of understanding, as the former requires a point of infinite perspective and infinite inclusion, and we are, alas, finitely bound by time and space in what we “know” here on Earth. Uh, unless, of course, we are really one with everything…
Here’s the simple beauty of it: Einstein’s Special Relativity (SR) says that time ceases to pass at the speed of light (SOL). This means that for photons, literally there is no time. SR also proposes that a photon can traverse the entire universe (or set of universes, if that’s your bent, analogous to embedded orders of infinity, saying something like the infinity of real numbers contains the infinity of integers and all that, by which it’s no large stretch of the interpolative mathematical mindset applied to the natural world to conclude there are many worlds, etc.) while that same get-about photon maintains its original energy state. This means that for photons, literally there is no space. And so voila, it’s no big mind-blower to understand, then, how in so many cases, electrons absorb photons without apparent change to the electrons.
Keeping these fundamental points in mind, we see that light is more fundamental than spacetime, mass, spin, and matter. (Quantum Mechanics states that photons possess neither mass nor charge.) Furthermore, even though the notions of SOL and Planck time, etc. are all quite useful for manipulating equations and smashing particles together, understanding these points quickly makes you see how terms like “SOL” are actually oxymoronic.
But placing due awe upon the implications of the photoelectric effect doesn’t mean superimposing some kind of wacked belief system onto it. One of my physics professors was/is a raving Tipler fan and spent a week droning on about references to “Let there be light” preceding “creation” in various religious texts. Thus began my long journey of being suspicious of authority.
And so I decided to take this C++ programming class mainly to keep myself humble enough to avoid the pitfalls of the human tendency to assert beliefs as knowledge. Though, epistemologically speaking, human beings are incapable of knowledge proper and can only approach sufficient levels of understanding, as the former requires a point of infinite perspective and infinite inclusion, and we are, alas, finitely bound by time and space in what we “know” here on Earth. Uh, unless, of course, we are really one with everything…
I'm encountering a bit of a paradox. velcro writes at the same time like he's received some form of formal physics training, and like he's absorbed it with all the rigorousness of a postmodernist pseudo-intellectual. I don't know what to make of this.
[EDIT]
Just to clarify, I mean no offense. I just find it weird that someone with such education could convey so little in so much text. You seem to understand what you're talking about, while at the same time treating the natural language descriptions of the concepts in ways they were not meant to treated, and from that making... odd deductions.
It's just puzzling. It's perfectly possible that I just don't know enough physics to understand what you're talking about, but I have read postmodernist drivel before, and it resembles what you wrote.
[/EDIT]
Not really. Unless you're limiting yourself to the physical world. Otherwise there are many things that can be known.
[EDIT]
Just to clarify, I mean no offense. I just find it weird that someone with such education could convey so little in so much text. You seem to understand what you're talking about, while at the same time treating the natural language descriptions of the concepts in ways they were not meant to treated, and from that making... odd deductions.
It's just puzzling. It's perfectly possible that I just don't know enough physics to understand what you're talking about, but I have read postmodernist drivel before, and it resembles what you wrote.
[/EDIT]
| epistemologically speaking, human beings are incapable of knowledge proper |
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There's two things that bug me:
1) why is SOL greatest (especially since it seems it's been exceeded)
2) why are photons affected by gravity
I still don't understand gravity tbh. It's like a bunch-up effect for matter+light?
As a reaction to antimatter (and maybe anti-light if such a thing even exists)?
@ helios @ chris: Let's keep this thread physical. ♫ ♪
1) why is SOL greatest (especially since it seems it's been exceeded)
2) why are photons affected by gravity
I still don't understand gravity tbh. It's like a bunch-up effect for matter+light?
As a reaction to antimatter (and maybe anti-light if such a thing even exists)?
@ helios @ chris: Let's keep this thread physical. ♫ ♪
| 2) why are photons affected by gravity |
Gravity in general is not well understood. Why is it so weak? What is it? Just a bend in space-time or is there a particular component? Are gravitons real?
| helios (9239) Nov 20, 2011 at 4:40pm I'm encountering a bit of a paradox. velcro writes at the same time like he's received some form of formal physics training, and like he's absorbed it with all the rigorousness of a postmodernist pseudo-intellectual. I don't know what to make of this. [EDIT] Just to clarify, I mean no offense. I just find it weird that someone with such education could convey so little in so much text. You seem to understand what you're talking about, while at the same time treating the natural language descriptions of the concepts in ways they were not meant to treated, and from that making... odd deductions. It's just puzzling. It's perfectly possible that I just don't know enough physics to understand what you're talking about, but I have read postmodernist drivel before, and it resembles what you wrote. [/EDIT] epistemologically speaking, human beings are incapable of knowledge proper Not really. Unless you're limiting yourself to the physical world. Otherwise there are many things that can be known. |
I wrote my response to your pre-edited response, which was while I figured you meant offense. Also I was watching my disappointing zombie survivalist show at the same time as writing my response and working on coding three different programs. So, take no offense to my original response below:
I’m amused by your attempt to label (mislabel) my very straightforward rendering of basic facts as post-modern intellectualism, even though it’s a rendering arrived at by many adept scholars in the fields. Or perhaps your cheery approach more concerns my assertion that human beings are incapable of knowledge proper?
First, agreement upon a rigorous definition of terms is in order. As I stated, I am using the epistemological definition of knowledge, which I doubt I have to explain to you, much less rigorously. Knowledge != fact(s).
Second, I only offered my thoughts, as solicited by the creator of this thread. I wasn’t planning on a forensic dissection of arguments in this forum. But I can skate right on over there. Just because I’m a moron about computer programming doesn’t mean I’m a wholesale imbecile.
When you say you know something, you are saying literally there is a thing to be known and that you know it presently. Velcro hypes the obvious, you might be thinking. But tense is all important to the epistemological definition of knowledge. If you cannot know something in the present, then you cannot seriously believe that you have known the identically equal thing in the past via reflection and/or rumination upon the heretofore unknown.
There are ample reliable and valid studies demonstrating the limits of human sensation, perception, volition, memory, and cognition. Those limits include the fact that once you become aware of something on the cognitive level (an incomplete and informal but workable description of “knowledge”, so I don’t dilute the gist with too much verbiage), that event, be it internal or external to your own skin, is at least milliseconds in the past and gone. In other words, no human being registers information at the time the exact same information exists. In other words, at every juncture that you “know” something, it no longer exists in the exact same state and arrangement as you believe you “know” it. At best you can claim to have known a copy of a thing, a copy invariably altered by passing its way through that magnificent filter organ called your brain. In fact, formulating your conception as “knower” in order to split the field into knower and known is a direct hindrance to approaching sufficient understanding.
I don’t argue that it’s a pragmatic method constantly to be aware that you don’t really know anything. We operate in a utilitarian “as if” world, by and large. I am only arguing that ultimately, wherever you claim to know something, I can present a valid argument for why you don’t know something. Of course, part of that is due to the advantage I would have as a deconstructor. To construct an airtight argument for something is exceedingly more difficult than arguing against something. I liken it to the house of brick and mortar analogy, whereby you can spend hours designing and building your house (arguing for something), but all I have to do is find a tiny crack or unsettled sliver in the mortar or one brick out of alignment, and then I have the advantage of an automatic inroad into tearing down the house (arguing against something). So, I’m not trying to trick you into the sucker’s bet. I’m merciful that way.
Just curious…are you also aware that presupposed randomness in this world is also a useful fiction? A most accurate definition of a random event is that it is an event that has or had an equal probability of happening anywhere at any given time, regardless of all other preceding or surrounding or tangential events or outcomes. (That’s what would make randomness so unpredictable.)
The computer science guru who maintains the REG (random event generator) programs at my school, who’s a post-doctoral genius with the advantage in many arenas by way of sheer years on the planet and working on all sorts of stuff way over my head (like quantum computing with neural networks and who basically runs the grant game for several different departments), succeeded in teaching me a lot about why the REG craft is a faux craft in ultimatum. He plays mean strategy grid games (e.g. chess and Go) and he basically illustrated for me how “randomness” is really only about escaping detection of triangulation, of which such triangulation is rudimentary to writing any REG program.
Debate on, Dude? Or shall I expect another cheery retort from you?
The topic is: neutrinos are faster than light. Second test had same results as first. [/minimod]
@ velcro: Not all people are impressed or intimidated by walls of text.
The ability to clearly and briefly convey your thoughts can be more rewarding.
@ velcro: Not all people are impressed or intimidated by walls of text.
The ability to clearly and briefly convey your thoughts can be more rewarding.
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| Or perhaps your cheery approach more concerns my assertion that human beings are incapable of knowledge proper? |
| [A long diatribe dealing with perception and so on.] |
What I meant should be clear now, and I don't need to give examples of knowable things, right?
| Just curious…are you also aware that presupposed randomness in this world is also a useful fiction? A most accurate definition of a random event is that it is an event that has or had an equal probability of happening anywhere at any given time, regardless of all other preceding or surrounding or tangential events or outcomes. |
I see no randomness. Just really complex, but in principle tractable (not necessarily in the algorithmic sense), chaos.
Well, evidently my pattern matching heuristic made a mistake (it's a heuristic after all, not a crystal ball), so why don't we pretend it just never happened?
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@Catfish
No, I get paid by the number of exasperated responses elicited by anyone with the nickname “Catfish”. Failing that, I get paid by the verboseatron, which is a powerful sub-phonetic particle produced by inducing a first-semester C++ student into a coding trance, whereby he is unable to learn rudimentary syntax.
Too bad you’re not impressed by walls of text. I was going to recommend to you this great new EULA I’m reading for the third time. The TOA section is particularly riveting.
@helios
Contrary to what you might have inferred, I’m not one who believes in the primacy of matter (or stuff like cognition is only an epiphenomenon of physical processes, etc.). However, I agree it’s best to forget this line of discourse, as to talk about what you and I know would rain down the world of Platonic forms, and how Western society is an organism that suppresses subjective forms of knowing in its organelles (aka people) toward the goal of expedient consumption, and how subjectively knowing is the only form of knowledge proper (though all subjectivity doesn’t qualify as knowledge proper, of course). Then the topics of direct apprehension versus comprehension would enter, followed by the arguments for revelatory forms of knowing, at which point I might write a tome and overload some neural circuits.
But ugh…Descartes? Might as well invoke Heraclitus. At least Hegel recognized how the yin and the yang come together to a higher hole in the middle, but those dualistic materialists worshipped one-way linear time. (Descartes was a deluded dualistic materialist, after all, even for all his talk about the ethereal mind.)
Better wrap now, before the neutrino nazi strikes again and puts me into a higher tax bracket for the year. You know I don’t want to be knocked out of the 99% club and miss out on all the fun with my buds at Tent City. Nothing like a good outbreak of lice to get you to scratching your head and thinking of stuff you never knew before. Well, that and the acid helps a lot, too. [Disclaimer: That was a joke, and I do not endorse trespassing, impeding public transportation, public intoxication, or lice.]
No, I get paid by the number of exasperated responses elicited by anyone with the nickname “Catfish”. Failing that, I get paid by the verboseatron, which is a powerful sub-phonetic particle produced by inducing a first-semester C++ student into a coding trance, whereby he is unable to learn rudimentary syntax.
Too bad you’re not impressed by walls of text. I was going to recommend to you this great new EULA I’m reading for the third time. The TOA section is particularly riveting.
@helios
Contrary to what you might have inferred, I’m not one who believes in the primacy of matter (or stuff like cognition is only an epiphenomenon of physical processes, etc.). However, I agree it’s best to forget this line of discourse, as to talk about what you and I know would rain down the world of Platonic forms, and how Western society is an organism that suppresses subjective forms of knowing in its organelles (aka people) toward the goal of expedient consumption, and how subjectively knowing is the only form of knowledge proper (though all subjectivity doesn’t qualify as knowledge proper, of course). Then the topics of direct apprehension versus comprehension would enter, followed by the arguments for revelatory forms of knowing, at which point I might write a tome and overload some neural circuits.
But ugh…Descartes? Might as well invoke Heraclitus. At least Hegel recognized how the yin and the yang come together to a higher hole in the middle, but those dualistic materialists worshipped one-way linear time. (Descartes was a deluded dualistic materialist, after all, even for all his talk about the ethereal mind.)
Better wrap now, before the neutrino nazi strikes again and puts me into a higher tax bracket for the year. You know I don’t want to be knocked out of the 99% club and miss out on all the fun with my buds at Tent City. Nothing like a good outbreak of lice to get you to scratching your head and thinking of stuff you never knew before. Well, that and the acid helps a lot, too. [Disclaimer: That was a joke, and I do not endorse trespassing, impeding public transportation, public intoxication, or lice.]
| Contrary to what you might have inferred, I’m not one who believes in the primacy of matter (or stuff like cognition is only an epiphenomenon of physical processes, etc.). |
| But ugh…Descartes? Might as well invoke Heraclitus. At least Hegel recognized how the yin and the yang come together to a higher hole in the middle, but those dualistic materialists worshipped one-way linear time. (Descartes was a deluded dualistic materialist, after all, even for all his talk about the ethereal mind.) |
@helios
A lot of people, maybe the majority of people in Western culture, rationalize their being with those dualistic and schismatic beliefs. Though I agree it does seem silly.
But what real knowledge is conferred upon the thinker of, “I think; therefore I am?” He’s what? What does one know when he knows, “I am”? Wouldn’t genuine knowledge require that he knows what he is, some characteristic of what he is? Is he, for instance, in vivo or in machina?
Think about it… And with all your thinking that leads you to knowing that you are, it doesn’t mean knowing anything, really…even that you are real since, of course, just by you thinking them doesn’t guarantee that your thoughts are even your own. What a bummer.
You might have read this paper and arguments like it before, but I’ll cite it for you anyway. It’s interesting to understand that we could be living in a computer simulation. It’s also interesting that whatever is the case, we could not prove that we weren’t objects of code, either (and I don’t only mean on the grounds of, yawn, you can’t prove a negative and all that). I don’t get so deep into the stuff as some people do, since I’m cool with my blissful idiot parts.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
A lot of people, maybe the majority of people in Western culture, rationalize their being with those dualistic and schismatic beliefs. Though I agree it does seem silly.
But what real knowledge is conferred upon the thinker of, “I think; therefore I am?” He’s what? What does one know when he knows, “I am”? Wouldn’t genuine knowledge require that he knows what he is, some characteristic of what he is? Is he, for instance, in vivo or in machina?
Think about it… And with all your thinking that leads you to knowing that you are, it doesn’t mean knowing anything, really…even that you are real since, of course, just by you thinking them doesn’t guarantee that your thoughts are even your own. What a bummer.
You might have read this paper and arguments like it before, but I’ll cite it for you anyway. It’s interesting to understand that we could be living in a computer simulation. It’s also interesting that whatever is the case, we could not prove that we weren’t objects of code, either (and I don’t only mean on the grounds of, yawn, you can’t prove a negative and all that). I don’t get so deep into the stuff as some people do, since I’m cool with my blissful idiot parts.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
| Wouldn’t genuine knowledge require that he knows what he is, some characteristic of what he is? |
| Is he, for instance, in vivo or in machina? |
| And with all your thinking that leads you to knowing that you are, it doesn’t mean knowing anything, really…even that you are real since, of course, just by you thinking them doesn’t guarantee that your thoughts are even your own. |
On the other hand, an observer complex enough to have state and processes does exist to a meaningful degree. With respect to its supposed thoughts, it would be at the same level as an animal lacking self-awareness (say, a cat) with respect to the world.
I'm okay with being a cat.
I can't get over the assumption that hypercomputation (specifically the kind that allows running infinite instructions in finite time) is logically possible to take the simulation argument seriously.
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anyone claiming cats are not self-aware has never owned a cat.
... or was it that the cat is the actual owner?
[Edit:] One of my favorite hitchhiker's quotes:
-Douglas Adams
... or was it that the cat is the actual owner?
[Edit:] One of my favorite hitchhiker's quotes:
| For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons |
-Douglas Adams
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I don't know what definition of "self-awareness" you're going by, but the consensus is that most animals are not self-aware, as tested with the mirror test. IIRC, only dolphins and some primates pass it.
I won't deny that cats have a sort of personality, but from that to self-awareness there's a stretch.
I won't deny that cats have a sort of personality, but from that to self-awareness there's a stretch.
Hi people,
Have a quick look here :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/21/faster-than-light-neutrinos-doubts
Have a quick look here :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/21/faster-than-light-neutrinos-doubts
I thought the matter had been resolved months ago?
Last I heard, the "anomaly" was explained by relativity itself; something about measuring from different perspectives (i.e. from Earth, where measurement locations are "fixed", versus from Space, which sees the measurement locations as "moving".), thus accounting for the "less than it should be" measurement.
Last I heard, the "anomaly" was explained by relativity itself; something about measuring from different perspectives (i.e. from Earth, where measurement locations are "fixed", versus from Space, which sees the measurement locations as "moving".), thus accounting for the "less than it should be" measurement.