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That's OK. You asked what people think of it. I gave my opinions. I just have to warn you that many of Gabriel's ideas (at least in the way he published them in those books) are shallow, and give a bad impression about what philosophy really is. If you want an impression of what modern metaphysics is, you can read e.g. D. M. Armstrong, Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. It surely is not such an easy read, and not funny at all, but if you want to know what is metaphysics about, it is a much better read.

No, I did not. But: # I looked at the video. This is cheap metaphysics. # Reading the critiques on the original book (in German), many critics say the same # I read another book of Markus Gabriel ('Ich ist nicht Gehirn' ~ 'I am not brain'). After the reading I, as an academic philosopher, felt ashamed that somebody like him is a philosophy professor. Just attacking straw men and caricatures of view points of others. So I will not read the book. Seems a waste of time to me.

He made it himself, and put it on Wikimedia. No Wikipedia article references it. See here.

Yeah. That's why I found it interesting.

Well, I assume that frontal colliding real life cars are pretty close too perfect inelastic collisions, no? I think the central lesson is that the frontal collision of two cars, each driving 50 km/h, even if they are approaching each other with a velocity of 100 km/h, cause the same damage to one car driving at 50 km/h as when this car collides with a perfect wall.

First time I see the word 'deceleration'... (non-native English speaker). But it makes a simple explanation. If nobody objects... then thanks.

As I said, the relative velocities are clear. But what about the effect? Take the perspective of one single car: will it have the same damage in all three situations?

Hmmm. That is ambiguous, or may be even wrong. Imagine the following 3 situations: 2 cars, each with 50 km/h frontally collide 1 car, 50 km/h, collides with a 'perfect wall' 2 cars, one is standing still, and the other collides with it with a velocity of 50 km/h The relative velocities are clear (forgetting relativity for the moment). But a person in between will experience the same effect in 1 and 2, where the relative velocities differ, but not in 3. But this also means that the single car in situation 2 will have the same effect as one car in situation 1, even if the relative velocity in situation 1 is 100 km/h and in 2 50 km/h. Or am I totally confused?

Feynman's statement about this is legendary:

What mysteries?

How much energy is needed to remove the water from the hygroscopic substance?

Just in addition to what I said about buckyballs, from here: Is there a theoretical or practical limit to the mass that wave phenomena can be measured?

I know this is dangerous in a room full of hard boiled physicists (I am only soft boiled...). According to Quantum Theory (QT) everything physically existing must be described with wave and particle attributes. However, when we look at the corresponding wavelengths, we see that for everyday objects, this wavelength is many magnitudes smaller than the objects themselves, so we do not notice this. However, when the particles get smaller, their corresponding wavelength relatively increases, it can so to speak become even bigger than the particles themselves. This means that with very small particles we cannot neglect their wave character anymore, and physics must take this into account to describe their behaviour. As far as I know, the biggest particles with which the wave character was experimentally confirmed were 'bucky balls'. For the description of atoms, electrons, protons etc, we definitely need QT. Small particles that are bound, e.g. in space or by electrical fields, form standing waves: As you see, standing waves can only exist when they 'exactly fit in their limits'. So there is room for half a wave, for a whole wave, 1 and a half, etc: so you get discrete states: a wave with a wavelength of 4.2197465 'half-waves' just cannot exist: only states of 1, 2, 3, 4 ... etc 'half-waves' are possible. So you get the discrete, quantum character: a system can have state 3, or 4 but not 3.5. The different states correspond to different energies: so in a system like e.g. a hydrogen atom, when the electron that is 'waving' around the nucleus can only get in certain states, and when it jumps from one state to the other, it can only emit its energy (in this case as a photon (=light)) in certain discrete values, being the difference in energy between the two states. From the other side, it can also only absorb light of the exact correct energy. This explains the discrete spectra of the elements. Standing waves of electrons in atoms, called orbitals, are of course completely different then the simple standing waves above: See also here. As the first state is still a wave, the ground energy is never 0. So even the lowest state still has energy. Another aspect of waves is that they are smeared out over space and time. You cannot measure the exact location of a wave, because it simply does not exist. This leads to the uncertainty principle: we cannot measure the frequency and the location of a wave in every detail. This is already true for simple classical wave mechanics, and it is true in QT too. I know this is all simplified, but as a first understandable characterisation, it should do. Of course it is much more complicated. From here on you can read Wikipedia... https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics ...

Yep. Morning traffic jams in the city, because of all the mothers bringing their children to school because the traffic is so dangerous, because there are so many mothers who bring their children to school because...

You would kill that person, just as usual. You and the person are in the same inertial frame, so there is nothing special for you, the bullet, and the person.

The idea of Strange, but a bit simplified: The speed of light is the same for all observers. A rocket flies by, and sends a lightbeam in the direction of its flight. So the astronaut measures a speed of c in the direction of his flight. I see the lightbeam also with a speed of c. If the rocket would be faster than c, I would see the astronaut measuring the light beam behind him, but for the astronaut it would be in front of him. That is logically impossible, so I will see the rocket always with a velocity lower than c.

I have no idea what "Ockham's Razor" being wrong could possibly mean. But much depends on what your understanding of O.R. is. In one of its formulations, I think it is not disputable at all: Maybe one should add 'competing hypotheses that explain the same set of facts'. There are other formulations however, e.g.: Of two explanations, the simplest tends to be the correct one. 'Tends'? Maybe. But surely not always. In that context I like to repeat what ajb already quoted: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler Original formulations of OR are quite ambiguous: - Plurality must never be posited without necessity - entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity - It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer To refute e.g. the multiverse theory beforehand on the basis of these formulations (so many universes!) would be unscientific, e.g. because we need less theoretical entities than in competing cosmologies. So OR does not help here. OR is a good heuristic principle, but it is not a guarantee for selecting the best theory. But it is good to use as methodological principle, but not as an absolute sieve of wrong or correct theories.

Great! Thanks for the link. Fascinating to read that of a total of 65 sun masses, 3 sun masses were transformed to the energy of these gravitational waves.

I understand that. But why do these characteristics inform us also of the distance and/or the masses of the black holes? Oh, sorry, missed your answer. That answers my question. Thanks.

It is written,(e.g. here), that the detected waves originated from a merger of two black holes, originally having masses of 29 and 36 sun-masses 1.3 billion years ago. I can imagine that the form of the signal shows what kind of event it was. But where I have difficulty is understanding how they know this moment and these masses. Would two lighter black holes closer by not give the same signal? If one compares this with all the difficulties one has to gauge the cosmic distance ladder, it is quite astonishing. Can somebody explain how they know this?

Maybe this helps a little? What Gives Gold that Mellow Glow? Color of gold and caesium

Maybe Einstein was inspired by Schopenhauer, but I would say, not greatly inspired, especially if you look at his professional career. There he refers to Kant, Hume, Mach and Poincaré. But Schopenhauer's main work was in those days a 'salon book'. Every (would-be) intellectual had 'The World as Will and Representation' on his bookshelves: Nietzsche was influenced by it, Freud, and even Wittgenstein. So a big chance that Einstein also read it. But in the links provided by Strange here above, I only see him referring to Schopenhauer's idea of free will: that we might be able to do what we want, but are not able to want what we want'. Einstein therefore concluded that we have no free will. Possibly he aesthetically liked it, as it fits to the idea of the spacetime-continuum: that everything in some sense is already there.

I Think this is a good place to start: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/problems/mind_body/

No.

No: Bold by me.