exchemist

OK, you refer to two sets of recent "findings" here, for which you have not provided details. I presume you mean findings of science, but perhaps you could confirm. One, you think, suggests a physicalist interpretation of the world may be inadequate, and the other you think suggests mind is an entity, rather than an activity of the brain. I'm intrigued by this. Perhaps if you can give a reference or a short description it would help me understand what you have in mind. Can you do that?

Well done indeed for digging this out. So it's possible it is after all a metamorphosed igneous rock then! That might more easily explain the flow-like banding, I suppose. (It seems to be called metabasite rather than metabasalt, though). I'm still intrigued by the light grey colour and its comparative softness/solubility, as suggested by the smooth way it has been eroded by sea, compared to the surrounding rocks on the beach which are darker and rougher. Perhaps the metamorphosis involved alteration by water as well as heat. I suspect we've got as far as we can now without a geologist familiar with the area.

Since science is the study of nature, I cannot envisage how it can ever "bring us beyond" space, time, energy and matter, as I can't see how there could be any observations of nature that are "beyond" such things. Even the mathematics we use to model mature is expressed in terms of properties of matter and radiation, as functions of space and time. My personal view of "mind" - and it is only a personal view - is that most people are conditioned by centuries of Cartesian dualism into making a category error: that of thinking that the mind is an entity. It seems to me, by analogy with how computers work, that the mind is not an entity but an activity: an activity of the brain.

OK but be a bit careful here. While science can certainly be done without claiming that we live in a materialist-mechanical world, anyone who does science must always apply the principle of methodological naturalism to any scientific work. Claiming supernatural intervention can never be part of a scientific explanation or description of nature. Scientists may well hold beliefs beyond simple physicalism, but they cannot introduce non-natural ideas into science. Such ideas simply do not belong there.

Yes, eroded by the waves of the Firth of Clyde. It's below the high tide mark, as indicated by the limpets.

Yup that's the place all right. Unfortunately neither reference sheds much light on the rocks on the beach at Cove. Cove is further round the coast to the west from the main subject of the first reference, which is chiefly about a beach walk in the area around Portkil, which is just - by a few hundred metres - on the SE side of the Highland Boundary Fault and thus has geology dominated by Old Red Sandstone. (In fact the map provided of the peninsula shows quite clearly the diagonal valley that marks the fault.) I was intrigued to see the spelling of some names by this writer. He refers to the Gare Loch as Gairloch, which how is a village far to the north, north of Skye, is spelt. Also he refers to Gallow Hill, on the SE side of the fault, as Gala Law Hill. Although he and his bevy of charming girls (grand daughters?) evidently walked round as far as Coulport in Loch Long (which is where you have to stop, at the Dr. No. style prohibited area where the UK's nuclear missile warheads are stored!), and therefore must have passed the location where I took my photo, he does not comment on the geology of the rocks in any detail. But there is one great photo in the reference, which seems to show the actual fault boundary: a crack with sandstone to the left and schist or gneiss on the right. So that must have been taken on the eastern side of the peninsula - a place I have never walked.

Hmm. I'm now a little unclear as to where you are going with your arguments. We've agreed that perfect objectivity in science is not possible in practice. I argue that, imperfect though objectivity in science may well be, it has worked fairly well up to now (i.e. has given us successful predictive models of nature). Please note I do not argue that there is no bad science. There is plenty: more today than ever before in fact, due to the huge numbers of working researchers we have nowadays and the way they are pressured to publish all the time. There is even fraud (made up data and so forth). However this is an issue of quality control, rather than insufficient objectivity. But in this last post of yours you seem to be going in yet another direction: questioning a claim that "we live in a materialist-mechanistic world". This is a metaphysical position that some (many) people take, but is not required by science. I would draw your attention to the distinction between the methodological naturalism of science with physicalism, which is a worldview, i.e.metaphysical, and as such not required by science. Science is the study of nature. Plenty of scientific people think there is more to the world (in the sense of human experience) than nature.

😴ZZzzzzz........... This is too silly for me. I'm out.

What if the sky were made of concrete?

What a silly question. Do you have infinite time at your disposal?

Ah, but you are shifting your ground now. Your opening post was entirely about the philosophical impossibility of achieving total, complete, objectivity. You and I agree on that, evidently. But now you introduce the concept of "control", which I did not mention. All I said was that the evidence is that the degree of objectivity science has achieved has historically been good enough for science to have been enormously successful at accounting for what we observe in nature. (The quote @CharonY provides makes the same point.) But now you say I think objectivity in science "is (i.e. in the present day) under control", whereas you doubt that it is. This seems to be a quite different question, about the efficacy of the means we use today for checking, controlling bias and weeding out bad science. We can move on to discuss that if you like but it has nothing to do with philosophy.

As @MigL says, the idea of a multiverse is far from being "mainstream science". In fact it is not even science at all, but a highly questionable metaphysical idea, as it is completely untestable, having no observational consequences. I must admit I have never understood the Fermi Paradox. As Douglas Adams's character Slartibartfast observes, "In space travel, all the numbers are awful". Therefore if Einstein was right, interstellar travel is inevitably both very costly and utterly pointless. So why would intelligent aliens attempt it? One might even cite the Fermi Paradox as evidence that relativity is very likely correct!

The trouble with these philosophical debates is that they are so often couched in terms of logical absolutes, e.g. “true” vs. “false”, rather than the pragmatic shades of grey that all of us actually deal with in real life, e.g. “mostly true”, “probably false”, and so on. Sure, no human observation can be stated to be completely , 100%, objective, since for a start we apprehend the world as human beings and cannot do otherwise. Cultural and other assumptions can also on occasion colour the way raw data is construed. But the goal of reproducible scientific observation is to eliminate bias as far as possible and this remains a valid objective, even if it cannot be definitively attained. The scrutiny of research for bias is a process that takes up a fair amount of time in the practice of science. Good science is as objective as we can make it, and over the years that has been good enough. We know that because of the tremendous success of modern science since it took shape after the Renaissance.

What makes you "feel by reading" that Einstein had a bigger role in WW2 than history acknowledges? What have you read that gives you this idea?

I do not believe forums in general have changed their policy since 2022. However it is possible that they are started to get tired of you, specifically. You seem to post obsessively on one topic only, namely your perception of spying and persecution by Iranian authorities, regardless of the interests and purpose of the forum you post on. For example you are posted here, on a science forum, about stuff that has no science content, and apparently on a Canadian law forum about stuff that has nothing to do with Canadian law. Furthermore there are signs you may be mentally unbalanced, for instance this delusional nonsense you posted recently about "spy dust". The most likely explanation, therefore, for your perception of a change in policy on these forums is that they have come to recognise you and increasingly either ignore you or ban you. In my opinion you may be heading for the same fate here, though the decision is not up to me. P.S. I see that, today, you have decided to open yet another rambling thread on the subject of your obsession. At some point, people are going to get very tired of this.

This does not make sense. Your rocket is analogous to the muons. The clock in the rocket will only show time dilation to observers on the ground, not to those aboard the rocket. Observers on the rocket will see clocks ticking at the normal rate. So it makes no sense to say time aboard the rocket is "really" dilated. There is no greater "reality" for observers on the ground than for observers aboard the rocket. (Observers on the rocket will however see a shortening of the distance it has to travel, relative to objects at rest with respect to the Earth, just as with the muons.) I think you need to abandon this idea of one perspective being more "real" than another. It seems to me to be a fatal error to think in this way.

In the muon case there is no "real change". It is just a matter of different perspectives on the same physics. When you say "for us, and "in our world", the muons appear time-dilated, you are acknowledging that this is what an observer on the Earth will measure. An observer travelling with the muons would experience time passing at the normal rate. However he would see a shorter distance to travel to reach the ground, so more muons would survive. In other words the same result. Neither perspective is more "real" than the other. But they give the same answer.

No they are not "real changes", they are just views from different perspectives. In the muon case, the earth-based observer sees an extension of the half-life of the muons, but the muons experience a shortening of the distance they have to travel to reach the ground. Both lead to the same outcome: more muons survive than would be expected from muons not in motion relative to the Earth. That is the whole point of the muon example. It nicely shows how time dilation and length contraction are complementary, leading to consistent results without any physical change being implied.

Yes you may be right, now that I have read more about the description of Dunoon phyllite and seen pictures. The grey-blue, smoothly eroded rock in the picture occurs in places along the beach, but most of the rocks are much rougher, darker in colour and have a slatey cleavage. From its undulating smoothness, the rock in the picture appears to be eroded more readily, as if the waves have partially dissolved it. I’d love to know what it is. But I would probably need to speak to a geologist with local knowledge.

I reiterate: none of Einstein’s theories were “weaponised” to make a bomb. Nothing in them tells you anything about how to split the atom. What do you mean by saying Einstein “probably played a bigger part in WWII than history portrayed”? The facts of Einstein’s life are well known. There is no reason to think the accepted history is wrong. He did not get involved in “helping the Allies”, other than to allow his name to be put to the Szilard letter, suggesting the USA should start its own bomb project. The advice in that letter - which actually did not come from his own ideas - was his sole involvement. And , as it turned out, atomic weapons played no part in the defeat of Germany.

On the beach at Cove, Argyll, on the Rosneath peninsula, opposite the Knockderry House Hotel where I was staying. It’s some sort of metamorphic rock, heavily folded and then sculpted into smooth wavy shapes by the sea. Could be a Dunoon phyllite or something, I suppose, but I’m not a geologist so I’m guessing. It’s about 2km back from the Highland boundary fault, on the Highland side. There are a few limpets for scale. It has a rather pleasing blue-grey colour, I find, shading greenish in the foreground. In fact I was thinking I might blow it up as a print and frame it to hang on the wall as a piece of soothing abstract art. I used to play on these beaches as a small boy, so rocks like this bring back memories for me as well.

Observed on my recent trip to Scotland:

No it is the lack of any understanding of Einstein's work and life that does the damage, to my mind. It's full of of nonsense such as "exciting" matter to the speed of light (impossible and irrelevant), the notion that E=mc² is some sort of key to making an atom bomb (which it isn't) and so on. Einstein never worked on nuclear fission and his contributions to physics didn't enable anyone to build one. He had nothing to do with Germany's failure to produce an atom bomb. You may possibly be confusing him with Heisenberg, who did work on the German bomb project. Einstein's sole intervention regarding the atom bomb was to sign the letter to President Roosevelt warning of Germany's capacity to build a bomb. The letter was not drafted by Einstein but by Hungarian physicists: Leo Szilard, in conjunction with Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner. In fact they had to explain to Einstein that it was possible to make a fission bomb, as it had never occurred to him. They then persuaded Einstein to sign the letter, as they rightly believed that would ensure the President would read it, their previous attempts to warn the US government having been ignored. So what your story needs, first of all, is a bit of basic research into what Einstein did and the actual history of it. And, if you don't understand the science, don't make up preposterous stuff about phasing effects and atoms lining up. Steer clear of technical details: they add nothing to the storyline in any case and just make the story look silly.

Interesting article, thanks for posting. What slightly surprised me about it was the lack of any reference to the Ediacaran biota. I was expecting them to have suggested that some of those enigmatic fossils may have been the forerunners of the first ctenophores. I realise we do not really know yet whether any of these were animals, rather than plants or fungi, but I find myself wondering whether these researchers might be in a position to comment on whether the Ediacaran biota could fit into their scheme, or whether perhaps they can say that they do not, i.e. they are another branch entirely.

This is awful. I’m not surprised the instructor did not think much of it. It mangles Einstein’s science and the history of his life out of all recognition.