joigus

Are you familiar with the words "not even wrong"?

Or maybe he just spent too many hours in the company of ovine mammals.

Do you know I have this same gut feeling? I would love to discuss this point, whenever you have the time. +1 I'm currently involved in a discussion with a mathematician friend of mine who says it doesn't. I, on the contrary, always have the feeling that in mathematics there's always a sequence of operations, if nothing else, which foreshadows time. Doesn't it? He says no, and I'm not convinced. Edit: That not to mention the concept of probability on a purely mathematical basis, which I think is heavily impregnated with a notion of time by construction.

Fine point, very precise and illuminating. +1 If you define relations between variables (let's call them x, y) as some kind of implicit constraint, \[f\left(x,y\right)=0\] The natural (simplest, obvious, directly related to the pre-defined terms) parameter to describe the sequence of changing is the (class of) proper length parameter(s) given by, \[ds^{2}=dx^{2}+dy^{2}\] There's your time. Defined as a clear-cut class of parametrizations, modulo (except for) its sign. The only sticking point about time is its orientation (the arrow of time). That remaining bit of information cannot be given by implicit relations between the world variables.

Thank you. +1 This connects with your observation on @studiot's post about some standards for good OP's: Please, keep working on it. I'm very interested in coming up with good standards for what aspects of philosophy scientists and engineers (whether they be experimentalists, theorists or computation-driven) would be well advised to be aware of. I know only too well that certain philosophies are too disconnected, too willing to disregard inductive principles, too vague, to be considered of interest for scientifically-minded people. Nothing to be sorry about. Fuzzy thinking has some value. You could even say that any rigorous thinking must start with fuzzy notions. I spent 10+ years living in a small village and became friends with a shepherd. Sometimes we'd start a casual conversation and he'd say, "why are we here?", "what's the meaning of life?" LOL I may be taking the whole for the part, but I think this guy is a representative example that illustrates your point pretty well. I think you're dead right. Your reputation is well deserved. Just one caveat: Some pretty bold, but pretty good, ideas have been trashed and then re-considered. When you think about it, Darwin's dangerous idea () was trashed ad nauseam in its day by a considerable number of people in academia. Who's to say that a new idea is to be trashed? Sorry for the rhetorical question.

Thank you all for very good points. Let me clarify further. The options could be re-phrased as, 0. Philosophy is never worth undertaking or learning about 1. Philosophy is always worth undertaking or learning about 3. Philosophy is worth undertaking or learning about only after a quality criterion has caught your attention in one of its many theories I didn't mean these categories to have Boolean closure, so to speak, but to be demographically/socially/statistically significant. If you think I've left something out that is significant, please tell me. Yes. Although a quantum Boolean Hamlet would have considered "to be and not to be" as a possibility. Or maybe "neither to be nor not to be".

This is actually not very difficult to conceive in principle within the quantum formalism. Quite more difficult is to give a precise and detailed answer. As Eise has told you, a quantum particle, in some sense, sniffs around all of space time. When you see it in a mathematical formula printed on a paper, you see very clearly it doesn't look like the whim of a god. It does look like a precise mathematical pattern of evolution. Now, this evolution, in a quantum theory that includes special relativity, is very puzzling, among other things, in that it includes modes of propagation that are superluminal, subluminal, every which way. Those are called "virtual amplitudes", and they appear in the calculations, although they cannot be measured. They are called "off-shell". The basic reason for this is actually a peculiarity of relativistic kinematics. A real photon satisfies a condition or reality that has the form, \[k^{2}=0\] k is called 4-momentum, and codifies the direction in space-time in which the photon is moving. It's a combination of 4 numbers, the time component and the 3 spacial components: \[k^{2}=\left(k^{t}\right)^{2}-\left(k^{x}\right)^{2}-\left(k^{y}\right)^{2}-\left(k^{z}\right)^{2}\] So it could be negative, positive, or zero in general. Real photons are null. For real photons this quantity must be zero. But you can always decompose this "real" state as made up by the real components plus many other virtual ones, \[k^{2}=\left(k+p\right)^{2}\] These virtual ones have momentum ("direction") p, which is not physical, and in particular could be superluminal or subluminal: \[p^{2}>0\] \[p^{2}<0\] as long as they give you a real photon: \[0=k^{2}+p^{2}+2kp\] I haven't shown you the full-fledged argument in quantum field theory, which goes with amplitudes and so-called Dyson time-ordered formula, but a simplified version of it. It is by no means a foolproof explanation. But here's my question for you: Can you guarantee that the positions where the particle can or cannot land (the not-so-well-known partial reflection paradox is another interesting example) are not set in advance by all the components of the quantum state, including the virtual ones, that make up the Feynman propagation formula?

Neither term would be precise in defining its properties. Dark matter is actually even weirder than transparent. Ordinary matter goes right through. It's not just transparent. Ghostly is more like it. Edit: But you're right that "transparent" is more suggestive of what it is. There's a tradition in the wording of physics. It's more like book-keeping than concept-suggesting.

Very nice. Thank you. +1

You're going a bit blurry here, in spite of my efforts to be concrete. Does philosophy make you uncomfortable? I sympathize (if not necessarily agree), but I can't do what you do. Philosophy always distracts me. +1. @Sensei is Boolean in nature.

Your point is well taken. By "philosophies" (countable English noun) I mean each and every particular philosophical theory, irrespective of their merits, whatever criterion we use to measure those. By "philosophy" (uncountable English noun) I mean the activity itself, which more or less can be associated with the grouping together of all philosophical theories. The activity itself. I suppose you can do that without losing much specificity. It's true, e.g., that some people reject philosophy flat-out. Those would be the ones that subscribe to option 0. On the one hand, it's possible that they have considered each and every philosophical theory there is and reject them all but keep "hoping for the right one" (in that sense, they would reject all philosophies so far but wouldn't have given up yet on philosophy altogether). On the other hand, there's the possibility that these people, at some point, grow tired of looking for philosophical arguments and finally decide to give up on philosophy altogether. That goes to show that you're right in that a finer distinction could be made, so I admit that I'm simplifying a little bit. But I don't think that I'm overlooking any big demographics here by identifying all philosophies with philosophy in general. I'm subsuming people who don't like any philosophical theory at all into the group of people who just don't think philosophy should be paid much attention. Would it be good because it might be right or might it be right because it would be good? "Bad" or "good" are defined in a particular sense in the options for the poll. They are not described "for themselves". Good: useless/too arbitrary/self-serving... Bad: has something useful (interesting points to consider)

I've missed that point. +1 I was so distracted with the equation itself, and then the OP completely changed the subject to gravity. It threw me off...

I'm testing my first poll today. I've scanned for similar topics but wasn't able to find collocations "good philosophy" or "bad philosophy". Especially if your option is the third one, I'm very interested in your criteria, exceptions, and so on. Thank you very much.

No can do. God may play dice, but that's too much of a stretch. Another brilliant logical point. +1

So you were thinking about gravitational potentials from the get go, and you couldn't figure out that a plausible solution was k/x? Something doesn't add up here. This sounds a bit disingenuous... Is it gravity you want to talk about, instead of calculus?

Thanks, @studiot. That was a pretty impressive informative answer. +1

By inspection, y=0 is solution. Now, after a couple of tries, one gets the intuition that the solution is some kind of potential function, so let's try that out: \[y=kx^{p}\] then, \[y'=pkx^{p-1}\] \[y''=p\left(p-1\right)kx^{p-2}\] Substituting and finding condition for p and k: \[k^{2}p\left(p-1\right)x^{2p-2}=ak\left(2-p\right)x^{p-3}\] \[\Rightarrow p=-1\] \[2k^{2}=ak\Rightarrow\] \[k=0\] (the trivial solution we found by inspection) or: \[k=\frac{a}{2}\] with which, \[y=\frac{a}{2}x^{-1}\] Mind you, non-linear differential equations may have more families* of solutions. Check me for mistakes. * Typically, not families. Rather, isolated solutions. Edit 1: Please, ask me if you're interested in uniqueness.

This is key, I think. There are several interpretations. They're not theories. The theory is quantum mechanics. You can bet that one is correct. Why it is correct being so mathematically ad hoc is another matter. That's where the different interpretations come up. IMO, the transactional interpretation is much more beautiful and parsimonious, although I must say I don't know it in detail. The one with empty amplitudes and occupied amplitudes is also more plausible IMO, even though it's somewhat ugly. The consistent histories approach is another one. As of today, I'm not aware that any of these have been finally confirmed or rejected experimentally or otherwise. There are claims in every which direction last time I looked, but I don't think there is unanimous thinking about that by any means. As we speak, more physicists are considering arguments about these interpretations, or maybe even other possible interpretations. Which means the problem is not settled. The elementary-particle-physicists' community favours the many-worlds interpretation, but that's all, as far as I understand. That's because their favourite toys (mainly the Wheeler-DeWitt eq.) are formulated within that framework. So it's a matter of heuristics and model-building, nothing else. And that's my two cents.

Oh, sorry. You're right.

Granite? Really? Would the granite parts be more eroded than the quartz veins? I've no idea really. I just want to learn more about rocks. And unfortunately I didn't have any geologist's kit with me.

OK, then. Let me ask you a very technical question: What's with 2 and 3?

The way I see it it was either Speculations or Nature.

I've attached them here. The first one with the quartz-like veins was collected hereabouts: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.9992728,-7.89032,15357m/data=!3m1!1e3 And the obsidian/basalt looking one, hereabouts: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9845133,-6.6169228,15156m/data=!3m1!1e3 I could be a little bit off in the second one. I do remember the terrain was ochre-red and the place was littered with many similar obsidian-looking rocks.

Very interesting topic. (+1,+1) Thank you. If you don't mind, I will post a couple more pictures of rocks I collected in Spain and Portugal and be posting them here ASAP. One of them is very similar. Looks like a sedimentary rock that's been infiltrated by quartz. It's visibly more eroded in the "sedimentary body" and the "quartz" veins have resisted erosion much better, so it has some kind of ridges all around. The other looks to me like obsidian and rougher basalt arranged in layers, but I could be wrong. Is that possible?

To my taste, those are very interesting philosophical-scientific questions I don't know the answer to. +1. I know it has been speculated that intelligence/conscience could be some kind of condition that's being seeded from a distant future or perhaps auxiliary dimensions. That we are simulations running on somebody else's computers. But, to me at least, that has the flavour of anthropocentrism again, of a Ptolemaic rather than Copernican perspective. I'm more of the opinion that conscience, whatever it is physically characterized by, is a condition that every once in a while in cosmic terms, appears in the universe. That we're not all that special even in respect to that. That there may even be other kinds of conscience than ours. So my line of thought is more along the lines of entanglement (correlated non-separability) and einselection (emergence of a special set of variables for that correlation) in quantum mechanics. For whatever reason, some physical systems become computers/register machines in relation to their environment. They "learn" to ignore the noise and develop handler variables for the environment as well as representation variables. Something like that. I hope it's clear and I hope it's not too out there. I think for something like conscience to evolve from a nebular chaos, it must have been universally inherent in all matter all along, and then something physical must be triggering it on over and over. And then I have suggested as a possibility that this 1+3 mapping of conscience may just be a characteristic of how conscience is formed rather that an inherent quality of the physical universe itself. But these are just speculations, admittedly. I don't know how we could do a gedanken experiment or more concrete hypothesis from that imprecise idea.