Sisyphus

Why? Observers in two different frames of reference will both agree on reality. That seems objective to me.

Conservation of what? What is it that you read about the Holmberg Effect that led you to believe that galaxies "come in pairs?"

Skaffen, it seems like you are defining "objective" in a very curious and specific way. Relativity is as consistent and objective as anything else.

Galaxies do not come in pairs. Andromeda is of a similar magnitude as the Milky Way. There is also one other spiral galaxy in our local group, and about 30 smaller ones. The reason all but the closest are getting farther away from us is because of cosmic expansion - the "amount of space" in the universe is increasing. At large distances, this effect is greater than any local motion towards us.

The guy in the video seems to be seeing a lot more than I am. I'm staring at it and I can't even be certain that she's actually holding anything, let alone "clearly a phone." The whole argument is pretty silly. "I can't explain this" morphs into "there is no other explanation besides time traveler, so that's what it is." This is a classic "time traveler of the gaps" argument. So: "I can't explain this." However, I can think of a few reasons against (aside from time travel of this type being so fantastic and probably impossible, I mean). How about: isn't it weird that nobody noticed a woman walking around with a magical device like that? Was everyone there a time traveler (including Charlie Chaplin?), and the fact that they accidentally kept this film the only evidence of it?

Your opinion on this subject on which you are admittedly completely ignorant is noted.

Interesting question. Just remember that 1) Evolution doesn't predict that everything that might be advantageous must develop. 2) Everything has its cost, which means that abilities that aren't used tend to disappear. 3) Evolution can't plan ahead. Ever hear of irreducible complexity? As for why something specific didn't develop, I guess that would have to be examined on a case by case basis. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you denying the existence of instinct? Are you claiming heritability has no influence on personality? Or are you saying these things are heritable by some means other than genes?

That's why I think it's more analogous to the image of a table. The atoms of the table are there whether anyone is looking at it or not, and so are the water droplets refracting light and "sorting" it by wavelength. But in order for the image of the table to exist, it needs photons bouncing off of it, through a lense, and onto a retina, and that effect needs to interpreted in a brain for an "image" to exist. One way it is different is that our brains tend to interpret "table data" fairly accurately, to judge there is a solid object of so and so size and shape, which is a conclusion similar to what other observers will arrive at. While the "rainbow data" causes an illusion that makes it seem* like there is a three dimensional solid object at some particular location in the sky, that an observer at a different location will disagree with completely. *"makes it seem" as in, if you interpret sensory data the same way you interpret it while looking at a table, you will arrive at this conclusion

Yes, there is. This seems to be the basis for many of your issues: some kind of weird aversion to the idea of simultaneity.

Right, different animals are different. That's why we call them different animals. We're a hell of a lot more similar to a chimpanzee than a platypus is to anything. Dividing between platypi and everything else makes more sense than dividing between human and everything else (not that either one makes sense).

I think attempting to distinguish between news and commentary is something we should do more of. People will say "but it's impossible to be totally objective bla bla bla" and that's true, but that doesn't mean you don't make it a lot worse if you don't even try to distinguish opinion and fact, let alone deliberately confusing the two, which I believe is also done quite a bit. As for distinguishing between "impartial" and "partisan," I think that's probably unimportant from an journalistic policy standpoint. Does it even make sense for an opinion to be impartial? If it does, wouldn't everyone - Sean Hannity included - claim to be? I guess there is a difference between stating one's own opinion and being a spokesman for some wider agenda (think Howard Dean the governor and candidate vs. Howard Dean the DNC chair), but the latter generally claim to be the former, right?

So innocent, you are.

Sure it does. The photons incoming towards a given point will be sorted by wavelength, coming from slightly different directions.

Then you don't understand correctly. That is the present day view of both observers.

Sure. What this drawing depicts is this sentence you just wrote: "An observer located on the same Galaxy today would observe the same CMBR as we do and would observe a very young Earth as it was 13billions years ago if the Earth existed at this time."

How so?

I don't disagree with you, Rilx. Similarly, you could say that the image of a table doesn't exist in nature. However, the patterns of photons that the brain processes as table or rainbow do exist in nature. "Color" as such is subjective - the light that causes us to see color is not.

14darryl14, you've been provided with documentation that that isn't accurate. You have been misinformed. More to the point, what does what Hitler believed have to do with anything? I'm sure he also believed in gravity, and the Nazis certainly used gravity in dropping bombs on London. Does that mean that "gravitationalists" are somehow related to Nazis? Does it mean that gravity doesn't exist? Of course not. Biological evolution is simply a fact. It does not dictate what to do with knowledge of that fact.

Yes, of course.

That is correct.

I assumed you were rejecting the obvious classification scheme on that basis. It's clearly not irrelevant, inasmuch as the rest of your post is about how categories relate (or rather supposedly don't relate) to "how they actually came to be," and what those categories "imply." The implication of the standard scheme is, in fact, demonstrably correct in a general sense, but I already know you don't accept that, so to avoid that debate I figured I'd try to point out it isn't necessary: it's still an extremely logical system even if you believe the world was made fully formed yesterday, implications be damned. (Though obviously, many have other theological objections to it.) Obviously, you could come up with whatever classification scheme you wanted, e.g. badgers on one side and everything else on the other, since such classifications are ultimately all artificial. It's just that some, let's say "suggest themselves" a lot more readily than others, and it's difficult for me to see how a scheme with humans on one side and everything else on the other might suggest itself purely from biology.

But a table or a tree also need an observer in order to be "diagnosed" as a such. The atoms of a table are objective. The fact that those atoms constitute a "table" is subjective, a classification of the human mind. But this discussion is more metaphysical than I think it needs to be. The objective reality of the rainbow is that light is double refracted as it passes through droplets of water. As a result, nearby points in space will be bombarded with photons not in the usual mixed up way, but receive them from slightly different directions depending on the wavelength of each photon. None of that requires an observer. The statement "I see a different rainbow than you" is still true in more ways than "I see a different table than you," though, because the rainbow referred to is the light itself, and different light is entering your eye than mine. The same is true when looking at a table, but in that case you're not talking about the light entering your eye, but rather the object that the light entering your eye allows you to deduce the existence of. "I see a different rainbow than you" is more equivalent to "I see a different image of a table than you," which is true, because your perspective is different. You could say, however, that you are both looking at the same water droplets.

There would be more of a curve. The universe has expanded by a factor of 1000 since the CMBR was emitted. That is not "behind the curtain." They are curved because the rate of expansion is not constant. It has only been accelerating for about 5 billion years. This is not true. Horizontal lines represent simultaneity. There is no "distance traveled" from "the bang," only time elapsed. The time elapsed is the same. Horizontal lines are simultaneous in the FOR of the CMBR, and, by extension our approximate FOR. You could make a graph where lines of simultaneity were curved, but it would be pointlessly confusing. You can draw any diagram you want, but it won't be consistent with observations. No, the speed of light is constant. What changes is the rate at which the space it is traveling through is expanding. It's not a perspective drawing. That, I think, is a question that you should think about. No, it isn't. Why do you say it is?

Classifying humans as somehow in a different category than all other animals is not necessary to be a creationist, you know. Carl Linnaeus lived before the theory of evolution and common descent, and he classified humans among the apes also, simply because there is no more biological difference between us than there is between any other closely related species. There are many, many species that have no living relatives with as few differences as there are between chimpanzees and humans.