cladking

This is simply untrue. Even everything that happens is effectively a statistical impossility. The tiniest grain of sand had to cleave from a boulder in exactly the right way and be worn by collisions while segregating with other grains by waves dancing on the tide. You can't even properly address the impossility of what exists far less make predictions about how a grain of sand will cause a catastrophy leading to political turmoil in 25 years. Tolstoy might have made his statement in a different way; "War and Piece". This ship has sailed. It is what it is and no kind of infinity can change it. We can't and never will be able to predict anyrthing at all. The world is choreographed not determined. The dance is impossibly complex and humans no longer see their cues but it dances along without us. It's funny that it was a simple question about a coin that got me started on one of my current tacks. It was asked where the terms "heads and tails" originated. Like many etymologies this might not be so simple as it sounds because people have long played fast and loose with language. Flippping coins has long interested me on several levels anyway and primarily as a magician who can make it come up either. The aerodynamics are also interesting since most US coins sail more cleanly with the "tails" side up; it tends to be the default position when all else is equal. The word for "coin" actually originated in a fossil which is a large component of the Great Pyramid. It was an animal that lived in the ocean that was disc shaped. These might have been used for currency even before the invention of money which was simply official weights of silver and gold stamped by an authority. These animals had a dorsal and ventril side and there's some limited evidence that the Greeks (who actuall "coined" the term "numis") tarred the dorsal side to fascilitate differentiation when they played games with them. This is all speculative, of course, at this point in time. "Heads" became the side with the bust and "tails" was the opposite. So what are the odds of a flipped coin coming up "heads"? If you use a US quarter then what are the odds that Washington ever even existed? What are the odds he'd toss a silver dollar across the Potomac or become president? What are the odds that the quarter you're flipping was made before the aerodynamics were reversed in 1996? What effect does the wear on the older version have on the odds of the flip? What are the chances that a meteor will destroy the coin while still in the air? Perhaps this is a good perspective; there are only two odds for anything 0% or 100%.

Time divided by the speed of light is the butterfly Where wing numbers are even it is harmonic and where odd, it is chaotic. As it flutters by, it knows It knows of wind, and food, and bats. It knows of of sun, and dew, and rainbows. ...Or maybe a thinking machine created itself by inventing man to build it.

Truth to tell I wasn't even comfortable using the word "magnitude" in this context. There is a sort of gentle butchering of the language here to make a point. This is a concept that seems to be screamed in the beliefs of the ancients. But to them it was almost axiomatic due to their perspective so was probably rarely stated in any form. It's easy to imagine other realities and we have no means to disprove them but, unless we stumble on the truth in such explorations these other realities will always prove fruitless. We need to stick to what we know and to try to see it from all possible perspectives. Hypothesis formation becomes automatic. If you consider that human knowledge has grown exponentially since the pyramid building age this makes our world many orders of magnitude more complex than theirs. This will continue ad infinitum but we'll never be able to predict anything and for practical purposes are moving away from it in some regards or at least, coming to recognize the impossibility.

I'll try to keep up with you but may not comment a lot. I've been trying to comprehend thought since I was very young. Early on I decided to treat the mind as the natural product of the brain but as a "black box problem". Over the years I've come to understand that the "brain" is far to tightly defined and actually includes the entire body and especially its ganglions. Most of our "brain" we can not access because signals won't travel both ways in the more "primitive" parts of the brain. I'm not convinced that "mind" is necessarily even relevant to understanding nature. Animals understand nature sufficiently for their needs and what sets man apart is much more language (that allows progress) than it is intelligence, soul or any of the other things people generally believe. This isn't to say I don't think "mind" is important because it certainly defines an individual's reality. Typing can be pretty tough on me sometimes as well and is never easy. The "plasticity" concept interests me but I can "change my mind" if I choose so might be of limited utility.

It is a virtual impossibility for even this state to exist. There aren't enough electrons in the universe to express this in binary. It would require 4.2 x 10 ^ 807,000 monkeys and typewriters just to get "War and Peace". The odds against Tolstoy's existence are astronomically higher than this. There are an infinite number of ways to make any point and Tolstoy was not limited to a single book or tactic. Perhaps he was influenced by his diet which was unique to his time and place. Certainly finding apples from so long ago is difficult. With all the impossibility in the here and now and our near total inability to understand or predict it, why should we imagine that anything else is possible? Events will continue to unfold in ways we can't predict no matter how well we understand nature's laws in the future. We might be able to bend much of nature to our will as part of technology but where we don't control events they will forever remain unpredictable (and those things we do control will suffer unpredictable breakdowns and flaws). This is the nature of nature itself. Time passage is where events unfold and every event is statistically impossible to almost infinite magnitude.

Virtual immortality is so simple a caveman could do it. The problem is that modern people are too ossified in their thinking and too wed to their beliefs to even see this as a beneficial thing. So long as we believe only our science (or religion) can provide total knowledge of nature and divine intent it will be impossible to redevelop the technology anyway. Ironically, up until the 16th century the quest for immortality drove much of human progress but then science began returning significant amounts of technology and creature comforts and it's like people just got tired of living individually and collectively. ...Quantity over quality.

I believe we all need a reality check. I'm disinclined to believe Dr Schwartz's means is the only way to go. We need to recognize that we have built a world based on beliefs and that there can be no sound foundation. The adoption of more beliefs whether that's a belief in god(s) or a belief in the non-existence of god(s) is probably not a sound foundation. There may be no answer that is right for each individual but, in my opinion, the ancient perspective that we are nature can provide some sense of permanence for many of us. But no matter how we view it there is ample evidence that people are getting "Deceptive Brain Messages" or have a perspective that is determined primarily by their place and time which can be wholly independent of reality and seems to be drifting further and further from an "outside" perspective.

There is a great deal of truth in what you say. People today whether they are educated or not are "overflowing" and can't see that their cup is tiny. I don't think that what peopple believe is so much "wrong" as it is incomplete and highly misleading. Specialization and the superstition that we are highly knowledgeable has obscured the facts and the real world from us. We are missing the forest for the trees. The forest is far more important than any tree or species it contains yet is part of the overflow.

Metaphysics is the basis used to gain knowledge. The problem with modern science is not theory. For the main part theory is reasonably well supported across the board. The problem is where the rubber meets the road; the application of science to the concrete world. No, not the isolation of basic principles that we call "technology" or invention but the application of known science to real world concerns. This is critical not only in planning but also in developement of processes that feed, house, and hydrate people; the processes like road design and building that serve human needs. The problem is that we blunder into the future always sure we know everything despite our vast ignorance. We rarely consider allthe consequences and show no concern for ultimate costs. We have an economy founded on waste and damage it by poor and incorrect planning. Not only is the application of science to the real world poor but applied science from the perspective of philosophy is behind the times.

If you believe "that way lies demons", are you not more likely to choose another direction?

You are presupposing that we know all of nature's laws. How can the knowledge of where everything is and it's velocity/ masss/ nature/ etc/ etc ad infinitum possibly help in prediction if we don't understand the simplest laws of nature like what gravity is? Such speculation is meaningless if there's such a thing as free will. Math is meaningless unless it's properly applied. You can count the number of molecules in a mole but we simply don't know the exact number, the exact weight of each, or even if each molecule is identical down to their smallest fractions. You are simply stating a belief and it's a belief that doesn't seem to be supported by evidence. My belief is we will never know even a small percentage of the laws that govern how nature behaves. We will continually improve our understanding just as we have for half a millineum and be able to use this knowledge to build better mouse traps but we'll can't ever predict weather more than 7 days out unless we learn to control and schedule it. Left to nature's devices nothing is predictable and never will be.

Science has always been about prediction and nothing else. Ancient science was as founded on metaphysics and observation as is our own. Where it made predictions like a sabre toothed tiger is repelled by the ground fruit of a pepper plant one time than it and others like it will be repelled by the ground fruit of any pepper plant. This was an extremely valuable prediction that allowed people to live who otherwise would have perished and contributed to an increase population of tigers. Science today is no different excepty te metaphysics isn't language and it is experimentally based rather than logically. Now we predict things like damming a river and putting generators in its path will provide cheap electricity to a large region and cause it and the people in it to flourish. We make predictions that lead to important experiments and new knowledge. But it will forever be impossible to make the types of predictions that lead to real life choices or to see bits and pieces of the future. Every event is far too improbable to understand its antecedents. Every event in the here and now is always an impossibility because the probability is too low for it to actually happen. Yet here we are. How are we to make predictions about the future since as time spans increase the nature and number of causes grow exponentially? People believe we have tremendous knowledge so are easily swayed to believe almost anything even if it defies the laws of nature or the nature of man. Most of what we call "prediction" is the ability to manifest the laboratory in concrete or to observe theory in nature. Ground pepper might still keep sabre toothed tigers away but this doesn't mean we know anything about capsiacin or thermo nuclear reactions. As we learn more we are able to make more practical predictions about the how nature works but this doesn't mean that we'll be able to push a string or know the future. The tiniest droplette of water "composing" a rainbow has water in it that was part of the apple that hit Newton. We can't predict the destination of the water molecule anymore than say where the rainbow goes when it sets. We don't even really know that every water molecule is identical.

I believe that language used to express meaning differently; meaning was in context rather than definitions being determined by context. I believe there is very extensive and pervasive evidence for this but it's a subject for another topic. It appears the thinking that generated these quotes pre-dated the change in the language.

I like that. Im going to read some of his work, It sounds fascinating. I have exceedingly little "expertise" in Egyptology and it is limited to the physical evidence related to the construction of great pyramids before 2700 BC. Unlike this area a great deal is known about the later eras and my knowledge is nearly absent. I can not confirm that these are actually from the Temple of Man as purported or that the translations are accurate. I can assure youthat as a rule this later language is well understood so any deficiency in translation is due to intent or incompetence. I believe these are derived from an invisible pre-existing language in which the more ancient material was written but this is a non-standard opinion based on my understanding of that writing.

People act solely on their beliefs. Actions determine outcomes. People become their beliefs. People believe what they choose to believe. Be careful what you want to believe. 3500 years ago Egyptians used modern language to say the same thing. - A house has the character of the man who lives in it. - Everyone finds himself in the world where he belongs. The essential thing is to have a fixed point from which to check its reality now and then. - The plant reveals what is in the seed. - If you would know yourself, take yourself as starting point and go back to its source; your beginning will disclose your end. http://www.aldokkan.com/art/proverbs.htm

We're doing remarkable things with mapping the genomes and the like and inventing new technology but these have nothing to do with cutting edge experimentation. There are many reasons we can't predict things and certainly in the real world a major factor is the inability to determine boundary conditions. Certainly, too, most observations of new phenomena are highly consistent with established theory but this isn't quite the same thing as prediction. True "prediction" must occur before the fact. If we really understood brain surgery we wouldn't have to try various medications or a single medication would be effective for allwith the same condition. Drugs would be taylor made for conditions rather finding their effects "experimentally". Electronics would be produced without the need of variable resistors. Cars wouldn't malfunction until the warranty was expired (they do well here). There wouldn't be traffic jams. We wouldn't have an economy based on waste and wealth derived from destruction of productive enterprises. We are acting on psuedo-science while real science is grinding slowly to a halt which is probably caused much more by the failure of the metaphysics to deal with the natural increase in the complexity of our understanding even more than it is the ascendency of superstition to decision making. This superstition is largely a function of a widespread belief that in aggregate we know just about everything. We each tend to trust specialists and experts in other fields to actually have real knowledge based on real science but instead what we get "fascilitators" who use oujia boards to communicate with those who can't communicate at all and archaeological fields founded on ridiculous assumptions. There's an attitude that since we know a million times as much as the great pyramid builders then we must know pretty close to everything when in actuality we know a tiny fraction of a percent about anything. Quite recently the very first piece of paper from the great pyramid building age was found. The only thing established by it so far was already known (tura limestone was imported to Giza) but this is the "cultural context" which actually underlies this "science". To a very real extent these considerations pervade most branches of science while specialists are so near sighted few can see anything but the smallest of pictures. They see only the mite on the back legs of a bark beetle on a spruce tree in a forest. We don't really understand the mite if we can't see the forest and certainly can't make realistic predictions without seeing the trees. I'm not condemning science or scientists but will say we've lost track of science and it's becoming the flavor of the day to the majority of people. Look up Long Term Capital Management to see where someone deluded themselves into believing markets are beholden to math and how their recklessness nearly destroyed us. We never seem to learn anything from these errors.

It's pretty pathetic metaphysics but it is metaphysics. At least the definition I'm using which is "the system of principles underlying the study of a subject". It's impossible to be strictly "empirical" and it may be undesirable to try. We attempt to exclude everything but observation and experience but the fact is that without definitions, axioms, and terms to understand convey the results they will have no meaning. We tend to brush off previous experimental results because we believe we "know" and understand the implications of those results and this is where we get in the most trouble. Experimental results are dependent on the lab and apply only to the lab. We extrapolate them to the concrete world at our own risk. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a problem and obviously 600 years of scientific advancement says it's not a particular problem. However, it is a monster of a problem when dealing with those who aren't familiar with science and believing results are "empirical" simply because we measure properly and compute properly is a problem. The major problem isn't the rampant pseudo-science nor is it even the extreme danger presented from scientists who can put us at risk by their "experiments", but simply the fact that advancement is going to slow if experimental science really is losing its ability to gain new knowledge. The types of problems facing us in the future may be much less solvable using experimental science than the problems of the past.

To my knowledge it's much more a matter of 'measurement" going on now days than experimentation. It seems we've been on the threshhold of a unified field theory for a century yet we know little more about gravity than the great pyramid builders. We've learned its speed and can closely measure its force and estimate its force on far away objects but we don't really know why two objects attract. In the real world it's rarely possible to predict events with any degree of certainty. The smaller the scale or greater the duuration the poorer are our predictions. We don't understand events and phenomena in the real world because we can't isolate them as we do in the lab. It looks to most of us that such predictions are easy because what we see are human concerns and man-made objects which are a manifestation of lab conditions. Still no two experts can agree on a prediction before or after the fact. People climb out of cars smashed to a tiny size and others are killed in fender benders. Weather predictions a few days out are rarely accurate. Brain surgeons try one medication after another searching for one that works. Modern science has provided tremendous wealth and technology but it has appeared to be slowing in terms of theory and experiment design for a quarter century. No doubt it can continue to provide more technology and materials just based on things already learned and outgrowths of those new processes, but theoretical science itself may be approaching a standstill.

There is no meaning to science without its definitions and the means to carry it out. Without the logic of math it is reduced to little more than semantics and observational truth. Observation> hypothesis> experiment> conclusion and previous conclusion is metaphysics and the basis of modern science. But there are other metaphysics that can be employed such as observation> logic> observation> conclusion plus previous conclusion. There may be an endless array of possible metaphysics to learn about nature though, I'd guess, they are all founded essentially on logic and observation. It is probably possible to blend these techniques in both theory and the real world in order to get past experiment at least in the short term.

Archimedes said, "give me a lever long enough and I'll move the world". Of course this is hyperbole and metaphor because in the real world you need a fulcrum and support for the fulcrum. If there were support you would be crushed by gravity. But the concrete world is not the same as theory because theory is developed from experimentation in the lab and really only applies to the degree the definitions and axioms can be extrapolated to "real life". You can move huge objects with a lever and a steady force only under the conditions that allow it. You can move a 30,000 ton oil tanker or a railroad car but a lever of the lenght to move the earth would have a significant gravitational field of its own and be quite unwieldy. In theory a tool can do about anything but in practice every tool has its limitations defined by its nature. A lead pry bar might be ideal for some application but use much leverage or weight and it bends. Metaphysics is the tool we use to operate science. Observation suggests that we are approaching the end of our ability to devise experiments to test theory. The tool has been used nearly to its limit yet we know only the tiniest percentage of nature's laws. This suggests we must invent a new tool or a means to extend or fortify the existing tool. I believe most of this will occur naturally through a sort of "fortification" (and already has to some extent) but this might be insufficient to greatly extend human reach. I believe we'll need a much more complicated metaphysics to go much further.

Nature is the root of science which is observation. Logic and math are puny tools we use to model nature. Since there is a sort of symetry and logic to nature they are actually fairly effective at guiding the observer toward more accurate models. We tend not to see such things because we've lost sight of nature and science. We may well be approaching the limitations of our ability to model nature using current metaphysics.

Most peoiple learn in typical ways and typical orders. So long as the teacher learned this way this is the easiest way to teach in my experience. Of course, my experience is neither deep nor includes a lot of atypical learning so I can't well argue the point. I'm sure you're right that some students need different tactics. Sailing off into the horizon not knowing if you'll ever reach land isn't very hazardous to the species. Some of the things we're doing today with little forethought could cause our ex- tinction. My contention isn't that we should do nothing but that we should chart the path ahead to the degree we can before setting off. Perhaps I came down a little too hard on him. The essay (lecture) really just highlighted a difference between who I had thought he was than the actual man. We're ultimately all just human with human frailties and foibels. I'm surprised he missed so many defining characteristics of science but we each have our own perspectives as well. I am struck by some of the similarities in upbringing and thought we share. Six years ago I'd have been in much closer agreement with him and not so much noticed the shortcomings. He was certainly one of the greats despite my opinion of this specific work.

Yes, it is largely semantics and mostly a change in perspectives. There is no proper route to learning but no matter how we come to know something it will guide our actions and increase our chances of success. With a little luch it will improve our ability to learn more. This is objective fact and truth but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that even visceral knowledge isn't reality itself but a personal modeling of reality. It works because we know it works and if it stops working we'll know it. One might say that nature is not beholden even to truth. Humans seek objective fact because it is useful and truth because it is beautiful.

Thanks for the link. I have (or at least had) a great deal of respect for Feynman but he sure blew this one. If not for his statement that, "science is the belief that all the experts are wrong" then I'd say he was almost completely wrong. I'd be inclined to say better phraseology is "science is the visceral knowledge that all the experts are wrong". Teaching is largely the ability to remember how you learned and to express this to students. Metaphysical science is exceedingly simple but it is too simple and we've wholly lost track of it. The metaphysics should be drilled into students' heads from 1st grade to the completion of their doctoral thesis. If we did this the world wouldn't be awash in silly psuedo-science and mountains of assumption. The world is getting increasingly dangerous because man can't recognize his own ignorance and weakness. It's ridiculous to try to understand reality only in terms of science when we know only the tiniest fraction of everything there is to know. It's only language that sets us apart. It's only confusion that allows us to fret about boxes and cats.

Modern science is merely "observation> hypothesis> experiment> results" as well as the definitions, axioms and previous results of experiment. Results don't exist outside such definitions. Most of what people call "science" is really just technology which is largely the magic created by the ability of some people to create experiments outside the lab or to manifest knowledge of a process in the real world. Science can be based on observation and logic alone. Observation> hypothetical prediction> observation> results. It's even possible that if we practiced science this way that experiment might seem somewhat contrived and confounding. Most of the results of this science are theoretical and relatively free of what we consider practical results like technology. It would be more accurate to say science leads to understanding since true knowledge is visceral and the result of experience.