The Total Perspective Vortex, Astrology and one small piece of fairy cake

[Gian]

Richard Dawkins is especially scathing of astrology, along with most scientists.

But I wonder what scientists here think of this idea from the Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy about the Total Perspective Vortex;

"The idea is that, if every atom of the universe is affected by every other atom of the universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake."

 So if every atom of matter attracts every other particle of matter in the universe, it follows that there's a relationship between the attributes and behaviour of celestial bodies (the fairy cake) and the matter here on Earth.

And as the planets' existence and our lives have been "going to happen" since the Big Bang, viz all events in the universe have a single common ancestor, is it possible that astrologers have identified readable patterns of behaviour in the heavens which relate via the Big Bang with events on Earth?

Eg put very simply, after a lecture hall has emptied, a scientist could I assume measure temperature and other attributes and estimate the number of students who had been present. Thus there's a relationship between the temperature of the lecture theatre, and the behaviour of students. Can astrology be the observation of similar patterns?

Thanks

GIAN x

 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Gian
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[dimreepr]

12 minutes ago, Gian said:

Richard Dawkins is especially scathing of astrology, along with most scientists.

But I wonder what scientists here think of this idea from the Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy about the Total Perspective Vortex;

"The idea is that, if every atom of the universe is affected by every other atom of the universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake."

 So if every atom of matter attracts every other particle of matter in the universe, it follows that there's a relationship between the attributes and behaviour of celestial bodies (the fairy cake) and the matter here on Earth.

And as the planets' existence and our lives have been "going to happen" since the Big Bang, viz all events in the universe have a single common ancestor, is it possible that astrologers have identified readable patterns of behaviour in the heavens which relate via the Big Bang with events on Earth?

Eg put very simply, after a lecture hall has emptied, a scientist could I assume measure temperature and other attributes and estimate the number of students who had been present. Thus there's a relationship between the temperature of the lecture theatre, and the behaviour of students. Can astrology be the observation of similar patterns?

Thanks

GIAN x

 

 

The total perspective vortex only work's on people who assume their perspective works for other's... 

[MigL]

Huuh ?  This is aa science forum.

"Richard Dawkins is especially scathing of astrology, along with ALL scientists."

Scientist and astrologer are mutually exclusive; you cannot be both.

And 'all atoms in the universe' cannot affect each other, unless they are in causal contact.
An atom in the Sun cannot affect you until more than 8 minutes have elapsed.
Atoms in our nearest stellar neighbour cannot affect you for a period of more than 4 years.
Atoms in the star Mizar will never affect you as it takes light/information 80 years to reach us, and you will be deceased by then.

As for the universe being deterministic like clockwork, and everything 'going to happen' since the Big Bang, that is also false because at small scales, the universe is probabilistic. You see, quantum Mechanics is science; astrology is not.

[exchemist]

58 minutes ago, Gian said:

Richard Dawkins is especially scathing of astrology, along with most scientists.

But I wonder what scientists here think of this idea from the Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy about the Total Perspective Vortex;

"The idea is that, if every atom of the universe is affected by every other atom of the universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake."

 So if every atom of matter attracts every other particle of matter in the universe, it follows that there's a relationship between the attributes and behaviour of celestial bodies (the fairy cake) and the matter here on Earth.

And as the planets' existence and our lives have been "going to happen" since the Big Bang, viz all events in the universe have a single common ancestor, is it possible that astrologers have identified readable patterns of behaviour in the heavens which relate via the Big Bang with events on Earth?

Eg put very simply, after a lecture hall has emptied, a scientist could I assume measure temperature and other attributes and estimate the number of students who had been present. Thus there's a relationship between the temperature of the lecture theatre, and the behaviour of students. Can astrology be the observation of similar patterns?

Thanks

GIAN x

 

 

"Nein."  (W. Heisenberg) 

[TheVat]

There's also an Occam's razor take on the notion that precise planetary and solar positions at birth influence your life and character - isn't it more likely that your DNA and nurturing and environment would have more effect?  Sure, there could be some early seasonal effect from being born into hot weather and lots of airborne pollen v being born in cold midwinter, that kind of thing.  But isn't it more likely that I'm analytical because my parents were, rather than because I'm a Virgo and the sun was blasting me with analysis-loving telepathy beams?  Which causal explanation requires the fewest outlandish assumptions?

Astrology annoys me, not least because I feel its pseudoscience tug the way many of my generation did.  It's so easy to talk yourself into people fitting their sign, cherry picking examples as you go.

Here's a concrete example: are Scorpio and Sagittarius people athletic because of celestial influence or because they are born in late Fall and thus among the oldest children in a primary school grade?  A Canadian study found the latter, which seemed to be a result of early school athletic programs favoring the older children in a grade level - at age eight, say, an age difference of even half a year makes a difference in size and strength and coordination.  Coaches pick selectively, and begin a process of favoring the oldest kids in a classroom. 

Think about how many small differentials like that, among schoolroom peers, can add up over a few years, creating a birth-seasonal effect on child development.  

 

[Gian]

17 minutes ago, TheVat said:

 

 

Gravity affects atoms the same way it affects all other matter. Every atom creates its own gravitational field which attracts all other matter in the universe. Steve Gagnon, Science Education Specialist 

Im still reading and pondering your reply but here's Point 1:
So is it true that the particles that make up this planet, you and me attract the particles which make up objects on the other side of our universe?

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Huuh ?  This is aa science forum.

"Richard Dawkins is especially scathing of astrology, along with ALL scientists."

Scientist and astrologer are mutually exclusive; you cannot be both.

And 'all atoms in the universe' cannot affect each other, unless they are in causal contact.
An atom in the Sun cannot affect you until more than 8 minutes have elapsed.
Atoms in our nearest stellar neighbour cannot affect you for a period of more than 4 years.
Atoms in the star Mizar will never affect you as it takes light/information 80 years to reach us, and you will be deceased by then.

As for the universe being deterministic like clockwork, and everything 'going to happen' since the Big Bang, that is also false because at small scales, the universe is probabilistic. You see, quantum Mechanics is science; astrology is not.

Gravity affects atoms the same way it affects all other matter. Every atom creates its own gravitational field which attracts all other matter in the universe. Steve Gagnon, Science Education Specialist 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Gian

[exchemist]

24 minutes ago, Gian said:

Gravity affects atoms the same way it affects all other matter. Every atom creates its own gravitational field which attracts all other matter in the universe. Steve Gagnon, Science Education Specialist 

Im still reading and pondering your reply but here's Point 1:
So is it true that the particles that make up this planet, you and me attract the particles which make up objects on the other side of our universe?

Gravity affects atoms the same way it affects all other matter. Every atom creates its own gravitational field which attracts all other matter in the universe. Steve Gagnon, Science Education Specialist 

Yes of course but so what? We know what effects are to be expected due to gravitational attraction. Massive bodies attract one another. 

But at level of individual atoms the effect is negligible and totally overridden by other interactions, chiefly electromagnetic. 

[TheVat]

(started writing this before exchemist posted)

Due to the inverse square law, the gravitational effects of distant stars are negligible.  

When you were born, a neighbor in a house near the hospital was running their vacuum cleaner.  This created some EMF emissions that might interfere with old tv signals back when they were on VHF frequencies, and would very slightly impact baby you's atoms.  Would that make you a Vacuum Cleaner Baby, destined to go through life being tidy?   Or perhaps there was a garbage truck backing up outside the wall of your birthing room.  Would the miniscule gravitic force of that truck make you a Garbage Baby, destined to pick up debris?  That's about how much sense astrology makes.

[swansont]

 

3 hours ago, Gian said:

Eg put very simply, after a lecture hall has emptied, a scientist could I assume measure temperature and other attributes and estimate the number of students who had been present. Thus there's a relationship between the temperature of the lecture theatre, and the behaviour of students.

It's not unique, though.

A particular temperature profile could be generated by more than one arrangement of students.

 

3 hours ago, Gian said:

Can astrology be the observation of similar patterns?

No.

48 minutes ago, Gian said:

Gravity affects atoms the same way it affects all other matter. Every atom creates its own gravitational field which attracts all other matter in the universe. Steve Gagnon, Science Education Specialist 

If you measure gravitational attraction from some distant mass, it doesn't tell you the composition of that mass. That's part of the equivalence principle.

[mistermack]

6 hours ago, Gian said:

"The idea is that, if every atom of the universe is affected by every other atom of the universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake."

Hitchhiker's guide is a comedy novel. It's not meant to be taken seriously.

I would view this in terms of information. The only way that all of the information in the universe was obtainable from a fairy cake, would be if the universe was made entirely of fairy cakes. 

[MigL]

You have to stop taking literature so seriously.
Thank God you read the Hitch-hiker's Guide and not the Bible.

[Gian]

On 8/13/2022 at 5:52 AM, MigL said:

You have to stop taking literature so seriously.
Thank God you read the Hitch-hiker's Guide and not the Bible.

We were told in GCSE Physics that every particle of matter in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on all other particles of matter

On 8/12/2022 at 6:38 PM, TheVat said:

(started writing this before exchemist posted)

Due to the inverse square law, the gravitational effects of distant stars are negligible.  

When you were born, a neighbor in a house near the hospital was running their vacuum cleaner.  This created some EMF emissions that might interfere with old tv signals back when they were on VHF frequencies, and would very slightly impact baby you's atoms.  Would that make you a Vacuum Cleaner Baby, destined to go through life being tidy?   Or perhaps there was a garbage truck backing up outside the wall of your birthing room.  Would the miniscule gravitic force of that truck make you a Garbage Baby, destined to pick up debris?  That's about how much sense astrology makes.

That's not what I mean lol

I don't mean that the stars are affecting us at this point in time, of course they're not, or not in any discernible significant way.
What I mean is that all objects - matter and energy - have a single common ancestor; Creation, the Big Bang. 

In dendrochronology we can see the weather year by year affecting tree rings. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the behaviour of some objects is discernible as "mirages" in the behaviour of other objects within our universe, as they all had the same single starting point. If so this is not remotely supernatural, and is so inexact it probably isn't very useful.

[Bufofrog]

2 hours ago, Gian said:

We were told in GCSE Physics that every particle of matter in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on all other particles of matter

Well that is too bad because that is clearly wrong.

There is matter in the universe, that due to the expansion of the universe, has a recession velocity greater than the speed of light therefore that matter cannot be exerting any gravitational effect on our region of space.  IOW matter that has a recession velocity greater than c cannot transmit any signal we could detect.

[dimreepr]

58 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Well that is too bad because that is clearly wrong.

There is matter in the universe, that due to the expansion of the universe, has a recession velocity greater than the speed of light therefore that matter cannot be exerting any gravitational effect on our region of space.  IOW matter that has a recession velocity greater than c cannot transmit any signal we could detect.

Perhaps he meant the observable universe, you know these student's, some of them miss a word or two.

3 hours ago, Gian said:

What I mean is that all objects - matter and energy - have a single common ancestor; Creation, the Big Bang. 

And???

3 hours ago, Gian said:

In dendrochronology we can see the weather year by year affecting tree rings. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the behaviour of some objects is discernible as "mirages" in the behaviour of other objects within our universe, as they all had the same single starting point. If so this is not remotely supernatural, and is so inexact it probably isn't very useful.

The only problem is, as with all complex signal's they degrade with distance and so become indiscernible from the background noise, at some point; if so it is entirely supernatural to somehow see the object...

[joigus]

Excellent arguments here. I would like to add another one of my own. The contention that,

On 8/12/2022 at 4:03 PM, Gian said:

So if every atom of matter attracts every other particle of matter in the universe, it follows that there's a relationship between the attributes and behaviour of celestial bodies (the fairy cake) and the matter here on Earth.

however plausible it may be, is not the same as the contention that certain accidental (visual) projections of stellar objects that are many light years apart from each other, by their sheer apparent position in the sky on this planet with respect to closer stellar bodies --Moon, Mars, etc.--, somehow determine our destinies.

Swansont has pointed out how information is hopelessly scrambled by thermalisation.

Exchemist and MigL have pointed out limitations imposed by quantum mechanics.

Bufofrog has pointed out the fundamental obstruction of relativistic causality.

The Vat has pointed out how devoid of predictive power such connections are.

I just want to point out that the assumptions of astrology and the observation that everything may ultimately be interconected, therefore maybe everything is affected by everything else, are quite different in and of themselves. The first is pure nonsense or extremely implausible at the very least; the second might be true if, in a remote past, everything was causally connected somehow. But, even if true, it would be pretty sterile in terms of prediction and retrodiction.

Truisms and reasonable "possibilisms" are not very useful to make solid science. Suppose you tell a paleantropologist: Somewhere out there must be the first rock that a hominid chipped into a stone tool. Go find it!

What hope do we have of finding such an object?

How would we know for sure it's the first such object?

Suppose we find it. What particular aspect --in this case, of human evolution-- would it illuminate?

[Gian]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Perhaps he meant the observable universe, you know these student's, some of them miss a word or two.

And???

The only problem is, as with all complex signal's they degrade with distance and so become indiscernible from the background noise, at some point; if so it is entirely supernatural to somehow see the object...

Why can't anyone here get me??

I don't mean that distant matter is influencing events on Earth. I mean that distant matter has an origin  in common with events here. Therefore it may be possible there's an observable correlation between the two, even though they are now of no influence on each other at all

[Janus]

On 8/12/2022 at 10:38 AM, TheVat said:

(started writing this before exchemist posted)

Due to the inverse square law, the gravitational effects of distant stars are negligible.  

When you were born, a neighbor in a house near the hospital was running their vacuum cleaner.  This created some EMF emissions that might interfere with old tv signals back when they were on VHF frequencies, and would very slightly impact baby you's atoms.  Would that make you a Vacuum Cleaner Baby, destined to go through life being tidy?   Or perhaps there was a garbage truck backing up outside the wall of your birthing room.  Would the miniscule gravitic force of that truck make you a Garbage Baby, destined to pick up debris?  That's about how much sense astrology makes.

It's not even the inverse square law that's meaningful, but the inverse cube law of tidal effects.

Take a body like Mars, It has a gravitational pull on you, but it also has one on Earth, and since both you and the center of the Earth are nearly the same distance from Mars(when compared to the distance to Mars),  the acceleration experienced from that pull is almost equal, and it is only the slight difference that could have any effect on you. This is the tidal effect.   These types of tidal forces fall off by the cube of the distance.

Given the mass of Mars, and it distance at its closest to Earth,  a 0.2 gram mass at a distance of 100 meters would exert a larger tidal force on you than Mars would.

[swansont]

54 minutes ago, Gian said:

Why can't anyone here get me??

I don't mean that distant matter is influencing events on Earth. I mean that distant matter has an origin  in common with events here. Therefore it may be possible there's an observable correlation between the two, even though they are now of no influence on each other at all

How would one confirm that correlation, since it would take so long to know the details of the distant particle's state? And it may not be possible, if that other particle is far enough away and can no longer be observed owing to the expansion of space.

[Bufofrog]

2 hours ago, Gian said:

I don't mean that distant matter is influencing events on Earth. I mean that distant matter has an origin  in common with events here.

The earth didn't exist 5 billion years ago, so I am not sure what common origin you are talking about.

[zapatos]

9 hours ago, Gian said:

In dendrochronology we can see the weather year by year affecting tree rings.

Good example. But what exactly is it telling you? You can tell what year a ring was formed, whether or not it was a wet year, and some level of details about climate. Even though we know a great deal about an individual ring, spending a great deal of money and intellect to understand, we still don't know what days it rained in a particular year, what the high and low temperatures were, if it was cloudy, etc. In other words, our best efforts got us some information but not very much.

If you knew every bit of data there was to know about every atom in the universe starting at the beginning of time, knew what impact each data point had on every other data point, and had the computing power to process all of that data, it is true you could extrapolate a great deal of information about the universe than we do not have now. But as @MigL pointed out, you still run into the uncertainty due to QM.

As far as astrologers having enough relevant data, knowledge and processing power based on looking at constellations visible from earth to predict human behavior, and of your behavior as opposed to mine, and without even bothering to make adjustments for the fact that you were born in a different year than me and thus different data applies? That would be a "no".

[MigL]

Shortly before the inflationary period ( !0^-35 sec ), the universe was in causal contact, which means that equilibrium could be established.
After The inflationary period ( 10^-32 sec ), parts of the universe started moving out of causal separation, due to expansion, and more and more structures move out of the observable universe as time progresses.
Inflation was first proposed by A Guth in the 80s, to explain many problems with the Big Bang Theory, and has had many modifications, and supporters, since.
One problem was how isotropy and homogeneity of the universe could be accounted for if the universe had never been in causal contact.
( By causal contact I mean that all parts of the universe are close enough to allow for information transfer )

[Gian]

On 11/11/2022 at 6:47 PM, Bufofrog said:

The earth didn't exist 5 billion years ago, so I am not sure what common origin you are talking about.

The common ancestor is the Big Bang, the creation of the universe.

The creation of the matter (or energy or whatever) was initiated which eventually made up the Milky Way, the Earth, then us, and also the astrological stars and planets in which astrologers examine for patterns. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Gian

[dimreepr]

24 minutes ago, Gian said:

The common ancestor is the Big Bang, the creation of the universe.

The creation of the matter (or energy or whatever) was initiated which eventually made up the Milky Way, the Earth, then us, and also the astrological stars and planets in which astrologers examine for patterns. 

You need to get a perspective, our common ancestor used to eat slug's, which is the worst kind of burger; the only pattern they examined was not found by looking to the star's...