How do we choose?

[Fred56]

"...there are no answers, only choices." -some philosopher

 

Do we perceive ourselves as able to choose (as all lifeforms are), to expend effort, or conserve it instead? To direct this effort (energy) to some goal or plan? What does a man hunting some animal, tracking it and wearing it down, doing? What choices are made and why? Is there a method being used, or applied to his science of hunting prey?

[iNow]

It depends on context.

[Reaper]

Fred, will you just drop it and cut out all of the "does such and such have a purpose/religious rant/nonsense"? The conclusions are all subjective, not a lot of people want to argue about it, and in all honesty nobody really cares.

 

Also, you don't seem to know what you are talking about, and you keep redefining definitions.

[Fred56]

Science is context-free, supposedly? There is no context except the one we 'see'. This is the only conclusion we can ever draw?

Saying "Science depends on context" sounds like a 101 lecture in Tautology.

 

P.S. You don't care about this enough to tell me that nobody does, as well.

(and that means 'everybody' else)

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

iNow did not say science depends on context. He said the answer to your question does.

 

This is getting a mite tiresome.

[revprez]

Damn, Cap. You just making it up as you go along now, aren't you?

[iNow]

Fred should be sent to coventry for a while.

[YT2095]

Damn, Cap. You just making it up as you go along now, aren't you?

 

I`m sorry, I think I Missed the part where he was talking to YOU!

[revprez]

I`m sorry, I think I Missed the part where he was talking to YOU!

 

I think I missed missed the part where I needed an excuse to take a dump on Cap.

[Mr Skeptic]

How do we choose ... which threads get closed?

[Pangloss]

Fred should be sent to coventry for a while.

 

He's taking a little break from the board instead.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Damn, Cap. You just making it up as you go along now, aren't you?

 

No, I had pre-written my response to this thread three weeks ago.

[Bignose]

Fred, may I suggest you start your own blog? You clearly are unsatisfied with this forum's responses, and if you started your own blog you could post all the pondering open-ended questions you wanted without having the moderators here closing your threads. Maybe you could start your own forum, too, as another option.

[Fred56]

[R]esearcher John Cramer has proposed a way of using entanglement that could reverse the timing of cause and effect. It relies on the way that light can be measured as a particle or as a wave when passing through two slits - but not both.

 

Streams of entangled photons are sent off in two directions, One goes immediately through a pair of slits, and an instrument registers whether the outcome was a measurement as waves or particles.

 

The second stream goes through a delay line, arriving at slits a little later. In this case a moveable detector forces the measurement to be waves or particles.

 

Because of the spooky link of entanglement the theory is that the light passing through the first detector will be forced to be in the appropriate form, even though the measurement was taken before the action that decided what the outcome should be.

 

Bear in mind that this experiment hasn't been carried out yet, and some doubt it's practicality - but it is being taken seriously by the science community.

--popularscience.co.uk

[mooeypoo]

--popularscience.co.uk

 

I don't understand your point in this quote.. the experiment wasn't done yet, those are general assumptions for it. But even if it is true, I am not sure I see the connection between that and choice.

 

What's your point..?

 

~moo

[Fred56]

The reality of a photon is that it is a photon, it obeys rules of QM that in general have no analogue - or at least, useful analogue - in the real world. Its state in a way encapsulates waves and particles, but it is, as a complete explanation, neither of these classical models. If your goal is to confine [the] view of physics to topics you can answer that is [a] choice.

--physicsforums.com

Also it's both a wave and particle; and neither. That's 4.

[iNow]

Troll.

[Fred56]

Boo!

[Realitycheck]

"...there are no answers, only choices." -some philosopher

 

Do we perceive ourselves as able to choose (as all lifeforms are), to expend effort, or conserve it instead? To direct this effort (energy) to some goal or plan? What does a man hunting some animal, tracking it and wearing it down, doing? What choices are made and why? Is there a method being used, or applied to his science of hunting prey?

 

There are two types of people in this world, people who make things happen and people who let things happen. The early bird usually gets the worm.

[Fred56]

Good for the bird.

I can hear a bird right now.

Since we're totally OT: It's a tui. It's 4:15 am and this bird is calling away sort of plaintively (but this is my imagination, I don't think tuis get plaintive); here smack in the middle of suburbia there's a native bird on a pohutukawa tree, singing the same kind of thing that they would have centuries ago, when all this city wasn't here.

Now that's plaintive. Mezzopiano, maybe.

[iNow]

Good for the bird.

I can hear a bird right now.

Since we're totally OT: It's a tui. It's 4:15 am and this bird is calling away sort of plaintively (but this is my imagination, I don't think tuis get plaintive); here smack in the middle of suburbia there's a native bird on a pohutukawa tree, singing the same kind of thing that they would have centuries ago, when all this city wasn't here.

Now that's plaintive. Mezzopiano, maybe.

 

Do you smoke herb, or do you prefer mushrooms? I'm starting to think maybe it's peyote, but can't really tell.

[Fred56]

"It depends on context."

[mooeypoo]

roflmao

[Sisyphus]

It really is possible to talk about metaphysics without resorting to glassy-eyed, babbling mysticism. In fact, it usually helps if you don't.

[swansont]

Seeing as how Fred won't be around to babble anymore, I'm closing this.