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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 27, 2017 - 10:50pm PT
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Look around you. Why would anyone think the universe is "hapless?" Luck? Not in a universe of inevitability.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 27, 2017 - 10:52pm PT
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ah, the fate of the universe... I'm sure much poetry has been written on the topic...
searching Google Scholar, it would seem that the more prosaic physicists have also been wondering about it...
the harvest since 2016
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2016&q=fate+of+the+universe&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
since you find my interactions to be greatly annoying, I'll let you ponder what might be in those articles yourself
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Feb 27, 2017 - 11:10pm PT
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Scientist are strought on what's here today is gone tomorrow. That nothing here today was at the start, I.E. The BB. And luck is jus another flavor from the chaos regime.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 28, 2017 - 08:09am PT
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It is a known fact that the material Universe is NOT eternal.
But it is real although temporary.
The living entities in the material Universe are eternal, but not their material bodies ........
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 28, 2017 - 08:26am PT
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Eeyonkee,
Nice to see you checked out the free will, responsibility and punishment piece. It is such a great thing to be able to have this kind of access – if you’re so inclined/interested – from one’s keyboard.
I am still not convinced you aren’t something of a compatibilist. All one needs to have is a mechanistic universe understanding of mechanistic things (or “deterministic” if you prefer) and room in that understanding for some kinds of freedom (of action, of will). Check out Pinker at c 45 min in. He takes the question ‘Is there such a thing as free will?’ and transposes it into four related questions, one of which is ‘Is there no difference between knee-jerk reflexes and deliberate behavior?’. Pinker’s response at 47:15 (‘We can call those processes free will’) makes it pretty clear, I think, that Pinker like Dennett supports some version of compatibilism.
A favorite part for me was Greene’s discussion re AUTO vs MANUAL mode or setting. He also brings this up in his book, Moral Tribes. I think this model provides some great insight into our own thinking, choosing, degree of due diligence we give, and decision-making. In the end, imo, it’s going to be every “person’s” choice (or every agent’s choice) in their own “practices” just how much to roll with AUTO or MANUAL depending on case, circumstance, interest, mood and temperament, etc… In turn all this judgment, decision-making, output - however we ape people decide things - is of course reflected/represented in our everyday lives, politics, law...
I thought it was pretty interesting that in the QA session, both the first and last questioners tried to bring the conversation back to issue one, the FW question. Many are just not ready to move on from the FW question to the Responsibility question and Punishment Penalty question. For a moment there, I imagined the first questioner might be our very own PaulR – I got a brief chuckle out of that.
In the QA session, I liked Dennett’s response to the question about control and controller. As a former “control engineer” “control theory” was one of my favorite subjects and in the lab it was one of my favorite pursuits. When we drive a car, we control the car. Yet as the controller we are both the driver and drivee. In the fullness of thinking we should consider both perspectives (both contextual frameworks). One sees us as the driver, the other sees us as the driveee (as the object being driven). Compare: “uncaused causer” vs “caused causer” (or “unmoved mover” vs “moved mover”) mentioned in the discussion.
The internet, Youtube, Wiki and their ilk are AMAZING developments in OUR human cultural evolution. I just hope we don’t blow ourselves up (ala Trump, partisan politics, whatever) before they bear all their fruits.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 28, 2017 - 08:35am PT
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The driver is never the car.
The gross materialists falsely identify the car & driver as one and same.
As in (living entity and it's material body) saying (I am the body)
In actuality, they are one but in difference, (simultaneously oneness and difference).
When car gets totaled (death) the driver leaves the car and purchases another car according to the means it has at the time.
The gross materialist thinks he's the car and dies with it .......
Stooopid!!!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 28, 2017 - 09:18am PT
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check out:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.2330.pdf
Late time acceleration in a slow moving galileon field
Recently the galileon symmetry was subsequently extended to the curved space time by the authors of [20], and was shown that the Lagrangian L = −(1/2)gμνπ;ᵤπ;ᵥ + (Gμν/2M²) π;ᵤπ;ᵥ respects this symmetry in curved space time. The sign of the terms in L are chosen in such a way that, the effective propagator of π is never ghost-like and hence are stable. By adding the standard Einstein-Hilbert term to L, and a non trivial potential for π, one gets a simple though rich gravitational theory, with some nice properties. In particular, in the flat space time limit and in the regimes in which the analogue of the strong energy condition is violated, the field π moves slower than in the cousin canonical theory. For this reason, π is dubbed as the “Slotheon”.
(couldn't get all the superscripts right)...
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jstan
climber
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Feb 28, 2017 - 10:13am PT
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From the introduction to the work quoted by Ed:
A significant portion of our present model for the universe's future is based on an apparent acceleration in the cosmological expansion rate. The quoted paper attempts an understanding for that acceleration. There is a lot of support for our current model but claiming we know even what the universe actually includes right now is getting a bit ahead of the curve. The universe may even be a cosmic foam.
Exciting times!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 28, 2017 - 10:57am PT
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Ahmed Farag Ali and Saurya Das. "Cosmology from quantum potential." Physics Letters B. Volume 741, 4 February 2015, Pages 276–279. DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2014.12.057. Also at: arXiv:1404.3093[gr-qc].
Saurya Das and Rajat K. Bhaduri, "Dark matter and dark energy from Bose-Einstein condensate", preprint: arXiv:1411.0753[gr-qc].
Journal reference: Physics Letters B
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html#jCp
There are other ideas out there: careful what you declare as settled science.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 28, 2017 - 11:13am PT
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Just because we don't fully understand the universe doesn't mean that anything goes. Our understanding of mind is consistent with it having evolved from the bottom up, not the other way around. That stuff that Ed and jstan posted is surely interesting but not THAT germane to the problem here.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 28, 2017 - 11:59am PT
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The greatest mind came first.
Without the supreme mind first, there would be no mind ever at all nor any universe ever period.
The gross materialists always remain in a poor fund of knowledge in their mental speculative theories ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 28, 2017 - 02:44pm PT
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Jstan: Exciting times!
:-) (Always.)
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 28, 2017 - 03:37pm PT
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So, just to be clear, HFCS, you agree with Dennett -- in compatibilism, and therefore do not agree with Greene and, say, Harris?
Like I said, I do want to believe. I just don't see a reason to. I'm fine with free will being an illusion.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 28, 2017 - 04:52pm PT
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eeyonkee, more later, but the confusion I think largely centers on there being different varieties of "free will". What am I? if I accept "free will" as a concept/word in one variety or contextual frame but I reject it in another.
At bottom I am every bit the hard mechanist (or hard determinist) as Harris, Coyne (I know you have read him), Pinker, Greene, Dennett. And yet am I not a "compatibilist"? if I can accept a volition (will) that is free in some way or variety.
What do you say - it is a basic starting point, I think - in response to the claim or proposition that there is more than one variety of "free will" in usage, both in science community and in public?
I'm not sure Greene is NOT a compatibilist. He didn't hit this term anywhere in his talk and I don't know his work well enough. yet.
Food for thought: Greene recognizes this Auto mode vs Manual mode to decision making. He talked about it. Now if a competent person (or competent agent) in some circumstance chooses to switch to Manual mode (requiring more time, more thought, more analysis, more consideration from frontal cortex processes) is he not doing so expecting more so-called degrees of freedom manifested either in his will output or behavior output? This would suggest acceptance of a will or volition free in some sense to choose among a greater number of options. Yes? No?
Aren't you "free" "in some sense" to climb 5.8 but not "free" to climb 5.15? Along similar lines, aren't some volition systems (eg, of a competent person or agent, or of an expert) "free" in some ways that others (eg, of a child, of a retarded person, IQ 50) are not? Madboltr long long ago dismissed these kinds of freedom and this kind of "intuition pump" but I think they are valid.
If what matters most is knowing a person's stance on whether or not he accepts the claim that we agentic ape people are 100% strict automata, then you could rightly say that hfcs accepts it, that this is what he accepts. He is a 100% hard mechanist. He believes we are 100% fully-caused beings.
He also believes volition systems of brain physiology, though 100% constrained by physics and chemistry, are not 100% constrained by other things (eg, supernatural demonic influence, a real concern in the 1600s eg in Germany) at all times (eg, a gun to the head to betray a friend or to sign a contract).
Where have we read stuff along similar lines? In the following: Are science and religion compatible? Who accepts SR compatibilism? Who is a SR compatibilist? Obviously, Gould (with his NOMA) was one while Dawkins is not. I think it entirely depends on starting criteria and definitions. More or less same with free will.
Curious, what did you make of Steven Pinker locating (so-called) "free will" in PFC processes? Did you catch that part?
Good stuff. Thanks for the back n forth.
I hope to watch "Battle of Wills" again. I am sure I missed some good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YYr8311yY0
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 28, 2017 - 05:56pm PT
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HFCS. I have a very specific model that, of course, I've learned from others -- from my reading on the subject.
I think that free will really is an illusion in that it is an after-the-fact sense of responsibility for our decisions. Of all the ideas that I've read on the subject, a link that Ed included a couple of years ago to a blog by Michael Gazzaniga, resonated the best with me.
Gazzaniga's hypothesizes that our sense of responsibility for our actions actually happens a few moments after the actual decision is made, and this appears to us, for all the world, to be OUR decision. Actually, this really isn't his idea. But he goes on to suggest that this is a coopted adaptation of the imagery system that evolved in predator-prey dynamics.
That's it! It's consistent with determinism and our sense of responsibility for our decisions. (Note my use of the word, responsibility, where a year ago I would have used agency).
We really are fooled. This is why I am an incompatibilist.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 28, 2017 - 06:18pm PT
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goes on to suggest that this is a coopted adaption of the imagery system that evolved in predator-prey dynamics.
A co-opted adaptation? Imagery after-the-fact? As in looking for an explanation of what happened?
These questions or ones like them were raised for me in the optic stimulation study in mice that made them go on attack.
Some animals must kill in order to eat and live. Killing usually requires violence, which is dangerous behavior for the initiator as well as the recipient.
It seems possible that in order to arouse an animal to the violent behavior necessary to kill, some kind of override of caution and common sense is needed. In the aftermath, perhaps a post hoc explanation helps the animal deal with the troubling emotions invoked by the act of killing.
These thoughts are anthropomorphic by necessity. What animals experience may be different than what we experience.
The feeling I get from the little dog I chaperone is that killing wouldn't bother her at all. She would only feel, "Job well done." I hazard a guess that the question of free will or no free will would seem beside the point to her. She would only say, "Who cares? Here is supper."
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 28, 2017 - 07:12pm PT
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who said it was settled?
not me...
however, the "eternal universe" you pointed to may not be like the one we are in right now... either in the past or in the future, and some of those universes might not have had "light" (which would mean they wouldn't have something like us, either).
there is nothing "inevitable" about our current universe.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 28, 2017 - 07:45pm PT
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In a limitless universe in which there is an ordered limitation of what can and what cannot occur based on physical "laws" only certain things will occur, and given the nature of limitlessness those certain things must eventually occur
First, I question the assertion that our universe is "limitless" and in what sense you use the word. How did you arrive at this conclusion? And, second, to say that certain things "will occur" then say they "must occur" seems like semantic overkill. It's possible, I suppose, those hundred monkeys will type out "Hamlet", but I don't think that "must" occur. You've brought this up before, the assumption that because something is possible it must occur. I don't think so. But this is a trite philosophical diversion.
The feeling I get from the little dog I chaperone is that killing wouldn't bother her at all
Foxy Loxy chomped down on a tiny dove chick recently and looked pretty pleased with herself.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 28, 2017 - 10:31pm PT
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"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html#jCp
If we live in an infinite universe with a set structure that allows somethings and disallows others then why wouldn't all possibilities be inevitable? Infinite material, infinite energy and infinite time would produce all that could be produced within allowable physical constraints and in this structure we would, naturally, though perhaps not correctly, see a purpose or direction borne of the relationship between constraints and the unlimited. Trite? What numbers would not be realized in an infinite universe? What number is not inevitable in an infinite universe?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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it's more probably zero energy, zero "material" and zero time...
and what happens when there is material and time (and space, there is always zero energy) doesn't have to look at all like our current universe.
and even then, not everything is possible...
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