BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Dec 12, 2012 - 08:46pm PT
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Helyje
"But I personally suspect what's under the hood past a certain point is an expansive event horizon of the unknowable."
isn't whats knowable defined on a timeline? And with time, there must be a start and a stop. So everything inbetween is conseivably knowable!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 12, 2012 - 09:37pm PT
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Feynman's blackboard
however, if you are asking the question regarding our ability to express what we know, it limits the domain of knowledge we're talking about. As MH2 points out, there is much "we know" but cannot express. That knowledge is not accessible to our consciousness. As I've hypothesized above, the consciousness doesn't need access to it, as that information is unnecessary in our social interactions.
The knowledge that is accessible is entirely a result of those interactions. So it violates MikeL's framing of his question.
By construction, the answer to MikeL's question "what can you say that you've experienced or learned for yourself?" is nothing.
So we either retreat into solipsism or we can create another model, which hypothesizes that we can separate subjective domains which are in our own mind and objective domains that exist separately from our mind. This can be considered a model, and that model can be tested, I used the word "hypothesize" for a purpose.
Our testing takes many forms... I like the scene in some PBS series on Galileo where he gets the inquisitors to look through his telescope to a place in the city of Pisa, has them carefully describe what they saw, and then takes them for a walk to that same place to see what they saw in the telescope. The point being the "truth" of the telescope's image... having bent the light rays and altering the "original" light, could it be that the telescope cannot be trusted. And if it is not trusted, could it be that Galileo is deceived by it and his observations of objects in the solar system are not trustworthy...
Our apocryphal Galileo here tests the hypothesis that the telescope's image does not distort the object appreciably. It is a test of the separation of subjective and objective, though we've pushed out the subjective a bit... now to our instruments.
Of course, any scientist will say that as good as Galileo's telescopes were, they were not perfect, there were distortions due to instrumental effects. And the same is true today... as we build the next generation telescopes to look for the optical shearing effect that deforms galaxy shapes due to the distribution of Dark Energy, we have to be aware of the same sort of effects due to our telescope's optics, the atmospheric instability, etc. We are interested in learning about what the distribution of Dark Energy is in the universe, not about how glass sags in a gravitational field and vibrates when accelerated.
We do not have perfect measurements so we cannot have perfect understanding.
You can inflate that to the point of despair and say we really don't know anything. But that would be foolish. We don't know everything, I'll cop to that, but we know quite a lot, a significant lot at that, and we will know more.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 12, 2012 - 09:41pm PT
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Isn't dark energy usually found in the near vicinity of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, et al?
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 12, 2012 - 09:44pm PT
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Love is the absolute constant of the Universe as revealed within the heart the seat of the soul, as the living entity.
Universal love is the all attractive and the source of all life.
It's consciousness is eternally spread infinitely everywhere unobstructed by anything material.
Matter is not the source of life as the blind eyed depth perception as the sterile speculators guess.
Life come life ....
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Dec 12, 2012 - 10:00pm PT
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The point being the "truth" of the telescope's image... having bent the light rays and altering the "original" light, could it be that the telescope cannot be trusted. And if it is not trusted, could it be that Galileo is deceived by it and his observations of objects in the solar system are not trustworthy...
Telescope or Eyeball. Whats seen is instant truth of matter. BUT each time you look its different. So trust fades!
Objects we veiw through the heart, like Love. Grow brighter with time.
Thus more trustworthy.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Dec 12, 2012 - 10:34pm PT
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one of the interesting things about this thread is how much incredibly intelligent discourse can continue on and on without really changing people's opinions or resolving the basic issues
and it is easy to ask questions that i can't answer for myself, let alone for this amazing campfire conversation
i will try again to suggest some of my views
i think the nature and structure of language is a crucial part of the limiting challenge
when we communicate using words, we are assuming the definitions of the words are something we have already agreed upon
however when someone here uses words like God or faith or spirit or sacred, that basic agreement on definitions isn't in place; as some people systematically and in all good conscience translate those terms into indicating naive mythology and/or shyster/liar
and others, perhaps no less intelligent, think of these terms as the bedrock to their world view...hence the communications disconnect
shouting BS at each other furthers nothing
so even if the person using those terms is trying to communicate some very observable experiential phenomena, the communication is completely lost in the translation...to the frustration of all concerned
that is why i say those terms are not going to further the conversation here...
so how do you get past that cosmic background noise to a real conversation?
there is a way in which i could cheat...if someone here says there is nothing in existence except for the observable physical universe...i can in all good conscience agree with them (to the surprise or disbelief of some here with special opinions about me)...and thus also sort of ending the conversation
however within the confines of the English language and officially sanctioned views of physics, i can still honestly believe that to be true... and yet later make note of phenomena in cosmology and theoretical physics that are not fully understood or resolved...and i could also chip in on the well-explored aspect of our conversation as to what is 'observable' and the nature of observing
i don't pretend to have any more than a passing acquaintance with quantum physics or relativity or string theory or dark matter/energy, etc
i do happen to know that leading physicists and mathematicians are still struggling along in these fields of understanding
i do have a few finger prints on the design of the computer control system for the NIF...but don't have more than a nodding acquaintance with the physics at the heart of it or what may be learned from it (same with the SLAC LCLS)
but i can still wonder as a moderately educated member of the public about the experiential implications of some of these things
i think some of these advanced research questions have implications that are far reaching in ways that even our most imaginative science fiction writers have not guessed
the more so because i was one of the first people in the world with a mainframe computer terminal in my home, and helped grow the systems that eventually led to the internet with the experiential implications that brought to us all
yet even as an imaginative computer technician and systems designer, i hardly guessed at the social implications of the networked computers we were building at Tymshare Inc in the 1960s
so my opinion is that if people are having such a struggle over terms like God, and spirit, and religion...then for the purposes of this conversation, leave them alone and move on
it is a waste of good intelligence and life energy to argue about whether God exists or if he does whether religions know anything about it
there are more than enough people discussing those issues so as to make it really pretty unnecessary in this forum
all that this extensive thread has really proved is that this is a hot contentious issue...and it really boils down to a disagreement on the definitions of terms and the observability of unusual phenomena
the fact is that we have a lot to discover and learn and understand...and we are more likely to make progress by redefining our terms and trying to understand the implications of unusual phenomena
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Dec 12, 2012 - 10:50pm PT
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as usual i find much of interest in Ed's thoughtful posts
i would like to comment on the following:
As MH2 points out, there is much "we know" but cannot express. That knowledge is not accessible to our consciousness. As I've hypothesized above, the consciousness doesn't need access to it, as that information is unnecessary in our social interactions.
so as a wilderness loner and solo climber and sailor, i certainly agree there is much we know and cannot express
however i do not agree that such special knowledge is inaccessible to our consciousness or unnecessary in our social interactions
that is exactly the point of my previous post...not being able to capture something in mathematics or English language is not the determining factor as to the existence or importance or our awareness of special or unusual knowledge
unlike some people, there is very little, and often no internal conversation going on in my head...if you ask the old question whether i think in English or French or Spanish...the answer is generally NO
much of my consciousness is not expressible in any communications media of which i am aware...
and my professional career has been largely devoted to expanding our means of sharing knowledge of complex systems...loosely termed 'model-based systems engineering'
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Dec 12, 2012 - 11:37pm PT
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^^^^ 1's and 0's aren't knifes and hearts
im not good at elaberating..
you missed alot from last month
language is our ability to create matter from conscienceness.
your words are engraved into my memory. Therefor part of my meat..
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Dec 13, 2012 - 06:53am PT
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Right by the tooth fairy.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 13, 2012 - 07:58am PT
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Some readers might think the current spate of goodwill and civility on this thread is dull, and maybe leave! :-D
Thanks to Ed for giving us a concrete example to sink our teeth into.
1. One person for guidance on what we can know and how we know might be Michael Polanyi. The write up on Wikipedia is fairly short--I suppose because some of his ideas are a little complicated. Polanyi argued:
a. Objectivism is a false ideal; all knowledge claims (including those which are derived from rules) rely on personal judgements.
b. The scientific method cannot yield truth mechanically. All knowing relies upon personal commitments.
c. We believe more than we can prove and know more than we can say.
d. Great scientists not only identify patterns, they identify meaningful questions that can be resolved.
e. Experience cannot be reduced to sense data. Experience is interpreted, often relying upon acquired practices.
f. All articulations are evoked by tacit awareness.
g. Mind is not reducible to rules.
h. DNA is not reducible to physics and chemistry.
i. A mechanistic view of the world is incomplete.
h. "Moral inversion" is where higher-order realities are rejected in favor of lower orders of reality (e.g., physics, biology, etc.). This inversion leads to nihilism especially in the humanities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi
2. The story about Galileo is a good one to deconstruct. The story illustrates how seeing something through an instrument (mechanical, theoretical, metric, some man-made artifact, whatever) can be verified in-person through the senses. The story illustrates a form of validation.
Validation can occur insidiously, and when it does, it can signal a projection.
When Galileo and the inquisitors looked through the telescope, what they saw is what their interpretations led them to see. I'll guess what they "saw" were people, walls, stone, trees, and various mundane physical objects. I'll argue that what they really saw was light, pixels. What their brains interpreted that light into were physical objects that were previously consensually defined. (This line of thinking can go beyond physical properties or characteristics to emotional and behavioral attributes or characteristics.)
People can hardly help to see what they are prepared to see. That has been shown so many times in so many fields that it's embarrassing to say it to a group of intelligent readers. But our intelligence is predicated upon the mind's ability to fill-in what it does not perceive in order to make sense of its environment.
This problem of projection and filling-in has been noted by philosophy of science scholars, and the problem is very difficult to overcome in research studies. As soon as someone says that they are going to research "X," all the cognitive (e.g., experience, categorizations, social agreements) baggage associated with X can hardly be ignored. So researchers go looking for X and its parts, and viola, they find X and some parts.
To be fair, most researchers have great integrity and work hard to be objective (without personal or even institutional commitments that Polyani talk about), but of course they are only human. Furthermore, the errors that projections lead to may not be very large or durable when there are so many studies done by so many researchers on subjects. Maybe the concern is trivial.
Sociologists may disagree. The extent to which any field of understanding or event is socially constructed can be surprising to most everyone. Go to another country or another culture, listen to your children, talk to a person of the opposite political or religious persuasion, look at unusual art, and it can be surprising how different perceptions occur over what appears to be the exact same physical world.
Let me be personally clear. I trust the intentions of most everyone to do well. (I believe in the socratic paradox.) Of course, I would put trained scientists toward the top of the ranking in that regard. I don't have problems with people's intentions. Instead, I have doubts about their ability to see things as they really are.
And what are things really? Hell if I know. I'm filled with doubt. But in the meantime, I go to the store, I teach my students, I work with my colleagues, and I have a wonderful marriage. Like they say in karma yoga, although one sees the emptiness and absurdity of everything (it's all like a cartoon), one acts as though everything is meaningful and real. I mean it's the only way to live this life.
It's just a conversation.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2012 - 08:00am PT
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we can access that knowledge, but not in a discursive way... our gait, for example, might be something we have no way of describing, how it comes about, it may be expressive of our moods and it may communicate something about our state, but we do not access in our usual modes of communication.
certainly it is used in performances of all types to convey just those subtle things, but when discussing how to express those moods, best way is "do it just like this..." by demonstration. what words do we have?
my point is, and it happens right here, that most of our knowledge is collective, what we know is collective, so even Feynman's brave and individualistic aspiration to "know how to solve every problem that has been solved" requires that somehow we know all those problems, a set which resides in our curriculum.
as for knowing something, when I calculate the trajectory of the Moon on the sky I apply a number of techniques and bring a set of knowledge, and technologies, to create my ephemeris for that position for that date. It is still an act of boldness to go out and setup exactly as you have calculated, with a firm commitment in your calculation. the anticipation builds, and that subjective time slows in that anticipation... you look down at the tables of times and altitudes and bearings, and gaze into the sky straining for some sign, and then the scene unfolds just as you calculated...
...that's the feeling of "knowing" something. And a small bit of what doing science is like... very small when you are doing something for the very first time.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2012 - 08:16am PT
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"Objectivism is a false ideal..."
MikeL, if I am sometimes cranky with you it is because I think you do disregard the language I use, which is chosen carefully.
I have posited that "objectivism" is a model, a hypothesis, that can be very usefully applied as an approximation to "reality." Most ideals are false, I suspect all of them are, the key is understanding where they are not false... these domains are accessible through experimentation and observation. And while these (experiment and observation) are personal acts, we perform and report those acts in a manner that can be reproduced by anyone. This is a boundary between "subjective" and "objective," subjective is something that only you can do.
...more on Polanyi's list of opinions later.
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jstan
climber
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Dec 13, 2012 - 08:45am PT
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Language well used makes man different from the beasts.
Language poorly used makes us the same.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 13, 2012 - 09:29am PT
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whereas the geezer is on the biological narrow track
Oh oh. Guess that does it for me! Now it all makes sense . . .
;>)
What I cannot create I do not understand
This expresses my learning style exactly. Had I had the intellect of Feynman I could have really gone somewhere!
I would watch a fellow mathematician write out his work, explaining each step, and I would feel he was correct, but I had to recreate his train of thought as if it were my own, with little "discoveries" as I went along, before it sunk in and became a part of me. Other mathematicians I knew didn't have to follow this procedure.
i don't think that mathematical descriptions are adequate for full understanding
I'm not sure what a full understanding really means, Tom, but there are some physical principles that challenge normal logical discourse and are "understandable" through mathematics. Which begs the question, does math - an extension of logic through symbols - actually underlie in some sense the very fabric of the universe.
Math is sometimes called the queen of the sciences, but of course is not really a science comparable to physics and chemistry. I do computer experiments to determine if algorithms I devise describe mathematical results I seek, but what I come up with is not a theory in the sense of science, but a mere hypothesis, a candidate for rigorous mathematical proof. There are gaps in the structure of mathematics, however, that allow the emergence of truth that is not verifiable through traditional logic techniques. Rare, but it seems to happen.
Isn't dark energy usually found in the near vicinity of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, et al?
Astute observation with which I fully agree . . . may the influence of these and of Bush's bomber boys wane.
Love is the absolute constant of the Universe as revealed within the heart the seat of the soul, as the living entity
The older I become the more I like this sentiment.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 13, 2012 - 09:39am PT
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Ed, although I wrote that line on this thread, I was trying to present Polyani's views. It was not meant to be an argument with you specifically or anything you said specifically. I surely do appreciate you are careful about what you say and how you say it. It is a model for all of us here to follow.
And I don't present Polyani as a bible or truth. I remember reading his writings and thinking that he had very good points to make. I still think that. When you wrote that people know more than they can put into words, I remembered Polyani . . . hence the post. I should hope there would be no need to take what I write personally, but if you do, then disregard and accept an apology for my poor writing skills.
EDIT: I try to summarize long or difficult writings of others for people here because I think people won't go to URLs and because I think posting URLs alone are lazy and perhaps an indication that people DON'T understand what they are pointing to. Summarizing is a test that comprehension is there in the poster. So, when you take up the argument with Polyani and you see that I've mis-read his ideas (or Wikipedia's text), then you be clear about where the error lies.
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MH2
climber
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Dec 13, 2012 - 10:29am PT
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from Tom:
i think the nature and structure of language is a crucial part of the limiting challenge
i certainly agree there is much we know and cannot express
however i do not agree that such special knowledge is inaccessible to our consciousness or unnecessary in our social interactions
a phrase I used:
learning you may not be particularly conscious of because it is handled below the executive level of the mind
I won't claim that anything going on in your brain, conscious or not, is inaccessible. For one thing, you could study neurophysiology and learn what individual neurons are doing. Also, no one knows for sure how much of what one is usually not conscious of in brain activity could be sensed if you worked at it. However, it would astonish me if, given a humane and non-invasive technology to work with, we could find a Tibetan monk or other specialist in contemplation who could tell us the firing rate of a randomly chosen neuron in their brain. All I am saying is that in order to walk or to interpret the visual or auditory world around you a lot of neural activity is happening that you are not directly aware of, even though you are presented with some of the results of the processing. In this sense we are probably no different than other animals and human language doesn't make a difference to that.
When Tom says, "i certainly agree there is much we know and cannot express," I suspect he is talking about something other than than the neurological details of how we keep from tripping over our own feet, or how inter-aural time differences are compared in the olivary nuclei of the brainstem.
Language may have limits but what's the alternative? Let's try to do the best we can with what we have.
Panini (of Shalatula) (ca 520-460 BC) Gandhara (India)
Panini's great accomplishment was his study of the Sanskrit language, especially in his text Ashtadhyayi. Although this work might be considered the very first study of linguistics or grammar, it used a non-obvious elegance that would not be equalled in the West until the 20th century. Linguistics may seem an unlikely qualification for a "great mathematician," but language theory is a field of mathematics. The works of eminent 20th-century linguists and computer scientists like Chomsky, Backus, Post and Church are seen to resemble Panini's work 24 centuries earlier. Panini's systematic study of Sanskrit may have inspired the development of Indian science and algebra. Panini has been called "the Indian Euclid" since the rigor of his grammar is comparable to Euclid's geometry.
Although his great texts have been preserved, little else is known about Panini. Some scholars would place his dates a century later than shown here; he may or may not have been the same person as the famous poet Panini. In any case, he was the very last Vedic Sanskrit scholar by definition: his text formed the transition to the Classic Sanskrit period. Panini has been called "one of the most innovative people in the whole development of knowledge."
http://fabpedigree.com/james/mathmen.htm
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 13, 2012 - 10:43am PT
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By juggling grammatical rules one can sometimes completely change the meaning of a sentence.
Thus one has to come complete understanding of the actual intended spirit of it's meaning beyond the planes of duality for it's ultimate conclusions.
The gross materialists can not do so, for they are rigidly bonded and anchored to duality.
Thus the ascending process of knowledge shows it defectiveness.
The descending process of knowledge coming down freed from duality shows it's superior process in the shortest path from A to B ......
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 13, 2012 - 01:57pm PT
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 13, 2012 - 03:03pm PT
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I just remembered that the world is going to end in 8 days. I gotta go surf some of the websites devoted entirely to the "spiritual" or "feeling" part of the brain.
Yep. There are many people like this. They are entirely devoted to a strict set of rules to either get into heaven or survive the coming pole shift or collision with planet X.
In the entire web, the coolest site like that is Zetatalk. Nancy, who was chosen by the Zetas to communicate with humanity, has a huge website. She used to bug all of the professional astronomers and astrophysicists on the old sci.astro usenet group. She was sort of like The Chief in that she would bomb into the middle of a conversation and then make very concrete and very inflexible claims.
One night all of the professional astrophysicists got their home telescopes and had a star party on the sidewalk in front of her house. She was claiming that Planet X was hiding in the comet Hale Bopp.
If any of you were too young to see that comet, you missed the sight of a lifetime.
Anyway, Nancy is a prolific writer and saves absolutely everything, including all of the debates that she butted in on at sci.astro. She keeps everything, and you could spend a month reading her website. I have never seen such a dogged goof. I hope she is a goof, anyway.
Please visit her virus free normal old website and peruse your evening away. It is fascinating. She now has mirror sites all over the world and quite a following. I saw her on CNN a few months ago.
http://zetatalk.com/
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Dec 13, 2012 - 03:49pm PT
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It's true: Life comes from life. But the rest of the truth: Life comes from geochemistry. That's the claim, and it's reasonable...
Carbon fixing and other chemical sub-processes that together constitute metabolism each comprise dozens of steps; some are quick and easy turnkey reactions with simple molecules, others require highly specific chemical helpers, or catalysts.
The parts of metabolism that guide carbon fixation through its unstable intermediate stages fall into the latter category, requiring help. But these seemingly unlikely reactions are remarkably consistent across all living systems. In fact, says Braakman, their ubiquity and the difficulty with which they are forged make them the chemical constraints within which all living systems operate -- in a sense, the scaffolding for the tree of life.
It's these dependable regularities of hierarchy and modularity, amid the panoply of reactions comprising metabolism, that stabilize the system and enable its complexity.
New paper pieces together life's beginnings (metabolism's beginnings).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121212130709.htm
What started as wonky geochemical mechanisms were sequentially replaced and fortified by biological ones, the authors believe. "Think of life like an onion emerging in layers, where each layer functions as a feedback mechanism that stabilizes and improves the ability to fix carbon," says Braakman.
re: sure, certain
re: You can't be sure. (Yes, you can.)
Absolutely sure, no. Reasonably sure, yes.
.....
Don't let people who like to over-philosophize things lead you (a) to believe the abyss is bottomless; (b) to believe you can't be sure of anything, or that everything's uncertain; (c) to believe truths don't exist. Strike a balance.
Striking a balance is a life skill.
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