Finally, something lighthearted!

your link essentially talks about one of the oldest philosophical problems: the mind/body problem... is our consciousness derived through some physical relationship, or is it, instead, hosted in some sort of spiritual container that is only loosely attached to the physical body? Or is it the third option, where there is no physical reality, just the consciousness, and we simply imagine that there is a physical reality because it's easier for our consciousness to perceive it as such.

This link is intriguing in the direction it takes. While it doesn't directly address the mind/body problem, it seems that the author is a proponent for materialism, where everything is contained within the mind with no "spiritual consciousness" - if you can duplicate every atom exactly, he claims, you would duplicate the entire person. Of course, he also goes on to say that it wouldn't be the same person, because someone who was duplicated can't say "I" and be referring to both copies. This would seem to point towards materialism as being the "correct" path... but since science has yet to create such a duplicate (and the genetic cloning of sheep don't count, as thats not an atom-by-atom duplication, just built from the same building blocks/pattern), i'm not sure we can say for certain that this is correct. For all we know, experiments to create such duplicates will fail until someone stumbles on a way to duplicate a spiritual consciousness as well. Or on the other hand, they might succeed, but how do we really know that you're creating a duplicate of something physical, as opposed to a representation of another consciousness (in the realm where there is no physicality, only consciousness)?

It's a truly intriguing question.

 

I'm sure you don't want to believe anything Al Gore says, I"m not sure about Carl. But, do some googling on the facts and see what you come up with. Here is my 3 minutes of math.

Earth Diameter, 7926 miles = radius of 3963 miles.
Earth Atmosphere = 19.26 miles

That is an atmosphere that is .004859 of the radius, or .4859% of the radius thickness.

For a 24" Globe that's .1166 inches of varnish or, equal to 29 pieces of paper thick for those sitting at a desk thinking 1 paper seems to be close to a 'thin layer of varnish' thick. Math based on google giving me .1mm thickness for paper = 256 sheets per inch roughly.

For a 18" globe, 22 pages thick layer of varnish.

If Al and carl are putting on a layer of varnish on a globe that's as thick as 29 sheets of paper and calling it a thin layer, I'd like to see the process for applying a thick layer.

Or, they are spouting off a bunch of crap that we all buy into without checking their facts.

 

Only nine months?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Nov 17 2006, 07:57 AM) [snapback]350782[/snapback]</div>

After Newton demonstrated that certain kinds of motion are governed by deterministic physical laws, the obvious conclusion, reached by some scientists and philosophers, was that if we could know the exact position and velocity of every particle in the universe, we could extrapolate the entire history of the universe from beginning to end. The same logic leads to the conclusion that if we could duplicate every particle of a person, in both position and velocity, we'd have an exact copy of the person, complete with memories, opinions, and feelings.

The came Heisenberg, who showed that you can never know both the position and velocity of a particle. This has nothing to do with a person knowing something. It is a fundamental property of the particle.

Around the same time came the understanding, within quantum mechanics, that certain events are not deterministic, but are governed by probability.

Einstein opposed this notion, arguing that "God does not play dice," but later said that this argument of his was the greatest mistake of his scientific career.

When you combine quantum uncertainty with quantum probability, and add in the fact that in certain kinds of reactions (those governed by repulsive, rather than by attractive, forces) very small differences in initial conditions lead to very large differences in end conditions (think of the collision of billiard balls) quantum uncertainty becomes magnified into macroscopic changes, and determinism collapses into chaos.

Chaos theory is a relatively new field of science, and studies percisely this kind of interaction.

The inescapable conclusion is that it is as impossible to reproduce a person as it would be for dbermanmd to be objective in a political discussion. Star Trek's "transporter" is not science fiction. It is magical fantasy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Nov 17 2006, 11:28 AM) [snapback]350858[/snapback]</div>

Ok, so you only want to count the first 5/19ths of my stack of 22 sheets.

Still comes out a pretty thick coat of varnish... My point is still valid... the statement sucks and even based on your wikpedia info makes the guy who wrote it and the guy who's quoting it seem like lemmings who are repeating crap that makes no sense.

But, they repeat it to people who have never used varnish, and to people who will never do the math and figure out how stupid the quote really is.

 

Mr. "Distort The Facts" speaks:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Nov 17 2006, 08:36 AM) [snapback]350822[/snapback]</div>

FACT: A 24" RADIUS globe is four feet in diameter: about the size of gigantic globes seen in museums and large buildings, and UNLIKELY to be the type of globe Carl Sagan had in mind when positing his analogy in terms likely to be understood by the average person.

My office globe is a deluxe globe, larger than most. It's 12 inches in diameter, with a radius of 6" - and is much more likely to be the type of globe Sagan had in mind for his analogy.

0.4859% of 6" is just shy of 3/100ths of an inch (29 thousandths, to be more precise). On your office ruler, that's slightly under 1/32 of an inch, which, by ANY common vernacular, is THIN.

To split hairs and put forth a cynical argument that Gore and Sagan are deliberately distorting the issue with your own deliberate distortion utterly devastates your credibility, and makes you look exceedingly foolish on top of it.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

so much for the OP's intention of starting a light-hearted thread!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 17 2006, 11:39 AM) [snapback]350879[/snapback]</div>

Yes, the uncertainty principle is a bitch... BTW, that sounds an awful lot like something i read from Hawking. Anyways, Like everything else in modern day physics, it's all simply a theory - it fits our current observations, so we say it's right, but all someone has to do is show it's wrong once and it's blown out of the water. It's like Newton's law of gravitation... Everyone knows it's correct, right? when in fact it's not - they have equations that match celestial orbits exactly, but those are complicated, so all but the most serious physicists use Newton's laws as a good enough approximation.

Also, i would argue that, just because we have this thing we call quantum uncertainty and probability, and can show the calculations with regards to it to match real world conditions doesn't mean that there isn't some underlying force driving it, deterministically predicting and explaining every outcome. We just haven't found it yet and don't know what it would look like - it's like we were living a hundred years ago - no one back then knew about the four different types of particle spin that result in the four different types of forces we know about, and would have called us crazy for proposing that they existed.

So in short, don't rule anything out based on a currently accepted physics theory.

 

Eagle, you make a common mistake, grounded in semantics. The same mistake comes up in the discussion of evolution:

The word "theory" has a very different meaning in science than it has in common parlance. In common parlance, "theory" is conjecture. In science a conjecture is a hypothesis. Only after that hypothesis has received overwhealming confirmation, does it graduate to the scientific category of "theory."

Quantum theory is the most successful construct in the history of human thought: the predictions it has made, which, although counter to all intuition, have turned out to be correct, are beyond number.

The phrase "just a theory" is a glib retort the disengenuous use to convince the gullible to reject ideas that have been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Relativity did not overturn classical mechanics. Relativity merely tweaked classical mechanics to account for effects that are only measureable/observable under conditions of extreme velocity or intense gravitational fields. Newton himself knew, and classical physisists knew all along, that their formulas broke down under extreme conditions, and were therefore not complete. But far from throwing out those principles, Relativity Theory merely filled in some of the missing parts.

And there are still some bits missing. The holy grail of physics today is the Grand Unified Field Theory, which will fill in the bits still missing. There is far too much confirmation of Relativity for anyone to think it will be thrown out. Rather, it remains to be completed.

However, your view is understandable, since science education in this country is so poor, and the popular press and the conservative pulpit like to misrepresent science as a series of unrelated conjectures that replace each other on a regular basis.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 20 2006, 07:17 PM) [snapback]352387[/snapback]</div>

Concise, clear and articulate as always, Daniel. If your posts run right off your fingertips onto the keyboard without revision, I'd be very impressed, as your explanations never fail for lucidity, the thoughtfulness behind their reasoning visible and impeccable. I wish I disagreed with you more so I could engage you in a duel of logic, but alas, I share most of your viewpoints. You even like cats. Cats who hate bombs.

Always a pleasure seeing your posts -

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Nov 20 2006, 07:43 PM) [snapback]352400[/snapback]</div>

Thank you, Mark. Mostly I edit for typos. I am a lousy typist. But I do edit and revise before posting. I use the Preview button a lot.

Cats are far more wise than we. If the world were run by cats there would be no war. Of course, the mice would have a hard time of it, but that's a price I'd be willing to pay. The problem is that cats are far too wise to let on that they know what's what. The proof of that is that if you ask a cat to run for president he'll just give you a blank stare and pretend he doesn't understand.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 20 2006, 09:17 PM) [snapback]352387[/snapback]</div>

I was merely pointing out that Hawking himself, one of the foremost physicists, has said that these theories are what currently fits what we "know" to be true, but all it takes is one instance where they don't work for them to be debunked. When dealing with them, it's literally impossible to prove that they are absolutely correct. In fact, in theory just about all of the theories we currently have break down in a singularity - ie a black hole or prior to the big bang. I'd go into more detail, but my references are all at home.

And as for quantum theory being "the most successful construct in the history of human thought"... well, people have said that in the past about different theories, some of which still hold true, others have been debunked. A quote from a good, if stupid, movie comes to mind:

And largely it's true... A huge number of scientific theories have been proposed and been widely accepted by the community only to later be proven incorrect. A theory is just that, a theory. it's a statement of the way we think the world works - without the ability to produce proof that it is true (and it's impossible to do so), it will always remain a theory that simply fits all the observations up to the given point in time.

I agree that quantum theory and all it's constructs are good and sound - they have been shown to be accurate many, many times. but all it takes is that one time...

So in conclusion, all i'm saying is don't stand up and declare it to be the end all of scientific theories in this area... leave the door open for future ideas, thoughts, and evidence, and don't dismiss other possibilities because it doesn't fit in your particular world view. So accept the theories for what they are, believe in them if you wish, but don't hold them up as the holy grail they aren't.

 

I repeat that saying "a theory is just a theory" is a glib way of obfuscating the meaning of the word. I never said that quantum theory was the end of the story. It's not complete and there are bits to be filled in. But, although one contradictory piece of evidence could topple the structure, all that means is that the theory is falsifiable, and therefore scientific. You act as though the mere fact that a theory is falsifiable is practically proof that it is false.

Hawking is working at the edges, where indeed there are hypotheses that seem to fit what we know now, but which have not yet been tested extensively and could well be pushed aside or discarded. But you commit a grave error when you judge a thoroughly tested and confirmed theory on the basis of the newest, still-untested conjectures, and when you put forth the faulty analogy that since these new conjectures are liable to be discarded, something as solid as quantum theory is equally likely to be discarded. It is not.

Quantum theory will eventually be filled in, and the naysayers will claim that those fillings-in are "replacing" the old theory. But just as relativity theory did not "replace" Newtonian gravity, it merely filled it in, so will be the case with quantum theory and relativity theory when we finally work out the grand unified field theory.