Why many scientists are so ignorant
- Thread starter Magical Realist
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Another Lawrence Krauss Interview style debate.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
Richard Dawkins wrote the afterword for the book---and I thought it was pretentious at the time, but I just decided to go with it---where he compares the book to The Origin of Species. And of course as a scientific work it doesn't come close to The Origin of Species, which is one of the greatest scientific works ever produced. And I say that as a physicist; I've often argued that Darwin was a greater scientist than Einstein. But there is one similarity between my book and Darwin's---before Darwin life was a miracle; every aspect of life was a miracle, every species was designed, etc. And then what Darwin showed was that simple laws could, in principle, plausibly explain the incredible diversity of life. And while we don't yet know the ultimate origin of life, for most people it's plausible that at some point chemistry became biology. What's amazing to me is that we're now at a point where we can plausibly argue that a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings: nothing. That's been driven by profound revolutions in our understanding of the universe, and that seemed to me to be something worth celebrating, and so what I wanted to do was use this question to get people to face this remarkable universe that we live in.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
Richard Dawkins wrote the afterword for the book---and I thought it was pretentious at the time, but I just decided to go with it---where he compares the book to The Origin of Species. And of course as a scientific work it doesn't come close to The Origin of Species, which is one of the greatest scientific works ever produced. And I say that as a physicist; I've often argued that Darwin was a greater scientist than Einstein. But there is one similarity between my book and Darwin's---before Darwin life was a miracle; every aspect of life was a miracle, every species was designed, etc. And then what Darwin showed was that simple laws could, in principle, plausibly explain the incredible diversity of life. And while we don't yet know the ultimate origin of life, for most people it's plausible that at some point chemistry became biology. What's amazing to me is that we're now at a point where we can plausibly argue that a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings: nothing. That's been driven by profound revolutions in our understanding of the universe, and that seemed to me to be something worth celebrating, and so what I wanted to do was use this question to get people to face this remarkable universe that we live in.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
Oh the Universe surprises the BB theorists all the time ; practicably everyday .
About this nothing ; stuff ; show how nothing becomes something ; without any something ; in any form.
Read the book and/or the two articles..
You are so far behind modern thought.
https://www.astrosociety.org/publications/a-universe-from-nothing/
A Universe from Nothing
by Alexei V. Filippenko and Jay M. Pasachoff
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://fisica.ciencias.uchile.cl/~gonzalo/cursos/termo_II-04/seminarios/EJP_Stenger-bigbang_90.pdf
The Universe: the ultimate free lunch
Abstract.
It is commonly believed that the origin of the Universe must have involved the violation of natural laws, particularly energy conservation and the second law of thermodynamics. Here is it shown that this need not have been the case, that the Universe could have begun from a state of zero energy and maximum entropy, and then naturally evolved into what we see today without violating any known principles of physics. The fundamental particles and the force laws they obey then come about through a series of random symmetry breaking phase transitions during the period of exponential expansion in the first fraction of a second after the Universe appears as a quantum fluctuation.
A Universe from Nothing
by Alexei V. Filippenko and Jay M. Pasachoff
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://fisica.ciencias.uchile.cl/~gonzalo/cursos/termo_II-04/seminarios/EJP_Stenger-bigbang_90.pdf
The Universe: the ultimate free lunch
Abstract.
It is commonly believed that the origin of the Universe must have involved the violation of natural laws, particularly energy conservation and the second law of thermodynamics. Here is it shown that this need not have been the case, that the Universe could have begun from a state of zero energy and maximum entropy, and then naturally evolved into what we see today without violating any known principles of physics. The fundamental particles and the force laws they obey then come about through a series of random symmetry breaking phase transitions during the period of exponential expansion in the first fraction of a second after the Universe appears as a quantum fluctuation.
All from something ; all from something
5yrs old pad ; maybe 10yrs. Old ; its just BS fancy talk.
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Not really...these people are recognised expert professionals, unlike you or I.
But perhaps you are getting confused with the likes of ghosts, goblins, UFO's of Alien origin, fairies, Big foot etc etc ?
Not really...these people are recognised expert professionals, unlike you or I.
But perhaps you are getting confused with the likes of ghosts, goblins, UFO's of Alien origin, fairies, Big foot etc etc ?
Perhaps if you were to have sat down with me and talked about all kinds of ideas and thoughts ; none of what I speak would have been a surprise .
And more important ; it would have expanded your thinking ...
Sure thing Russell! or is it Plato? or perhaps Socrates
Another vague assertion.
Please, tell us what this "modern thought" is and provide sources.
Or are you simply referring to the output of cranks (whom you listen to instead of scientists) and who can't actually support their inane drivel?
Modern thought is beyond your ability to understand ; I know this because you dywr are a mainstream crank .
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
Don't cry. I defend myself where I'm attacked. If the moderation finds the place of defense inappropriate, it can delete it together with the defamation, or split it.
That is spinning a little fantasy. You do have reason to believe the standard histories, which only in your fantasy world are a "mainstream variant", and - more to the point - you have no reason to disbelieve them. The existence of propaganda or coercion somewhere is no reason to disbelieve sound histories and accounts elsewhere.schmelzer said:
I said that Holocaust denial is freely permitted in many places, including the US where many posters here have been educated, so you have presented no reason to doubt the accounts of the Holocaust you find in those places.schmelzer said:
You're error there is at root a simple one of basic logic - asserting "some A" is not the same thing as asserting "no not-A". Why do you think you made that error?
But these errors in reasoning you are committing on that topic are directly relevant to the thread topic. You are illustrating the vulnerability of anyone - scientist or not - to errors of reasoning, and the value of science in providing various formal and institutionalized resistance to them, and correction of them.schmelzer said:
In particular, you illustrate the danger of coming to conclusions about physical reality or the uncertainty of it (which you have, although you think by describing it as uncertainty you can present it as suspended judgment), based on what is read in books or deduced from what people say only. Your handling of German coercion is not based on physical fact-checking, even casual and as easily accomplished as discovery of the coercion in the first place.
You also illustrate the fact that these virtues of science are not perfect or infallible in their influence on human beings - you, for example, despite familiarity with scientific reasoning, have not been corrected in even this simple and well-understood arena of delusion.
So this is a reasonable example for the thread.
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Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
I disagree. History is written by the winner, this was always so, and was always a good reason not to trust the mainstream variant of history. It is the most politicized science of all, and has always been. So, even without the criminal persecutions of opponents there would be sufficient reason to doubt. If you prefer the mainstream variant so much that you even deny the existence of alternatives, your choice. If you think the actual Western variant of history contains less propaganda than usual, ok, your choice, I do not share this belief.
Permitted or not, Zündel was arrested in the US, and, after this, ended in German jail. But this is not the decisive point. There is a long way from no imprisonment for revisionists to a free scientific discussion with revisionists. Much less political pressure than imprisonment is sufficient to classify the affected domain of science as problematic and politicized, and, as a consequence, to doubt the mainstream position.
I'm attacked here, quite heavily, not even because I deny the Holocaust, because I don't, but simply for having no definite position about those historical questions. This is certainly not a climate where unbiased truth finding would be even imaginable.
No. This part of the thread is about a primitive defamation. I was named a Holocaust denier, which would be a criminal offense at the place where I spend some time, because my family lives there, so, the defamation is a quite serious one.
My position is quite consistent, I do not believe the mainstream position where I can identify political pressure. This does not mean that I claim that the mainstream position is wrong, but it means that to find out if it is true or not one has to become a specialist in this domain too, because one has to read a lot of scientific papers (not only titles and abstracts) to find out at least some part of what is hidden because of the political pressure.
It would be stupid and inconsistent, if I would classify climate science and child labor economics as examples of such science under political pressure, where one cannot simply accept the mainstream but has to look at the details to find the truth, but to accept the mainstream without any doubt in the case of history of WW II, where revisionists risk even imprisonment. (And where one already risk personal attacks for simply not supporting the official position.)
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
That's a stupid remark.
The only way that we could surprise the universe is if the universe were sentient and capable of psychological states such as surprise.
I don't think that Krauss really thinks that the universe could surprise him either. That's because Krauss believes (by faith mostly) that he already knows all the underlying principles of the universe (his quantum physics equations) or all the important ones anyway, or at least their outlines. He might not believe that he's omniscient at this point, but he thinks he knows the direction to go to get there.
His interview style is where Krauss' annoying mixture of attitude and hubris is most on display.
And Krauss says that he was on his way to speak at Christopher Hitchens' funeral when the inverviewer asked him for this interview. Apparently Krauss is close to the so-called "new atheist" crowd. And during the course of his Atlantic interview, Krauss suggests that he associates philosophers and theologians in his own mind, so apparently philosophy becomes collateral damage in some idiot jihad against religion.
Krauss seems to believe that Darwin's historical importance is that he reduced the force of the theistic design argument in intellectual life. And Krauss seemingly wants to be the guy who does the same thing with first-cause theistic argument, which he seems to associate with the the idea that 'something can't come from nothing'.
Krauss is defining 'nothing' in his own peculiar way, where nothing includes the laws of physics upon which all the rest of his rhetoric rests.
The Atlantic interview quotes from Columbia University's David Albert's scathing New York Times review of Krauss' A Universe from Nothing:
"The particular, eternally existing, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields... they [Krauss & co.] have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields come from, or why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or why it should have consisted of fields at all, or why there should have been a world in the first place. Case closed. End of story."
Or as I would say more simply: trying to explain reality in its entirety in terms of physics presupposes physics. That's just as circular as the worst theistic arguments. 'Nothing' implies not only no space, time or matter, but no principles of physics either. A consequence is that physics is unlikely to ever be in a position to provide a credible answer to the 'why is there something rather than nothing' question.
In the Atlantic interview Krauss is backed into admitting that 'why' questions can continue forever. Then he blurts:
"But I don't really give a damn what 'nothing' means to philosophers; I care about the 'nothing' of reality".
Krauss' contempt for philosophers doesn't even address the difficulties in his approach to the 'A Universe from Nothing' issue, real difficulties that would remain whether philosophers pointed them out or not.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
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