multi-dimensional physics thread (for Gisteron) ;-)

Rex wrote: Metaphysics and physics both require the other at a certain level, so your edgy point just outed yourself.

Outed myself? Edgy?
You realize I'm not being serious whatsoever. In fact, I was being deliberately flippant.
I'm just trying to add to the conversation, I have no specific standpoint, especially concerning philosophy (I'm a college freshman).

Rex wrote: Also relevant to Hume:
You realize that skepticism is largely a hypothetical and not an actual viewpoint; if you do decide to be a skeptic, you're at a dead end and you have nothing else to add.......

Skepticism is an actual viewpoint, hence the work of Descartes (or maybe it's just an evil demon tricking us with a false reality).
Most philosophers utilize a healthy amount of skepticism towards one thing or another.
It isn't so much a strict belief as it is a tool, a means to an end.
Skepticism can be extended towards any matter, it doesn't necessarily mean you are at an epistemological "dead-end", as you put it.

Rex wrote: I haven't touched modern physics in a long time, but I'm pretty sure travelling back in time isn't a thing for a handful of reasons.....

Are you implying that philosophy is outdated? Because I would heartily disagree.

Poe's law strikes again.

Descartes Meditations were chalk full of thought experiments not his actual beliefs. I mean cogito is one of them, along with the wax and evil demon ones. If you don't believe me, fact check me, Stanford's philosophy encyclopedia is a reputable and still easily accessible resource. I actually enjoy this sort of stuff as a hobby, and love learning more about it, so if you want to discuss it in a separate thread (this one is already its own nasty beast) I'd love to.

Skepticism is like the term "agnosticism" in that it's used against certain beliefs, however total skepticism i.e. that you can't trust jack, is a dead end. Why? Because I wrote this.

The time travelling remark has nothing to do with philosophy. It's because time expands and contracts, but always in the positive direction. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of causality among other things would be screwy

Rex wrote: I actually enjoy this sort of stuff as a hobby, and love learning more about it, so if you want to discuss it in a separate thread (this one is already its own nasty beast) I'd love to.

Yes, let's do that.
That may prove entertaining, informative, and hopefully less combative than this thread.
I love talking philosophy, and I just started my first philosophy class in college, so discussing it may help my understanding.
A little dialectic never hurts.
Do you want to start the thread, or shall I?
What topic shall we start with?

Fyxe wrote: What it has to do with the subject is Im trying to understand why you have taken such particular issue with my particular theories on the subject of the force. You seem to want to reduce it to complete... uhh woo, didnt you call it? I can understand that some will see it that way but your particular obsession with completely destroying it seems a lot. I wonder where you get this intense hatred from and I wonder if its because you have had a very bad experience or something?

There is no particular hate I feel toward your position. I tried to start out with content-oriented inquiries, maybe some disagreements stemming from a misunderstanding of the way you used certain technical terms. It's also not about what the Force "really is to me" or how you may or may not have a different perspective on it. I invited you to open this thread after you mentioned in another that your model was supported by findings in physics research. See, if this was your personal religious conviction, that would be fair enough by me. Still I might comment on those if I find them intriguing enough to ponder beyond just saying "thanks for sharing" and moving along, but a lot of the time you go much further than just expressing how you feel. When you say that this is the way the... "cosmos", for lack of a better word, is structured, and when you say that this is actually something with scientific backing behind it, that's when you really spark my interest. You are not the first to present your ideas as factual rather than mere philosophical ponderings, and you are not the first to have ideas that rightly raise an eyebrow on the face of anyone who spent some time studying nature outside of YouTube and an arm chair. You are not unique in this, and I don't have personal issues with it, as long as we can discuss it with civility.

I don't want nor need to reduce your ideas to woo either. This may be a controversial thing to say, but in my experience, people broadly have some respect for the scientific enterprise. The last few hundred years of our history are profoundly different from the thousands that came before. We live now to become old enough that various forms of dementia and cancer are things we get to worry about. Until that time we are surrounded by so much technology to aid our lives that a general sense of boredom is a problem some people can genuinely have. Meanwhile entertainment is so abundant that we get to miss out on more than we get to enjoy. Compare our lives to the lives of our ancestors just a millennium ago, and it turns out that even the poorest among us live in relative luxury. Intuitively we understand that none of this would be possible, were it not for the relentless efforts by a collective of the most competent and passionate among us to find out how the world works and to exploit those mechanisms for the benefit of all. The name of science bears so much appeal and pedigree with the common man, that often appeals to science even without any cited research are compelling. "Technobabble" is a technique used in storytelling to ex-machina difficult situations out of the picture so the tale can conclude on time. When Geordi LaForge speaks of some "anti-dilithium quantum slipstream reactor catalysis" or some mumbo jumbo like that, we don't spend time to analyze whether what he said made any sense. The message we are supposed to get is that he is an engineering genius who just had the idea of how to save the Enterprise in that week's episode, and that is fair enough. Sharlatans of course do the same thing, except unlike Star Trek, they don't make it clear that what they sell is fantasy, and instead exploit their buyers' intuitive trust in science to make money out of selling empty promises of great rewards.

When I call something woo, I mean by it that it uses technical jargon solely because it sounds nice as anything we are conditioned to trust would, rather than because it is appropriate to convey the intended meaning. Words like "quantum", "singularity", or "vortex", or even "energy" and "dimension" sure sound exciting, and anyone is free to use them to refer to things like the mystical, or a magic portal, or a flash of light, or a spirit, or a parallel world of course, but I think it is important to understand and appreciate that in the context they are borrowed from they already have established uses. For all I care you can call the Phantom Zone a "dimension" when writing a Superman comic book, but to say that science has evidence of the fictional prison world just because "dimension" is also a word you might find in scientific texts is, in my humble opinion, stretching it far, far beyond breaking point. And, no offense, but what you presented in this thread was not exactly substantially more meritorious, let's face it. What you proposed, after all, were very specific numbers of worlds of different types that overlapped in specific ways, contained specific things or kinds of existence and shared relations between them and so on. Of course you can point at dark matter or dark energy as things that sort of don't quite fully fit in with the rest of what we figured out but still have an impact, any impact, on those things. But to take that very generic and superficial point of similarity (if one were even to grant that there be any) to say that this indicates, serves as evidence even, that indeed there are this amount of "spiritual levels" of this sort, and that amount of the other, and they interact in some measurable or unmeasurable ways but that are well described as those particular interactions is, frankly, a bit reaching, I find.

And that you then go on to take criticisms like that so personally and snap back over nothing (until it inevitably escalates as you lose ever more composure) really doesn't help clarify or resolve anything. It's also not helpful to pretend in the end like this should never have been about the scientific merit you were trying to claim for your model. Especially considering that you were fine supporting a conversation about that before it became ever clearer that the reasoning by which the model was obtained had not been scientific in the first place.

So what it sounds like to me Gist is that you just have a problem with me using your pet words and phrases, right?

Ok so if I present this experience (changed from theory) of myself to the board to get input and feedback on its content and I say that I have belief (changed from evidence) that it is real, this is the result of becoming convinced that what I have been told and experienced conforms with reality because of the faith (changed from proof) I have in the incredible amount of work others have put in in these areas over the centuries that have come to the same conclusions as I. This is reinforced by the appearance (changed from fact) that the findings of modern sceince seem to line up with these ancient revealings. Things like dark matter appear to conform with the idea that other worlds do exist that are not physical but still interact with the solid reality.

Would you have any problems then?

Hmm, I don't think I had "problems" before either. All I did was take what you said at face value, and inquired just what evidence from physics it was that you were referring to and it turned out something that was not really indicative of your model as much as it was arguably sort of consistent with it.

As for your new wording, aside from wondering why you would insist that yes there was indeed evidence - if not proof - of your "theory" - when apparently you meant nothing stronger than a (possibly unfounded) personal conviction, the only thing I'd still say to it is that I don't understand how dark matter "conforms" to the idea that other non-physical worlds exist. Sure, the existence of one does not - as far as I can tell - preclude the existence of the other. There is no strict contradiction there. But there is no strong contradiction between regular matter and Santa Clause either, and we wouldn't think of that "conformity" as particularly significant in a discussion on the (physical) merits of the Santa Clause idea, so I wouldn't know why one would bring it up. So does bringing dark matter into a discussion about other worlds seem a bit forced (no pun intended), given the flimsy connection. A reference to the mysterious in a discussion about the mystical. I mean, it's not even that we know dark matter to share the non-physicalness with your other worlds. And the interaction asserted for it would seem to be detectable, at least in principle, whilst the interactions between your other worlds and ours you said could very well not be.
Although, I'd struggle to understand what "non-measurable interaction" might be referring to, anyway. It's rather like "unthinkable thought". If something is to be called a "thought" of any sort, it is sort of entailed automatically that it has to be possible for something we would recognize as a mind to think it...

Oh I would very much disagree that you did not have a problem. You have not only a problem but a huge condescending chip on your shoulder in order to resort to such low tactics as calling me a liar and a weasel. Those are not objective terms of science but personal attacks on my person.

I used evidence in a laymans term and I find it reasonable so if asked I will convey that in as a yes, this is not insisting anything as you seem to want to put that word in my mouth. This is what I meant and its what I intended. The only reason I h ave softened it here is for your ego so that you can feel as though you have won some sort of sciencey victory for all mankind.

Dark matter conforms to my idea of non physical worlds because I say it does. It makes sense to me. Obviously it does not to you and thats fine. But short of you making a claim that it CANT conform to that idea all you can do is tell me you dont agree. You asked for evidence and I gave it and you did not find it credible, ok. A accept your rejection of my evidence and I move on. I dont care what you think anyway so why are you still here trying to show the world how much I am wrong or how much better you have it figured out? You seem to be satisfied you proved a point. soooo.. why are you still trying to prove it except to bully this thread and interrupt others trying to have a discussion?

I have no idea what the whole santa clause thing is about. children believe in it because we trick them into believing it. Im not trying to trick you into anything here. I was upfront and you say NOT and thats it. right?

One more thing, why do you refuse to answer my questions about your beliefs? you seem to think you know everything wrong with my beliefs based on your intense knowledge and strict use of sceiney terms so you killed discussion here. What about you. I want to know what you believe about the force and why?

Is it possible some people are afraid of what they cannot control.?
If they don't have all the answers and are standing on solid ground they're afraid?

For some people they're obviously not going to get this connection. one example look at the scientifically documented cases of the placebo effect.
They give people a water pill And tell them it will cure cancer they come back a week later their whole bodies cured of cancer.
You think the 1st time you would have heard a story like that it would have changed the whole world.
No way it's too scary for people to think in your mind you could change the molecules of the body heal muscles cure every disease replace damaged organs all by just a thought.

It's too scary magine the millions of people who would be put out of work in the medical field.
So we continue on our path.
Some people will never change It's a little scary for them imagine to find out all your years of reading books and going to school or pointless.
Just something to think about for those who get it.
Ill stand back while most of you start to throw rocks at me .

Fyxe wrote: I used evidence in a laymans term and I find it reasonable so if asked I will convey that in as a yes, this is not insisting anything as you seem to want to put that word in my mouth. This is what I meant and its what I intended.

Perhaps then I misread. To me it sounded like you were saying that there was scientific support for your model, but perhaps all you really meant was that to you it made sense in the context of what you think are findings in modern physics. In the end, now that you clarified that this was not how you meant it, we can move on with that new interpretation.

You asked for evidence and I gave it and you did not find it credible, ...

I invite you and other readers to go back and read through what I actually said. Credibility of what you submitted did not come up. My contention was that what you submitted did not serve to indicate the model you were proposing over alternatives to it. You have made it clear now that this was not what you meant by evidence, but it is what I meant and I made that much clear long before you submitted your first item. That moment would have been a good time to clarify, tha when you speak of "evidence in physics", you do not mean evidence in the sense any scientific context would assign, but rather a vague consistency just enough to make a lay person go "yea, that kinda makes sense to me". You did not, so I treated your evidence as if it was of the scientific sort, for I assumed that this was how I was meant to take it.

I dont care what you think anyway so why are you still here trying to show the world how much I am wrong or how much better you have it figured out?

You have voiced that accusation a few times already, but it is in my opinion a false one and I shouldn't need to have to point that out again and correct you again. I leave it to the judgement of our readers, then, to go back and to see whether showing your wrongness was an implicit or explicit goal I ever pursued here or whether showing the world how much better I had figured it out was.
As for you not caring what I think... If that is so, then how come you put my name in the thread title and invited me publicly to pose questions to you, with a promise to address them? How come you are asking me of my conception of the Force, if you genuinely don't care what I think? Well, whether you care or not, at the very least it would seem to me that you wish me to express my thoughts, or at least you make some effort to converse with me, for a while. Your not fancying what I have to say too much afterwards is in any case perfectly acceptable to me.

forceuser wrote: ... it's too scary for people to think in your mind you could change the molecules of the body heal muscles cure every disease replace damaged organs all by just a thought.

Of course that would be scary! Imagine you had a lung inflammation and your doctor told you to just think it away? Imagine you lost a limb in a freak car accident, blood is gushing out of the fresh stump, your eyesight is fading away and you feel increasingly cold and all you can hear is the ever more muffled voices of the emergency medics telling you intently from a yard's distance away to start having heal-y thoughts so you can stop the bleeding and regrow your foot. This could easily be the premise of a horror novel, and rightly so!

But no. Doctors that respond in this way to serious conditions are rightly viewed as sharlatans by most people. Their patients either die thinking that they should have had more faith and it is ultimately their own fault, or they live long enough to visit an actual doctor who may still have time to save them. The reason people broadly believe that doing nothing achieves nothing is not so much that they are afraid to find out they wasted their time doing stuff when they could instead have just thought things into becoming the way they wished, but rather because there is about as little as no confirmation whatsoever that things in general behave this way, and everything we know about how the universe operates pushes us towards the opposite conclusion. If this was not so, the placebo effect would not be remarkable but mundane. It would be the rule, rather than the exception.

Some people will never change It's a little scary for them imagine to find out all your years of reading books and going to school or [sic] pointless.

In education, we read books and go to school not in order to study the world so much as in order to not all start at zero in that effort. It is not necessary for everyone to reinvent the wheel when it has already been invented and works just fine as is. The point is to get people to a place from whence they can contribute something new and interesting, rather than tread ground long covered. If anything is to be called scary here, it'd be this sort of dismissive attitude of the very thing that enables someone to broadcast it accross the world with such ease. If all those years all those engineers spent reading books and going to school were so pointless in your eyes, then what are you doing with the semiconductor based microelectronic computer device, sending radio wave transmissions into outer space to be received by a network of self-sustaining amplifying satellites zooming just fast enough to be ever falling past earth's surface, and eventually beamed back to other places across the globe? The fact that you get to live comfortably enough to fantasize of magical thought-powers rather than about surviving through the night is testimony to the effectiveness of the very enterprise you use that comfort to talk down about... using even for that purpose technology it provided you with. The "point" behind some of us reading books and going to school, in a way, is so that they can make life easy enough for you to have any time left to speak of their efforts as pointless...