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#201
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Sat, 29 Sep 2018 11:22:42 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote: That only impacts the new pile, not the original. After the count I know whether the original number was even or odd. And I can repeat the test on each new pile I create. Not if one of the grains in the original pile breaks without you noticing it and before you count it. It requires superhuman capabilities to keep track of each and every one of several billion grains. In a way this resembles Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: you cannot measure anything without affecting it in some small way. I believe you totally miss the concept of a though problem. We can ignore such practicalities. Replace "sand" with "ball bearings" if you like. Or even with individual atoms. The point is, the proposed system is countable. At most it depends upon the right technology. The count of particles is knowable... unlike the existence of deities which have the power to hide themselves outside the Universe. |
#202
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Sat, 29 Sep 2018 08:37:23 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote: On Sat, 29 Sep 2018 11:22:42 +0200, Paul Schlyter wrote: That only impacts the new pile, not the original. After the count I know whether the original number was even or odd. And I can repeat the test on each new pile I create. Not if one of the grains in the original pile breaks without you noticing it and before you count it. It requires superhuman capabilities to keep track of each and every one of several billion grains. In a way this resembles Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: you cannot measure anything without affecting it in some small way. I believe you totally miss the concept of a though problem. We can ignore such practicalities. Replace "sand" with "ball bearings" if you like. Or even with individual atoms. The point is, the proposed system is countable. At most it depends upon the right technology. The count of particles is knowable... unlike the existence of deities which have the power to hide themselves outside the Universe. So deities which lack this power to hide, their existence is knowable? |
#203
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:32:16 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote: So deities which lack this power to hide, their existence is knowable? It seems likely. I've seen nothing to suggest that anything in nature is unknowable, so I'd only reserve certainty of unknowability for the supernatural. |
#204
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 10:50:10 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote: On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:32:16 +0200, Paul Schlyter wrote: So deities which lack this power to hide, their existence is knowable? It seems likely. I've seen nothing to suggest that anything in nature is unknowable, so I'd only reserve certainty of unknowability for the supernatural. The existence of radio communication is definitely knowable. A few centuries ago, it would have been considered supernatural to be able to send messages apparently instantly (and definitely much faster than with a courier riding a fast horse) over long distances, even when direct visual contact was not possible. Btw I encountered some new worlds the other day: Nontheism - vaguely similar to atheism but still different. There are nontheistic religions for instance, like some varieties of Buddhism. Apatheism - having no interest in the question about the eventual existence of deities. An apatheist is therefore neither a theist nor an atheist. You say apatheists do not exist, but if so, why invent a word for a non-existing property? |
#205
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Sunday, September 30, 2018 at 11:53:39 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:
Apatheism - having no interest in the question about the eventual existence of deities. An apatheist is therefore neither a theist nor an atheist. Presumably, such a one still firmly believes that he does not need to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior, in order to avoid spending eternity in the lake of fire. Hence, for some purposes (can he be manipulated or controlled by thumping the Bible at him) he might as well be an atheist. So there is no interest in making the distinction. John Savard |
#206
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Mon, 01 Oct 2018 07:53:36 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote: The existence of radio communication is definitely knowable. A few centuries ago, it would have been considered supernatural to be able to send messages apparently instantly (and definitely much faster than with a courier riding a fast horse) over long distances, even when direct visual contact was not possible. Sure. But it's difficult to imagine what we might find supernatural today. Today we understand most of nature. I doubt Clarke's Law applies anymore. I don't imagine we could encounter any technology advanced enough to appear as magic. We now have enough knowledge to recognize the likely natural law underlying anything we encounter, even if we lack perfect understanding. Btw I encountered some new worlds the other day: Nontheism - vaguely similar to atheism but still different. There are nontheistic religions for instance, like some varieties of Buddhism. In actual usage, nontheism and atheism are synonyms. Apatheism - having no interest in the question about the eventual existence of deities. An apatheist is therefore neither a theist nor an atheist. You say apatheists do not exist, but if so, why invent a word for a non-existing property? "Apatheism" is a portmanteau of "apathetic" and "atheism". A recent word which refers to unreflective atheism. An apatheist is an atheist who doesn't give the matter any thought and isn't interested in any underlying philosophical questions about the matter. All apatheists are atheists, but not all atheists are apatheists. |
#207
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
Any experience that opens up sorrow or joy in a person is supernatural for the intimacy is borne inside the person from an external agency whether something seen, heard or both.
The hapless may have conjured up the word supernatural for their own ends as external agency as distinct from human experience but then again when did they ever connect with something greater than themselves. The dour and dull never incorporate the old festivals when people were closer to nature which is perhaps why they mock what they don't understand, however, people with a sense of the poetic mixes with common sense come to appreciate those festivals where the spirits of our ancestors mix with our own.. The Gaelic festival of Halloween was the annual equivalent of the human cicadian rhythm which, in this case divided the year into a dark half and a light half - https://www.newgrange.com/samhain.htm Nowadays they call the loss of balance 'seasonal affective disorder' or SAD which surfaces as depression. The older cultures of Northern Europe developed ways to deal with the seasonal swings and built them into their festivals such as All Souls Day or Halloween. |
#208
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 8:23:54 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 06:18:14 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel wrote: On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 10:22:01 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote: Uh, no. Everywhere in the Universe is the same. If only one civilization existed on one certain planet? Then that place would be different. No, it wouldn't, except in the most trivial of ways. Okay. Got it: you believe civilization is trivial. |
#209
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, September 29, 2018 at 3:55:55 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 05:49:40 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel wrote: On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 3:47:01 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote: You are hopelessly overoptimistic. The typical distance between galaxies is millions of light years or more. That's true ... TODAY. What about 9 billion years ago? Back then the galaxies were some 3 times closer to one another than today, so the typical intergalactic distance were perhaps about a million instead of millions of light years. But, more importantly, back then there were few if any population I stars in existence. All stars back then were population II stars, which have very little, if any, elements heavier than H and He. Those heavier elements are required to form life. So back then there was no life in the universe, that we can say with great certainty. Back then, our Sun and our Earth did not even exist. Life, of all kinds, formed later. 9 billion years ago there certainly WERE stars with heavy elements: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/0...forming-theory Although their metallicity was only 20% of stars near us, that's pretty good for 11 billion years ago, wouldn't you say? Therefore you are saying that any civilisation would with great probability learn interstellar travel at or near light speed. I believe there are other alternatives. Such as wormholes? Or did you have something else in your mind? Wormholes, Alcubierre=type drives, transit to other branes, and ways not even a glimmer in the eyes of theoretical physicists. Are you even aware of the difficulties involved? For instance, colliding with a grain of sand near light speed would mean the end of your expedition. Indeed, I am quite aware of the difficulties. That's why I think there are alternatives. WHICH alternatives? How can you travel millions of light years in just millions of years without traveling at near light speed? Answered above. So that one survivor can spread its DNA over the whole galaxy in a few million years. Now you are getting more modest, which is good. Earlier you claimed that this one survivor could spread its DNA to **other** galaxies within the same time span of a few million years. That would require travel near light speed. Not necessarily. If this civilization developed, say, 5 billion years after the big bang, the galaxies would have been closer together. Not by much. Since the big bang happened 13.5 billion years ago, 5 billion years ago the intergalactic distances already had about 60% of their current value. And maybe there's a way to "wink out" there and "wink in" here vitually instantaneously. We haven't had millions of years of scientific development yet. And as we seem to agree, travel near light speed has certain high-probability risks. I think there are alternative ways to get from one place to another. You are very quiet about these alternative ways... why? "Wink out", "wink in" :-) Your grasp of probability theory must be very weak, or else you would not make such claims. I have to laugh at your assertion again :-)) Are you familiar with the Law of Large Numbers? Do you consider one to be a large number? One is the number of planets known to have life... The law of large numbers say that if you repeat an experiment a large number of times, the outcome will be very close to the expected value. But, in the case of life in the universe, we have no idea what the expected value is. So the law of large numbers does not help us here. Sure it does. We don't have to know the expectation value. We KNOW it happened ONCE. Given ENOUGH chances, it will happen again. Given what we know about planetary systems today, about the number of stars in our galaxy, about the number of galaxies in just the VISIBLE universe and the tininess of the visible universe, you don't believe it hasn't happened MANY times? If so, you are an amazing pessimist! And how can we be certain that this lone surviving intelligent ? civilization would devote itself to space travel over intergalactic distances? Or develop some alternative means where distance isn't important? If "a" civilization didn't, another one would. That's your guess, and it is a far cry from "absolutely certain" that it actually is so. YOU are the only one talking about "absolute certainty." I'm talking about probabilities. You and I are working from different assumptions. Are you familiar with Paul Steinhardt's Ekpyrotic theory? https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0103239 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe It posits a cyclic universe. If it has any credence it means that past universes existed. If intelligent life is as rare as some here believe, it becomes a virtual certainty that it developed in a previous genesis, maybe millions of times. If some couldn't find a way to transport itself from one genesis to the next, one would have. Imagine, a civilization billions of years old appearing on the scene 13 billion years ago! But what if it doesn't have any credence? We don't know if it has, so we can only guess. And you must do much better than guesswork to be able to reliably claim that something is "almost certain". Don't be such a pessimist! It's bordering on a mania :-) That might make a great SF story to outdo even Olaf Stapledon. But I don't think it's SF. Anyway, now you see why no argument about probability has any affect on me whatsoever. So, want to discuss the probability of Steinhardt et al. being right? :-) You can fantasize as much as you want, but please stop trying to misuse probability to claim something is "almost certain" when it actually just is a guess of yours. Pessimist! Nope! Something supernatural is something which contradicts physics. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supernatural "departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature" With that definition, radio communication would have been "supernatural" a few centuries ago. Exactly! Now you're getting it :-) The scientific method requires that a phenomenon be repeatable by any competent researcher. It also requires the ability to change the inputs. No it doesn't. Astronomers cannot experiment with the universe by changing the input, but despite that astronomy is regarded as a science. Astronomical science requires that experiments performed here on earth be valid elsewhere in the solar system, galaxy, universe. Now that we have sent missions throughout the solar system, that part is no longer assumption, and we have no choice but to assume it's true throughout the universe. It SEEMS to be, anyway, but it IS a weakness that certain scientific disciplines have. Cosmology is a case in point. We have the Big Bang model, but there are alternatives ... There are no alternatives today that match empirical data so well. Irrelevant since we're talking about billion-year-old civilizations. The discovery of the cosmic background radiation made the "big bang" win over the "steady state" cosmology. But note that this is not final. If and when a cosmology appears that matches empirical data even better, then it will replace the "big bang" as the standard cosmological model. The standard model assumes inflation. There are scientists that dispute that. https://www.wired.com/2008/02/physic...the-beginning/ |
#210
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Mon, 1 Oct 2018 00:21:08 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote: On Sunday, September 30, 2018 at 11:53:39 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote: Apatheism - having no interest in the question about the eventual existence of deities. An apatheist is therefore neither a theist nor an atheist. Presumably, such a one still firmly believes that he does not need to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior, in order to avoid spending eternity in the lake of fire. Not quite. The apatheist is simply not interested in this question, so he has no opinion whatsoever about it. Hence, for some purposes (can he be manipulated or controlled by thumping the Bible at him) he might as well be an atheist. So there is no interest in making the distinction. If there is no such interest, why was the word apatheist even defined? John Savard |
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