Absolutes

[Brian]

Food for thought:

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-latest-lhc-findings-hint-at-strange-physics-beyond-the-standard-model

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-2-most-dangerous-numbers-in-the-universe-could-signal-the-end-of-physics

[Karl]

Can you point to electricity? Neutrons? Light? Magnetism? Gravity? Inertia? Are these reality?

 

I can point to their effects Brian. The fact you know and can name such concepts is proof that this is true for you also. Electricity and gravity didn't magically appear in your consciousness-aren't you aware that you had to integrate increasingly complex concepts to understand these things ? You didn't know what Gravity was as a child, but you saw its effects. Things fell down, they didn't fall up, sideways or at some random angle.

 

[Michael Sternbach]

if the so-called past, present and future are all contained in a big ball of a non-linear One (which btw linear mind can not see) then they are all open to change per will of non-linear being.

 

Theoretically yes.

[Michael Sternbach]

If, and only if.  However, we know that this is not true.  Therefore the concept is null and void.

 

We would hardly know if the past had been altered and therefore the present, as we would have no memory of the present as it was "before" the alteration took place. However, I think that it is possible not so much to alter the past as to neutralize how it is affecting the present.

[Brian]

I can point to their effects Brian. The fact you know and can name such concepts is proof that this is true for you also. Electricity and gravity didn't magically appear in your consciousness-aren't you aware that you had to integrate increasingly complex concepts to understand these things ? You didn't know what Gravity was as a child, but you saw its effects. Things fell down, they didn't fall up, sideways or at some random angle.

Absolutely! So why do you believe it stops there?

[Marblehead]

Food for thought:

Well, I have a long time now been saying that I believe there is a lot about the force of gravity that we still do not understand.

[Marblehead]

Theoretically yes.

 

Most theories go down the drain with the baby.

[Marblehead]

However, I think that it is possible not so much to alter the past as to neutralize how it is affecting the present.

This I fully accept.

[Karl]

Absolutely! So why do you believe it stops there?

 

What stops where ? Reality is what I experience directly Brian. I don't need to see items in order to put my wine glass on the table. I don't need to understand wavelength and frequency to determine a lemon is yellow and the sky is blue. I don't need a tape measure to reveal that a postage stamp is smaller than an envelope.

[Karl]

This I fully accept.

 

LOL so do I. Kill your history, kill reality and everything floats in an abstract way. That's exactly how civilisations die. They return to throwing people in volcanoes and drug induced psychosis. There is a point where people just give up.

[Brian]

We would hardly know if the past had been altered and therefore the present, as we would have no memory of the present as it was "before" the alteration took place. However, I think that it is possible not so much to alter the past as to neutralize how it is affecting the present.

The past is just as malleable as the future. Actually, the distinction between the two is relative to the observer. One observer's past may well be another observer's future (and yet another's present...)

[Marblehead]

The past is just as malleable as the future. Actually, the distinction between the two is relative to the observer. One observer's past may well be another observer's future (and yet another's present...)

Care to undertake an experience?

 

Drop your coffee cup on the floor so that it shatters into eighty-seven pieces.

 

Now, go back in time and don't drop the coffee cup so that it is still in your hand.

 

Please let me know the results.

[Brian]

What stops where ? Reality is what I experience directly Brian. I don't need to see items in order to put my wine glass on the table. I don't need to understand wavelength and frequency to determine a lemon is yellow and the sky is blue. I don't need a tape measure to reveal that a postage stamp is smaller than an envelope.

So anything you don't consciously experience in a direct and understandable fashion is not reality? And anything someone else experiences but you don't is delusion? And anything you experience but someone else doesn't is what? How about things you experience for the first time? Were they reality prior to you personally experiencing them?

 

I know you've said you've never experienced centrifugal force but your body certainly has, regardless of it being classified by physicists as a pseudo-force. Is that reality? What about things you experience without being aware of them -- like exposure to x-rays, for instance?

[Brian]

Care to undertake an experience?

 

Drop your coffee cup on the floor so that it shatters into eighty-seven pieces.

 

Now, go back in time and don't drop the coffee cup so that it is still in your hand.

 

Please let me know the results.

I don't drink coffee.

[Marblehead]

I don't drink coffee.

Maybe you should start yesterday.

[Brian]

I dropped my tea cup, though, and it bounced.

 

Once you grasp Newton's laws of motion, MH, I'll be glad to start a discussion with you about relativity.

 

Might start here:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion

Edited March 10, 2016 by Brian

[Karl]

So anything you don't consciously experience in a direct and understandable fashion is not reality? And anything someone else experiences but you don't is delusion? And anything you experience but someone else doesn't is what? How about things you experience for the first time? Were they reality prior to you personally experiencing them?I know you've said you've never experienced centrifugal force but your body certainly has, regardless of it being classified by physicists as a pseudo-force. Is that reality? What about things you experience without being aware of them -- like exposure to x-rays, for instance?

 

No, anything I don't experience-I don't experience. I find lots of things I don't understand and also experience. I label them 'things I don't understand'. I might then attempt to understand them. I don't experience anything that someone else experiences as a direct perception-but that's because I'm not anyone else, I'm me :-)

 

I experience a sensation of pressure, movement, heat, light or whatever. I relate it to things I'm already aware of in reality.

 

I'm not aware of X Ray's directly because my body doesn't have the requisite sense apparatus, but I'm aware of X Ray's because I've learned about them and I can relate them to experienced reality. I can go through various stages of knowing. From possible, through probable, to certainty. I can integrate the concepts. Similarly, if someone tells me that a man in a wheel chair will shortly run a 3 minute mile whilst giving birth to twin elephants, then I see that no such integration is possible. I know a man doesn't give birth, a man is not an elephant, the sizes aren't comparative, the biology is wrong, a man in a wheel chair is unlikely to walk far, never mind run a 3 minute mile whilst giving birth to elephants.

 

Give me something that is possible and I will say it's possible. Tell me that there are such a thing as X Ray's and relate them to heat, light and energy, then I'm going to say it's probable. Tell me that you have X ray vision and I will give you a funny look and head off to find saner folk.

[Marblehead]

I dropped my tea cup, though, and it bounced.

 

Once you grasp Newton's laws of motion, MH, I'll be glad to start a discussion with you about relativity.

 

Might start here:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion

Okay.  I have a grasp on all three of to laws except for the following:

 

And the more mass the object has, the acceleration decreases.

 

This is illogical if we consider the object is in a vacuum and experiences no resistance.

 

The big ball and the small fall from the tower of Pisa at exactly the same rate - never increasing or decreasing their acceleration individually.

[Nikolai1]

Drop your coffee cup on the floor so that it shatters into eighty-seven pieces.

 

Now, go back in time and don't drop the coffee cup so that it is still in your hand.

 

Please let me know the results.

As we look at the shards of cup on the floor, in the rawness of that moment, all we have alongside is a mental representation of the intact cup.

 

A mental item exists out of time,  There is no possible way of affirming whether the mental image of the intact cup is from the past or from the future.  A memory and a prediction are of the same ontological nature.

 

Therefore, any cause is also an effect - cause and effect are just two sides of the same coin.  If we imagine that time's arrow flows in one direction, from intact cups --> borken cups we see only one side of the coin.  We must also see that broken cups reform and regroup.

 

In physics this second side of the coin is slowly gaining currency (pardon the pun) with the notion of retrocausality.  Elsewhere the two sides are alienated into separate disciplines.  Physics assumes entropy.  Biology assumes increased organisation (negentropy and of course, evolution).

Edited March 10, 2016 by Nikolai1

[Marblehead]

I dropped my tea cup, though, and it bounced.

Yeah, I get lucky sometimes too.

[Michael Sternbach]

Feynman diagrams frequently show particles moving backward in time. However, on the macroscopic level, things are bound to move forward in time, that is, from a state of lower to higher entropy. I believe there can be exceptions to this, but it isn't what we commonly observe.

[Karl]

Okay.  I have a grasp on all three of to laws except for the following:

 

And the more mass the object has, the acceleration decreases.

 

This is illogical if we consider the object is in a vacuum and experiences no resistance.

 

The big ball and the small fall from the tower of Pisa at exactly the same rate - never increasing or decreasing their acceleration individually.

 

Takes more force the move a larger mass. An object at rest on the earths surface is already experiencing acceleration due to gravity. A body in motion is in equilibrium, it is effectively weightless as it is in free fall.

[Marblehead]

Damn!  Are you wanting me to become plagued with schizophrenia?

 

As we look at the shards of cup on the floor, in the rawness of that moment, all we have alongside is a mental representation of the intact cup.

No, I see eighty-seven bits of a cup that used to be on the floor and head for where my broom and dust pan are.  (A couple choice words are spoken as well.)

 

A mental item exists out of time,  There is no possible way of affirming whether the mental image of the intact cup is from the past or from the future.  A memory and a prediction are of the same ontological nature.

I strongly disagree with this.  I really do know the difference between the present and the past.  I confess, though, to not knowing the future.

 

Therefore, any cause is also an effect - cause and effect are just two sides of the same coin.  If we imagine that time's arrow flows in one direction, from intact cups --> borken cups we see only one side of the coin.  We must also see that broken cups reform and regroup.

Wrong.  The effect is the result of the cause.  Yes, they are linked but only in space/time.

 

Sure, I can remember the intact cup.  But I cannot manifest it back to being one intact cup.  What now exists, because of linear space/time, are eighty-seven bits of pottery on the floor.

 

In physics this second side of the coin is slowly gaining currency (pardon the pun) with the notion of retrocausality.  Elsewhere the two sides are alienated into separate disciplines.  Physics assumes entropy.  Biology assumes increased organisation (negentropy and of course, evolution).

I actually watched Neil Tyson last night and he mentioned this but he laughed when he said it.

[Marblehead]

Feynman diagrams frequently show particles moving backward in time.

 

You know I'm not going to accept this, don't you?

[Marblehead]

Takes more force the move a larger mass. An object at rest on the earths surface is already experiencing acceleration due to gravity. A body in motion is in equilibrium, it is effectively weightless as it is in free fall.

 

Yeah, but don't lets talk about how much force is required to get the big ball moving at the same speed as the little ball.  If they both are already accelerating at the same speed in a vacuum with no resistance they both will continue to move at the exact same speed - forever - and that's a very long time.