would such a progression of linear time to a conscious being allow them to understand its infinite nature though not being able experience infinity itself due to their limited timespan — invicta
In a paper I wrote on the topic — Pierre-Normand
I see this as a Sartrean-type dilemma where the ethical thing to do is to simply choose and take responsibility for our choice rather than try to justify it by any particular theory that would abstract us away from such responsibility and in any case could provide nothing more than arbitrary grounds for judgement when considered meta-ethically. — Baden
This highlights how we all choose selfishly every day based on proximity rather than ethics. — Baden
The problem with putting initial conditions off limits is that virtually everything we observe in the universe is dependant on initial conditions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
That is, of the set of all physically possible things we could see, we shouldn't expect to see one universe more than the other. Thus, if we come to see "Christ is King," "Zeus wuz here," "Led Zeppelin rules!," scrawled out in quasars and galaxies at the far end of the cosmos, this shouldn't raise an eyebrow? Because, provided the universe is deterministic, such an ordering would be fully determined by those inscrutable initial conditions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
When you think of the Big Bang, you just mean inflation, right? You're not adding a singularity to it, are you? — frank
Yes, I was going to post that. The really amazing thing is that the program provided fake references for its accusations. The links to references in The Guardian and other sources went nowhere. — T Clark
Historically, the line of reasoning has gone in the opposite direction. One of the most compelling arguments for the Big Bang was that, in an eternal universe of the sort people thought existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the conditions we observed in the universe seemed highly unlikely based on statistical mechanics. That is, we accept such a starting point for observable existence, in part, because of arguments about the likelihood of entropy levels in the first place. An eternal universe could produce such phenomena, it just is unlikely too. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm still not quite sure what your objection was because my original point was that claiming that there is no reason to think the universe would have low entropy (agreeing that it appears to be unlikely), and then invoking the anthropic principle to fix that issue, reduced explanations to the triviality that all possible things happen and so whatever is observed MUST occur. If you don't think the Past Hypothesis or Fine Tuning Problem needs an answer then there is no reason to invoke the Anthropic Principle in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus
You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you. — Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Call me Ishmael.
Thermodynamics isn't the only global asymmetry either. There is wave asymmetry in electromagnetism, the jury is out on of this reduces to the thermodynamic arrow; there is radiation asymmetry, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Not to mention there is an overarching microlevel problem. Observed wavefunction collapse only happens in one direction. This is a fundemental level asymmetry that is probably the most vetted empirical results in the sciences. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It doesn't seem like thermodynamics can be exactly what we mean by time because if the thermodynamic arrow were to reverse, it doesn't seem like it would throw time in reverse. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If time reversed when the thermodynamic arrow reversed, we should expect that, when the very last area of the universe that is out of equilibrium and not contracting reaches equilibrium, particles should suddenly have their momentum reverse and begin backtracking. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Indeed, we can well imagine sticking an observer in a tank with a Maxwell's Demon and having them watch the isolated system they sit in reduce in entropy over time. Global entropy would reduce, but that says nothing about the observer subsystem and how it experiences time. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If nothing can be said about likeliness vis-á-vis the early universe how do you vet any scientific theories about it? How can you say "this explanation is more likely to be the case than this one?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
As you point out, it is now commonly accepted that a period of cosmic inflation preceded the Big Bang. — Count Timothy von Icarus
A major piece of evidence in favor of inflation is that patterns of light from the early universe are consistent with proposed inflation and unlikely under other existing models. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This seems as much of a mixup to me as when people claim "nothing can come before the Big Bang because time and cause are meaningless past that point." — Count Timothy von Icarus
If the universe did not expand after the Big Bang, it would have stayed as it was shortly after the Big Bang: a hot, dense, uniform plasma. — SophistiCat
Sure, but this is speculative. It implies that you can get the "Big Bang," under highly different conditions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
One can choose to be moral or immoral, but one cannot chose what is moral and what is immoral. — unenlightened
Yes this I don't understand then I suppose, because isn't equilibrium necessarily maximum entropy... If entropy always increases, it can only be in equilibrium if max entropy has been reached no? — ChatteringMonkey
The space that is currently occupied by the observable universe was at a much lower entropy 14 billion years ago — SophistiCat
The space or the matter in that space is at lower entropy? That is what is confusing to me. How can space itself be measured entropically. Isn't that just the condition that sets the degrees of freedom for matter in that space to be in, determining the range of entropy? — ChatteringMonkey
Yes unlikely by definition maybe isn't true for initial conditions, I can see the reasoning there. It still is an observation (and a condition for our universe to like it is) that the universe was in a low entropic state, it could have been otherwise I suppose... — ChatteringMonkey
The relationship with the Past Hypothesis is that it is exceedingly combinatorically unlikely to have a low entropy universe. Borrowing Penrose's math, to observe a universe with our level of entropy is to observe a system that is occupying 1/10^10^123 of the entire volume in phase space (possible arrangements of the universe). It's like standing in a room full of coherent texts in the Library of Babel.
https://accelconf.web.cern.ch/e06/papers/thespa01.pdf
Or also relevant for the summary: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0701146.pdf — Count Timothy von Icarus
I am not sure what criticisms to the Principle of Indifference you are referring too. The ones I have seen are arguments about model building and the need to implement Bayesian methods when there is not a case of total stochastic ignorance , which is not the case vis-á-vis the Past Hypothesis. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If you encounter a phenomenon of which you have no previous knowledge, what are you supposed to do? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Right. So did the expansion take place in order to facilitate the evolutionary process? Or was the initial state itself actually metastable? Perhaps the idea of a closed system is inapplicable? — Pantagruel
My problem with this is that it consigns areas begging for inquiry to the bucket of things we just accept for the trivial reason that it is clearly possible for what we observe to exist. Our aliens might never figure out they are seeing a language, let alone what the messages they observe mean, but I certainly think they can find something out about these "brute facts," which presupposes that they be analyzable using probabilities. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Would it be fair here for the aliens to assume that the arrangement they observe is extremely unlikely barring some sort of underlying logic to the portal's outputs? — Count Timothy von Icarus
There are all sorts of interesting things to consider here. Given the aliens can never know the origin of the patterns, that they are separated from that knowledge by an epistemic (and maybe ontological) barrier, would it be fair for them to assume said patterns are just brute facts? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Would it be justifiable to posit that the observed phenomena was some sort of language? — Count Timothy von Icarus
I used that thought experiment because I think it's a neat idea. More to the point though, there are tons of areas where we essentially have no clue what sort of frequency we should expect for variables. The early universe is in no way epistemicaly unique here. Keynes was thinking of just this sort of scenario when he developed the principle, and Jayne's was thinking of similar cases we he expanded on it with the Principal of Maximum Entropy.
Maybe someone will pull a Quine on these ideas, but these seem grounded in mathematical logic, not the particularities of any particular observation. So, I would apply the concept here. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Russia has been and one can argue is still a colonizer: there are parts that it annexed through force in the 19th Century just as other European colonizers were doing (starting with Chechnya, that was occupied as late as 1859). China has had some ports colonized, but never has been colonized (the Mongol Horde didn't have colonies). — ssu
From a systems perspective, subsystems leech energy (negentropy) from their parent systems. So if entropy were ever at a "universal maximum" it would be theoretically impossible for any subsystem ever to emerge. Since cosmic evolution is manifestly systemic evolution (concurrent with the emergence of new dominant laws) entropy would have to be at an initial minimum. Either that, or the entropy of the universe would have to change over time. — Pantagruel
You seem to be disagreeing with the past hypothesis, in that it wasn't low entropy, but maximum entropy? — ChatteringMonkey
I guess the question is not whether it was likely or not, but whether it was low entropy or not (low entropy is unlikely by definition) — ChatteringMonkey
And if it was the first case (the universe itself explanding) than the past hypothesis isn't "matter was in a low entropy configuration", but "the universe was small". Is a small universe likely or unlikely, without another frame of reference, who knows... so I guess I would agree with you. Probabilities only make sense if you have relevant information. And since we don't, it doesn't. What is the likelihood of drawing the ace of spades out of an undefined amount of cards and with undefined types of cards in the deck? — ChatteringMonkey
And if it was as Hersh says it was, it's really a panicky bad choice for Biden to make: Germany wasn't going to go for Nordstream gas anyway as there was no energy Armageddon or even one blackout in Germany this winter. — ssu
You are correct about the nature of the Past Hypothesis; that's a fine answer, but it isn't the argument I get frustrated with. By definition, there are more ways to be in a high entropy state than a low entropy state. Perhaps there is indeed a mechanism at work in the early universe that makes a later low entropy state counterintuitively more likely than a high entropy one. But, barring support for that fact, we are left with the principal of indifference, and this suggests that we weight all options equally, combinatorially if there are a finite number of states. That is, giving equal likelihood to all potential universes of X mass energy existing in an early state with all possible levels of entropy, the high entropy universes outnumber the low entropy ones, barring some other sort of explanation. Appeals to the Anthropic Principle don't address this. The same issue comes up with the Fine Tuning Problem; if we don't know the likelihood of values for constants, indifference should prevail. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Positing some as of yet not understood mechanism by which this is not the case is fine, after all, we have empirical evidence that the entropy of the early universe was low (counterintuitively despite being near equilibrium, wrapping your head around negative heat is a doozy). — Count Timothy von Icarus
As opposed to what? A world at thermodynamic equilibrium? — SophistiCat
Yes. Since there are more ways to be high entropy than low entropy we should have more worlds with high entropy than low. So why are we in a low entropy world if it is very statistically unlikely?
Some version of the past hypothesis, right? But then seeing a world where the past hypothesis is true is vanishingly unlikely, even if it occurs with probability 1, according to MWI derivations of the Born Rule. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It seems to me that either low probability events should always be surprising and make us ask questions or they never should, not a too cute mix of both. Just bite the bullet and say the Born Rule is meaningless, a total illusion, in that case. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Maybe he is not lying just making false claims. Anyways, talking about OSINT, I was aware of Oliver Alexander's review of Hersh's article: https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe
Or are you referring to somebody else? — neomac
I have never seen a satisfactory explanation of why we should find ourselves in the world that has increasing entropy — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, the real issue here
...is just what those peace terms are. Russia simply should exit from Ukraine, including Crimea, and respect the territorial integrity of the country what it has accepted starting when the country became independent.
Having any problem with that? — ssu
1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected. — China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis
BTW Hersh too candidly admits to lie in his profession whenever he thinks he has a good reason to (https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/). — neomac
In most cases, Hersh attaches a caveat—such as “I’m just talking now, I’m not writing”—before unloading one of his blockbusters, which can send bloggers and reporters scurrying for confirmation. — Sy Hersh Says It’s Okay to Lie (Just Not in Print)
Today, the secretary general of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. — How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline
So what is the perfect definition of knowledge? — Cidat
How should we define knowledge? In context. — Fooloso4
Russia too has means, the right amount of hawkishness and a history of false flag operations to directly or indirectly support such operation. — neomac
Stupidity has always been dangerous — Wolfgang
As you know, what morality descriptively ‘is’ and what morality normatively ‘is’ are separate questions. In traditional moral philosophy, an extreme version of this idea is that “science has nothing to offer moral philosophy”, implying that what is descriptively moral is irrelevant to what is normatively moral.
Gert contradicts this view by claiming that the "lessening of harm" component of what is descriptively moral (a subject within science's what 'is' domain) is also normatively moral by his criterion “what all rational people would put forward”. — Mark S
He does give a definition of morality (at 15:28) as "An informal public system applying to all moral agents that has the goal of lessening of harm suffered by those who are protected by this system". — Banno
Are any of you wondering how Gert’s morality can be so concrete?
He can be concrete because his subject in the video is what morality ‘is’ – the same subject as Morality As Cooperation Strategies (MACS). I don’t hear him making direct claims about what morality we somehow imperatively ought to follow (the standard focus of traditional moral philosophy). — Mark S
Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. — Fooloso4
To what extent can well-informed, mentally normal, religious people be rational about their religion-based moral beliefs? — Mark S
In the normative sense, “morality” refers to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational. That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by saying that the person counts as a moral agent. — Gert
Seems to me, in the context of the article, that Gert is not offering a definition of morality, but giving reasons why such a thing is bothersome. — Banno