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OT: This is Baylor country

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One of my favorite natural selection phenomenon is happening in over-fished local waters around the world. Species like Red Snapper which used to grow quite large and would be thrown back if they were less than say ten inches have been 'naturally selected' and fewer and fewer of them reach ten inches in adulthood. This has happened over a very short period of time. There are other similar results occurring because of the fast changes to the environment brought on by human development.
 
They are all pretty and sure to procreate and pass on their genes. Another argument for Random Walk and Chaos Theory as a more appropriate definition of evolution than some ideal of the fittest leading to cyclical improvements in the gene pool.
 
We watched the recently released to dvd movie, 'The Revisionaries'--well done and a fairly clear view of one local Texas school board and how much they influence what goes into science and history textbooks that are used all over the country. Worth a watch, for sure. I believe it's on Netflix, also. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_revisionaries_2012/
 
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Rayvin56 said:
We watched the recently released to dvd movie, 'The Revisionaries'--well done and a fairly clear view of one local Texas school board and how much they influence what goes into science and history textbooks that are used all over the country. Worth a watch, for sure. I believe it's on Netflix, also. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_revisionaries_2012/[/quote]
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Yes, this is all very real and very scary stuff. They impact both the distortion of science and American History in very dangerous and significant manners.
 
Icebear said:
Not sure if this ends the discussion, all hope or anything In particular but it may indicate we are doomed. Let it suffice to say the gravity of the situation is immense.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=jTxOcMhRv6M&desktop_uri=/watch?v=jTxOcMhRv6M&feature=youtu.be
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We are doomed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, I have been using the phrase "the dumbing of America" quite a bit lately. The scary thing is that folks don't let minor things like facts get in their way of being dumb. As in the example.
 
I find it interesting that over the span of my lifetime 'intellectual' has become a pejorative in political discourse, when it used to be a good thing. Families still celebrate the first child getting to go to college, but being labeled intelligent is a bad thing in politics. Oh well.
(And I haven't completely figured out if some politicians are really as dumb as what they spout, or if it is all an act to garner more 'stupid' votes.)
 
It would be bad enough if it were limited to only one part of the country, but because the volume of textbooks purchased by Texas schools is so high, the science and history textbook modifications demanded by their boards of ed are adopted by the publishers due to $$$ and get incorporated into books that are used nationally. At least this is one of the assertions of the documentary.
 
elzorrogris said:
The domains aren't comparable. The physical domain is knowable, testable and useable. The "spiritual domain" is conjecture, pure and simple, from Catholicism to scientology. And theoretical physicists are NOT "alchemists in training". That is just silly to the max. Superstring theory, brane theory, one of the the "many-universes" theories may turn out to be correct, or they may never be able to answer all the questions. But they are much further along than they were x number of years ago. Gould's "seperate domains" proposition is simply a very slick version of the "God of the Gaps" idea.
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Z., if you posit they're "much further along", can you tell me where I might find at least one potentially verifiable prediction from any of the multiverse thought experiments? I've yet to hear of any.
 
UcMiami said:
I find it interesting that over the span of my lifetime 'intellectual' has become a pejorative in political discourse, when it used to be a good thing. Families still celebrate the first child getting to go to college, but being labeled intelligent is a bad thing in politics. Oh well.
(And I haven't completely figured out if some politicians are really as dumb as what they spout, or if it is all an act to garner more 'stupid' votes.)
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I've wondered about that a lot.I think it varies from pol to pol. Don't want to chance violating policy by naming names, but there are some that you just KNOW are sincere in their ignorance and others who seem to have something of a hard time faking it.
 
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elzorrogris said:
The domains aren't comparable. The physical domain is knowable, testable and useable. The "spiritual domain" is conjecture, pure and simple, from Catholicism to scientology. And theoretical physicists are NOT "alchemists in training". That is just silly to the max. Superstring theory, brane theory, one of the the "many-universes" theories may turn out to be correct, or they may never be able to answer all the questions. But they are much further along than they were x number of years ago. Gould's "seperate domains" proposition is simply a very slick version of the "God of the Gaps" idea.
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Kant would disagree...
 
JRRRJ said:
Z., if you posit they're "much further along", can you tell me where I might find at least one potentially verifiable prediction from any of the multiverse thought experiments? I've yet to hear of any.
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JR; No, I can't. I am by no means knowledgeable in the field of theoretical physics, only an awe-struck and fascinated observer. I just spent an hour trying to find an answer to your question. Some physicists seem to believe that the classic "two-slit" experiment is sufficient proof; others don't. It looks as if the best argument for the multiverse interpretation is that, incomprhensible as it is, it is less incomprehensible than alternate explanation of the strange world of quantum mechanics. The best statement of this that I could find is from Max Tegmark, quoted in Wikipedia; (part of a much longer article)
"A common feature of all four multiverse levels is that the simplest and arguably most elegant theory involves parallel universes by default. To deny the existence of those universes, one needs to complicate the theory by adding experimentally unsupported processes and ad hoc postulates: finite space, wave function collapse and ontological asymmetry. Our judgment therefore comes down to which we find more wasteful and inelegant: many worlds or many words. Perhaps we will gradually get used to the weird ways of our cosmos and find its strangeness to be part of its charm."[5]
 
Kurt Vonnegut and others live and died by multiverse theory. As did The Matrix.

The theories of multiverses and the singularity (the One) are not new to Metaphysics. Or even Christian Ontology. Whereas Christianity personalizes the theory in Trinitarian terms Sci fi gets cutesy with The One or Malachi Constant.

As an example below

The initial and final singularities are outside space and time, but they are connected by worldlines within space-time associated with the histories of all the universes in the "multiverse" that is implied by quantum mechanics The Father and Holy Spirit singularities are also connected by a line outside of space-time. This singularity associates with the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity. A Cauchy sequence, constructed from the person of Christ across all the universes in the multiverse, goes all the way to the God Singularity and is thus identical to it. While there are analogues of all of us in many universes, only Christ is found in all.
 
Meanwhile Science continues the search for the God particle.....

You know if there is a Christ he's laughing like all hell....
 
elzorrogris said:
I've wondered about that a lot.I think it varies from pol to pol. Don't want to chance violating policy by naming names, but there are some that you just KNOW are sincere in their ignorance and others who seem to have something of a hard time faking it.
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Yes - I had trouble keeping my observation 'apolitical' as well. Had more to say, but self censored - but it got into memberships of the various congressional committees most involved with science and technology.
 
The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. You can not contain the ocean of truth within a thimbleful of mind. The great mystery is unknowable, and, although the effort to conceptualize that which is beyond thought is ultimately futile, it can be great fun and appears to be the universal human condition. Koan for the day: What is the sound of one hand dunking? :p
 
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RS9999X said:
Meanwhile Science continues the search for the God particle.....

You know if there is a Christ he's laughing like all hell....
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And many religions continue espousing the "supreme intelligence" notion, which has has kept the firm adherents of the science community laughing to the "heavens" for eternity as theological yahoos and creationists bend over backwards to display their lack of intelligent thought or interest in it.

Look, you can always slip over to the superstition side when science doesn't satisfy your demand for every answer, but it's a cop out, and it's the big problem I have with all the leading highly religious scientists of the world who are proud to proclaim that their scientific fields cannot provide all the answers so they are happy to assign the unknowable to a divine presence they firmly believe in as a kind of backup to their minds. That's just bad and lazy scientific thought, and I'm not sure an NIH director should be publicly espousing this view. That as much as 50% of America's youth is likely being educated in a way that might make medieval theologians proud is a sobering thought (though at least back in the 1200s they were wrestling with the principles of critical thought, which the Texas school systems see as the enemy). True, the internecine wars in the science community in defense of pet theories are unhelpful, but at least you can always hope that the best science and maybe even the truth will win out, while convoluted drek is the goal of the anti-science cabal.

But the Bible as an historical tool and a provider of stories that point toward events that have a scientifically identified story behind them (Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.) is a wonderful work of human endeavor to try to understand the world and events around us. And in a world of rapidly changing technology and social pressures that lead to all kinds of ethical issues, the search for the spiritual well-being of humankind has to be a driving force in the push for progress and solutions.
 
Dobbs - nice post and nice conclusion.
And I agree that human kind can always use a 'moral compass' to help even out our baser instincts. My quibble with most religious fanatics of any faith is they use their religion not as a moral compass but as a defense for their immoral acts. Not sure that their are many less [fill in your religion] people than the holier than thou [religion]
And to take the centuries old religious writings of any religion and treat them as indelible literal fact not open to all the scientific learning of the intervening centuries is to cheapen and degrade their underlying message.
 
elzorrogris said:
I've wondered about that a lot.I think it varies from pol to pol. Don't want to chance violating policy by naming names, but there are some that you just KNOW are sincere in their ignorance and others who seem to have something of a hard time faking it.
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I've come to believe that there are far fewer "sincerely dumb" and "sincerely passionate" politicians than those who pander to the single-issue voters (who seem to mostly hold what I consider unsupportable views on those issues) in order to get elected, re-elected, re-re-elected, &c.
 
I subscribe to Scientific American and I'm fascinated by much of what I read there. But when articles start talking about some of the stuff tossed around in some of the posts above I turn the page, totally baffled. I cannot get my mind around this fairly basic question: when the big bang went off, it went off into what? Or: With the universe constantly expanding, it is expanding into what?
 
elzorrogris said:
JR; No, I can't. I am by no means knowledgeable in the field of theoretical physics, only an awe-struck and fascinated observer. I just spent an hour trying to find an answer to your question. Some physicists seem to believe that the classic "two-slit" experiment is sufficient proof; others don't. It looks as if the best argument for the multiverse interpretation is that, incomprhensible as it is, it is less incomprehensible than alternate explanation of the strange world of quantum mechanics. The best statement of this that I could find is from Max Tegmark, quoted in Wikipedia; (part of a much longer article)
"A common feature of all four multiverse levels is that the simplest and arguably most elegant theory involves parallel universes by default. To deny the existence of those universes, one needs to complicate the theory by adding experimentally unsupported processes and ad hoc postulates: finite space, wave function collapse and ontological asymmetry. Our judgment therefore comes down to which we find more wasteful and inelegant: many worlds or many words. Perhaps we will gradually get used to the weird ways of our cosmos and find its strangeness to be part of its charm."[5]
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I've no problems with incomprehensibility. It's a basic truth that our understanding of anything is limited and incomplete, no matter how we circumscribe the area under discussion. But by that very truth, a theory purporting to explain the observed facts without being able to reasonably predict consequences we haven't yet observed, is just an exercise in building castles in the air. No matter how logical and congruent it is, we have no clue whether it is actually related to the reality it attempts to describe or just pretty picture echoing what we already know, but in another modality.

And obviously the predictions need to be testable.

I have built many beautiful logical structures to explain why things happen in my world that turned out to be unconnected to the actual workings of those things.

And I don't live in the camp that holds that true understanding will reveal some "essential underlying simplicity". Sometimes, things are just complicated because they encompass many things. Occam's razor is a guideline to use in evaluating conflicting theories, not a gating criteria.

I got involved in this discussion because, coincidentally I've been thinking about the possible effects of branes intersecting along some shared dimension(s). Most interesting to think about if the number shared is higher than one.
 
RockyMTblue2 said:
I subscribe to Scientific American and I'm fascinated by much of what I read there. But when articles start talking about some of the stuff tossed around in some of the posts above I turn the page, totally baffled. I cannot get my mind around this fairly basic question: when the big bang went off, it went off into what? Or: With the universe constantly expanding, it is expanding into what?
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For me, the simplest way to express it is that the big bang creates the space it expands into. Kinda like an explosion in a vacuum: the particles from the explosion expand, making the space they expand into different than it was before. And "before" the big bang, all there was to our universe was a kind of dimensionless singularity. The question of "where did that singularity exist? What was it embedded in?" is what brings up all the multiverse stuff.

I currently favor the foam model: non-intersecting universes in an omniverse. Of course, that can be seen as just raising the "What's it embedded in..." question one level higher and opening up infinity. Or, you can read Henry Hasse's "He Who Shrank" for a possible (though troubling) pointer to an answer.

On edit: Oops! I checked out the end of "He Who Shrank", and I appear to have conflated it with some other story/movie that contained the ending I meant -- where the universe-hopper ends up back where he started. Nonetheless, it's a good story, very surprising in how many ideas you wouldn't have thought had currency in 1936.
 
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UcMiami said:
Yes - I had trouble keeping my observation 'apolitical' as well. Had more to say, but self censored - but it got into memberships of the various congressional committees most involved with science and technology.
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Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more!
 
JRRRJ said:
I've no problems with incomprehensibility. It's a basic truth that our understanding of anything is limited and incomplete, no matter how we circumscribe the area under discussion. But by that very truth, a theory purporting to explain the observed facts without being able to reasonably predict consequences we haven't yet observed, is just an exercise in building castles in the air. No matter how logical and congruent it is, we have no clue whether it is actually related to the reality it attempts to describe or just pretty picture echoing what we already know, but in another modality.

And obviously the predictions need to be testable.

I have built many beautiful logical structures to explain why things happen in my world that turned out to be unconnected to the actual workings of those things.

And I don't live in the camp that holds that true understanding will reveal some "essential underlying simplicity". Sometimes, things are just complicated because they encompass many things. Occam's razor is a guideline to use in evaluating conflicting theories, not a gating criteria.

I got involved in this discussion because, coincidentally I've been thinking about the possible effects of branes intersecting along some shared dimension(s). Most interesting to think about if the number shared is higher than one.
Expand ...

The fact that (as I understand them) neither superstring theory, brane theory, multiverse theory nor any other attempt to track quantum mechanics to its den has at this point yielded testable hypotheses does not mean that none of them ever will. General relativity had no solid empirical evidence when it was formulated either, but testable hypotheses were developed and carried out by Eddington and others. I do believe that the quest for the elusive TOE or GUT will eventually home in on SOMETHING that will harmonize relativity with quantum mechanics. Both are indisputably accurate and useful explanations of their own domains; there HAS to be an explanation/theory that subsumes them both. And I do not believe that it is going to come from esoteric philosophy or theology.
 
This thread has veered a long way off-course from Waco!!
 
Its been suggested we will never prove the existence of much of quantum mechanic theory. At best we will have math and a theory that answers much but proves little. Our instrumentation will never cross over the plane to another dimension. Physical bodies won't. Once into the 4th dimension and dimensions beyond proof will always be based on a faith that something in the known dimensions is missing and the present math doesn't add up
 
I told Wilbur and I told Orville and I'm tellin you, the durned thing'll never leave the ground! Beam me up, Scotty.
 
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