Razziel

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Posts by Razziel

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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  What in the world has the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle got to do with human beings and their Free Will??

  The act of observation affects the outcome of an experiment for tangible reasons. The observer must employ interference (electron microscopes, for example) which impact on the object of observation and disturb that object.

  I thought I took care of this one in the time travel thread. This isn't what the uncertainty principle is. It was originally developed by heisenberg to explain this, but was later shown to be much more encompassing. The uncertainty is inherent in the system. Sub-atomic particles with BOTH definite position and momentum, DO NOT EXIST in nature. This can be shown mathematically and has nothing to do with any physical measurement or limitations of instrumentation.

  Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is NOT an observer effect. That way of understanding was disproved over 75 years ago.

  (Sometimes it's still taught the old way in other science classes by non-QM professors, but it's misinformation.)
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  3. 
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  Razziel

  Yeah, I'm not talking about money at all, that's why I put in figurative. I'm just trying to say someone with a lot higher intelligence might be able to apply, discern things, and build upon what they learn and experience to a far greater degree than the average person who learns and experiences the same things. To that extent, the gap between two people with identical education and life experiences, but different genetics would become more pronounced as they aged.
• 
  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  "it is reasonable to expect that genetic influences on traits like IQ should become less important as one gains experiences with age. However, that the opposite occurs is well documented. "

  What I would like to see instead of the bell-shaped IQ curve, which is reflective of what percentage of the general population has a certain IQ, is at what rate intelligence increases as IQ increases. I would bet money it is on a non-linear scale.

  The point I'm making is that if it is non-linear, then someone with a substantially higher IQ than average might see an exponentially higher figurative return-on-investment as they gain education and experience in life. (Disclaimer: that doesn't mean they're going to put it to beneficial use.) This would mean the influence of genetics would be more and more pronounced as one ages.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

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  Razziel

  "Cleland wanted to see if he could find the size where the laws of quantum broke down and everyday laws take over."

  You can mathematically show that Newton's laws can be reduced from, and are just special cases of Einstein's relativity equations. Many quantum equations likewise can reduce to Newton's laws. I imagine when a "theory of everything" is finally developed, it will elegantly show there is just one set of governing equations that reduce to einstein's, newton's, or quantum equations depending upon the scale of the universe they apply to.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

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  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  Here's an example in less abstract concepts. What is velocity? It is simply how position changes with respect to time at a specified moment. For example your car speedometer reads mi/hr or km/hr. What is acceleration? It is how velocity changes with respect to time at a specified moment.

  Both velocity and acceleration are just rates of change of position with respect to time, and you can give a definition of each only describing each concept by how position is changing over time, without using the words velocity or acceleration at all.

  It's the same idea with energy. Energy is directly related to how force actively changes with respect to time, position, or another force, or has the potential to change with respect to these. Power is analagous to acceleration in the above example. It is how energy changes or is transferred with respect to time.

  If you asked a professor to explain velocity or acceleration they're going to talk about position because that's where those concepts come from. The same is true with energy, they're going to talk about force. The words aren't dodgy so much as a part of the jargon used in academics.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

  1. 
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  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  A reason energy can be difficult to understand is that it is not a natural unit of measure. Energy is a derived concept. It can be derived from the fundamental units of mass, length, time, charge and temperature, but it is not a base measure in itself.

  The reason energy definitions contain the concept of "doing" something, such as the ability to do work, is because that's what the human concept of energy is.

  There are two ways I can try to explain energy, the top-down approach and a bottom-up approach. I'll use the bottom-up here.

  The concept of energy arises from the four fundamental forces in nature.

  We know there are four fundamental forces in nature: gravity, electro-magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear force. There are 3 things that can occur resulting in a difference in force. 1. The force can change strength over a spacial distance. 2. At any particular point in space, the force can change strength with respect to time. 3. Two or more forces can be present on the same point in space.

  If you've had calculus, you'll recognize quickly that energy is just the derivative of force strength with respect to position, time, another force, or even all three. For those who haven't had calculus, energy is the rate of change of force strength when position, time, or the strength of another force remain constant.

  So energy is a consequence of changing force strengths. It isn't something that exists by itself. That's why it's a concept and can be difficult to understand.

  Is energy the motion of particles? In most cases yes, the interactions of forces with time, distance, and each other generally cause energy to be seen in the form of particle movement or vibration. Not in all cases though. Electric charge and electron spin are two examples. (Spin is a misnomer because it doesn't mean an electron spinning on an axis at all.)

  There are generally two ways energy is quantified. The first is a measure in comparison to the surroundings or environment. The second is in comparison to some ground state where no forces are present.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

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  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  To put my previous post in terms of Terry's original domino analogy, there are two timelines:

  State 1. The dominos at time A in an arbitrary configuration.

  State 2. The dominos at time B (dominos from time A at a later time in the future in a configuration descended from time A).

  If the dominos from state 2 go backwards in time to state 1, then it appears from the perspective of the state 1 dominos that duplicate dominos have appeared out of thin air in a different configuration, basically being in two places at once and violating the premise there are a finite amount of dominos.

  The flaw in Terry's reasoning is that he's only considering things from the perspective of the state 1 dominos. You have to look at it from the perspective of the state 2 dominos, since they are the dominos actually traveling through time.

  From their perspective along their timeline, they still originate from the finite set of state 1 dominos. Along their timeline they still have a definite relationship to the dominos in their past and at no time were dominos created or destroyed. So in this sense, even though the rules appear to be broken from the pov of the state 1 dominos, from the pov of state 2 dominos they aren't. They are conserved locally.
• 
  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  Back to the original topic, though I don't believe backwards time travel is possible, it would not directly violate the conservation of mass/energy law. It has to do with the reference frame used. Though an observer from the past might see an object instantly pop out of nowhere from the future, which from their reference frame appears to violate the conservation laws, from the reference frame of the object traveling through time, no laws are violated.

  This is the same reasoning for why distant objects from earth can appear to be moving faster than the speed of light, but relative to the objects' reference frame, the speed of light is not being broken. When relativity is taken into account, the laws often appear broken from other reference frames but are still conserved locally.
• 
  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  Heisenberg originally developed the principle for the reasons Terry outlined, and it is logical. The math didn't come until schrodinger's equation and then it was shown that the uncertainty wasn't a part of the measurement process. If it was, then the uncertainty wouldn't be there when dealing with purely theoreticals. In other words, uncertainty is not an observer effect. According to the present theory, quantum particles with both a definite position and momentum do not exist.
• 
  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Razziel

  I'm late to the party, but I wanted to comment on heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Terry's explanation (with the example of a momentum measurement affecting position, and vice-versa a position measurement affecting momentum) was how the uncertainty principle was explained to me in university physics when we briefly overviewed quantum physics.

  Later, when I took the actual quantum mechanics course, it was mathematically shown the uncertainty principle goes a lot further than that. It's inherent in the mathematics of the sub-atomic world. Solving the schrodinger and matrix equations for whatever operator you want to define (energy, momentum, position, etc) involves using complex conjugates (you get two answers). One answer is (value +h/2), and the other is (value -h/2). So the theoretical answer is (value +/- h/2). This is dealing only in theoreticals, with no physical measurements involved whatsoever.

  It follows that the uncertainty in the measurements we could possibly make of sub-atomic particles are a consequence of the uncertainty principle, they aren't the cause of it.