Science: Are You Consistant in Your Views?

[gikigill]

ah... but what is a field?

it is just a substance that can pop in and out of existence periodically with a bunch of vectors drawn to entice the no-particularists...

people thought we were on a giant turtle, but NOW we realize we are riding on the back of a giant porky-pine whose quill tips emerger here and there, quantized one way or another

it is a charming thought, and you can spin it anyway you want

Now we realise we might be in a holographic simulation. No porcupines necessary.

 

[mansr]

Now we realise we might be in a holographic simulation. No porcupines necessary.

Computer, end program.

 

[StevenEleven]

It is surely obvious to some, yet perhaps not all, so it's worth attributing this quote to Emerson.

I guess I didn’t state my meaning in posting what I did. True, it was by Emerson, but a couple of others had already cited it and attributed it to Emerson in the thread, so I thought that was established as part of the conversation. However, taking that snippet out of context like that reduces it from a great piece of literature to a shallow put-down. Consistency has its place. People go babbling that little snippet out of context over and over again as an excuse for sloppy thinking. Let me be clear: IMHO sloppy thinking is not good. And part of sloppy thinking is a “foolish” consistency. In full context, then, this is an astonishing piece of literature, rather than a glib put-down:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

And to be clear, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote it. And if someone cited just the first sentence, or as is more often the case only the first several words, as so many people often do, which I feel is very unfortunate, I was, in my own way, hoping that they would gain some greater insight by reading the full quote.

 

[Wes]

Now we realise we might be in a holographic simulation. No porcupines necessary.

"This is Worker speaking. Hello."

 

[pkane]

Computer, end program.

Take the red pill, that works better.

 

[mhardy6647]

I guess I didn’t state my meaning in posting what I did. True, it was by Emerson, but a couple of others had already cited it and attributed it to Emerson in the thread, so I thought that was established as part of the conversation. However, taking that snippet out of context like that reduces it from a great piece of literature to shallow put-down. Consistency has its place. People go babbling that little snippet out of context over and over again as an excuse for sloppy thinking. Let me be clear: IMHO sloppy thinking is not good. And part of sloppy thinking is a “foolish” consistency. In full context, then, this is an astonishing piece of literature, rather than a glib put-down:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

And to be clear, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote it. And if someone cited just the first sentence, or as is more often the case the first several words, as so many people often do, which I feel is very unfortunate, I was, in my own way, hoping that they would gain some greater insight by reading the full quote.

The key word is foolish, don't you think?
I never saw it as a put-down of sloppy thinking (I think sloppy thinking has its place -- heck, I am a Grateful Dead fan*! ). I do see it as an indictment of blindly/slavishly cleaving to foolish ideas in the face of evidence to the contrary -- or a "there's only one way to think" mentality. I have some pretty contrary worldviews, and I see that as an asset, not a liability.

And Self-Reliance is an essay that had a profound impact on me in my high school days (just FYI and FWIW).

... and being misunderstood?

Townshend's tongue is jammed so far into his cheek on this one, its comin' out to the outside

___________________
* and that's not a non sequitur, although it might take some 'splainin'.

 

[StevenEleven]

The key word is foolish, don't you think?
I never saw it as a put-down of sloppy thinking (I think sloppy thinking has its place -- heck, I am a Grateful Dead fan*! ). I do see it as an indictment of blindly/slavishly cleaving to foolish ideas in the face of evidence to the contrary -- or a "there's only one way to think" mentality. I have some pretty contrary worldviews, and I see that as an asset, not a liability.

And Self-Reliance is an essay that had a profound impact on me in my high school days (just FYI and FWIW).

... and being misunderstood?

Townshend's tongue is jammed so far into his cheek on this one, its comin' out to the outside

___________________
* and that's not a non sequitur, although it might take some 'splainin'.

I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here, but I don’t see it as a put-down of sloppy thinking either. I see it as a remarkable piece of literature, the first several words of which are often taken out of context as an excuse for sloppy thinking.

And I happen to be one who believes we can have two theories of great usefulness and explanatory power that are not consistent with one another. To discard one of them would indeed be a foolish consistency, until someone can do better.

And my last name is Higgs. Yet I do not feel that Higgs is proven. It is yet another theory with astonishing predictive power under an extreme set of circumstances, and great explanatory power. But someone said it is proven. . . Well, no, not even close, in my view, that is not the language of science. Is gravity proven? Then what is it? What is the cause? That’s right, you don’t know. And neither does anyone else.

 

[mhardy6647]

I don't do physics -- too much maths.
I am not a maths guy -- everyone else in the family (both sides, mine and my wife's) is -- including (in particular) our son the PhD mathematician and professor.
Me? Just a biochemist. Light on the maths.

EDIT: So... I was thinkin' some more on this topic whilst putting away dishes from the dishwasher From a (life) scientific perspective, foolish consistency would be to cleave stubbornly in a belief of the Central Dogma* after the discovery of RNA viruses and reverse transcriptase. Or after some vindication of Stanley Prusiner's prion hypothesis. Heck, when I was in grad school, he was (still) known as Stan the Charlatan.

When James B. Sumner reported to colleagues I have crystallized an enzyme (urease from jack bean), they quite literally thought he'd stripped a gear, so to speak! In those days, proteins (and enzyme proteins, for that matter) were still widely regarded as colloids -- perhaps polydisperse, and of ill-defined composition. Not something crystallizable.

Derp.

J. B. Sumner (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1946)

___________________
* The Central Dogma of molecular biology: [Biological] Information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins. (F.H.C. Crick)

 

[StevenEleven]

I don't do physics -- too much maths.
I am not a maths guy -- everyone else in the family (both sides, mine and my wife's) is -- including (in particular) our son the PhD mathematician and professor.
Me? Just a biochemist. Light on the maths.

As a biochemist you would destroy me in math.

 

[Wes]

computational biochemistry... >>>> MATH

 

[Sal1950]

so it's worth attributing this quote to Emerson.

Keith Emerson ???
"Welcome back my friends
To the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend
Come inside, come inside."

 

[gikigill]

I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here, but I don’t see it as a put-down of sloppy thinking either. I see it as a remarkable piece of literature, the first several words of which are often taken out of context as an excuse for sloppy thinking.

And I happen to be one who believes we can have two theories of great usefulness and explanatory power that are not consistent with one another. To discard one of them would indeed be a foolish consistency, until someone can do better.

And my last name is Higgs. Yet I do not feel that Higgs is proven. It is yet another theory with astonishing predictive power under an extreme set of circumstances, and great explanatory power. But someone said it is proven. . . Well, no, not even close, in my view, that is not the language of science. Is gravity proven? Then what is it? What is the cause? That’s right, you don’t know. And neither does anyone else.

You might wanna discuss the non-existence of Higgs with these folks.

https://atlas.cern/updates/atlas-feature/higgs-boson

Its was proven to exist with a very high level of confidence, 5.9 sigma by ATLAS and 5 sigma by CMA so not sure how its existence is even a question at this point. Probability was improved from 3 mil to almost 600 mil and the teams involved were doing blind tests.

EDIT: Now that i think about, would be a good idea to do audio testing this way.

 

[StevenEleven]

You might wanna discuss the non-existence of Higgs with these folks.

https://atlas.cern/updates/atlas-feature/higgs-boson

Its was proven to exist with a very high level of confidence, 5.9 sigma by ATLAS and 5 sigma by CMA so not sure how its existence is even a question at this point. Probability was improved from 3 mil to almost 600 mil and the teams involved were doing blind tests.

EDIT: Now that i think about, would be a good idea to do audio testing this way.

To say a theory is “proven” is simply not the language of science. And for good reason.

And you might want to talk to these folks about whether the Higgs Boson really “exists”:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higgs-boson-discovery-particle_n_6133502

https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.035012

 

[Putter]

Probably completely OT, but the first thing that I think of in this thread (enough to wade through 5 pages of discussion) is the quote from Richard P. Feynman "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. "

In the context of this discussion, I would take that you need to be flexible in your conclusions and be willing to accept that you need to consider new data that makes you look like an idiot, as long as it seems reasonable, i.e. you can be wrong as long as it was in good faith and you're open to new ideas. That is hard to do as the quote implies.

Final conclusion you do not need to be consistEnt in your views as long as they are based on real data. (Hate misspelling especially for a Thread Title.)

 

[gikigill]

To say a theory is “proven” is simply not the language of science. And for good reason.

And you might want to talk to these folks:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higgs-boson-discovery-particle_n_6133502

https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.035012

And that why I said with a high level of confidence with improving probabilities. Even DNA is not a 100% match to be taken as conclusive.

The second paper seems to suggest multiple particles fitting multiple TC models but doesn't contradict that its not there given the confidence level.

They "suggest" based on their modelling of the LHC data multiple probabilities (of the Higgs or Higgs like particle) that fit the TC Higgs hypothesis but nothing to indicate its not there. Multiple particles could generate the fit as per the model but its not indicative it wasn't the Higgs.

The full paper is not there so kinda hard to assume what they are proposing and as for the Huffpost, they should stick to non-scientific stuff.

 

[StevenEleven]

And that why I said with a high level of confidence with improving probabilities. Even DNA is not a 100% match to be taken as conclusive.

The second paper seems to suggest multiple particles fitting multiple TC models but doesn't contradict that its not there given the confidence level.

They "suggest" based on their modelling of the LHC data multiple probabilities (of the Higgs or Higgs like particle) that fit the TC Higgs hypothesis but nothing to indicate its not there. Multiple particles could generate the fit as per the model but its not indicative it wasn't the Higgs.

The full paper is not there so kinda hard to assume what they are proposing and as for the Huffpost, they should stick to non-scientific stuff.

Fair.

 

[gikigill]

Fair.

The reason I am (fairly) confident is due to the tests by ATLAS and the CMS which were operating independently and yet got the same results.

Their results matching exactly at 5-5.9 sigma would be a bigger coincidence then the Higgs not exisitng at that level of confidence. If its true, I might have to go back and relearn everything I know about the SM.

Nothing is ever proven though, even string theory has its bad days and now the Holographic universe model proposed is a whole new benchmark for science to meet.

I work with big data so this is a topic that's close to me as to the sheer amount of data involved and heaven forbid, the Holographic universe theory ever matches six (or even 5) sigma, it will redefine what it means to be human, to be dead or alive, to have free-will, the very nature of reality will be in shreds.

 

[StevenEleven]

The reason I am (fairly) confident is due to the tests by ATLAS and the CMS which were operating independently and yet got the same results.

Their results matching exactly at 5-5.9 sigma would be a bigger coincidence then the Higgs not exisitng at that level of confidence. If its true, I might have to go back and relearn everything I know about the SM.

Nothing is ever proven though, even string theory has its bad days and now the Holographic universe model proposed is a whole new benchmark for science to meet.

I work with big data so this is a topic that's close to me as to the sheer amount of data involved and heaven forbid, the Holographic app universe theory ever matches six (or even 5) sigma, it will redefine what it means to be human, to be dead or alive, to have free-will, the very nature of reality will be in shreds.

Reading through this now (it will take me a while), I think along the lines of your description of the implications of the holographic universe model:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1_13

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1.pdf

Fascinating. Thank you.

 

[gikigill]

Reading through this now (it will take me a while), I think along the lines of your description of the implications of the holographic universe theory:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1_13

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1.pdf

Fascinating. Thank you.

What if we are beings of pure information?

 

[RayDunzl]

Am I a 0 or am I a 1?