Food for thought from Japan's accused
From the International Whaling Commission annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco:
One of the people I wasn't expecting to see here was Junichi Sato, whaling campaigner for Greenpeace in Japan.
He's one of the activists facing jail time for taking whalemeat from a warehouse back in 2008 - an action intended to draw attention to issues within Japan's Antarctic whaling programme.
Evidence in the case has now been heard, and the judgement is expected in September.
Mr Sato and his fellow activist Toru Suzuki are looking at a possible penalty of 18 months in jail if convicted, which they expect to be.
The reason I was surprised to see him here is that at various times since the whalemeat "liberation" two years ago he's been prevented from travelling, or speaking to the press or even to Mr Suzuki.
If the fact that his bail conditions permitted travel, I was even more surprised (and pleased) that he's now allowed to talk to the press.
And after IWC member governments rejected the notion of a potential compromise agreement that would have cut the scale of Japan's Antarctic hunt, I was interested to get his take on events, his reflections on anti-whaling campaigns, and his projections for the future.
So we had lunch.
For someone who believes he's about to go to jail, he came across as relaxed and content in himself. After two years of suspense, he confirmed, the court verdict will at least get some certainty back in his life, whatever it is.
I've wondered whether in retrospect he might see the whalemeat removal as something of an own goal.
Coverage of the incident in Western countries endorsed the Greenpeace conclusions that here was clear evidence of wrong-doing in the government agencies that run whaling, and showed that whalemeat was in such oversupply that it had to be given away free to crewmembers and officials.
But in Japan it played rather differently. The activists were largely painted as common criminals; and the investigation that they were told would begin into the whaling agencies never materialised.
Greenpeace Japan lost about a thousand members as a result - roughly one-sixth of its membership.
But, he said - not many regrets. A better understanding of international treaties and agreements on human rights law might have enabled him to tell his story better; but as to the taking of the meat, it was vital to exposing the wrong-doing, he said.
The big news here - the failure of governments to reach a compromise - he views as a missed opportunity to take Japanese whalers out of the Southern Ocean.
Japan was prepared to reduce the scale of its Antarctic hunt to 200 minke whales per year.
Officials from governments at the heart of negotiations have told me they thought Japan would have gone lower still, had it had the right signals from the EU, Australia and the Latin American bloc.
These countries had wanted the promise of a complete phase-out. But there is a view that going down to, say, 150 per year is effectively the same thing, as sending a fleet to the Antarctic for that few minke whales is simply not economic.
Mr Sato endorsed this view; Japan accepting less than 200, which could have been secured, would effectively have been promising a phase-out, he said.
If this is something of a rebuke for countries and environment groups that opposed the notion of a deal, his criticism of the Antarctic whaling programme itself is undiminished.
Any pretence that it's really conducted for scientific research is fatally holed, he said, by the fact that Japan was prepared to downscale the size of the hunt so drastically; if you really needed 850 for research, you'd stick with 850.
On the campaigning front, I reminded Mr Sato of a news conference he'd held back in 2007 at the IWC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.
At that time, Greenpeace still mounted annual expeditions to the Southern Ocean to obstruct the Japanese hunt.
Some Japanese academics had begun to say that the annual confrontations on the high seas were counterproductive, and that anti-whaling organisations would be better off stopping.
At the time, Mr Sato didn't accept that thesis. Now, he does - and indeed, Greenpeace isn't sending ships to the Antarctic any more.
The organisation's goal is unchanged - an end to Japanese whaling, certainly in the Antarctic. But it feels it can achieve more now by campaigning with words - by attacking the finances of the hunt, pointing up the reputational damage that Japan suffers as a result of the hunt, and so on.
Greenpeace Japan is a tiny organisation, and one of only a handful campaigning against whaling in the country. Therefore, the bulk of activism on the issue, the bulk of the pressure, comes from the outside world.
But does the outside world including the activist community understand enough about Japanese society, I wondered, in order to apply that pressure effectively - in order to find the right places and the right times to push, and the right occasions for restraint?
Mr Sato's answer - and this should perhaps be salutary for many of the campaign groups here that declaim long, loud and often about what Japan ought and ought not to do - is no, they don't.
We discussed two ways in which that manifests itself. One is that change can be wrought much more slowly than in the West; impatience is unlikely, therefore, to bring rewards.
The second, though, is that over the years, Japanese society and indeed the Japanese government has changed and is changing - as witnessed by the emergence of academics such as Jun Morikawa, whose recent book I discussed in a previous post, who are prepared openly to challenge the justifications put forward by the Japanese government for whaling.
This isn't the 1970s, Mr Sato acknowledged; and campaigners who want to effect change in Japan should not see things in the same terms as in that era.
Lunches come to an end, and so do blog posts: and so, soon, may liberty end temporarily for Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki.
I hope our conversation provides readers as much food for thought as it did for me.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~32~RS~)
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"The pair took a box of whale meat from a courier company warehouse and displayed it at a news conference.
They said it was evidence whalers were smuggling meat to the black market with the knowledge of the authorities.
But an investigation into their allegations was dropped and they were charged with trespass and theft."
___________________________________________________
This rang true in the early days of the Climategate e-mail scandal. It wasn't the content of the e-mails that authorities concentrated on, but by what methods and means they were obtained.
Surely we can't have double standards for whistle blowers.
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As a meat eater I feel somewhat disenfranchised to comment about the barbaric slaughter of whales. But a vegetarian only world does not appeal, although they can be strangely tasty - even by themselves.
Whaling is a bit like the bush-meat trade. Both do not replace the resource they pillage and seem to have little regard to bio-diversity and that is really what bothers me most. If the Japanese/Norwegians/Icelanders planted more 'trees' than they cut down then the rational majority meat eating World might be more appreciative of their strange delight in eating whale meat. And no I haven't heard a lettuce scream!
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It's absolutely essential that whistle-blowers get some sort of immunity from the usual laws about theft and invasion of privacy. But presumably, that immunity is something that a court should grant, and a decent court will grant, rather than something to be written explicitly into the statute book itself.
Fairly recently, a British jury acquitted some people who had damaged a coal-fired power station. It was right that these people were charged, and probably right that the jury acquitted them, not because they were correct in thinking that they were helping to save the world, but because they sincerely believed it, however false their belief may have been.
The whistle-blower(s) who stole/released the climategate emails should similarly be charged, and subsequently similarly acquitted.
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bowmanthebard,
(at 10:26am on 25 Jun 2010)
So if one is convinced that one is in the right, that there is no possibility of mistake, the crime committed is incidental?
I don’t think so.
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#4 Saltpeter wrote:
So if one is convinced that one is in the right, that there is no possibility of mistake, the crime committed is incidental?
I don’t think so.
That's not quite what I'm saying. I mean to say that where a crime has definitely been committed, there may still be mitigating circumstances, and false beliefs on the part of the perpetrator can surely be among them.
Just think of a few less serious "misdemeanors" such as speeding in a car. If you are caught speeding in a car to a hospital because you mistakenly but sincerely think your pregnant wife is in the final stages of labor, a court might waive the fine or the penalty points, at the same time as insisting that you were still breaking the law.
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...Or suppose an "imbecile" (as they used to be called) climbs up an electricity pylon to stop the electricity "leaking" into the air, because he's heard that electricity leaks can be dangerous. In doing so he causes criminal damage.
A court would be right to find that a crime had been committed, but also right to decide that the criminal shouldn't be punished because he's an imbecile. In doing so, the court isn't saying what the imbecile thought was correct -- far from it.
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"The whistle-blower(s) who stole/released the climategate emails should similarly be charged, and subsequently similarly acquitted."
whistleblowers? the only thing they highlighted in the end was a lack of malpractice, or any evidence of a conspiracy, as was suspected from the start. that you would let off individuals capable of such a blatant crime against humanity says alot. the right wing criminals behind the 'climategate' derailment of Copenhagen should be charged with theft and libel for starters, and then they can be put on trial for their crime against humanity
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@ 7.
few points.
1- it has never been confirmed whether the files were stolen or leaked.
2- if you honestly believe that the leaked emails showed no evidence of malpractice- then you are living in a fantasy world.
Finally- as i've said numerous times- all it takes for this whole argument to go away, is for the AGW proponents to fully release their data and methods. Once that's done and everyone's checked it's ok- the debate (until furthe data is gathered) will be settled.
Yet 'they' refuse to and fight tooth and nail to keep these things secret. Oh well, we'll just have to take their word for it then huh.
On-topic---
it's tricky. I think it's dangerous to allow any sort of legal immunity off the basis that you 'thought you were doing the right thing'. FAR too open for abuse.
But i do take Bowmans point on the speeding to hospital( less so the mentally unstable person as that'd clearly be a medical issue) i doubt (and know of at least one case) any policeman/woman would give a ticket to someone trying to get to hospital FOR GOOD reasons (i.e. dying/in labour).
so, charges should be brought, unless it is obvious at the point of 'arrest' that it's not a 'usual' situation- the judge can then dismiss/punish as required.
As for the whaling chap- it seems (on the VERY limited info i have on this matter) that hes being hung out to dry. Sympathies.
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#7 andy765gtr wrote:
"a blatant crime against humanity"
Making emails public is a crime against humanity?
I draw your attention to my earlier comments about fanatics not having a scale of values.
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I remebemr the MP's expenses /leak/hack/THEFT!
Nothing to see here, move along please, storm in a moat (nee teacup)
Now did that turn out again...?!?!
;) ;) ;)
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#8 LabMunkey wrote:
"I think it's dangerous to allow any sort of legal immunity off the basis that you 'thought you were doing the right thing'. FAR too open for abuse."
I don't mean to advocate total legal immunity, I'm just in favor of courts taking mitigating factors and special circumstances into account when a crime has been committed, and that those mitigating factors can include false beliefs on the part of lawbreakers.
Most people are pretty gullible, and if they are subjected to a constant barrage of bedtime-story-about-end-of-the-world-type propaganda, from all corners of the media, it's understandable that some of them get carried away by the hysteria and break the law.
Similarly, if some people sincerely feel important falsehoods are being propagated and that serious methodological failures are being covered up, causing real damage, it's understandable that some of them break the law too.
In both cases, laws concerning property and privacy are broken. But in both cases, it seems reasonable for a court to decide that there are significant mitigating factors, and that no real punishment should ensue.
Please note that it doesn't matter whether the beliefs in question are true or false, just that it's understandable why people who sincerely held them would behave as they did without being considered major league criminals.
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It is very positive to sse the BBC actually concentrating on some very real, actual pressing conservation and environmental issue.
Which I wholeheartedly applaud.
May they keep it up,
I wonder if Professor Kelly's comments may have finally made the penny drop at the BBC. His comment only released following FOI request following the Oxburgh climategate enquiry. So much for establishment transparency, surely the BBC should be pursueing FOI request of government in tghe public interest, not some blogger in their spare time?
Given that the C in AGW (C= Catastrophic) man made global warming, depends on ' computer 'runs' with very results from +1.0C to +12.0C depending how you program the assumptions.
Professor Kelly's comments make some climate researchers look silly (not real hard science ones ones actually looking at oceans, solar, hurricanes, upper lower atmosphere, etc) but paleo-climatologist and computer modeller ( Met office included)
Professor Kelly: (choice one, full comments follow link)
"I take real exception to having simulation runs described as experiments (without at least the qualification of ‘computer’ experiments).
It does a disservice to centuries of real experimentation and allows simulations output to be considered as real data.
This last is a very serious matter, as it can lead to the idea that real ‘real data’ might be wrong simply because it disagrees with the models!
That is turning centuries of science on its head"
Of course the findings of the report were correct (within the narrow brief) no findings of malpractice (ignoring peer review issues) just evidence of an extraordinary popular delusion, straight out of the madness of crowds.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/6/22/the-kelly-paper.html#comments
(the comments are well worth a read as well.)
More BBC environment news please,
how is the oil leak coming along?
how is the plastic pollution in the sargasso sea,
or those tuvalu islanders, have they stopped dynamite fishing, over-populating marginal habital islands,
extracting too much water, or stopped blaming everybody else, yet, for their own destruction of their local environment. Whilst of cause the islands are growing according to the very natural process that created them in the first place..
I'd actually quite like alternate enegry as well, but wind farms just do not cut it.
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@ 11
the qualifier i would add to that would be the degree or seriousness of the crime.
hacking/leakin documents is a very different thing to say, sending a dismantled bomb to someone as a warning. I do think as well, that in the uk at least a certain flexibility is there- again pointing to the rushing to hospital for a wife giving birth- no copper in his right mind would give you a ticket for it (speed camera's are a different thing).
but say- would you allow green activists to attack someone because they 'thought' they were doing something right? You obviously wouldn't- but thats the clear distinction that needs to be made, and i don't think you can legislate it- it has to ba a common sense approach- which again, i think actually already exists.
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Governments protect economic interest. People sometimes feel compelled to challenage that support..over time things change. Strip mining, lead in gasoline, overfishing of may species, air pollution from coal buring plants, etc. At each step governments have jailed those in opposition to these harmful actions. It tells you about governments and the relationships they have with businesses and citizen advocates. Confrontation - Negotition..it has been the method for a long time. Jails are full of people wronged by governments..one of the sorry examples of governmental evolution. Asian societies tend to value order over individual rights, it is a cultural doctrine developed during periods of great social disorder and internal warring periods. It is a given in Asian societies and those who commit acts that can be viewed as disorderly receive punishment regardless of the motivations. That is not a judgement as there are positives that can all be attributed to individual restaints by social norms.
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An article in the Globe and Mail in Canada seems appropriate on this thread. It's about a protester that found the only way open for her to effectively protest was to lay her own body on the line, much like the Greenpeace activist highlighted in this blog.
"Why I will protest at the G20"
by Annahid Dashtgard
"It's the heart's cry, echoed through the ages, for freedom, truth and justice..."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/why-i-will-protest-at-the-g20/article1616661/
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As this blog is also about food for thought, how if I present a few thoughts?
"The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life." [1]
"Knowledge that humankind does have the capacity to alter the nature of the sea may be the most important discovery made so far about the ocean. But the greatest discoveries, of learning how to live within our planetary means, may await." [2]
"...who will forgive us if we fail to learn from past and present experiences, to forge new values, new relationships, a new level of respect for the natural systems that keep us alive?" [3]
============
Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in jail, if memory serves.
Surely Japan can change, and find another way than jail to make their point?
- Manysummits -
[1] John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, January 20, 1961.
[2 & 3] Sylvia Earle, "The World is Blue" (2009) (p.193 & 91 hardcover ed.)
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Has anyone measured the carbon footprint of this enviro conference?
Or do enviro conferences emit a different kind of carbon ?
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@jack hughes #16
when discussing this type of environ conference i think you are confusing carbon with methane ;)
/Mango
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in general i agree with bowman (even though he thinks me a fascist) and john_from_hendon.
whistle blowers are essential (if their motives can be shown to be in the public interest) and should be protected from govt and corporate retribution. unfortunately this does not happen most of the time and at the very least they tend to lose their livelihoods.
we need more govt adverts encouraging the disclosure of bad practice and fewer suggesting we spy on each other.
#labmunkey
"Finally- as i've said numerous times- all it takes for this whole argument to go away, is for the AGW proponents to fully release their data and methods. Once that's done and everyone's checked it's ok- the debate (until furthe data is gathered) will be settled."
it has! but even when you're satisfied that agw is a reality, the corporations that stand to lose huge sums of money will continue lobbying against it, plain and simple.
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#18 rossglory wrote:
"he thinks me a fascist"
No, I don't think you're a fascist. I think there are some remarkable affinities between fascism and environmentalism, which I would elucidate in greater detail except people keep prefacing their replies to what I write with with the word "yawn", which is hardly encouraging!
For the record, I think the two vital ingredients of fascism are (a) seeing a single moral issue as so overriding it cannot even be put on a scale of right/wrong, and so overrules all other considerations; and (b) respecting groups rather than individuals, so that mundane wishes of ordinary people count for nothing compared to abstract codology about "destiny" or "the natural order" or "the General Will"...
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My wife Underacanoe has taken issue with a quote I posted in my #15, specifically:
"...to abolish all forms of human poverty..."
I think many, perhaps most people would agree immediately with the idea of abolishing poverty, given the chance.
But as Underacanoe pointed out to me, it is wealth that is the problem - not poverty.
Truly said!
Here is Livy, in the Preface to his "Early History of Rome":
"I hope my passion for Rome’s past has not impaired my judgment; for I do honestly believe that no country has ever been greater or purer than ours or richer in good citizens and noble deeds; none has been free for so many generations from the vices of avarice and luxury; nowhere have thrift and plain living been for so long held in such esteem. Indeed, poverty, with us, went hand in hand with contentment. Of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective."
================
Now that I think of it, the paradigm shift in thinking which is required, as I see it, is nothing short of a return to virtuous poverty as a way of life.
Before one doth protest, consider the 2009 Webster's New World College Dictionary definition of poverty:
SYN. - poverty, the broadest of these terms, implies a lack of the resources for reasonably comfortable living; ...
It then goes on to 'destitution' and 'penury', extreme forms of poverty.
If we then take the broadest definition as implying what Livy meant, I think we have the mountaineers avowed goal and reason for climbing, for he, or she, is more or less actively courting such a minimal lifestyle, with the additional high of possible demise thrown in, satisfying Freud's:
"Life is impoverished, it loses in interest, when the highest stake in the game of living, life itself, may not be risked."
Poverty is a hard sell I think, but perhaps not that hard, now that we have impoverished a generation, at the same time fabulously enriching a very few.
For if you think about it, it is the disparity that is the problem - is it not?
Since there are already too many of us on Earth to aspire to wealth - why don't we aspire instead to Livy's poverty?
Now that I think of it, that's the road my family and I are on.
90 percent reductions are looking more feasible just now - the goal being in fact Antoine de Saint-Exupery's:
"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."
Ergo - let us set ourselves the task of abolishing all forms of excessive wealth!!
- Manysummits -
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Rossglory & Bowman re 'fascism'
Personally, I like Robert Lucien's definition best: (previous blog)
117. At 12:38pm on 25 Jun 2010, Robert Lucien wrote:
"Ah the old arguments about fascism again.
Fascism isn't simply the opposite of democracy, it is a corrupt form of democracy. It is 'popularism', rule by the majority against the minority. Above all it is the control of people through the control and manipulation of information. The other thing is that it caters to the lowest common denominator, usually hate - yes things like racism, homophobia, anti-smoking, left - right, climate denial verses belief, etc, etc."
============
- Manysummits -
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"it is wealth that is the problem - not poverty"
What a bitter and ignorant thing to say.
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Addendum to my #20 - 'virtuous poverty'
I was at a local bookstore, a big chain, and I counted the number of magazines to a first approximation:
There were two thousand five hundred separate magazine titles!!
Yes, I counted one hundred and two separate sections, each section with twenty-five different magazines, most glossy.
Maybe that is rather the opposite of 'virtuous poverty,' or am I missing something here?
- Manysummits -
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Come on Bowman - where is that philosopher's hat - did you misplace it?
Or do you think Livy wrong?
An intelligent discussion if you please, or are your clouds of philosophy reserved for CO2 discussions?
- Manysummits -
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Interesting. They may not stop whaling but perhaps some of them may actually obey this nanny-state order:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7851292/Japanese-told-to-go-to-bed-an-hour-early-to-cut-carbon-emissions.html
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bowmanthebard #22.
""it is wealth that is the problem - not poverty"
What a bitter and ignorant thing to say."
why? if we define 'wealth' as unrequired surplus then, by definition, it is THE problem; instead of living in a world where everyone has enough we get to a situation of 'have' and 'have-not's. also, greed and avarice ('deadly sins') are fed by 'possession'.
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To jr4412 re #26 "'wealth' as unrequired surplus" (jr)
"To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature."
- Adam Smith (1723-1790)
It seems Adam Smith may again become required reading?
- Manysummits -
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And this @ # 26 &27:
"...there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with 'the money touch,' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawn-brokers."
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
"It has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue."
- Abraham Lincoln
- Manysummits -
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20. At 8:35pm on 25 Jun 2010, manysummits wrote:
blah blah blah (paraphrasing for length)
--------------------------------------
The greatest barrier to human advancement is not, as you suggest, the amount of money in our wallets. It's the amount of knowledge in our brains. From this perspective we are the richest generation in history.
Of course, we always have those trying to drag us backwards to a more ignorant time when we lived "in harmony with nature" or some such rot, but we can ignore them as they use the tools of advanced science (i.e. the internet) to decry technology and can safely be dismissed as fools.
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Brunnen_G #29.
"..the amount of knowledge in our brains. From this perspective we are the richest generation in history."
"Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned."
(Oliver Wendell Holmes)
knowledge is one thing but I think you may not be well educated.
"Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."
(Ambrose Bierce)
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Brunnen_G #29.
"..we are the richest generation in history."
and, from the way things look, one of the last!
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-mccarthy-small-species-spare-parts-that-matter-2009650.html
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/extinction-species-evolve
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Oh, oh. Speaking of knowledge and timber, more inconvenient rot uncovered in the house of CO2.
IPCC "Consensus" on Solar Influence was Only One Solar Physicist who Agreed with Her Own Paper
Thursday, June 24th 2010,
http://climaterealists.com/?id=5910
"On the basis of this "consensus of one" solar physicist, the IPCC proclaimed solar influences upon the climate to be minimal."
Real scientist protested but the IPCC used it anyways.
And, surprise, surprise, the data used for this paper was "manipulated."
But, but, but... look!!! that photoshopped polar bear is threatened!!!
LOL.
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Power without knowledge is worthless (it destroys itself)
Knowledge without power is useless (it can do nothing)
Knowledge and power together is what allows everything to happen.
A technologists view of wealth is very interesting, he/she views wealth as the resources to do things. Technological wealth is a series of growing mountains, but there's always another bit you cannot do until you have a bit you haven't got. But if you have a good enough aim at your goal, enough resources, and enough time you can do anything.
Tech wealth mountains (early industrial period)-
Ability to produce and handle different metals.
The flat edge, the right angle and the screw.
The ability to understand and utilize sources of energy.
Low pressure steam engines -
Improved materials and metals allow stronger lighter structures with higher tensile strength.
High pressure steam engines -
etc
The list goes on forever.. but the point is that the greatest wealth in the world vis doing things is that tech mountain. For instance without satellites and space imagery of Earth even thinking about global climate as a science would be next to impossible. (and like it or not it is a science)
Saving the world at this point requires the tech mountain. There's no way back to an agrarian society without a time of barbarism and horrors first. Things are kind of ugly at the moment and a lot of people are despondent about the future precisely because to much of the focus of the world has shifted from the tech mountain to things like money and finance. A short term blind solution that can only lead to disaster after disaster until corrected.
Look at BP floundering, thats because the oil industry didn't invest enough in that mountain, they took the path of minimum energy and minimum resistance and maximum profits - now they and sadly the gulf of Mexico are starting to pay the price.
As for protests and green groups - love them hate them. To me they lean to much towards luddism which is the worst choice possible. Mountain top clearance mining, the continuing strength of the oil industry both are actually the result of the green lobby bringing the nuclear industry to its knees. Of course they've done a lot of good as well, things like cleaning up the chemical industry, campaigning against dumping at sea, reducing smog emissions, raising green awareness, etc. The world desperately needs technologists in power - to point out bad technologies like big wind turbines, and guiding it towards really useful ones like improving the efficiency of energy transmission or CHP.
[sorry this is so long - 4 AM :)]
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\\\ Luddism - from Luddite ///
"The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the nineteenth century who protested...
against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution...
and the degrading working conditions in the new textile factories.
The principal objection of the Luddites was to the introduction of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheap, relatively unskilled labour, resulting in the loss of jobs for many skilled textile workers."
- Wikipedia
===============
Discussion:
As is often the case, this case against Luddism is definition-sensitive.
I believe Luddism is often taken to mean anti-technology.
This would in my opinion be a categorical mistake in understanding this movement.
Having a wide range of experience in working conditions similar to the Luddites, along with my so called professional skills and experience, I can comment confidently on this matter.
No doubt some are opposed to change - just because they don't like change.
But the majority, the vast majority, are opposed to mistreatment, callous disregard, and being sent to the ranks of the unemployed, through no real fault of their own. I align myself with this second type of Luddite.
There are many types of oppression. One is undoubtedly the marginalization of people in the name of progress, be it technological or otherwise.
Marginalizing people is the great tragedy of our time, and of past times.
'United we stand - divided we fall.'
It is possible to divide people in many ways. Race and color, intelligence, training, patronage, political affiliation, religious belief... it is a long list.
But when you throw people on the trash-heap in the name of something called progress - you add insult to injury.
How can this type of marginalization, this demeaning of the spirit, be called progress?
It is not - not in any sense which has meaning.
In the West, following the Second World War, and up until the spike in oil prices of the '70's, there was progress in the sense of the West only. Here we had optimism, a space race, relatively high paying jobs in that one family member could support his or her family on one income. Life was good, so we are told. Then oil got expensive, and the free ride slowed, and here we are. As Thomas Friedman says:
"The price of oil and the quality of freedom invariably travel in opposite directions."
But life was only good here in the West because of the marginalization of others - in Africa, in China and India, in Latin America and South America, and indeed around the world.
But we didn't feel their pain.
And unless you have experienced life in a Luddite factory environment, been marginalized, told you are easily replaceable, at the drop of the proverbial hat - you have not really lived in the modern industrial world. The pain has always been elsewhere.
I'm willing to bet that quite a number of readers are now realizing that Luddism is not restricted to factories at all, and has in fact little to do with technology.
But the ranks of the unemployed and out of work is running around 16 percent in the United States about now - maybe higher. The pain is getting altogether too close to home. Europe has similar problems just now, in places, and the pain is spreading there too.
It is not technology per se that is the problem.
As Bill Tilman was fond of quoting:
"There's nothing wrong with ships - it's the men in them."
- Manysummits -
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#15 manysummits
Silvia's book has arrived :) Just getting started...
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Brunnen_G #29: "..we are the richest generation in history."
jr4412 #31: "and, from the way things look, one of the last!"
As an antidote to that way of thinking, you might try this:
"I suspect that if you are the kind of person who is agonizing over when to tell your children that their lives will be cut short by global warming, you will be chilled when Mr. Ridley points out that all the scenarios gamed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that your grandkids will become significantly better off."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704009804575309610811148630.html
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#23 manysummits wrote:
I counted one hundred and two separate sections, each section with twenty-five different magazines, most glossy.
Maybe that is rather the opposite of 'virtuous poverty,' or am I missing something here?
You're missing the fact that we are all individuals with different interests, and we should be free to follow those interests as we think fit, not as you think fit.
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#12. Barry Woods wrote:
"Professor Kelly: (choice one, full comments follow link)
"I take real exception to having simulation runs described as experiments (without at least the qualification of ‘computer’ experiments).
It does a disservice to centuries of real experimentation and allows simulations output to be considered as real data.
This last is a very serious matter, as it can lead to the idea that real ‘real data’ might be wrong simply because it disagrees with the models!"
Poor old professor Kelly, born in the wrong century.
If you want to not use the results of computer experimentation you'd better throwaway every physics book written in the last thirty years, you'd better throw away every modern aircraft or space craft, PET MRI and CAT scanners, the human genome program, nanomaterials, modern drugs, ha ha any computer under about thirty years old, almost any car under about twenty years old, and the list goes on.
In physics and the rest of science simulation and modeling have come to underly almost everything. Computated fluid dynamics and cellular autonoma are used everywhere in designing more efficient machines from vacuum cleaners to boxes to rocket engines.
A lot of machines simply don't work at all without heavy computer modeling, MRI in particular. Then there are particle accelerators like the LHC at the CERN labs, synthetic aperture astronomy, and many other physics experiments - totally dependent on modeling and computer analysis. There's more physics done today based on computer simulation than not, and I know the same is true in chemistry and even in places in biology.
Computer experiments are just like any other experiment the results are either right or wrong, a lot of the time computers are correcting and tuning the results of raw data or extracting information from vast seas of noise. I remember something about the Gravity B probe, there was a flaw in the physical experiment and it failed, with several years of intense analysis and computer work they were able to recover a partial result. http://einstein.stanford.edu/
Maybe an even better example is Hubble, they were only able to build a correcting lens because they used computer modeling.
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I have done computer modelling, it is very useful technique..
BUT ONLY when all the physcics, chemistry interactions are known, in a closed system, is best.
The 'climate scientists' themselves freely admit to areas of great uncertainty, let alone the 'unknown unknowns' in the open, complex cahotics, poorly understood, system that is the earth's climate.
As above, they seem to have totally discounted all solar research, based on one papaer, reviewed by it's own author, in the IPCC!!!
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/ipcc-consensus-on-solar-influence-was.html
Shall we see ' revenge of the astrophysicists' playing out somehwere soon?
The 'climate models' extapolate into the future, and they are all over the place..
Evidence in the climategate emails, of confusion of real world , with uoutputs..
A quote, where they question the observed REAL world data, vs projections..
"we can't explain it, it is a TRAVESTY' is the quote.. and he then goes on to question the real wolrd data... obvioulsy not cobsidering it might just show the theory is wrong!!!
When the computer models FAIL to match the real world data they are modelling, the model is WRONG.
That is Professor Kelly (non dinosaur) position.
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simple things like models predict 'hot spots' of temperature, or that temperature should be higher..
Thermometers, satellites measuring the REAL observed temperature data, then the 'scientists' concerned question! the measured data, vs predicted by the model..
What gives. The planet is wrong?! Keep the thoery/MPdel?!
That is what Kelly is getting at..
As he is Physics and ELECTONICS, the attempt at painting him as some so5rt of computer luddite, is a bit silly.
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Manysummits the original Luddites are actually quite a good example, look at it from the other side. The weavers were defending an obsolete industry that yes benefited them but for the rest of the population clothes were colossally expensive. Most people only kept one or two sets of clothing and they kept them for years, and unless you were relatively rich you would probably never own much or any new clothing, the poor wore little more than rags.
Luddism takes many forms, the car industry clung to oil and petrol after the oil crisis in the 70's even though the writing was on the wall even back then. Just look at the oil industry already trying to do the same thing again after the gulf spill when its not even capped yet.
Of course I am a scientist but even I have my share of Luddist ideals, I attacked genetic engineering as dangerous and primitive, and pig human organ transplants likening them to Frankenstein (limb transplant anyone?), I see all Apple products as the monstrous excretions of an evil cult, and I hate 'networking' and social networking culture - and mobile phones.
The thing I hate most of all is the continuing growth of houses and towns into natural land and natural areas. The destruction of wilderness, the polluting of the oceans with wind turbines and oil slicks, the destruction of natural habitats, the insane overproduction of so many things from cars to cheap plastic toys, the buy use discard cycle and the treating of animals as mass commodity products.
Saying all the above I still see progress and technology as the answer. When your in science Luddism is like a disease constantly trying to eat away at things, everything new gets attacked no matter what it is. Remember the scare made about the LHC making black holes and destroying the Earth, total nonsense. Scientifically its just impossible for a dozen reasons, basically theory says that such singularities have very short lifespans of a tiny tiny fraction of a second. What if theory is wrong? well the conditions that could produce a micro singularity exist near the Earth so it has been full of them for billions of years - not destroyed yet!
Another example is Luddites attacking nuclear propulsion in space because it will make space radioactive!! Dou!! space is already radioactive, maybe they're worrying about us harming the radiation. :>
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#38 Robert Lucien wrote:
In physics and the rest of science simulation and modeling have come to underly almost everything.
It's important to bear in mind what computer modelling can do and can't do. It is not a substitute for testing. Why not?
The (over-simplified) logical pattern of testing in science goes like this. Suppose H is an explanatory hypothesis describing something that cannot be observed directly. And suppose O describes one of H's observable consequences -- in other words O is an observation statement that can be deduced from H, and it describes something that can be seen directly, such as the result of an experiment. Then we have:
If H then O
I repeat: this is the greatly over-simplified model. H never implies O on its own, but does so in concert with a range of "auxiliary" hypotheses and assumptions. The business of deriving O from these can be very difficult.
The test of the hypothesis H occurs when observation (usually experiment) reveals whether O is true or false. If O is false, that counts against H (although H isn't conclusively disproven, because O is always derived from a range of auxiliary hypotheses in addition to H). If O is true, that usually counts in favour of H (but again, it's never conclusive, because it might just be a "lucky coincidence"). In effect, all the "other stuff" (auxiliary hypotheses, etc.) from which O is derived (in addition to H) is tested alongside H.
Computer modelling strengthens our ability to deduce O from H (plus the other stuff). But it is never an alternative for the observation that counts for or against H. That is still an essential ingredient. In fact, because the modelling in effect adds to the "machinery" involved in deducing O from H, the computer modelling itself is part of the "other stuff" that gets tested alongside H.
When H is not itself being called into question, observation in effect tests the "other stuff" used to derive O. This includes any computer modelling involved. Any useful real-world applications of computer modelling are subject to frequent testing of that sort. For example, weather-forecasting computer models are tested against the actual weather, once it happens, and updated when they systematically go wrong. Computer models are used in aircraft maintenance to predict where metal fatigue will strike. But again, these are tested against the actual metal fatigue observed in actual aircraft.
In short, computer modelling augments our ability to both predict and test, but is never an alternative to testing, and it needs to be tested itself.
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@Robert Lucien #41
Well Spoken
Cheers.
Kealey
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@Robert Lucien #41
Lucid Lucien
/Mango
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Geological Research Letters tell us that Swiss Alps glacial loss linked to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation not global AGW
We show that North Atlantic variability had a recognizable impact on glacier changes in the Swiss Alps for at least 250 years
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042616.shtml
/Mango
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Mango at #45
The comment "not global AGW" does does not appear in the abstract linked to in your post.
The abstract simply states: "We show that North Atlantic variability had a recognizable impact on glacier changes in the Swiss Alps for at least 250 years." That finding does not in itself rule out a role for AGW.
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@simon-swede #46
true simon, the "not AGW" part came from me, which i will retract
the 250 years in Swiss glaciers change linked to natural variability stands
/Mango
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Good Morning Robert Lucien - good to hear from you! (Luddism #41)
I woke up this morning and read your post with great interest.
I think our discussion is one which has occupied many an active mind.
Robert Pirsig for example in his "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." The pre-Socratic sophists, and of course, the post-Socratic philosophers.
Closer to home, the great climber Reinhold Messner developed his philosophy 'by fair means.'
Is it fair to climb a mountain using oxygen?
And if not, then why are technical crampons OK - or are they?
Although it takes a fair bit of thinking, it turns out this question is resolvable, but only once the underlying reasons for a person's decision to climb are taken into account.
Likewise technology and progress.
If we define progress as the advance of technology, we can point to all sorts of benefits, such as you have pointed out in your post - better and cheaper clothes for the poor for example.
But the question is begged, why were there poor in rags in the first place.
And further, do cheaper mass produced clothes 'make the man'?
I think it is fair to say mankind is technically oriented, always has been, and our success as a species is in part due to this technical prowess. Also, I don't think it realistic to believe we can change our basic nature that much - perhaps not at all.
But technical prowess must be deployed by a man, or a woman, or a child.
And it turns out that the qualities of that person are more important than the tool.
In our society post hunter gatherer, we have increasingly marginalized and impoverished the spirit of the individual. That would be an opinion of course, but I think I am not alone in this assertion.
Do the benefits of progress outweigh the costs to the individual then becomes the question?
Ronald Wright, a Canadian revisionist historian with a background in archaeology, argues that we humans have progressed from one "progress trap" to the other, until here we are, too many people upon a planet too small.
This is of course also an opinion, and the results of this way of life of homo sapiens are still to come in.
We then move to some of the other points you mention in your post - if I may summarize and extrapolate - the continuing encroachment of man upon the natural landscape - environmental destruction in the final analysis, including of course climate change, which after all is just another form of encroachment upon the biosphere.
Further discussion is limited by what one thinks the consequences of all of this progress are going to be - speculation as it were.
Maybe it will all turn out OK! I think most people unconsciously subscribe to this way of thinking, as we have always prospered and survived before, despite world wars, pesticides etc...
Those who think otherwise are characterized as Cassandras, or doom and gloomers - and until the results are finally in - who can say otherwise?
Back to the Luddites - were they against technical progress - or against the marginalization of the individual by what they perceived as an ultimately corrosive way of life - in short - industrial man?
Back to Robert Pirsig and his motorcycle companions, the artistic couple, who loved the freedom of the open road, but were suspicious of the mode of transport.
Robert Pirsig thought himself capable of resolving the dilemma, much like yourself. But Robert Pirsig was a genius, much like yourself.
What about the rest of us?
Are we being sacrificed to the god of progress in the name of what is best for the majority rules? Or are we benefiting - but just don't realize this yet?
Complex questions!
When given the time and opportunity, I took to the hills and the deserts in minimalist style to survive, sacrificing all material wealth to my devotion, and unexpectedly restored my soul - hence my wife Underacanoe and our son Cloudrunner.
Of course that is just one example, but again, I think I am not alone in this pilgrimage, and its resulting insights.
All the best,
Manysummits
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A Luddite cat - for Robert Lucien:
I remember like it was yesterday, though it was in fact decades ago, a tiny stray kitten, black as night, and starving when brought to me.
All claws and teeth, this enigma refused all advances, including food.
Patience and shaved roast beef eventually prevailed, and the kitten sheathed claw and fang and grew into a beautiful creature, and lived its life with us.
Obviously, I think, this starving kitten was not 'against' the food proffered to it, but was just mad at the slings and arrows of an unkind world.
Same for the Luddites.
Manysummits
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To Robert Lucien - Back to the present:
"How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America"
by Don Peck; The Atlantic; March 2010
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/how-a-new-jobless-era-will-transform-america/7919/
Excerpts:
'broadest measure of unemployment,' October 2010: 17.4 percent, apparently the highest since the 1930's.
for teenagers: ~ 27 percent
in the past year: ~ 44 percent of families had experienced "a job loss, a reduction in hours, or a pay cut..."
And - unlikely to change anytime soon.
Manysummits
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Junichi Sato & Toru Suzuki - Luddites? - or Heros?
Here are these young intelligent men, laying their bodies on the line for something that they believe in.
They have my immediate respect, regardless of their cause.
As it turns out, I think their cause is a just one.
Painted as criminals, I see that it is Japan that has broken its word! For me that is criminal:
"The activists were largely painted as common criminals; and the investigation that they were told would begin into the whaling agencies never materialised." (Richard Black)
============
Japan says they are not whaling - they are doing science.
As a citizen of the world, I say they are lying. That makes two breaches of trust.
And Japan is whaling in a zone designated a whaling sanctuary.
Strike three and you're out. The Japanese like baseball, and can relate to this analogy.
It is not Japan that I am attacking, just as the Luddites were not all attacking technology.
It is double dealing, double standards, and a certain inability to tell the truth that is reprehensible.
Because our politicians are no better is no cause for the dismissal of this pattern of do as I say not as I do.
Bite the bullet, and leave the Antarctic whaling sanctuary alone.
And give these two young men a medal, not a jail term.
- Manysummits -
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I wonder how many people here have actually been open minded enough to eat whale meat? I have and I can tell you it is one of the finest foods you will ever eat.
Now because I have eaten whale I suppose I am a "bad" person, but the fact remains, whales like many other animals on this planet are good sources of food and nutrition, so long as whale hunting is regulated and stocks are monitored so that stocks are not depleted then where is the issue? How many of you eat fish? probably most, I only eat line caught fish that is sustainable, but if I choose to eat tuna, no one would bat an eyelid.
I also do not buy the argument that whales are sentient beings who are capable of some quite high level thinking, guess what, most animals are afraid before they are slaughtered, and most will suffer, but for the majority that does not put you off eating animals. But whales are another story altogether.. its hypocrisy at its best!
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\\\ The Iconic Whale ///
It's really not all about whales, is it?
Just as Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle" is not really about motorcycles, or even Zen.
Just as "Moby Dick" is not really about seventeenth century whaling.
Every story, or at least every good story, needs a carrier.
The great stories, those above, "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner, "Travels with Charlie" by John Steinbeck, "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway, "The Road" by Cormac MacCarthy, "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon...
these all have great carriers, but they are all palimpsests, i.e., stories within stories - stories with many layers of meaning,
stories about the human condition, and mankind's place in the Universe,
- a search for meaning -
So too our infatuation with whales, our preoccupation with defending them, and other iconic species.
Here, non-iconic species, at least in the popular mind:
"Fewer than 2 percent of the oysters, clams, crabs, and sponges - and menhaden - that once prospered in the [Chesapeake] bay now remain to cope with present loads of silt, sewage and algae... all of the waters of the Chesapeake Bay may have passed through the bay's oysters and clams each 24 hours... at the start of the twentieth century."
- Sylvia Earle, "The World is Blue" p.76
===============
Arguably, we can do without whales.
Without question, we cannot do without the oceanic phytoplankton which produce 70 percent of our oxygen. The Chesapeake oysters and clams and sponges and menhaden also perform essential ecosystem services which benefit mankind and many other ecosphere inhabitants.
But it would be a mistake I think, to presume that in protecting whales we have lost sight of the smaller creatures, just as I have argued recently it would be a mistake to presume the Luddites were opposed per se to technology.
In the final analysis, I think the pre-Socratic Protagoras and his contemporary pre-Socratic sophists were much more realistic, and empathetic, than the much more famous Socrates and his disciples.
"Man is the measure of all things," pronounces Protagoras, and his meaning is still enigmatic.
Or is it?
I think not.
Our attempts to save whales, rain forests, a patch of countryside, a nice view - these are all attempts to save ourselves, for at the instinctive level where most people live, this is what is most important.
And this I think is as it should be - a sign, if of nothing else, of mental health.
I am all for mental health - balance it is sometimes called.
- Manysummits -
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I would say the real crime here was that the media would not show the facts that prove there is no Global Warming, the left wing media refused to report the evidence!
That is the reason the emails were released.
An insider saw the fraud going on, and tried and tried to get the media to look into it. Before we finally changed the way the entire Worlds lives, the person had to get the information out.
While the person is a real life World Hero, they would have surely been jailed and tortured if the media could have found out who it was. I hope to see them turned into a Hero when the world comes to it's senses!
The phony media has given up their place to be the Watch Dogs in the World!
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"...Mr Sato's answer - and this should perhaps be salutary for many of the campaign groups here that declaim long, loud and often about what Japan ought and ought not to do - is no, they don't...."
I live in Japan. The media is ostensibly controlled by the Govt. Since the media do not wish to have a confrontaion, thus they play the "game".
Only two things matter in Japan, for EVERYTHING. Harmony and Image.
Thus, if there is too much fuss made about this issue, the Japanese shall ignore, why, because it is upsetting the "harmony".
So, when foriegn media state XX YY and ZZ, in Japan, it is ignored and not reported at all. The average Japanese citizen does not know about any protest, or, if it is indeed reported, it is ALWAYS given an negative and anti-western spin, to create the IMAGE of everything foriegn is bad. Therefore the conclusion is, this does not promote HARMONY. Whatever anyone else thinks.
The only way to make Japan listen and make changes, is to take the same actions as the rest of the world did with South Africa several decades ago. Any less, will be simply ignored and treated with contempt as anti-Japanese.
As for Human rights....in Japan...forget it, there are none, at least for foreigners, period.
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Oh dear the dangers of late night rambling,[wake up 3am, write post, 9 am read post, regret. - repeat.] I just wrote and nearly posted a long missive on my favorite subject AI.[yawn] I'll try to write something slightly less off topic.
#53 Mannysummits
"Our attempts to save whales, rain forests, a patch of countryside, a nice view - these are all attempts to save ourselves, for at the instinctive level where most people live, this is what is most important."
This is where I disagree, I see the environment as totally separate from people I really don't see it as there to serve people. Not only did I grow up in remote rural country, I read a lot of books that influenced me to see nature as not owned by us, I believe in true wilderness.
I might list some of them - John Wyndham's The Day of The Triffids, and The Chrisalids, The Lord of The Rings, The Narnia series, Helliconia Spring and Summer by Brian Aldis, Downward to the Earth by Robert Silverberg. Then there's Cyteen by CJ Cherryh which has a unique perspective on humanity and machines.
==== ====
OK here’s the last bit of the terrible post, what do you think of AI?
DANGERS. There are obvious dangers in AI, just watch "The Phantom Menace" or "The Terminator", but there are far more subtle ones.
AI isn't really compatible with a capitalist system, you can produce machines almost without limit and they can replace workers in almost any and every function. Apply it in a moralist post-capitalist society like the Federation in Star trek and it might work, apply it here and now and it'll either destroy society, create a complete new world, or get AI banned (try banning the internet). There's also a heavy moral connection because an AI is a sentient thing, almost a living thing and an AI as a slave is really no different to a human slave.
The real killer is the base nature of human nature. . Put AI in human hands and it will become a military weapon, a terrorist weapon, a criminals dream, in fact every abomination imaginable will be committed. Unfortunately AI is also uniquely dangerous in the hands of hackers.
ADVANTAGES. Of course AI also has a million and one positive uses. Imagine how it could help the disabled, make a lot of dangerous processes safer, free people from mundane tasks like driving, make all kinds of technologies everywhere safer and more reliable and more efficient (ie greener).
One of the odder uses is in solving problems that are far beyond human abilities. Building a super or hyper intelligent mind is not fundamentally any harder than building a moron level mind, and this opens up a huge number of possibilities. Imagine using an AI to control the markets so there is no more boom and bust or unemployment. Solving medical problems like cancer or Alzheimer's or spinal repair. Solving insoluble eco problems and actually answering questions about things like future climate change. Its also the key technology needed to start building assemblers and a Von Neumann technology base (allowing 'ultra' green tech). Originally I viewed an AI big brother (policing) system as just a nightmare but actually it could practically eradicate crime and terrorism overnight and make the whole world safer for everybody.
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#53 manysummits
"It's really not all about whales, is it?" - it's not even about the environment.
i think it's important understand that the main motivating force of 'the lobby' is fear not apathy or greed.
the endless rants about evil scientists, contrived statistics, biased reporting etc all boil down to one thing, they are terrified. the daily bomabardment from the right wing gutter press has carefully shaped the argument so that there are just two options for mankind: mill's libertarianism; or deep green eco-fascism.
the world is green or white, either we must all live in fear that the world govt's gaian greenshirts will bang down the door searching for strips of whalemeat and carting you of on the least suspicion that you don;t advocate earth worship or we can live in a utopia where inefficient cars run on subsidised oil, cheap stuff is plentiful (and lives of ruined childhoods carefully hidden) and politicians stay bought.
no room for a nuanced continuum of ideas and politics, just libertarianism or fascism. that's why evidence/facts/sound predictions of disaster are virtually irrelevant, in their eyes it's a political battle for survival.
and when you're dealing with fear all rationality disappears. there can be no balance.
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#56 Robert Lucien
"Oh dear the dangers of late night rambling,[wake up 3am, write post, 9 am read post, regret. - repeat.]"
we've all done it :o)
"This is where I disagree, I see the environment as totally separate from people I really don't see it as there to serve people."
i agree it's purpose is not to serve us but i don't believe we can see it as separate either. imo there is nothing preordained about us or nature or our relationship, we are both parts of a unique property of our paticular part of the universe (just the right amount of heat, light, gravity etc) - the ability to evolve complexity but not with complexity as a 'goal'.
which is also where i think i depart from your view of ai. ai will eventually 'suceed' but we cannot create it, only the conditions that would enable it to evolve rapidly. therefore, by definition, we can never control it and whether it benefits or detroys us is out of our hands.
recently read steve grand's 'creation - life and how to make it' where he put forward this idea and it struck me immediately as a good explanation of why the design approach to ai has progressed so slowly.
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#57 rossglory wrote:
mill's libertarianism
Mill was a famous liberAL, not a liberTARIAN.
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@rossglory #57
Ross,
despite what you and manysummits think, there is no lobby on these pages - it's a complete figment of your imaginations.
I believe AGW is real. I believe man can and is affecting the climate. The only real part of AGW that i don't accept is CO2 being the primary driver of climate change for reasons that i have already given
So where does that out me? In or out of the lobby?
/Mango
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#53 manysummits wrote:
"Man is the measure of all things," pronounces Protagoras, and his meaning is still enigmatic.
Plato took him to mean that everything, including truth, is like beauty: "in the eye of the beholder". In other words, Protagoras was a "relativist", and therefore one of Plato's principal opponents, because Plato thought that truth was absolute.
Plato's anti-relativism is very relevant today, because "postmodernists" and AGW-believers so often appeal to consensus -- as if a lot of people agreeing about something makes it true. Plato would be appalled.
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52. At 10:09pm on 26 Jun 2010, Jon wrote:
I wonder how many people here have actually been open minded enough to eat whale meat? I have and I can tell you it is one of the finest foods you will ever eat.
I have heard that too from people who have eaten it.
I also do not buy the argument that whales are sentient beings who are capable of some quite high level thinking, guess what, most animals are afraid before they are slaughtered, and most will suffer, but for the majority that does not put you off eating animals. But whales are another story altogether.. its hypocrisy at its best!
Some people argue that we shouldn't be eating any sentient animals, including whales. But focussing on whales needn't be hypocrisy. It might be that whales -- like lambs, say -- are a good vehicle to draw everyone's attention the the awfulness of all meat-eating. Or one might have aesthetic rather than moral objections to killing whales -- one might say that it is "unbecoming" and "unnecessary", like bull-fighting or fox-hunting, say -- rather than especially morally wrong.
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i've never tried whale meat, but i certainly would. There's very few things i wouldn't try at least once. I often wonder if i ate a vegan would that count towards my five-a-day?
/Mango
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@Robert Lucien #56
(@rossglory #58)
"Oh dear the dangers of late night rambling,[wake up 3am, write post, 9 am read post, regret. - repeat.]"
In my case stay up too late (hey I have an excuse at the moment with Glastonbury on the telly) and then regret stuff in the morning.
Your #56 was at 6:10am. Obviously your 9am reference could be just generalising but people posting here know so little about each other. So can I be nosy and ask if you're three hours east of BST (British Summer Time is GMT + 1 hour)?
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On being "open minded" enough to try eating whale meat.
This is a new one on me.
I am more familiar with the "if you eat meat from pigs and cows, etc, or accept others eating meat from pigs and cows, etc, then you should accept others eating whale meat".
Perhaps I need to clarify, very few people on the anti-whaling side are against whale meat for the yuk factor. It's not the same as Brits getting queasy at the thought of eating meat from dogs or cats. Or eating worms or snails or something from a reality TV bushtucker trial.
I have three issues with eating whale meat.
Firstly there's the evidence that some types of whale, especially members of the dolphin family, are intelligent in a people like way. This doesn't apply to all whales and I think both sides would benefit from clarity here.
Secondly there's the conservation issue. The moratorium was partly imposed to deal with the problem of actually being able to stick to working quotas, with some whales needing strong protection. This doesn't apply to all whales, in particular the Minke whale has never been at significant risk. And unfortunately there is disagreement about the status of the Fin and Sei whales.
Finally there's the clean kill issue. Whales are big, even Minke whales are big. This makes a quick clean kill inherently difficult. And even the less intelligent whales are sensitive enough to suffer.
Those are my issues.
I understand there is a fourth issue that doesn't affect me personally. There is a tourist industry of whale spotting and they like whales that approach boats, a behaviour that is threatened by otherwise sustainable whaling.
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #63
You've never heard the gag "on a vegetarian diet - eats vegetarians"?
Cos with the exception of fish the "natural" diet of most of the animals contributing to the meat on your plate would be vegan. (I say "natural" because the food supplements for many farm animals aren't vegan.)
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Re my comment #56.
"Oh dear the dangers of late night rambling..."
#53 Mannysummits
Horrible irony I wrote this wrong and published this totally half finished... :) late nights are a rally bad habit.
"This is where I disagree, I see the environment as totally separate from people I really don't see it as there to serve people. Not only did I grow up in remote rural country, I read a lot of books that influenced me to see nature as not owned by us, I believe in true wilderness."
Sorry I put that very wrongly.
What I should have said is that the environment and its protection should not simply be subservient to people, or as a resource simply to support the maximum number of human lives. I believe that people tend to be far to small minded and self centered, not that we should just give up and die but that we need a better justification for our lives than consumerism or triviality. I believe in the idea of a true wilderness - but I also believe in the conquest of space and ultimate machine.
I know I believe in many things that are contradictory but isn't that the true nature of the world? Reality is a pretty complex place, especially when you look into all the dark places and the details.
----
I was very lucky to grow up was a place where there was true wilderness and a lot of nature and very few people, in a tiny village on a very old country estate in a house that was over 500 years old. A pretty cool and wierd old place with a half demolished country house, many strangle old buildings, with ancient abandoned machines, wide fields, hidden valleys and small crags and its own stream and even a kind of moat, and at the edge even its own standing stone. Ironically I rebelled and turned totally inwards to TV, SF science and futurism, I turned to TV to escape from nature. - you never know what you had till you don't have it any more. :l
I know that its still a big part of who I am today.
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@JaneBasingstoke #66
I'm actually a post-modern vegan - i still eat meat, but with a twist of irony
/Mango
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#64. At 12:33pm on 27 Jun 2010, JaneBasingstoke wrote:
@Robert Lucien #56
(@rossglory #58)
"Oh dear the dangers of late night rambling,[wake up 3am, write post, 9 am read post, regret. - repeat.]"
"In my case stay up too late (hey I have an excuse at the moment with Glastonbury on the telly) and then regret stuff in the morning.
Your #56 was at 6:10am. Obviously your 9am reference could be just generalising but people posting here know so little about each other. So can I be nosy and ask if you're three hours east of BST (British Summer Time is GMT + 1 hour)?"
Posted 6:10 am BST. Broken sleep cycle, wake up 3Am, wrote post fell asleep woke up finished post posted 6:10 am went back to sleep. Checked post realized that I'd left it half finished. The good thing about working from home is no schedule, ... the bad thing is no schedule.
- Get horrible desire to strap everyone into AI appreciation couches or read them some of my poetry.
----
BTW on whale meat : yes would try it, probably less damaging than Tuna meat. Japans real environmental 'crime' isn't over whales its over needing to much fish.
Whales - #65 JaneBasingstoke
"Firstly there's the evidence that some types of whale, especially members of the dolphin family, are intelligent in a people like way. This doesn't apply to all whales and I think both sides would benefit from clarity here."
Certainly I agree on dolphins, but a lot of other animals are broadly comparable, just a small step below human level intelligence. Monkeys and Chimps obviously, pigs, dogs, rats, octopie, elephants, horses, some birds. Intelligence has other problems though, should it be the criteria for kill not kill? why don't we eat stupid people?
"Secondly there's the conservation issue. The moratorium was partly imposed to deal with the problem of actually being able to stick to working quotas, with some whales needing strong protection. This doesn't apply to all whales, in particular the Minke whale has never been at significant risk. And unfortunately there is disagreement about the status of the Fin and Sei whales."
Agree totally, blue whales and sperm whales were hunted in huge numbers and nearly driven extinct. Large whales have a long cycle time and low birth rate making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. On the other side I suspect the biggest pressure on whales in the near future wont be from whaling but from general overfishing.
"Finally there's the clean kill issue. Whales are big, even Minke whales are big. This makes a quick clean kill inherently difficult. And even the less intelligent whales are sensitive enough to suffer."
On cruelty of death, there is no pleasant death especially in nature, especially for very large animals. Explosive harpoons might look horrible but are probably actually a lot nicer than a lot of the natural ways whales die, like beaching, or disease or bleeding to death from injuries, or being eaten to death. The animals we treat the worst of course are fish which are routinely butchered alive, then there are lobsters - octopi - cuttlefish - sharks - which are all treated about equally badly. It seems that when it comes from the sea there's little or no mercy.
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should we only eat stupid animals? is that the natural way?
/Mango
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#70 MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
should we only eat stupid animals? is that the natural way?
-------------------------------------------
In that case, we can eat whatever animal we like.
No species of dolphin or whale has ever been shown to have anything CLOSE to human intelligence. If they did, they would avoid human contact.
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57. rossglory wrote:
"when you're dealing with fear all rationality disappears. there can be no balance."
I agree. That's why the AGW gang employs fearmongering constantly. You know. Floods, famines, pestilence... all the usual Biblical stuff, plus now extinction!!!
Unfortunately we now know that all their scary poster stories are false or, at the very least, grossly overstated. Another one...
The story of the IPCC's claims about threats to the Amazon rainforest takes another bizarre turn. June 26th 2010
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5914
And then there's your "21st century scientific consensus"...
IPCC "Consensus" on Solar Influence was Only One Solar Physicist who Agreed with Her Own Paper June 24th 2010,
http://climaterealists.com/?id=5910
Y2K! WMDs! AGW! Run lemmings, run! Or should I say, pay lemmings, pay!
Of course, we have come a lot way from this (not!):
"The Age of Witch-Hunting thus seems pretty congruent with the era of the
Little Ice Age. The peaks of the persecution coincide with the critical
points of climatic deterioration. Witches traditionally had been held
responsible for bad weather which was so dangerous for the precarious
agriculture of the pre-industrial period. But it was only in the 15th
century that ecclesiastical and secular authorities accepted the reality of that crime. The 1420ies, the 1450ies, and the last two decades of the
fifteenth century, well known in the history of climate, were decisive years in which secular and ecclesiastical authorities increasingly accepted the existence of weather-making witches. During the "cumulative sequences of coldness" in the years 1560-1574, 1583-1589 and 1623-1630, again 1678-1698 (Pfister 1988, 150) people demanded the eradication of the witches whom they held responsible for climatic aberrations. Obviously it was the impact of the Little Ice Age which increased the pressure from below and made parts of the intellectual elites believe in the existence of witchcraft. So it is possible to say: witchcraft was the unique crime of the Little Ice Age."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32396573/Witch-Hunting-Maunder
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@Brunnen_G #71
No species of dolphin or whale has ever been shown to have anything CLOSE to human intelligence.
or they would have invented climate models before us ;)
/Mango
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@bowmanthebard #57
(@rossglory)
The Bowman dictionary making an appearance again.
The concept of "libertarianism" with a small L, and softened with the prescription against harming others, is a significant strand of liberalism.
I remind you that Mill wrote a book called "On Liberty" rather than "On Liberalism".
You may also be interested in the following website where authoritarianism at one extreme and anarchy/libertarianism at the other are seen as complimentary to traditional left-right politics
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
@RobertLucien #69
I'm talking by species rather than by individual. I don't want individual human beings valued any less than they are now. And I don't want to get into the (related) abortion debate.
There is a big variation of intelligence within your list. Personally I'd go by the mirror test for self awareness, which suggests elephants, dolphins and some members of the crow family are as people-like as some of the other higher apes. And I'd want to look harder at parrots (large vocabulary), other members of the crow family (tool use) and octopuses (some tool users) before writing them off as not people-like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
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It would seem the BBC is incapable of learning from past mistakes.
They ignored 'climategate' until it was impossible to do so, then reported on it as if they were breaking the story.
Now they are ignoring the IPCC solar physicist scandal, already being dubbed 'Judithgate' and showing up all over the blogosphere.
I wonder how long they'll pretend nothing is happening THIS time before 'breaking' the story?
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@Brunnen_G #71
"No species of dolphin or whale has ever been shown to have anything CLOSE to human intelligence. If they did, they would avoid human contact."
Interesting logic. By that test plenty of human failures as well, including most victims of bullying and violent crime.
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#77 BrunnenG says 'I wonder how long they'll pretend nothing is happening THIS time before 'breaking' the story?'
Perhaps they are waiting to see if it is as real as as the other blogosphere '-gates' that occur about once a week and are faithfully spread by the 'skeptical' and gullible.
Let me see, are you still promoting the Moon-gate of a couple of weeks ago? You know, NASA deliberately faked black-body calculations? How about the 'US law professor shows climate change evidence is rubbish-gate'? And all the rest.
Go get your information from science sites, you know, the ones that support their information with peer-reviewed science, not junk-food equivalent made up or twisted for blogosphere consumption. It's really not good for you.
Lorax
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#79 Lorax wrote:
Perhaps they are waiting to see if it is as real as as the other blogosphere '-gates' that occur about once a week and are faithfully spread by the 'skeptical' and gullible.
Let me see, are you still promoting the Moon-gate of a couple of weeks ago? You know, NASA deliberately faked black-body calculations? How about the 'US law professor shows climate change evidence is rubbish-gate'? And all the rest.
Go get your information from science sites, you know, the ones that support their information with peer-reviewed science, not junk-food equivalent made up or twisted for blogosphere consumption. It's really not good for you.
Lorax
----------------------------------------------
Moongate? Sorry, never heard of it.
Ah yes, peer reviewed science. It's wonderful. If only the IPCC thought that too.
As for 'all the other blogosphere gates that occur about once a week', apart from sounding pompous and dismissive, I'd remind you that if it weren't for bloggers, climategate would never have broke.
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@Brunnen_G #77
Judithgate
Also apparently currently ignoring it at article level at least are lots of sceptic sites including Anthony Watts and Stephen McIntyre.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
You going to tell them off too?
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79. Lorax - The old "peer-reviewed science' line just doesn't work anymore. Now, in the case of AGW, we are dealing with stooge-reviewed "science' compounded by biased gatekeepers running most of the journals. In the case of the IPCC, its often not even stooge-reviewed... and, as for the WWF, LOL.
Here's more on the phoney Amazon AGW story I posted earlier... just another bogus scare story that is falling apart when it actually is closely reviewed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/27/out-in-the-ama-zone/#more-21123
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/27/booker-north-and-willis-on-the-ipcc-amazongate-affair/
You should try debating the folks at WUWT. You know... the actual substance. It can be a real learning process. But don't bother with your knee-jerk "peer-reviewed" red herring because you'll get laughed off with that lame argument over there.
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Re 77: I think post 79 covers this fairly well. Another way of looking at it would be to look at the poor old Sunday Times. They reported at length on that 'Amazongate' thing and had to issue an extensive apology the other day explaining that it was hokum. Given that none of these so called 'gates' has amounted to anything that fundamentally calls into question the mainstream science, you can't blame the media for being cautious of blog generated scaremongering...
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Re 72: "That's why the AGW gang employs fearmongering constantly."
How come the 'sceptic' gang constantly scaremonger about how a low carbon economy will lead to dystopia. Pot. Kettle. Black.
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Re 60:
"despite what you and manysummits think, there is no lobby on these pages - it's a complete figment of your imaginations."
Well I can't speak for anyone else but I don't think there is evidence that anyone posting on this blog is being paid - except for Mr Black. 'Astroturfing' is common online, but none of the regular bloggers on here write in a style that suggests they are part of some dodgy PR campaign.
However, certain people might as well be. If a lobbyist was posting on behalf of the fossil fuel industries then they would be saying the following things:
1) Pollution is not a problem. CHECK.
2) There is no such thing as negative externalities. CHECK.
3) Climate change is not caused by fossil fuels. CHECK.
4) Current alternatives to fossil fuels are hopeless. CHECK.
5) Fusion Power is great, but, conveniently, it is not on the agenda for the foreseeable future. CHECK.
The lovely PR people employed by our high carbon friends must be absolutely wetting themselves that certain people are willing to do so much of their work for them. Funny? Tragic? Well it's their time, so if they want to do it then that's up to them. Personally, I think it's nuts...
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#81. JaneBasingstoke
There is only so much they can cover, and Watts is in Australia. I would expect that the 'one-paper using manipulated data solar 'consensus'' story will be featured at both shortly... with plenty of informative comments as usual.
In the meantime, as I just posted, there are two articles on the phoney IPCC/WWF tale of the Amazon, among other things.
Seems to be a bit of a pattern in what has come out of the IPCC et al. perhaps the P actually stands for Pinnochio?
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#82 'Now, in the case of AGW, we are dealing with stooge-reviewed "science' compounded by biased gatekeepers running most of the journals.'
Ah, the conspiracy theory. The debating gift that keeps on giving. Doesn't matter what the opposition argue, you can always pull that one out of the hat.
Lorax
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#83. Yorkurbantree
Sorry, but that's what the latest revelations are about (see my #82). That apology was premature.
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@CanadianRockies
"There is only so much they can cover"
The BBC is not a specialist climate site and has far less stuff on climate than Watts. So perhaps that applies here as well.
Meanwhile Watts seems to be managing to post plenty while in Australia.
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87. Lorax - Its not a conspiracy theory. It is now a well known conspiracy fact. But its been obvious in some journals, in some fields, for a long time. And it has been even more obvious in some faculties where students do not get their degrees unless they tow the prof's line.
I notice that you never address the specifics of any of these revelations that counter your beliefs.
Do you think that one paper based on manipulated data is a 'consensus' worth taking seriously? On a point so important as the potential impact of the SUN on our climate?
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85.Yorkurbantree
Your strawman debating points are laughable. Not even clever.
But I would profoundly disagree with all of them except for #3 - "Climate change is not caused by fossil fuels" - because of the simplistic way you wrote it.
Seriously. Read it again. How about burning fossil fuels, at least? And the real question is more about how much than if. One butterfly causes climate change, in theory.
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89. JaneBasingstoke
Time will tell. I can't imagine that that story will not be covered by them.
I do miss the good old days when the BBC (which we get over here) had at least one very scary climate story per day. Great entertainment.
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To Rossglory & Robert Lucien - re your posts:
Fear is normal, as is controlling it.
Fear alerts you to danger, enabling one to react.
Fight or flight is more complicated I believe than either running away literally or standing toe to toe. Coping mechanisms are effective in many non life-threatening instances, for reasons that I am sure are even more complicated.
It is not true that all deaths in the animal world are gruesome and filled with terror. A big subject, best left to personal investigation.
Divorced from the natural world, civilized man, which includes farmers as well as city-folk, live in the 'built environment', which I think also includes farms and not just cities and towns.
Ralph Waldo Emerson thought that literally anything man did, including farming and living in cities, was completely natural, and thus that man has never left the natural world - and there is much truth in this I think.
There is that continuum of yours Ross - none of this is as black and white as we might wish.
=============
I think the operative word is wisdom, or the 'sacred balance,' as David Suziki calls it, or E.O Wilson - or me, for that matter.
And to partly answer you Bowman, I think I am with Protagoris and the 'relativists,' as you call them, and very much opposed to the way of thinking of Socrates and Plato, even though they might have got large parts 'right.'
"And what is good Phaedrus,
and what is not good?
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
Note that all are questions.
I am not a student of Greek history, but I am a student of Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," and of the history of life on Earth.
The Law of Gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, mathematics, etc...
they are all inventions - relative terms and framework dependent - Protagoras country.
Useful descriptions, devastatingly effective if one wishes to either land a man on the Moon or a ten megaton thermonuclear device on a city full of people.
Mankind is trapped inside mankind's bodies. Every time we leave in a drug induced trance, or seek to imagine ourselves as eagles or whales or phytoplankton, we demonstrate our great intellectual curiosity, but just as certainly our anthropomorphic viewpoint.
To argue against this is I think a false philosophy.
"To thine own self be true" rings down the ages, long before Shakespeare, long before England, long before civilization.
We empathize with some animals more than others, and with animals more than with plants, and with life more than with the inanimate - at least many of us, perhaps most of us, maybe even all of us. Much of this empathy, or respect, or disdain, is culturally induced, or based on personal life experience or trauma.
Yet stars live and die, and they have 'children.'
What is one to make of all of this?
I think one can think oneself into a state.
The sounding board which I believe in is the natural world free of the built environment, or as free as one can manage these days.
Lest I be accused of just going off on a tangent, I will relate the last few words of E.O Wilson, who is older than me, and wrote "Anthill," his first novel just published, because he thought - 'people read novels.'
I sense in his writings and history an attempt, much like my own, and I presume many others on this blog, to connect with as many people as possible before it is too late.
Here is his last paragraph, where he speaks of Lake Nokobee, near Mobile Alabama, where both E.O Wilson and his main character grew up:
"This was his sacred place, just as his immemorial ancestors had their sacred places...a habitat of infinite knowledge and mystery...his island in a meaningless sea...
Because Nokobee survived, he survived. Because it preserved its meaning, he preserved his meaning."
============
Aside from the smaller fears, the natural ones which present themselves everyday to every one of us, there has always been and overarching fear, I believe -
the fear of dying without having lived a life of meaning, without ever having discovered why we are here, and where we are going.
So we invented the gods and religions, and workaholism, and mountaineering...and the Internet.
But let's not go down the path of false philosophy, or lose ourselves in religious fervor, at least not while a clear and present danger is presenting.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
Our task is to determine it's size - bonfire or conflagration.
- Manysummits -
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I'm still trying to work out what "negative externalities" might be.
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@bowmanthebard
I understand that in some circles the correct term for the impact of a big blob of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is a "negative externality".
The term "negative externality" can act as an umbrella term for all cases when a third party is hurt by something such as pollution. But it can also be used to avoid using the emotive term "pollution" when hard nosed business decisions are being made about money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative
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#20 manysummits
"Ergo - let us set ourselves the task of abolishing all forms of excessive wealth!!"
indeed, and if you need an example of the failure of excessive wealth to produce, just look at the england football team :o)
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bowmanthebard #94: "I'm still trying to work out what "negative externalities" might be."
Apparently it's "when an individual or firm making a decision does not have to pay the full cost of the decision"
/davblo
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Surely the issues are not about meat eaters versus vegetarians, whistle blowers having immunity from prosecution or the intransigence that wrecked the so called "compromise" deal on the resumption of commercial whaling. The issues I think are very clear:
1) Ghandi once said that a nation can be judged on how it treat it's animals. Can manking not be judged similarly for using such a barbaric method of dispatch for marine mammals, the explosive harpoon. We would never allow this form of slaughter on land based mammals so why do we in marine mammals? In 2010 I would have expected mankind to have moved on a little from the 19th century attitude towards wildlife and natural heritage.
2) Having decimated the World's store of natural capital and reduced biodiversity to a shadow of it's former self, can we justify the commercial exploitation of any species? Once commercial issues raise their ugly head then all talk of sustainability goes out of the window. The reason "the deal" fell over in Agadir is because those nations implacably opposed to whaling in any form don't trust Japan, Iceland and Norway to stick to IWC imposed quotas. Clearly 200 whales killed in the Southern Ocean would be better than the targetted 1000 but no one for a moment believes Japan would limit their catch to 200. The organisation that conducts Japanes whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary has been shown to be corrupt by the activists Sato and Suzuki.
3) Not foremost in people minds but I worry about Japan's image on the World stage. They are an important global player economically and over the past few years they have taken serious knocks to their credibility but have managed to maintain a level of composure and aloofness in the face of criticism. However, with the false imprisonment of Peter Bethune and Sato and Suzuki, ramming the Ady Gill in the Southern Ocean, threatening to leave the IWC (and not doing so) and demonstrating clearly a contempt for judicial procedures Japan has reduced it's image in the eyes of the west to that of a third level banana republic. This will have a serious knock on effect for their future exports as faith in their products continues to decline as it surely will. I don't knowingly buy Japanese products now, not because they go whaling but because I no longer have faith in their ability to produce the world's best car or electronics.
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@rossglory #96
"[England] football team"
I ain't the biggest footie fan, and my personal corner of Basingstoke isn't draped with St George crosses. But that subject's a little raw at the moment.
Plus you do understand that Richard "more complex than Tolstoy" Littlejohn has got a really cringe making Daily Mail front page headline out of it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/10431098.stm
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@ 38- robert lucien.
i cannot even begin to address the degree ignorance/misunderstanding in this post.
The use of models in science and engineering is widespread and when used propely- crucial- especially for engineering.
The succesful models are used in tightly defined areas, in fully known situations/'environments' and once fully validated are exceptionally useful and have (in most cases) excellent predictive capabilities.
But, one piece of data can be used to show they are inadequate/need revising- for the more established ones this is less likely- but they are constantly being refined/adjusted by new data.
Proffessor Kelly's comments- which you either willfully misinterpreted or are unable to see the distinction in, was based on the replacement of computer simulation for raw data- and specifically with climate change, the promotion of model OVER raw data. I.e. the repeated assumptions that the raw data is wrong because it doesn't fit the models (where in any other field this would be dismissed out of hand as rubbish).
As with theories, models are adjusted/ammended/scrapped off the back of the raw data. NOT the other way around. your statement :
"Computer experiments are just like any other experiment "
again shows your astounding misunderstanding wrt the scientific practice and even shows you don't even understand how models are and should be used today.
One piece of data can 'destroy' a model, just as one 'paper' or 'scientist' can destroy a theory. If you cannot comprehend that point, then i'd suggest you find another career.
@ richard
Anychance of an update on the chap mentioned in your post? i'd be really interested to see how he fairs- best wishes to him.
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#93 manysummits wrote:
"To Rossglory & Robert Lucien - re your posts:
...
It is not true that all deaths in the animal world are gruesome and filled with terror. A big subject, best left to personal investigation."
To me the answer is that death is irrelevant compared to life, once your dead you no longer exist, while your alive the universe is yours. Reality is a quixotic place. Dolphins are beautiful creatures but they kill for pleasure - if your a small fish a Dolphin isn't beautiful at all.
I like what I call the trauma model, pain and terror are just as important to life as pleasure and love, until you experience the fear of death your not truly alive. Thats why people like fast cars and speed or things like mountain climbing or skateboarding or whatever - the thrill of danger..
"Ralph Waldo Emerson thought that literally anything man did, including farming and living in cities, was completely natural, and thus that man has never left the natural world - and there is much truth in this I think."
Certainly not a bad philosophy, of course it can be extended to mines and building oil rigs. Ultimately, although I love nature and believe in nature I think mankind is the final action of natural evolution, and that people and machines can easily out compete nature.
I don't know where things go from here- If the forces of human entropy and greed continue to win things look bad.. but I have much higher hopes than that, thats a big part of what drives my own scientific work.
=============
"..
The Law of Gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, mathematics, etc...
they are all inventions - relative terms and framework dependent - Protagoras country."
That was all true before Relativity, relativity codifies reality at a deeper level. Einstein's famous quote "With enough energy you can do anything", with enough energy you can create and manipulate your own space time and if you can do that you can do practically anything. There's no way of getting away from it relativity codifies God, with enough energy you can create your own God in the laboratory.
(I believe) The reason Einstein left the FTL portion of relativity unfinished is because it allows us to test the assertion "does (the great) God exist?" the answer is no. If the answer was yes there would be no reality apart from God and the universe wouldn't exist. That doesn't mean that 'spirit' doesn't exist however, that is a separate question.
A little joke- the principle thing that's wrong with things like Harry Potter is that no one ever seems to be lugging around a bucket of liquid helium to keep their wands cool. ::)
(The other side of the coin is control but even that can be solved by quantum information and coherency, though of course touching or using quantum information is one of the most difficult tasks science has ever faced...)
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re: #100
I find it constantly amazing that AGW believers will ignore the real data when it conflicts with the climate models.
The obvious thing to do when the data conflicts with is to scrap the model and start again.
How likely is this?
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@ 102- the same likelyhood of the england team putting in a good performance against germany..... oh... wait....
It still amazes me the number of fundamental scientific procedures that have been turned on their head just to support the AGW message. Doesn't happen in any other field barring climate science, which should tell you all you need to know really.
Re whaling- to competely show my ignorance here- i (think) that whaling is outlawed in certain areas, but how is this policed? is it down to the navy/coastguard of that region? is it down to the politicians (i.e. sanctions). Are people actually checking who's doing what or does it rely on people like the chap in richards piece actually exposing the whaling? or on a country saying 'we're not doing any, honest guv'?
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Rossglory at #96 (indeed, and if you need an example of the failure of excessive wealth to produce, just look at the england football team :o))
It has been pointed out that the "strike" by the French team was a milestone in industrial action - millionaires going on strike!
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To Robert Lucien #101:
"Ultimately, although I love nature and believe in nature I think mankind is the final action of natural evolution, and that people and machines can easily out compete nature." (RL)
================
A mountaineer might call this the crux of the argument.
As this is your belief, we must leave it at that.
I see in this morning's Globe and Mail that both David Suziki and Naomi Klein are featured in the 'Comments' section.
David Suziki is advocating the wild blueberry for a new 'national plant,' and Naomi Klein has written on the G-20 concensus in Toronto -
'send it back!'
Talking about fear Robert, it scares me that you have such a view of man and nature, and are in a position to develop Artificial Intelligence.
And when I see the machinations of the G-20, and their intention to cut public expenditures, while giving the banks carte blanche, I see big trouble ahead. Our leaders have beliefs too - among them faith in the concept of growth and material progress. I have the feeling that their faith is based largely on the donations of the corporate sector to both their campaigns and to their countries tax base.
As an ever larger section of the electorate is driven to menial work and penury, I fear also the immediate future. Obviously it is going to take a major world depression to bring us to our senses.
When I get feeling like this, and my faith in my own assessments falter, I turn to other voices - a sort of check and balance. Naturally I select particular voices - those which reinforce my own views. Still, it makes one feel less alone.
In accepting the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, the American writer John Steinbeck gave 'an impassioned speech' in which he said:
"the ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement."
He also wrote - on his fellow Americans:
"We can stand anything God and Nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick."
- Letter to Adlai Stevenson, 1960
============
I do not share your hopes for our future, at least not in the way you appear to envision them.
If ever we eliminate war on the Earth's surface - war with each other and war against the natural world, both of which are sure indications of our mental imbalance, then perhaps we can visit the stars.
To me, we are still too immature to handle the technology we have already developed, let alone the new items on the drawing board.
I suppose this makes me a Luddite, in conventional parlance.
I can only say again that the original Luddites were not incorrect in their overall assessment.
Too great a reliance on technology diminishes the value of the individuals who make up most of society. Marshall McLuhan was essentially right, 'the medium is the message.'
Our medium is technology - we are leveraged to it too highly.
We have created a technological bubble to go along with the financial one.
We are losing all sense of home, of any sacredness of place, as over half of the world's population now live in cities, and our dependence on corporate agribusiness increases along with our still expanding numbers.
My belief is that we are one minute from midnight.
- Manysummits -
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Labmunkey at #103
It depends! IWC does not (yet) have provisions for monitoring or enforcement of whalng activities - although these were part of teh package being considered in Agadir. There is 'policing' by costal states within their waters up to the limits of their EEZs (but not in the high seas outside of EEZs) and by the flag state of the whaling vessel (anywhere, including the high seas). If you mean control over trade in whaling products, within a country (as is the situation for the case described in Richard's blog),this is for the domestic enforcement bodies of the country. International trade in whale products however could be policed at point of entry/departure from a state (if memory serves, Iceland's whale exports used to transit Luxembourg en route to Japan).
Some countries have domestic laws that allow sanctions related to whaling - the US being a case in point. The US has threated such actions in teh past to influence decisions on whaling by other countries.
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"The obvious thing to do when the data conflicts with is to scrap the model and start again."
OK. 1859. There's this weird thing with the orbit of Mercury, where the position of the perihelion moves so that the orbit isn't a static ellipse.
Should they ditch Newton, after all Einstein's general relativity will be along to explain it in just over half a century. Or should they perhaps at least look for a planet causing the perturbation first.
And when they finally have general relativity, should they dump Newton completely? After all the Mercury perihelion thing has proved him wrong. Or should they say Newton is still useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury
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@ 104- brilliant!
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@106 thanks
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#100 LabMunkey wrote:
"@ 38- robert lucien."
"i cannot even begin to address the degree ignorance/misunderstanding in this post."
Yours or mine???
"The use of models in science and engineering is widespread and when used propely- crucial- especially for engineering."
True.
"The succesful models are used in tightly defined areas, in fully known situations/'environments' and once fully validated are exceptionally useful and have (in most cases) excellent predictive capabilities."
True - except that models so often bring us answers that otherwise simply wouldn't exist.
"But, one piece of data can be used to show they are inadequate/need revising- for the more established ones this is less likely- but they are constantly being refined/adjusted by new data."
True, new models are constantly being refined. New things always start with errors and imperfections and systematic testing is essential. However with increasing accuracy and precision and sophistication it is more often new that beats old.
"Proffessor Kelly's comments- which you either willfully misinterpreted or are unable to see the distinction in, was based on the replacement of computer simulation for raw data- and specifically with climate change, the promotion of model OVER raw data. I.e. the repeated assumptions that the raw data is wrong because it doesn't fit the models (where in any other field this would be dismissed out of hand as rubbish)."
Your missing the point, in modern science most raw data is useless without processing and calibration. Raw data is often full of noise and errors, and very often there is so much raw data that it is completely indecipherable without massive analysis. In physics 99 out of 100 times if there is a discrepancy between model and test results it will be the result data that is wrong. Models are actually used constantly to test raw data to see if an experiment is working correctly. Experiments like the LHC can produce tens of thousands of terabytes in a few seconds, they would laugh at the suggestion of sticking to the raw data.
"As with theories, models are adjusted/ammended/scrapped off the back of the raw data. NOT the other way around."
That might have been true a long time ago.(see above) You have to remember that these models are actually built on existing theory, as long as the theory is correct the model will be correct. In actuality the discrepancies between model and theory are often minute but we all know that all models are simplifications. Most scientists know that an error isn't just a disaster anyway, its just as often a doorway into something new.
" your statement : Computer experiments are just like any other experiment "
again shows your astounding misunderstanding wrt the scientific practice and even shows you don't even understand how models are and should be used today."
Testing a model is identical to a physical test, an experiment is designed and set up, starting conditions are set, and the model is run, if everything works it produces results just like a physical experiment. If it doesn't work you take it apart and try to fix it. I suppose you've never encountered a physical experiment that didn't work first time because of some tiny flaw or mistake?
"One piece of data can 'destroy' a model, just as one 'paper' or 'scientist' can destroy a theory. If you cannot comprehend that point, then i'd suggest you find another career."
If a new paper can break a theory then its probably wrong, or more often slightly wrong. Chemistry threw away four element theory centuries ago so how come physics is still using part of it? Its because the world is made up of solids, liquids, and gases, and energy imbalances/changing states.
Personally I am well aware that anything I or anyone does in science can always be overturned overnight. Plus a lot of the time a theory doesnt even need to be overturned because it doesn't even exist as science until there is proof and successful prediction.
-------------------
Given the enormous difficulties involved in environmental and climate prediction it is actually one of the most difficult and intractable sciences around. In small closed systems like Newtonian physics, modeling accurate prediction is relatively easy. But climate has an almost infinite numbers of variables, is open, and badly behaved. Then add in the fact that biological systems self regulate, that the sun is an unpredictable and unknown variable, and that we have no measurements for a non-human contaminated ecosystem. To be honest on climate change getting any long term prediction right above chance is a major achievement.
(as I have said before)
On climate change I don't personally argue for modeling at least used for prediction. If the scientists had had their way they would have stuck with rough (guess based) probabilities, it was the politicians refusing to act without absolute proof that has brought us all to the present impasse. Even if climate change is a wrong guess, there are pointers everywhere that humanity is pushing the natural environment to the point of collapse.
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@Robert Lucien #69 #101
(@manysummits)
"AI" RL #69
Perhaps another blog? Which you could link to?
"I think mankind is the final action of natural evolution," RL #101
Speciest!
We don't know that we're the first.
We don't know that we're the last.
And even if our biological evolution is "complete", culture evolves too. So we don't know that we're the "end product" yet.
"and that people and machines can easily out compete nature." RL #101
"one minute from midnight" manysummits #105
I think we can hang on, even through the worst case scenarios. But "out compete" is way strong.
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Panorama: What's Up With the Weather? BBC One, Monday, 28 June at 2030BST and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8758000/8758352.stm
just a heads up - hope it doesn't count as an ad for the BBC ;)
/Mango
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#111 Jane maybe I was being a bit pessimistic. I forget that other people don't have a background in science extrapolation. - The problem with natural evolution is that it is very slow, machine evolution is running a million times faster, and our knowledge of genetic engineering is almost moving at the same pace. In a few years we will see computers starting to build genomes from the ground up. I think about these things so I know how extreme it could get, Geiger's Alien - you've got it, dragons - you've got it, bio-robots...etc, and this isn't my stuff its right out of the pages of New Scientist.
Every year billions of baby rabbits die under the wheels of cars but in seventy years they've shown no sign of starting to evolve to recognize that cars or roads are dangerous.... not a good sign.
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@Robert Lucien #123
The problem with natural evolution is that it is very slow
I'm no expert Robert, but doesn't evolution depend on the species reacting to changing circumstances rather than evolving slowly? For example, the demise of the dinosaurs allowed the rapid evolution of mammals to exploit the void left by the dinosaurs
of course bacteria evolve at a much faster rate than mammals
/Mango
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Evolution has neither direction nor clear trends. Everything alive today is equally "evolved".
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I'm not sure you chaps understand Natural Selection all that well.
To a great extent it depends on the magic of large numbers. Thus, in the baby rabbit example above, there will be a tendency for the more aware rabbits, the ones more nervous of roads, to survive in greater numbers to breed than the more cavalier individuals. Consequently, if nervousness is a genetic trait, the mass population behaviour will move that way.
This does not predict the fate of any individual and depends on the selected characteristic having an evolutionary advantage and being genetically transmissable.
Of course, avoiding roads may make an individual more accessible to foxes in the fields and thus have of negative evolutionary value.
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I didn't put that post very well, maybe something like hedgehogs would be a better example than rabbits. Rabbits have a survival strategy of simply out-breeding anything which threatens them rather than reacting to it, and are not really threatened by cars.
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#114 MangoChutneyUKOK
'The problem with natural evolution is that it is very slow'
"I'm no expert Robert, but doesn't evolution depend on the species reacting to changing circumstances rather than evolving slowly? For example, the demise of the dinosaurs allowed the rapid evolution of mammals to exploit the void left by the dinosaurs"
You answered your own question, mammals had millions of years to do it in. Slow is relative, if there is a good slope and high pressure or open places evolution can go pretty fast. Human society is still evolving and changing much much faster, and technology is going even faster still, and no I don't know what any of it means good or bad.
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@Robert Lucien #113
"rabbits"
Not sure that cars that have a big effect on rabbit numbers. Meanwhile farmers are disappointed that rabbit evolution has given rabbits more resistance to myxomatosis.
"Giger's Alien"
Very very long way in the future. We don't have a deep understanding of the link between genes and phenotype. And there's nothing remotely similar to base it on. And possible physical restrictions on some of its characteristics.
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Believe it or not, the England team can serve a useful purpose: to illustrate the test of a hypothesis and the role of computer modelling.
H (hypothesis): the more you pay someone, the better a job he does.
A (assumption): members of the England team get paid more than ever.
O (predicted observation): the England team will do better than ever.
Actual observation: not-O.
Reaction 1: "By George -- just think how bad they would be if they were paid less!"
Reaction 2: "Maybe we should dump the hypothesis that the more you pay someone, the better a job he does?"
The general pattern is If H and A then O
The occurrence of not-O does not conclusively disprove H, because A (or any of the other hidden assumptions like A) might be at fault rather than O.
Computer modelling can only help in deriving Os from Hs and As. For example, you might find out how much each player is earning, and use a computer model to work out the best positions for each player to make the best possible team line-up. You might even try getting the computer to predict how much better the team will be than ever before.
But all such modelling and hypotheses eventually have to hit the "brick wall" of actual observation, and if observation doesn't bear out their predictions, it's "back to the drawing board" -- or should be. Modelling is not a substitute for testing.
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@Bowmanthebard, #119
A very interesting example which leads me to a question:
you wrote:
"The occurrence of not-O does not conclusively disprove H, because A (or any of the other hidden assumptions like A) might be at fault rather than O."
Given that it may be H, A or the particular combination of H and A (i.e. the details of the model) that leads to not-O, how would you propose going about separating whether it is H, A or the combination of H and A that is at fault?
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@ robert lucien #110.
right- this should be interesting.
You seem to be trying to obfuscate the issue again. I was not and did not intend to imply that models were useless- except in climatic predictions of course.
We'll leave the obvious baiting and implyed insults aside and get to the crux:
The AGW theories absolute reliance on computational models. Without which, the drastic predictions touted by the IPCC et al mean nothing.
These models have been shown to diverge from reality on almost every single occasion. Those that didn't diverge have never been succesfully repeated- i.e. they were flukes.
So- the models fail. Which means the predictions are useless- yet 'we' still rely on them.
These models predict nothing but the climate scientists prejudiced ideas(or more accuratley, ideals).
You yourself (in a landmark moment) actually admitted that the models were nonsense with this phrase:
"But climate has an almost infinite numbers of variables, is open, and badly behaved. Then add in the fact that biological systems self regulate, that the sun is an unpredictable and unknown variable, and that we have no measurements for a non-human contaminated ecosystem. To be honest on climate change getting any long term prediction right above chance is a major achievement."
interesting phrasing of the last sentance- obviously building yourself a 'get-out of jail free clause'- very scientific btw.
We don't fully understand the system- ergo we cannot fully model it. If we cannot fully model it (and the data shows, catagorically, that we can not) then any predictions on future climatic states are nothing but sheer (biased) guesswork.
If the models, as argued above, are useless, then the AGW theory has even LESS backing it (basically all you have left is a coincidental relationship that stopped ~10 years ago).
You can try all you want to argue the case for models using particle physics, gravity, newtonian physics (which is actually known to be wrong- but the best model we have jane)- but that does not translate to climate sciences. The 'HARD' sciences use models in a very tightly controlled, and in the case of the orbiting body example, HIGHLY validated way, which have predictive capabilities that can be backed up (and have been thoroughly tested) by experimentaion.
I would ABSOLUTELY love someone to try and validate a climate model. It would be brilliant to behold.
You are clearly incapable of objective reasoning- or you would at least be able to admit, or accept the possibility that the likelyhood of AGW is JUST as likely as natural variation (given our current understanding).
You cannot use the processes followed (models, theoretical reasoning, logic paths) in the 'HARD' sciences to support Climate Science. Climate Science has shown on many occasions that it does not follow (and in some cases is proud of the fact) the normal scientific tennents.
Finally- despite your assertions (understandable given your knowledge)- Raw data is the 'king' of science. any scientist that tells you a model is of more importance that raw data (which was in all likelyhood used to program the model) doesn't deserve the title.
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#120 Dave_oxon wrote:
Given that it may be H, A or the particular combination of H and A (i.e. the details of the model) that leads to not-O, how would you propose going about separating whether it is H, A or the combination of H and A that is at fault?
I would say that that is one of several places where a non-eliminable element of "subjectivity" enters the scientific enterprise. A person who is hell-bent on holding on to his main guiding hypothesis H can indeed do do, as long as he is prepared to make endless new ad hoc "protective" assumptions A1, A2, A3,... to "cushion" H from unwelcome observations.
I would call the type of person who does that an "ideologue": he is "insensitive" to observation, because he makes his guiding hypothesis invulnerable to unfavourable tests.
Examples of ideologues are easy to find -- personally, I think the unchanging attitude of banks to the recent difficulties smacks of ideology. It seems to me that there are as many ideologues on the right (e.g. protecting a hypothesis about the unregulated market) as on the left (e.g. protecting a Marxist interpretation of history).
One thing to bear in mind is that however "subjective" judgements may be on questions of which hypotheses to accept or reject, the truth or falsity of those hypotheses remains an "objective" matter: the world (rather than mere thinking) makes it so.
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bowmanthebard #119: "H. A. O."
Just curious. Why use "O" for "predicted observation"
Wouldn't it make discussion easier if you used "P" for "prediction" and "O" for "Observation"?
Like so...
H (hypothesis):
A (assumption):
P (prediction)
O (observation):
...and you get a nice acronym (HAPO) to-boot.
/davblo
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@LabMunkey #121
"The AGW theories absolute reliance on computational models. Without which, the drastic predictions touted by the IPCC et al mean nothing."
Drastic predictions maybe. But AGW theories no.
So you'd approve of Hansen's comparatively low opinion of models in this comment
"Our understanding of the Earth’s climate, in particular, depends foremost on the Earth’s history: how past climate changed in response to changing boundary conditions. I rate observations of ongoing climate change and processes today, processes on the ice sheets, in the oceans, etc., as the second most important source of knowledge about climate change. Climate models rate only third, in my opinion. Models are a tool that helps us understand the other two, i.e., climate history and on-going climate phenomena. Models are a representation of reality, one that helps us combine different factors, evaluate relative importance, and try to understand interactions. As we make progress we add more processes to the models and improve representations of others."
[from 2008 Aug 4 Trip Report]
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/
Or Lovelock's opinion on overreliance on computer models (sorry there is another relevant quote where Lovelock says when computer models can help understanding but I can't find it online)
"I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault."
"If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it's a model and think of it as the real world. You really start to believe it."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
"I would ABSOLUTELY love someone to try and validate a climate model. It would be brilliant to behold."
Not many opportunities. But when one came along James Hansen had the same idea.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1992/Hansen_etal.html
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@ 123. i'm with davblo on this :-)
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@bowmanthebard #115
"Evolution has neither direction nor clear trends. Everything alive today is equally "evolved"."
A few qualifying points.
Firstly lots of invisible evolution of hosts versus pathogens. A bunny that is immune to mxyomatosis due to selective pressures on its ancestors looks superficially similar to those less immune ancestors.
Secondly although evolution probably does progress in fits and starts there are animals and plants out there that don't look quite finished and might evolve further. Examples - the panda's gut to cope better with its comparatively recent bamboo diet. Other examples - the still recognisably finchy Darwin's finches in the Galapagos. Whereas other animals and plants have changed so little that they get used by David Attenborough as illustrations of their ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago.
I suspect most species alive today (or at most times in the past) are twigs on evolution's tree. Not likely to change much, more likely to go extinct rather than evolve into something significantly different. Look at the dinosaurs. So few of them survived to the present day. But those that did now occupy a class as big as the other reptilia.
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#123 davblo wrote:
Why use "O" for "predicted observation"
Over the course of the twentieth-century, logicians because increasingly aware of how easy it is to get confused between a statement (i.e. a bit of language which is true or false) and a fact (i.e. a state of affairs or "aspect of reality" that makes the statement true or false). For example, the sentence 'the cat is on the mat' is a bit of language consisting of 6 words or 16 letters, and it has to be interpreted as meaning something. But the fact or state of affairs that makes it true/false is a warm furry, purry thing on top of a flat fibrous brown thing.
An observation is an act or experiment of some sort -- a sort of state of affairs or aspect of reality -- that makes the prediction -- a statement or bit of language -- true or false. I agree that it might be less confusing to refer to the latter using the letter P instead of the letter O, as long as we see that the act of observation is not itself a further statement or bit of language. In other words, we don't have two separate statements P and O. So we have to choose one or the other, and the letter P is already widely used as a general marker for "proposition", so I guess they chose O to stand for "observation statement" instead.
The main thing to be clear about is the distinction between bits of language and the bits of reality that the language refers to or describes.
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@Bowmanthebard, #122
An interesting phrase: "non-eliminable element of subjectivity"
Furthering your analogy of the footballers' performance/pay relationship, it is interesting that there is a wealth of historical data available (well... it exists, I am not concerned for the purposes of this thught experiment how 'available' it really is) concerning pay/performance in this particular field.
If our hypothesis H (+A1... An) has yielded historical prediction Ph (hat-tip to LabMunkey/davblo) which has been 'validated' by historical observation Oh (i.e. Ph = Oh), what sort of effect would you expect this to have on the "non-eliminable subjective assessment" of validity (or believability?) of H? What does it say about A1... An? Can it tell us anything about the "hidden" assumptions, or other unknowns? Can it tell us anything objective about H and A1... An?
How does this change if it is possible to do 1000 historical tests? How does it change if, out of the 1000 historical tests, 95% give correct 'predictions' whilst 5% are hopeless? How about if we change those numbers to 60/40? or do sets of tests based on different sets of As and of these sets we get some with 95/5 and others with 60/40 right/wrong splits (or even 40/60, 5/95)?
These questions are meant to be largely rhetorical (so I'm not expecting any answers - your answers/thoughts would be interesting (everyone!) but don't feel obliged to provide any) as I think these are the sorts of questions that need to be thought about when people make up their minds as to whether to believe a model result or not or whether to trust a model projection or not.
Essentially, when dealing with a complex system that can contain many Hs and many As (and even many hidden As), at what point should a particular H be discarded? Or should the whole model be regarded as representing H and be discarded in its enirety?
Where does the the line exist between the "scientist" and the "idealogue"?
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@Dave_oxon #128
"interesting phrase"
If he'd used more straightforward language like "emotional bias" you'd have been able to call his bluff and say it cuts both ways, either side is susceptible to such bias.
(PS, you can still say that about subjectivity.)
:-)
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bowmanthebard #127: "...as long as we see that the act of observation is not itself a further statement or bit of language. In other words, we don't have two separate statements P and O."
I'm not sure I follow your insistence on not having two separate statements (my P & O).
In your #119 you had...
"...
O (predicted observation): the England team will do better than ever.
Actual observation: not-O.
"
Surely your "Actual observation" resulted in some kind of statement which was found to be "not-O". Why pretend that it doesn't exist?
How can you justify your "not-O" result if you do not declare the "Actual observation"?
/davblo
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This is a LONG post- apoligies :-)
Models are tricky beasts and it depends, heavily, on how well understood the system the model is attempting to model, is. If you follow.
Any good model will have a degree of uncertainty, or error limits assigned to it. You can actually use these error limits (especially in engineering fields) as a good guide for future performance- but all models have error. There is no such thing as a perfect model.
Obviously, the further into the future, or the farther from the 'normal range' the model operates the more 'error' there will be in the results and therefore, the less reliable the model will be.
Hence, 'good' models are fully validated, their limits are fully known and they are regularly checked with real-world data.
So how much faith does one put into a specific model? Again, a tricky question depending much on a few major factors such as (but not limited to):
-the level of understanding surrounding the area that the model is trying to model. I.e. do we understand all the factors that can affect this 'system'?
-what are the error limits and the predictive capacity
-what are the proof-positive/negative controls
Now, lets take a 'fully' understood model; the engineering models surrounding aeroplane-wing construction; we know the properties of the components involved (tensile strengths, weights, resistances to air flow) etc etc. We know the forces they will encounter (sheer, pressure, gravity etc etc) so we can make a model to predict the outcomes based on say- adding a new polymer.
Now- these can then be tested against real-world measurements and the model refined as required. But, the important bit is the 'testing'. Models are useless without these controls- you can predict how the polymer will react- but you would STILL then do the stress testing- to make sure ,peoples live depend on it.
So what about a less understood system? Well lets look at Newtonian Physics. We don't thoroughly understand the physics involved- but we know enough to be able to make very accurate predictions. For example, we know the theories behind newtonian physics to be wrong, or at least inaccurate- but they are CLOSE enough that we can still use them to make very accurate predictions- the ultimate definition of a known unknown. We can (and nasa do) compensate for these and then they are tested- i.e. we know they work because the results show us that they do- despite the 'unknown'.
So two examples- one of a fully understood system, one of a less understood system- but with sufficient knowledge (and more importantly the full acknowledgement that we don't have the full story) to make predictions. But they are both (especially the latter) fully backed up by experimental evidence.
So i think for both of those cases the justification for 'belief' in those models is quite high.
If we take (here we go) climate models, using the same logic, we know we don't understand the system (not even close), so it is not comparable to the first example- but is it comparable to the second- i.e. do we know ENOUGH to make predictions taking into account the unkowns?
Observational evidence would suggest, rather emphatically, no- that we don't know nearly enough for the models to have any sort of predictive capacity. As a side note- it is WELL worth studying the information behind the IPCC models- the error limits on the graphs are illuminating.
These predictions become less and less reliable, the further into the future they extend- but no one knows the 'accuracy' levels as, so far, they diverge from reality almost immediatley.
So based on that i'd say the justification for 'belief' in the climate models was very low-nil.
Now, the problem we have is that the climate models make a basic assumption- that the data is wrong and the models are right, or to put it another way, the theory is sound, but the models are not refined enough to show the trends whilst accounting for the observable results.
This is actually possible. It COULD be that the reason the models diverge almost immediatley is due to some mis or under-understood aspect of climate that is causing the short-term trends to diverge- but allowing the longer-term trends to be 'accurate'. This is possible, but highly unlikely. The very fact that the uncertainties are at play on the shorter scale make it a near certainty that they are wrong on the larger scale- hence further and further refinement is irrelevant (and a wasted effort.
The much more likely outcome is that the assumptions in the models are wrong. (this is different to saying the theory is wrong- but it has, in effect, the same outcome). The observational data does not follow the predictions, so it SHOULD be clear that the system is not understood enough and that the models are not useable for any sort of prediction.
The mistake is to assume your assumptions are right, the models predictions are right and that it's just the 'details' or 'data' that's wrong- which seems to be the current state of play.
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#128 Dave_oxon wrote:
If our hypothesis H (+A1... An) has yielded historical prediction Ph (hat-tip to LabMunkey/davblo) which has been 'validated' by historical observation Oh (i.e. Ph = Oh),
Hold it right there! -- Stop thinking as if there were two kinds of statements. All you're saying here is that the hypothesis has been corroborated on numerous occasions in the past.
what sort of effect would you expect this to have on the "non-eliminable subjective assessment" of validity (or believability?) of H? What does it say aboutA1... An?
Typically, the range of auxiliary hypotheses and assumptions is quite large, and crucially, it differs from one person to the next, and even from one moment to the next. (For example, you might have doubts about a bit of measuring equipment one minute, but the next you are told that it has recently be checked and calibrated.)
Can it tell us anything about the "hidden" assumptions, or other unknowns? Can it tell us anything objective about H and A1... An?
I cannot stress this enough: you're looking for the wrong thing. The truth or falsity of those hypotheses and assumptions is an objective matter, but "how confident we can feel about thinking something is true" is a contextual or "subjective" matter.
How does this change if it is possible to do 1000 historical tests?
It doesn't change at all, because you might be repeating the same tests over and over again -- which is no better than buying numerous copies of the same edition of the same newspaper to check a story they're running.
Loosely speaking, the more of a "hurdle" a test amounts to, the better we can feel about a hypothesis when it manages to get over that hurdle.
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#130 davblo wrote:
I'm not sure I follow your insistence on not having two separate statements (my P & O).
As a first pass, only statements (sentences, or the contents of beliefs, etc.) are true or false and so can enter into logical relations with each other (in other words, imply each other, be inconsistent with each other, etc.). The act of observation allows us to rule observation statements in or out, pretty much directly. Those in turn allow us to rule hypotheses in or out, much more indirectly. But an act of observation is not itself either true or false.
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#130, davblo wrote:
Surely your "Actual observation" resulted in some kind of statement which was found to be "not-O". Why pretend that it doesn't exist?
The hypothesis (plus the other stuff) implied O, which describes an event. As it turned out, that event didn't happen, so you have to say O is false. "Not-O" is just a way of saying that O is false.
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#129 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
If he'd used more straightforward language like "emotional bias"
I wasn't talking about emotional bias though. I was talking about the way we adopt new beliefs by checking them against beliefs we already have. There is no other way of doing it, so it isn't a bad thing.
We all have emotional biases, and they're not so bad either.
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#121 LabMunkey wrote:
"The AGW theories absolute reliance on computational models. Without which, the drastic predictions touted by the IPCC et al mean nothing.
These models have been shown to diverge from reality on almost every single occasion. Those that didn't diverge have never been succesfully repeated- i.e. they were flukes.
So- the models fail. Which means the predictions are useless- yet 'we' still rely on them.
These models predict nothing but the climate scientists prejudiced ideas(or more accuratley, ideals).
You yourself (in a landmark moment) actually admitted that the models were nonsense with this phrase:
"But climate has an almost infinite numbers of variables, is open, and badly behaved. Then add in the fact that biological systems self regulate, that the sun is an unpredictable and unknown variable, and that we have no measurements for a non-human contaminated ecosystem. To be honest on climate change getting any long term prediction right above chance is a major achievement." "
Your missing one tiny point, that has been my stance from the beginning. In a way my criticism of the models is even stronger than yours because even if they did produce statistically accurate results I wouldn't completely trust them. There's no way to close the system and no way to eliminate chaos. Climate models are very useful for understanding climate but not so much for FUTURE prediction. Remember that under estimates are just as likely as over estimates.
My argument is that people should rely on more basic prediction based on things like the costs of being right verses being wrong. The whole argument about heavy modeling only came into being because politicians demanded more and more 'conclusive' proof before they would act.
BTW Newtonian physics hasn't actually been proven wrong, its just that it now has limits beyond which it begins to fail. Relativity is a minute factor in any system where velocities remain below 1% c including most astronomical systems. In fact Newtonian predictions of the solar system have a basic accuracy of tens of thousands of years or better, not bad for a theory thats 'wrong'.
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@bowmanthebard #135
"element of subjectivity"
Definite whiff of emotional involvement there.
"I was talking about the way we adopt new beliefs by checking them against beliefs we already have."
Well that's definitely bias.
Yes, I know. I'm wrong. Everyone thinks like Mr Spock. Bowman dictionary rules.
:-p
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#136 Robert Lucien wrote:
"Climate models are very useful for understanding climate but not so much for FUTURE prediction."
There is no other kind of prediction than prediction of the future. If a model cannot predict well, then it's a bad model.
I'd love to hear what it is you think you "understand" better by handing over cognition to another agent -- and an inept one at that!
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#137 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"Yes, I know. I'm wrong. Everyone thinks like Mr Spock. Bowman dictionary rules."
I have no idea what this exercise in deliberate obfuscation is supposed to mean, so obviously cannot reply.
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@ 136
i see- i apologise if i've mis-represented you.
re- your pragmatic approach (relying on basic predictions) i would actually agree with you- were there a cause for alarm. However, without the models, there simply is one- it's kind of a catch 22 situation there you see?
Re- mewtonian physics. Of course, i was being overly dramatic for the purpose of illustration. The theorys do work, but there are know limitations and it is fully know that the theory is not 'sufficient'. i.e. it is known to be wrong SOMEWHERE, but the predictions are still accurate enough to be of REAL value.
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"All models are wrong, but some are more useful than others."
Don't see that studies of climate are any different in this respect to other types of study. Knowing the limitations of a model is essential whether it be in engineering or ecology.
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#41 sensibleoldgrannie wrote:
We all need to change to become 'the little people.' Who has got the magic wand?
We are all free to become a "little person". We can drive a smaller car, get a bike, eat less meat, and so on. Those who do not do these things do not want to do those things.
So what you're suggesting is not a "magic wand", but an instrument of coercion. Maybe that's a good idea, but let's be clear what we're talking about.
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#136 Robert Lucien wrote:
"people should rely on more basic prediction based on things like the costs of being right verses being wrong."
Make this clear, and I'll address it.
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#142: Sorry about that -- meant to send that to the latest thread.
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#136 Robert Lucien wrote:
"Newtonian physics hasn't actually been proven wrong"
Are you trying to suggest that Newton was right, or are you trying to make an epistemological point that nothing is certain?
I accept that nothing is certain. But Newton was wrong.
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@Bowmanthebard, #132
"All you're saying here is that the hypothesis has been corroborated on numerous occasions in the past."
Yes, that was perhaps a more succinct way of putting it - I was just trying to stick with the symbolic logic with which this sub-thread started.
"Loosely speaking, the more of a "hurdle" a test amounts to, the better we can feel about a hypothesis when it manages to get over that hurdle."
So using this (loosely) as a guide, (I think) you are saying that a test using historic data is still useful in falsifying or corroborating a hypothesis (one might like to call this the "development stage" of the hypothesis/model) but, in comparative terms, amounts to successfully clearing a divot compared to the "Becher's Brook" of a future prediction (what one might call "the actual test"). Or, in other words, the corroboration of our hypothesis using historic data would give us enough of a reason to think the hypothesis is true to go to the expense of subjecting the hypothesis to a "proper" test.
Bearing this in mind, I thought you'd find this article (http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.2649) interesting - it concerns cosmological data sets that can only be measured once, hence any theories/models will only ever be able to work on historical data. This paper advocates "drip-feeding" the data to researchers so that they will have the opportunity to test their theories on, what would amount to, data (observations) to be obtained in the future.
Others, of course, say that researchers are above the sort of bias that this approach hopes to avoid (!)
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#145 bowmanthebard wrote:
"Are you trying to suggest that Newton was right, or are you trying to make an epistemological point that nothing is certain?"
You simply don't understand physics language, the critical word is limits. Newton is extremely accurate within a huge range and since in that range Newton and relativity are practically identical, if Newton were wrong Relativty would be to.
I would actually be almost shocked if you or anyone here understood relativity and space time correctly. I've worked on it for years and I would say 1 in 5 descriptions is correct, even in physics books about half will have something wrong. There's no conspiracy- in the case of Relativity its a difficult subject and its the blind leading the blind leading the blind. BTW Wikipedia is as good a description as any.
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@Robert Lucien and a couple of others
Everything you wanted to know about general relativity, but were afraid to ask:
http://www.newscientist.com/special/instant-expert-general-relativity
Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)
Later, we can do strings, loops and branes.... oooh.... and maybe even Newton and wonky orbital sling shots..............
One of the Vestibule(I got bored in the Lobby)
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#147 Robert Lucien wrote:
"You simply don't understand physics language"
And I suggest you don't understand physics, partly because you seem to have swallowed whole the textbooks' "whig" history of science.
Newtonian mechanics is (slightly) out numerically even at low velocities, and it is conceptually wrong in treating mass as an intrinsic property of physical objects.
The Ptolemaic theory of the solar system (geocentric, epicycles for retrograde motion, etc.) was actually much better numerically than is generally realized. In spite of that numerical accuracy, it too was conceptually mistaken.
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Dave_oxon #146: This paper advocates "drip-feeding" the data to researchers so that they will have the opportunity to test their theories on, what would amount to, data (observations) to be obtained in the future.
I don't disapprove of the methodology of "keeping things temporarily covered to make more of a real test". And it even agrees with common sense: we all deliberately hide the answers when taking a practice multiple-choice quiz, to make it more of a test of how much we really know. Of course, in that paper, smoke starts to come out of my ears when I see Bayes' Theorem used in a discussion about belief -- a sure sign of rampant inductivism -- but let's pass over that!
bowmanthebard: Loosely speaking, the more of a "hurdle" a test amounts to, the better we can feel about a hypothesis when it manages to get over that hurdle.
Dave_oxon: So using this (loosely) as a guide, (I think) you are saying that a test using historic data is still useful in falsifying or corroborating a hypothesis (one might like to call this the "development stage" of the hypothesis/model)
I don't mean to say that. I would defend the standard distinction between the "context of discovery" and the "context of justification". In the context of discovery, you can be on LSD, drunk, dreaming (as Kekule claimed he had been when he was struck by the idea of the ring-shape of the benzene molecule)… The way you come up with an idea is irrelevant to the question of how confident you can be that it's true. There are all sorts of reasons for that. For a start, if O is to "do its logical work" in the 'if H then O' pattern we were discussing yesterday, O has to be the sort of claim that we can be practically confident about. It has to describe the sort of thing that everyone can agree on -- usually because it's repeatable, obvious, directly observable -- such as "the needle points to the 5" or "it's turned blue". Historical claims are none of those things, and calling them "data" sounds wrong to me -- it suggests that they are the posits of an ideology according to which "data" work as the "basis" for theory, which as you know I reject completely. In reality, claims about things that happened long before anyone was there to observe them are highly tentative, speculative, "theoretical" claims rather than descriptions of genuine "observations".
But perhaps more obviously, if a hypothesis was constructed with the specific purpose of fitting some historical claims, the fact that it still fits them sometime later is hardly surprising, and counts as no sort of "hurdle".
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#149 bowmanthebard wrote:
#147 Robert Lucien wrote:
"You simply don't understand physics language"
"And I suggest you don't understand physics, partly because you seem to have swallowed whole the textbooks' "whig" history of science.
Newtonian mechanics is (slightly) out numerically even at low velocities, and it is conceptually wrong in treating mass as an intrinsic property of physical objects.
The Ptolemaic theory of the solar system (geocentric, epicycles for retrograde motion, etc.) was actually much better numerically than is generally realized. In spite of that numerical accuracy, it too was conceptually mistaken."
A. Mass is an intrinsic property of all physical objects, Relativity says that even more clearly than Newtonian mechanics. I suppose you've never heard of E=mc^2 or mass energy equivalence - all energy has mass, even photons have mass.
B. 'Numerical' in physics is quite a complicated concept, within limits of error different values can be identical. The difference between Newton and relativity is governed by the Lorenz factor 1 /( root( 1 - v^2/c^2 ) ). Since c^2 is very large the curve falls to basically zero as soon as v is much smaller than c. An object traveling at 1 Km/s experiences a dilation fraction of 1/10 the width of an atom, even at 100 Km/s the dilation factor is still only about 1000 atoms across. On a trip from Earth to Mars the error difference is a few centimeters at most.
C. If Polemics is so accurate then try using it to calculate the trajectory of a cannon ball, you can't because it doesn't work. Newton simply isn't conceptually wrong - it was the first system of complete mechanics that worked, and if you still don't understand, I don't think I can explain it again.
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#151 Robert Lucien wrote:
"A. Mass is an intrinsic property of all physical objects, Relativity says that even more clearly than Newtonian mechanics."
Wrong. According to special relativity, mass is a relativistic property of an object -- its value depends on the reference frame.
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Gotta love typos sometimes: "If Polemics is so accurate then try using it to calculate the trajectory of a cannon ball". (See post #152)
Polemics may be responsible for much of what appears on this blog, but predicting the trajectory of physical objects is not one of the features!
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153. At 10:50am on 01 Jul 2010, simon-swede wrote:
Gotta love typos sometimes: "If Polemics is so accurate[...]"
I didn't mention that, hoping against hope that it really was a typo!
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Bowman at #152
Actually I believe you are wrong here. Mass is an intrinsic property of all physical objects.
It isn't mass per se that may be relativistic, but its measure which may be dependent on the velocity of the observer ("relativistic mass").
Moreover my understanding is that "mass" is defined in two different ways in special relativity. In addition to relativistic mass, there is also "rest mass" or "invariant mass", whereby mass as a invariant quantity which is the same for all observers in all reference frames.
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#155 simon-swede wrote:
It isn't mass per se that may be relativistic, but its measure which may be dependent on the velocity of the observer ("relativistic mass").
In that case, you don't really accept special relativity at all, but instead hold some cobbled-together "Newtonian interpretation" of special relativity, with absolute space and time. That may be a more "conservative" approach, but it "multiplies entities beyond necessity".
Following Mach, Einstein himself believed that if every conceivable manifestation of time (length, mass, etc.) gave the impression that it was dilated, then it actually was dilated.
"Rest mass" is different from mass. I was talking about mass in general, not rest mass, and so was Newton.
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I do find it second-rate when people agree with other people's opinions without any real reflection, because they happen to be "political allies".
I'd say a lot of support for AGW comes from disappointed "political allies" who supported Al Gore's bid for the presidency.
Four legs good. Two legs bad.
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Bowman at #155
I am simply pointing out that relativistic mass has some "mass", and that mass per se is an intrinsic property of physical objects even if the 'value' of that mass is relativistic. Time which is dilated still is "time".
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#158 simon-swede wrote:
I am simply pointing out that relativistic mass has some "mass", and that mass per se is an intrinsic property of physical objects even if the 'value' of that mass is relativistic.
"Mass per se"? -- What is that supposed to be? It sounds a bit like the "being qua being" of mediaeval metaphysics! (By the way, Newtonian mechanics assumes that some things -- such as waves -- do not have mass.)
The simple fact is that the only mass physics talks about is the sort that has a numerical value. Newtonian mechanics assumes that that value is an intrinsic property of any massive object, be it a particle, rigid body, or what have you. Relativistic mechanics gives up that assumption. Conceptually the two theories are very different, and the best bet at the moment is that Newton was wrong.
The ideology that says science is a steadily-accumulating body of ever-more-certain knowledge is also wrong. The misinterpretation of relativity to make it seem to mesh smoothly with Newtonian mechanics is a standard symptom of of that ideology. Trying to get Einstein to fit the Newtonian view of the universe is like hammering a square peg into a round hole.
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#74 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
I remind you that Mill wrote a book called "On Liberty" rather than "On Liberalism".
I don't see the relevance of this. Mill was not a libertarian. Mill was a liberal.
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Bowman at #159
"The simple fact is that the only mass physics talks about is the sort that has a numerical value."
Um, isn't this the same as saying that physical objects have mass?
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bowmanthebard: The simple fact is that the only mass physics talks about is the sort that has a numerical value.
simon-swede #161: Um, isn't this the same as saying that physical objects have mass?
If one theory calculates the numerical value as a function of the reference frame as well as the physical object, in effect it's saying that the mass is a property of the combination of the object and the frame, which in effect is to say that it's not a property of the object simpliciter.
The other theory, meanwhile, says it is a property of the object simpliciter.
So the two theories differ -- profoundly, in conceptual terms -- which was my original point.
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What I find interesting about this discussion is the urge to "paper over" deep differences between Newton and Einstein -- differences of a sort that lead away from the idea that science is a "steady cumulative progression" of knowledge.
The reality is quite different. Science is more a series of skirmishes and revolutions -- often involving profound re-conceptualizations of space, time, mass, causation, life itself...
That insight makes the "findings" of science suddenly seem more tentative. But instead of mourning our loss of confidence in its "findings", we should rejoice at the realization that it is an exciting adventure!
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#152 etc bowmanthebard wrote:
#151 Robert Lucien wrote:
"A. Mass is an intrinsic property of all physical objects, Relativity says that even more clearly than Newtonian mechanics."
"Wrong. According to special relativity, mass is a relativistic property of an object -- its value depends on the reference frame."
Being relativistic doesn't make mass any less intrinsic, in fact E=mc^2 shows the fundamental nature of mass and energy. Relativity never shows an object to loose mass only to gain it with increasing energy relative to other frames.
Bowman if you don't like Newton because its been superseded you should be aware that Special Relativity by itself is only a model and very weak because Gravity breaks it as does non-locality (FTL geometry) or an open universe. General Relativity is a very different beast, and in GR it is mass energy that bends space time. And by the way even General Relativity is on its last legs - at least if the Higgs boson or the graviton is found,/ or Heim theory is proved, or String theory, etc, etc.
'Polemics' - Yes I'm a poor speller and clumsy, worse I'm lazy, worse I tend to type very fast and leave letters out because I didn't hit the key hard enough. Then fix I things by re-reading them but of course I tend to be a bit careless and skip over bits now and then ..... caught out.
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#164 Robert Lucien wrote:
"Being relativistic doesn't make mass any less intrinsic"
I suggest you look up the word 'intrinsic'.
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#164 Robert Lucien wrote:
"Special Relativity by itself is only a model"
Oh dear. Now you're going to have to have a shot at explaining the difference between a "model" and a theory!
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Mutter... calling it a model in physics (urm) simply means that it simulates part of reality but doesn't work in the real universe.
Not the same as "climate model" at all. :)
...Mutter...
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But special relativity is a theory, not a model.
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Bowman at #165 (intrinsic)
You point out that a relativistic mass is "a property of the combination of the object and the [reference] frame". I agree.
To put it another way, the object has mass, and it is the value of the mass changes according to the frame of reference.
So unless you really are trying to claim that one can have a massless physical object (are you?), then you would agree that a physical object has some mass. That is what I mean when I say that mass is an intrinsic property of a physical object.
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#169 simon-swede wrote:
a physical object has some mass. That is what I mean when I say that mass is an intrinsic property of a physical object.
Then you do not understand what the word 'intrinsic' means, and I recommend you look it up.
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Bowman at #170
Are you claiming a massless physical object?
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#171. At 09:41am on 02 Jul 2010, simon-swede wrote:
"Are you claiming a massless physical object?"
I don't know -- I haven't given it much thought. Till recently they used to think that neutrinos were massless. I gather that some other subatomic particles are speculated to be massless.
In Newton's theory, waves are massless, although of course the medium through which a wave moves is not. In more recent physics -- prior to speculation about "virtual particles", empty space was massless. But that is a highly speculative and poorly understood area.
Really, the word 'object' doesn't have the precision we need to answer your question as it might stand for something abstract (such as a reference frame) or something without causal powers (such as a centre of gravity), neither of which have mass. Do you count those items as "objects"? Isn't the question of whether the word 'object' applies to them rather idle, like the question of whether Pluto is a genuine planet?
Back in the eighteenth century, critics complained about Hume's use of the word 'object' when talking about cause and effect. He deliberately chose that word so as to make it apply to as much as possible that could enter into casual relations -- events, processes, durable items made out of matter, and so on. The first of those putative "objects", an event, is a dated individual with coordinates in space and time. A carefully chosen event could be a singularity like a geometrical point, and that wouldn't have mass. But it sounds odd even to speak of events that are non-singularities as having mass. For example, what was the mass of the sinking of the Titanic?
But I repeat, words like 'object' and 'have' (as in 'having' a property, be it intrinsic or relational like mass) is an invitation to the bewitchment of our intelligence. Just think of some of the words we use to describe things without actually attributing a genuine property to them.
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Whales and Whaling are really a side issue, the central problem is our blatant misuse of the seas. We have treated the top predators in the sea as food and are working our way down the food chain. We are rapidly heading for a situation where the seas will be pretty much vertibrate free. The future's bright, the future's empty!
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Bowman at #172
So you don't know what a physical object is, but you do claim to know whether or not it has intrinsic attributes. Interesting.
Does your dictionary have 'weasel' in it?
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#174 simon-swede wrote:
"So you don't know what a physical object is"
What a silly remark. You are obviously not interested in Newton or Einstein or mass or the history of science.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#145....#174: RL, BB & SS.
Thanks for an entertaining argument!
/davblo
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#172
"Back in the eighteenth century, critics complained about Hume's use of the word 'object' when talking about cause and effect. He deliberately chose that word so as to make it apply to as much as possible that could enter into casual relations -- events, processes, durable items made out of matter, and so on. The first of those putative "objects", an event, is a dated individual with coordinates in space and time. A carefully chosen event could be a singularity like a geometrical point, and that wouldn't have mass. But it sounds odd even to speak of events that are non-singularities as having mass. For example, what was the mass of the sinking of the Titanic?"
Its funny but physics actually has an answer to that based on entropy. Because the sunk titanic has lower ordered entropy compared to before it sank it has actually lost energy and therefore mass.
This is all based on the idea that the order in things is a kind of information, and information itself is made of energy. Fire is the classic example, when a fuel is burned the chemical energy in the fuel is converted into heat. Even if all combustion products and gasses are weighted together they will have slightly less mass than the original fuel - this has been verified experimentally.
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#178 Robert Lucien wrote:
"information itself is made of energy"
If no AGW-believers are prepared to correct this claim, I'll assume they agree with it!
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bowmanthebard #179: "...information..."
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS 0. AND THEN THERE WAS 1.
"That life might be information, as biologists propose, is far more intuitive than the corresponding idea that hard matter is information as well. When we bang a knee against a table leg, it sure doesn't feel like we knocked into information. But that's the idea many physicists are formulating."
"The spooky nature of material things is not new. Once science examined matter below the level of fleeting quarks and muons, it knew the world was incorporeal."
(just need to go off and look-up "incorporeal"; (bet bowmanthebard already knows what it means).)
/davblo
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#180 davblo wrote:
"Once science examined matter below the level of fleeting quarks and muons, it knew the world was incorporeal."
I'm afraid I don't know what 'incorporeal' means if not "of the stuff of which bodies are made"!
If particles are "fleeting" at the subatomic level, that hardly makes them any less "corporeal". Did they expect microscopic things to be just like familiar medium-sized things? -- How naive of them!
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A typical definition seem to be like this...
Incorporeal: "Not composed of matter; having no material existence:"
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#174 simon-swede wrote:
"So you don't know what a physical object is"
No one knows, because there is no fact of the matter of what a physical object is. In English the word 'object' is not used with enough consistency. So what it refers to differs from one speaker to the next. It has been used most consistently to refer to "whatever can be perceived by a subject", but that is too vague to pin things down, as "subject" and "perception" are themselves vague and understood differently by different idiolects.
Should we count a tsunami as a "physical object"? -- It is certainly capable of wreaking death and destruction, it has a shape, and it moves through water at a particular speed. But the only mass it has is relativistic mass (by virtue of its mechanical energy), and that differs between different reference frames. (Because mass is not an intrinsic property of things that have mass, at least according to Einstein.)
Should we count the crack in the glass of a breaking window as a "physical object"? It has no mass or energy, but a definite location, size and shape, and a speed considerably faster than that of sound. That is the best candidate I can think of so far for a "massless object".
But such questions are idle. They of fleeting interest as long as we remember that there is simply no fact of the matter of what a "physical object" is in English.
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Bowman at #183
One last try...
Recall that my engagement in this was in response to your assertion that Robert was wrong and "According to special relativity, mass is a relativistic property of an object -- its value depends on the reference frame." (in your post at #152)
I have no problem with this concept of relativistic mass.
Where I find myself in disagreement with you is that to me "relativistic mass" IS mass even if its VALUE changes according to the reference frame of the observer. As such, mass is an intrinsic property of matter, even if its value is not.
You disagree with this use of intrinsic, but so far this seems to be because the value of the mass may change. Or are you arguing that "relativistic mass" is something other than mass? You do say above that "mass is not an intrinsic property of things that have mass", which to me is a bizarre claim.
If an intrinsic property is a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context, then I would argue that a physical object (or matter) has mass as an intrinsic property. The value of that mass is an extrinsic property, as it depends on the context - relative to the frame of reference.
If not, then I think you need to explain your definition of intrinsic, although again I suspect your dictionary has a very Bowmanesque definition as it appears to have for so many other words.
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184. At 07:16am on 03 Jul 2010, simon-swede wrote:
You do say above that "mass is not an intrinsic property of things that have mass", which to me is a bizarre claim.
Compare the claim -- made wholly within the Newtonian system, say -- that "kinetic energy is not an intrinsic property of things that have it".
For example, if you are travelling along with a speeding bullet, it has zero kinetic energy relative to your reference frame, and it can do you no harm. But relative to a person who is standing still, the bullet can have lethal effects because it has very high kinetic energy.
Being "physically real" is a matter of having causal powers (for example, a centre of gravity is not real in that sense because it doesn't itself have causal powers). The "reality" or casual power of kinetic energy is a function of its numerical value, which depends on the reference frame.
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simon-swede #184 wrote:
you need to explain your definition of intrinsic, although again I suspect your dictionary has a very Bowmanesque definition as it appears to have for so many other words.
The first non-obsolete entry (1. and 2. are obsolete) for 'intrinsic' in the OED is:
"3. a. Belonging to the thing in itself, or by its very nature; inherent, essential, proper; 'of its own'."
In other words, an intrinsic property of a physical thing (such as the number of atoms it is composed of, say) does not differ between reference frames, but its mass does.
Perhaps philosophers and physicists use the word 'instrinsic' in more a specialized way, as do, for example, mathematicians:
"c. Math. intrinsic equation of a curve: an equation expressing the relation between its length and curvature (and so involving no reference to external points, lines, etc., as in equations referred to co-ordinates)."
But in any case, most words do not get their "meanings" by having definitions. The "meanings" of most everyday words are established by instead by the way they are habitually used by ordinary people who speak the language. When the people who write dictionaries attempt to capture the "meaning" of a word by giving a synonymous phrase, they often capture the conceptual confusion that is embodied in everyday usage.
So it would be very strange for a philosopher -- especially one who broadly agrees with Wittgenstein that "philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language" -- to always use words as dictionaries prescribe. That would be to swallow the conceptual confusion whole. You should expect some fine-tuning and the careful drawing of distinctions to avoid the conceptual confusions that are simply echoed in dictionary definitions.
This doesn't just apply to philosophers. Students of physics do not learn about mass (i.e. about what the word 'mass' means) by looking up a dictionary. They learn how to use a couple of theories which routinely handle numerical values of 'm'. The word 'mass' is not an everyday word, so to amend a phrase above slightly, its "meaning" is not quite established by the way it is "habitually used by ordinary people who speak the language", but by the way it is habitually used by physicists who apply the theories in which it occurs.
Perhaps the word 'mass' is used by ordinary people to mean "bulk" or something vague like that; the fine-tuning applied by physicists to give the word a more precise, specialized meaning is not an idle bit of pettifoggery.
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Students of physics might be a little uncomfortable with that definition, in physics argument theory and everything else is secondary to physical observation. Mass is just a description of one of the main properties of physical matter, other parts of the description include things like momentum, inertia, and position. - Those descriptions form what physics calls 'information' and they all have energy associated with them.
Actually information and energy are a part of my own research, information in physics is a spectacularly complex subject. The physical order of everything in the universe forms an information energy state, a single wavefront, that appears simultaneously at every point in the universe and spreads outwards at the speed of light. (that is an extension of Relativity to cope with a large universe) The past is a memory that represents the entire current state of the present. The future is a 'phase space' generated by the current state of the present.
People who talk about relativity and quote time as 'the 4th dimension' mostly don't notice that it is an extremely abstruse way of saying you believe in 'magic'. Time is not a dimension except maybe on very small scales like quantum scales. Relativity does define time as a dimension but it is only a notional dimension - in other words it isn't reality directly.
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@Robert Lucien #187
Students of physics might be a little uncomfortable with that definition, in physics argument theory and everything else is secondary to physical observation.
So modelled values of climate sensivity (generally high) are secondary to physically observed values of climate sensitivity (generally low), which means the whole CO2 as primary driver of climate is false.
This is what I've been saying ever since I first started coming here
/Mango
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I'm not going to bother replying to Robert Lucien, because he's always talking through his tin foil hat.
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I find it depressing and disappointing that AGW-believers never seem to disown obvious nonsense if another AGW-believer says it.
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The concept of "information" as used in engineering and physics is quite different from what we normally call "information" in everyday life.
The former is statistical co-variation, and it hardly deserves the name 'information' at all; the latter is something like potential knowledge.
There are connections between available thermal energy and statistical co-variation, because where there is a lot of available thermal energy, there is a lot of as-yet un-dissipated motion, and statistically motion tends to dissipate in a very reliable/predictable way, especially if many particles are involved.
Alas. The word 'information' is a honey-trap for the conceptually unwary and the gullible. The idea that "immaterial mind-stuff underlies physical reality" is enormously attractive to the religiously-inclined wishful thinker. But it's pure baloney.
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@Robert Lucien #187
"but it is only a notional dimension"
C***!
It may be useful to treat time's dimension like properties as an artefact within your discipline, and perhaps your approach can explain most of such dimension like properties away without your explanations impacting spatial dimensions in the same way. And perhaps your approach will eventually disprove "time is a dimension".
But outside of your eclectic approach time looks like a proper dimension, and is best treated as a proper dimension.
And with respect to the specific issue of relativity:
If someone on Earth looks at a spaceship* travelling close to the speed of light the spaceship is shorter in the direction of travel, the time on its clocks run slower, and the time on its clocks depend whereabouts in the spaceship the clock is. Meanwhile someone on that spaceship sees none of these distortions on their spaceship but if they look back at Earth they see similar distortions being applied to the Earth.
So you have time playing swapsies with the direction of travel spatial dimension. To not treat time as a dimension under such circumstances seems more than stubborn. Especially with the problem that special relativity makes "simultaneous" very difficult to define, even confined to inertial frames of reference.
* This would be a spaceship in normal space-time rather than some of the more exotic situations covered by general relativity.
(Sorry Bowman. I know you like to see proof. But I prefer not to clog up this thread with special relativity.)
Incidentally how does your approach deal with Special Relativity's "no such thing as absolute simultaneous" problem?
And I have a second question for you. Would you also make the same claim about a hypothetical spatial dimension which was also low entropy in one direction? Or is that a contradiction in terms, would such a dimension automatically be a/the time dimension?
@bowmanthebard #190
"disown obvious nonsense"
Not "obvious nonsense".
:-p
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@bowmanthebard
(@Robert Lucien)
"theory" ... "model"
Ho hum. Bowman dictionary again. What do you make of the following piece by Victorian mathematician Charles Dodgson?
http://fair-use.org/mind/1894/07/notes/a-logical-paradox
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bowmanthebard #190: "I find it depressing and disappointing that AGW-believers never seem to disown obvious nonsense if another AGW-believer says it."
That's exactly what I've been saying all along (maybe not so much recently) about AGW-non-believers!
/davblo
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@davblo #194
bowmanthebard #190: "I find it depressing and disappointing that AGW-believers never seem to disown obvious nonsense if another AGW-believer says it."
That's exactly what I've been saying all along (maybe not so much recently) about AGW-non-believers!
seems you are wrong davblo:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/06/sustainability_choices_choices.html#P96786420
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/06/sustainability_choices_choices.html#P96799906
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/06/sustainability_choices_choices.html#P96810167
;)
/Mango
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@bowmanthebard
"mind-stuff"
Is "2 + 2 = 4" mind-stuff? How about the Mandelbrot Set? Or the first 4 postulates of Euclid? How would you feel about a universe built with "[mind-stuff] in a straight jacket", where everything is about the rules of interaction?
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#196 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
Sorry Bowman. I know you like to see proof.
No I don't -- except in maths and logic sometimes. Where have I ever asked to see proof?
Incidentally how does your approach deal with Special Relativity's "no such thing as absolute simultaneous" problem?
No problem! -- I mean, I don't have a problem: there's no such thing as absolute simultaneity, and if that seems odd it's because we haven't purged ourselves fully of Newtonian expectations. It takes a lot of effort and diligence to purge oneself of expectations.
Is "2 + 2 = 4" mind-stuff?
It is if you are thinking it. If you believe it, the belief is true, and what makes it true is an abstract fact, which we might express with gross inelegance as "there is a one-to-one correspondence between the union of any two pairs and the set whose elements are the null set, the set containing nothing but the null set, the set containing nothing but the set containing nothing but the null set, and the set containing nothing but the set containing nothing but the set containing nothing but the null set".
If you think sets are "in the mind", then that abstract fact is in the mind. But since most material objects are not in the mind, it seems reasonable to say that sets of those objects are not in the mind either.
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#193 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"theory" ... "model"
Ho hum. Bowman dictionary again.
A model is neither true nor false, but a theory is true or false. Do you regard that as a minor detail?
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#192 JaneBasingstoke
@Robert Lucien #187
"but it is only a notional dimension"
"It may be useful to treat time's dimension like properties as an artefact within your discipline, and perhaps your approach can explain most of such dimension like properties away without your explanations impacting spatial dimensions in the same way. And perhaps your approach will eventually disprove "time is a dimension".
But outside of your eclectic approach time looks like a proper dimension, and is best treated as a proper dimension."
Hate to point it out Jane but it was Einstein who was treating it as a notional dimension, time space is a map that unifies time and space into a single unit defined by the constant c in vacuum. As relative speeds approach light time and space begin to merge, local time compresses and runs slower, etc. But it is only at FTL velocities that relativity says that time actually behaves like a dimension.
- And that is one reason why another 'higher energy' theory is needed - something Einstein actually tried to solve for several decades. [censored for publication reasons]. Time can also behave like a dimension on very small scales but that is quantum mechanics.
If time really is a dimension then why doesn't someone just go and have a quick look a hundred years into the future to see if climate change is a real threat or not? Maybe that explains why Bowman and the other skeptics are so certain about things, I can see them all sitting in their bathtub time machines with THEIR silver hats on. :>
"So you have time playing swapsies with the direction of travel spatial dimension. To not treat time as a dimension under such circumstances seems more than stubborn. Especially with the problem that special relativity makes "simultaneous" very difficult to define, even confined to inertial frames of reference.
Incidentally how does your approach deal with Special Relativity's "no such thing as absolute simultaneous" problem?"
The trouble with the way relativity defines simultaneity is that it scales with space time. This is very interesting and mind twisting but on the vast scale of the whole of space it doesn't provide a coherent universe. The fact that the stars don't wobble about the sky kind of tells us that space is very static and stable on far higher energy scales than 'space time', the problem with the higher energy physics is that its very hard to measure because its all zero's. (a massive simplification)
"And I have a second question for you. Would you also make the same claim about a hypothetical spatial dimension which was also low entropy in one direction? Or is that a contradiction in terms, would such a dimension automatically be a/the time dimension?"
Sorry but if time was a dimension all times would co-exist together simultaneously. Of course we do move 'forward' in time but at any one moment we are only ever at one point in time, that is the definition of a point not a dimension.
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bowmanthebard #198: "A model is neither true nor false, but a theory is true or false. Do you regard that as a minor detail?"
A model can be as correct or incorrect as a theory can be true or false.
/davblo
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#200. At 4:33pm on 04 Jul 2010, davblo wrote:
"A model can be as correct or incorrect as a theory can be true or false."
At the end of the day a model is simply a way of reformulating a theory. The definition of model is far wider though, models and simulations have all kinds of uses - like prototyping (ie testing and tuning theories that are works in progress).
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#200 davblo wrote:
A model can be as correct or incorrect as a theory can be true or false.
A model can be more or less accurate, by resembling some aspect of reality more or less closely. But a theory doesn't resemble reality -- it purports to describe it.
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@bowmanthebard #198
"theory" ... "model"
If "model" is being used as a synonym for "theory" then yes, it can be correct or incorrect. Such use is context sensitive as "model" has other uses. As I said, Bowman dictionary again.
Meanwhile you haven't given an opinion of the Dodgson example of excessive rigidity of language being used as a cheat to get the wrong result in a logic problem. Which, as a fan of Wittgenstein, you should at least find interesting.
Charles Dodgson "A Logical Paradox"
http://fair-use.org/mind/1894/07/notes/a-logical-paradox
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@davblo #194
(me@195)
no retraction davblo?
shame on you, making accusations that can't be substantiated ;)
/Mango
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bowmanthebard #202: "A model can be more or less accurate, by resembling some aspect of reality more or less closely. But a theory doesn't resemble reality -- it purports to describe it."
I see no difference between the two. I don't think we can "describe" anything more than by modelling its behaviour.
But if you have an example to the contrary I'd be "all ears".
/davblo
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MangoChutneyUKOK #204: "no retraction davblo? shame on you, making accusations that can't be substantiated ;)"
Two of the comments you linked to were written by you.
In them you expressed caution about some extravagant AGW-non-believer claims.
For those two, amongst thousands of other AGW-non-believer comments on these blogs, you deserve some credit.
Unfortunately it's not enough to tip the balance...
(Maybe I should have adjusted bowmanthebard's wording to "almost never" to accommodate you.)
/davblo
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#203 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
Meanwhile you haven't given an opinion of the Dodgson example of excessive rigidity of language
I will if you insist, but I'm allergic to Lewis Carroll! (I accept he was a significant logician, however.)
Excessive rigidity of language is bad, and I'm all in favour of recognizing that words are used in context, and should be interpreted in context. But wouldn't you agree with me that language can lead us astray? Often it leads us astray when a single word has two different meanings, and we mistakenly assign the wrong meaning. To take a few examples close to today's discussions, consider the word 'information'. Or the word 'energy'. Have you not met people who think "imaginary numbers" are imaginary in the everyday sense rather than being one half of an ordered pair of real numbers? And don't get me started on 'real'!
I think what you're trying to say, politely, is that I'm a royal pain in the a**! I agree -- I just ask you to treat my irritating nit-picking with its intended frivolity. That way it's slightly less irritating (I gather).
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#206 davblo wrote:
Maybe I should have adjusted bowmanthebard's wording to "almost never" to accommodate you.
I hate to toot my own trumpet, but I have been quick to admonish everyone -- on both sides -- who expected or demanded "proof" of a scientific theory.
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Robert Lucien #199: "If time really is a dimension then why doesn't someone just go and have a quick look a hundred years into the future to see if climate change is a real threat or not?"
For the same reason as I can't suddenly pop up in New York or on a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. It takes time to get there; and guess what, it takes about a hundred years to reach "a hundred years into the future".
But more seriously; for bomanthbard and MangoChutneyUKOK, I must say that I haven't a clue what you are talking about. Your statements are too hand waving, unclear, jumbled and lacking in any logic.
/davblo
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@bowmanthebard #197
"and the set whose elements are the null set, the set containing nothing but the null set, the set containing nothing but the set containing nothing but the null set, and the set containing nothing but the set containing nothing but the set containing nothing but the null set"
Can't work out if that is a spoof on Sir Humphrey, a spoof on Alice Tinker's description of her issues with "I can't believe it's not butter", or a really rubbish way to count to 4 (or possibly 3 if the null set is zero).
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#210 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
Can't work out if that is a spoof on Sir Humphrey
...and not only is it "grossly inelegant" (as I modestly put it before) it is also inaccurate. (I forgot the pairs have to be disjoint.)
There is a sane idea behind it though. The idea is that what the counting numbers refer to can be expressed in terms of set theory, and set theory is so intuitively simple that it becomes hard to say that numbers aren't real (in the everyday sense of the word 'real'). They're not "immaterial" or "mental" or "belonging to another realm" or anything mystical like that.
It is easy to prove (!) that there is only one null set (symbolized by{}). We can define 1 as the cardinal number of the set that contains the null set. And so on, so that 4 is the cardinal number of the set {{}, {{}}, {{{}}}, {{{{}}}}}.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but just remember the main point of the exercise: to show that numbers are "real", and part of the familiar world of things, although of course they are abstract.
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#209 davblo wrote:
"But more seriously; for bomanthbard and MangoChutneyUKOK"
Duly noted with admiration and approval. We really must all learn to be comfortable disagreeing with each other, especially those on our own "side". Disagreement is the lifeblood of science and philosophy, and how our civilization advances. (Oh yeah -- it's also the lifeblood of marriage!)
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#205 davblo wrote:
I don't think we can "describe" anything more than by modelling its behaviour.
The word 'fat' isn't a big or corpulent word, unlike the people it describes. I am suffering from ghastly toothache at the moment, and wish I had a mere linguistic description of a toothache to contend with, as that would be much more pleasant -- the two things are completely unlike.
But models really are similar -- in some respects but not all -- to the things they model. For example, a plastic display model aeroplane resembles a real aeroplane in appearance (but not size). A flying balsa wood model resembles it in flight (but not appearance). A computer model of the weather really does resemble current weather systems, at least in terms of the internal numbers it manipulates and the values (pressure, etc.) they measure. A bit like an old-fashioned "analog" recording on vinyl and the music it "resembles" (the loudest bits really do stand out like squalls on the surface of the sea).
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#209
"But more seriously; for bomanthbard and MangoChutneyUKOK, I must say that I haven't a clue what you are talking about. Your statements are too hand waving, unclear, jumbled and lacking in any logic."
Especially if taken out of context, deliberately twisted and distorted to make a wrong sense, and only half the words are read. Come to think of it thats the whole basis of most climate science skepticism isn't it?
Or is it that the remark about the silver hats hit to close to home?
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Robert Lucien #214: "Especially if taken out of context, deliberately twisted and distorted to make a wrong sense, and only half the words are read."
I quoted one sentence from a two sentence paragraph in your #199. SO I don't know what you think I "twisted", "distorted", took "out of context" or made a "wrong sense of". Also I know nothing about silver hats; sounds rather silly.
/davblo
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bowmanthebard #213: "But models really are similar -- in some respects but not all -- to the things they model. ...a plastic display model aeroplane ... A computer model of the weather really does resemble current weather systems, at least in terms of the internal numbers it manipulates and the values (pressure, etc.) they measure."
This is where I think you are wrong.
I don't know whether I can explain clearly and simply at the moment, but I think you are mixing up the model itself with the "running" of the model and the results it may produce.
Some models can be "analogue" in their nature and working but they don't have to be.
A modern model of the solar system would include a selection of relevant theories such as mass, gravitation, relativity etc and use them together to explain/predict the behaviour of the actual solar system. Given an arbitrary starting point it could be used to predict the positions of the planetary bodies at any other time.
A good implementation of the model would be able to calculate the positions directly and not need to iterate through second by second as you seem to imply.
The numbers you get out from running the model are equivalent to the numbers you get from using a theory to make a prediction.
Does that make sense?
(I didn't see the relevance "fat" and toothache, but sorry to hear you are suffering pain)
/davblo
PS. I liked the null set stuff; but didn't quite see the difference between the "counting numbers" you defined and the "cardinal numbers" you used in the definition.
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#215. At 00:21am on 05 Jul 2010, davblo wrote:
I quoted one sentence from a two sentence paragraph in your #199. SO I don't know what you think I "twisted", "distorted", took "out of context" or made a "wrong sense of". Also I know nothing about silver hats; sounds rather silly."
----
Sorry I have an IQ of 130 and I sometimes forget to put contexts in order, or worse include logical leaps that are not exactly intuitive for most. In my sentence I was of course referring to time travel. As to the silver hat my dyslexia fixed that- it should have read 'tin foil' hat, a comment on the irony of Bowman placing one on my head earlier.
Maybe I should be labeling things. Actually explaining anything relativity without a lot of diagrams and pages of description is next to impossible. It doesn't help that so much many descriptions written for non-scientists get things wrong.
----
#199 I wrote:
#192 JaneBasingstoke
. . .
[background description of space time]
Hate to point it out Jane but it was Einstein who was treating it[time] as a notional dimension, space time is a map that unifies time and space into a single unit defined by the constant c in vacuum. As relative speeds approach light time and space begin to merge, local time compresses and runs slower, etc. [ie normal reality breaks down]
[Now showing where SR and GR fail, namely in FTL region geometry]
But it is only at FTL velocities that relativity says that time actually behaves like a dimension.
['humorous' aside about time travelling to see if climate change is real]
If time really is a dimension then why doesn't someone just go and have a quick look a hundred years into the future to see if climate change is a real threat or not? Maybe that explains why Bowman and the other skeptics are so certain about things, I can see them all sitting in their bathtub time machines with THEIR 'tin foil' hats on. :>
Jane - "Incidentally how does your approach deal with Special Relativity's "no such thing as absolute simultaneous" problem?"
[One of the most complex problems in physics shortened into one sentence]
The trouble with the way relativity defines simultaneity is that it scales with space time. [snip]
Einstein was wrong - or rather his devoted followers are wrong, without an absolute simultaneity or other FTL geometry the rest of the universe doesn't exist.
Jane - "And I have a second question for you. Would you also make the same claim about a hypothetical spatial dimension which was also low entropy in one direction? Or is that a contradiction in terms, would such a dimension automatically be a/the time dimension?"
[the actual meat of the whole argument]
Sorry but if time was a dimension all times would co-exist together simultaneously.
Of course we do move 'forward' in time but at any one moment we are only ever at one point in time, that is the definition of a point not a dimension. []
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#216 davblo wrote:
I didn't see the relevance "fat" and toothache
The word 'fat' isn't fat, and the word 'toothache ' isn't painful. The words of a language refer to things in the world, and descriptive sentences say how they are arranged, but they don't achieve this through mimicry. Much the same applies to the terms of a theory. The term 'm' doesn't have mass, 'F' doesn't apply a force, 'a' doesn't accelerate, and so on.
Models are different because their parts literally mimic aspects of the world.
didn't quite see the difference between the "counting numbers" you defined and the "cardinal numbers" you used in the definition.
The cardinal number of a set is the number of elements it contains. It seems that our most basic use of numbers involves counting elements of things we have grouped together. All of the other number systems (negative numbers, fractions, etc.) can be derived from that basic use of numbers, so to show that those counting numbers refer to everyday features of the physical world is in effect to show that all numbers are like that. So none of them are in a mysterious non-physical realm, or "in the mind", or "made out of mind-stuff".
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bowmanthebard #218: "The cardinal number of a set is the number of elements it contains..." [my emphasis]
That seems to presume "number" and "countability" even before you've started.
bowmanthebard #218: "Models are different because their parts literally mimic aspects of the world."
Did my explanation not make my point? I say they aren't different and the don't literally mimic aspects of the world.
bowmanthebard #218: "Much the same applies to the terms of a theory. The term 'm' doesn't have mass, 'F' doesn't apply a force, 'a' doesn't accelerate, and so on."
The same is true of a model. The 'm' in a model has no mass, the 'F' in a model doesn't apply any force, the 'a' in a model doesn't accelerate and so on. I think you are still distracted by simple 'analogue' replicas, but I'm not talking about those.
It is the result of 'using' model which relates (a value of 'F' say) to the real world. in just the same way as a theory, when used to make a prediction will yield a value (eg 'F') which relates to the real world.
You can 'formulate' a theory and you can 'formulate' a model (based upon actual or imagined theories).
Only when 'using' them do you derive results which relate to the real world. It's the same in both cases.
The simple 'analogue' replica (eg a model-car or model-aeroplane) is a special case where the 'formulation' and 'use' of the model are rolled into one; because that's inherent in that kind of model. As soon as you build it, it is displaying it's features. Non analogue models (ie those which are not physical replicas) can easily separate the two stages of 'formulation' and 'use'.
/davblo
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bowmanthebard #218: The cardinal number of a set is the number of elements it contains
davblo #219: That seems to presume "number" and "countability" even before you've started.
My basic assumptions are that sets are real groupings of things, and that mappings are real associations between their elements which can be injective, surjective, or both (in which case there is a one-to-one correspondence between their elements). Given some very basic set-theoretical assumptions like those, sets can themselves can be classified into disjoint groups (i.e. sets of sets) according to whether or not there is a one-to-one correspondence between their elements. Each of these disjoint groups corresponds to a counting number. In my opinion it is an idle exercise to explicitly and fully define numbers in terms of sets of sets, mappings, equivalence relations, etc. as long as we recognize that it can in fact be done. As long as we agree on that, it doesn't matter that I use the words 'number', 'count', etc. in explaining what numbers are, because those are the clearest words to use. The object, remember, is to show that numbers are not "made out of mind-stuff" whatever that means. They belong to the same "realm" as all the other stuff we routinely talk about -- such as colours and tables and chairs -- although they are a bit more abstract.
bowmanthebard #218: Models are different because their parts literally mimic aspects of the world.
davblo #219: Did my explanation not make my point? I say they aren't different and the don't literally mimic aspects of the world.
No, I don't think it did make the point. I think what you described was the use of a theory. I don't see why you'd call it a "model". I got the impression that it reinforced my point that models and theories are different. But even if we say that models and theories shade into one another in places, like herring gulls and black-backed gulls, there are some definite examples of each.
It's important, because the test of any hypothesis depends on its being either true or false, and implying something that is either true or false. A model can be more or less accurate, but as long as we treat it as a mere model, without a truth-value, we cannot test it in the usual sense. We might use it, nod cheerfully when it works well and shake our heads when it works badly, but we cannot say "it's right" or "it's wrong" until we interpret it as saying something true or false. Nor can we take it as implying anything about the real world.
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Robert Lucien #217: "Sorry I have an IQ of 130..."
...and modest to-boot!
Thanks anyway for saying 'sorry'.
Robert Lucien #217: "...without an absolute simultaneity or other FTL geometry the rest of the universe doesn't exist."
Sorry in advance if you feel that quote is misleading out of context; but statements like that are pretty meaningless without a logical argument to back them up; i.e. why would "absolute simultaneity (or other...)" be a pre-requisite for a universe to "exist"?
/davblo
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davblo #219 wrote: "Non analogue models"
Maybe what I'm trying to say is that all models work like "analog machines", so there is no such thing as a "non-analog model".
For example, a model that predicts the position of the planets would work by being given a range of internal variables whose values correspond to that of variables in the real world. It would then be "set in motion", in the hope that it would mimic the behaviour of the real planets as it unfolds over time.
But a theory would work differently. You would simply plug in initial conditions, do the math, and there's your answer.
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@Robert Lucien #199
"notional dimension" [again]
Not aware of Einstein demoting time to a "notional dimension". Thought Einstein had both time and the three space dimensions combined into 4-D spacetime. But there you go. Learn something from a blogger every day. Are you going to tell Kip Thorne that his take on general relativity is wrong or shall I? (Hint, I'm not a scientist so it'll have to be you.)
"If time really is a dimension then why doesn't someone just go and have a quick look a hundred years into the future to see if climate change is a real threat or not?"
Right so because Kip Thorne hasn't built that time machine yet time can't be a dimension. Was it the same deal with altitude before the Montgolfier brothers?
first question - coping with lack of absolute simultaneousness
As for your answer to the first of my two questions. I am having problems reconciling your answer to my question.
To recap on simultaneousness. If I am standing equal distance from two clocks travelling at the same velocity as me and in sync with each other I see them as synchronised. But if they are also equidistant from someone on that very fast space ship they will see the two clocks as out of sync.
Although the effect is much more noticeable for spaceships going near the speed of light (or particles in the LHC going near the speed of light) the spaceship doesn't even need to be going that fast, the effect is significant enough to require GPS satellites to cope with it.
There is no such thing as absolute simultaneousness. Simultaneous is different for different frames of reference.
You appeal to coherence. Time being a dimension doesn't destroy coherence because information stays within light cones. (I thought you said you knew relativity.) And as to your comment about a time dimension meaning stars should wobble. Perhaps my #192 needed to be clearer that stars aren't made out of blancmange. (Joke.)
So back to my question. Your rejection of a time dimension is dependent on absolute simultaneousness. But there is no such absolute. So how does your work cope with the lack of absolute simultaneousness.
second question - directional low entropy in a spatial dimension
Your answer to my second question is even less of an answer to my question. You've basically ignored my question using an aside in my question as an excuse to restate your position. So I repeat, how does your work cope with a spatial dimension with low entropy in one direction? Does such a dimension have any of the properties we associate with time?
"Sorry but if time was a dimension all times would co-exist together simultaneously."
Um, think you're muddling language appropriate for "outside" our spacetime with language appropriate for an observer who is part of our spacetime.
OK you've expanded on your #199 in your #217
"silver hat = tin foil hat"
Actually I got this reference due to sufficient context and due to the synonym "silver paper" for "tin foil". (Thank you Blue Peter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpiPEWDwK_Q ) Ironically "tin" is also wrong, foil is normally made out of aluminium rather than tin. But "cooking foil hat" or "aluminium foil hat" don't have the same ring. (Where's Bluesberry and his HAARP posts when you need him.)
"As relative speeds approach light time and space begin to merge, local time compresses and runs slower, etc. [ie normal reality breaks down]"
Don't like you describing the time distortion effects of relativity as normal reality breaking down. These effects exist at much slower speeds, although they are harder to detect. GPS satellites have to be designed to cope with them. And there are no go areas for relativity sums that are far more deserving of the description "normal reality breaks down" than the example you give.
"bowmanthebard"
gave a very gracious reply to me on the issues of understanding posts in his #207.
"dyslexic"
Genuinely, or just one of those comments people make in conversation? Borderline dyslexic myself, word processors with their cut-and-paste and spellchecks have been a godsend. Used to have a housemate who was a teacher and said dyslexia was just a middle class excuse for being thick (grrr). But you should have seen his handwriting.
:-)
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bowmanthebard #222: "no such thing as a 'non-analog model'"
That was exactly what I was trying to correct.
The model you describe, that works by iterative progression is only a special case and more of the kind that would be called a 'simulation'.
In general, a good model should be able to use appropriate theories to "do the math" as you say and determine a particular configuration (eg of planets) without plodding through a 'mimicry' of reality.
Maybe it's the flexibility of models which is causing he problem. They have the ability to incorporate unknowns and uncertainties and make approximate predictions. But surely some theories are allowed to incorporate such approximations as well; it just depends how you formulate the theory.
/davblo
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#221. At 11:00am on 05 Jul 2010, davblo wrote:
"Sorry in advance if you feel that quote is misleading out of context; but statements like that are pretty meaningless without a logical argument to back them up; i.e. why would "absolute simultaneity (or other...)" be a pre-requisite for a universe to "exist"? "
Its actually an extremely complex problem. -
Its all to do with the nature of the universe on very large scales,
basically space time scales with the size of space but the speed of light doesn't. So on larger and larger scales space time becomes increasingly flexible and fragile, now relativity has an answer for that but its unsatisfying itself in a number of ways.
The real problem is when we look at the present time directly, do the stars and the rest of space exist? Strictly Relativity says that since they are outside our light cone they exist in the past and future but not now. If you take it to its logical limit all light cones shrink to zero and there are an infinite number of tiny parallel universes each about the size of a living room. IE the big universe doesn't exist, pretty abstract stuff!
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#224 davblo wrote:
In general, a good model should be able to use appropriate theories to "do the math"
But what makes you call that "a model" at all, rather than "some theories"?
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@bowmanthebard #207
Thanks for that.
Not asking you to approve of Dodgson. Just thought you might be interested in another example of "bewitchment". (Incidentally, reading the "Notes" section, I'm not sure that Dodgson actually realises the "paradox" is caused by a misapplication of his logic terminology.)
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#227 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
thought you might be interested in another example of "bewitchment"
Yes -- bewitchment is everywhere.
Statements of the form 'if... then...' (so-called "conditionals" by almost everyone nowadays, although Dodgson calls them "hypotheticals") are notoriously hard to deal with. The very simplest way of treating them is to pretend that they say nothing more than can be expressed using words like 'and', 'not' and 'or'. Sometimes that is indeed all they mean. For example, 'if it's raining then it's cloudy' can often mean nothing more than "either it's not raining, or else it's cloudy".
That can be very useful, especially in mathematics-type proofs, but it's inadequate for dealing with the sort of conditionals typically found in science. For example, a law such as "what goes up must come down" (which has the basic structure of a law) in effect says that if anything were to be thrown into the air, then it would fall back to the ground again, even if isn't thrown into the air. The simple treatment described above isn't good enough for that, because of its simple assumption that the entire conditional is true simply by virtue of the first claim (after the 'if') being false.
Even eminent logicians such as Bertrand Russell have been led astray by conditionals. He made the mistake of assuming that the simplest treatment of conditionals described above captures what is meant by "implication". Hence you sometimes hear admirers of Russell talking about "material implication" when really they should limit themselves to "material conditionals" -- i.e. if-then statements which are true or false purely as a combination of the truth or falsity of the claims they are constructed from.
I'm interested in conditionals like "if hypothesis H were true, then observation O would be true". That conditional is not rendered true simply by H being false, so we cannot regard it as a material conditional. Instead, we have to think of it capturing a "special link" between H and O -- something like "if we believed H, we would be entitled to believe O as well".
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Robert Lucien #225: "...basically space time scales with the size of space but the speed of light doesn't. So on larger and larger scales space time becomes increasingly flexible and fragile,..."
I missed the logical connection there. How does one measure the 'flexibility' of space-time and what do you consider 'fragile'?
Why does it depend on the non-scalability of the speed of light?
/davblo
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bowmanthebard #226: "But what makes you call that 'a model' at all, rather than 'some theories'? "
Because it's an application of 'some theories', used in a way appropriate for 'modelling' (predicting or explaining behaviour of) a specific system.
Theories are generally less specifically orientated and are as simple and with as wide a scope as possible. A model will generally be arranged to cope with a specific system.
The theory of gravitation (or curved space-time if you like) is expected to apply all over (simply speaking), but the modelling of the solar system requires specific application of the theory - a model.
/davblo
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bowmanthebard #226: But what makes you call that 'a model' at all, rather than 'some theories'?
davblo #230: Because it's an application of 'some theories', used in a way appropriate for 'modelling' (predicting or explaining behaviour of) a specific system.
Ah, I see -- that makes much more sense. Personally, I think I'll keep using the word 'model' as I currently do to refer to something (usually realized in a machine of some sort) that isn't true or false, like an orrery or a computer simulation.
Another reason is this: so-called 'instrumentalists' (opponents of 'scientific realists' like me) say that scientific theories are mere instruments for prediction rather than literally true or false. They often use the word 'model' to express their belief that scientific theories are not literally true.
Theories are generally less specifically orientated and are as simple and with as wide a scope as possible. A model will generally be arranged to cope with a specific system.
That's true. Maybe we'll have to say there is more than one type of model.
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bowmanthebard #231: "Personally, I think I'll keep using the word 'model' as I currently do to refer to something (usually realized in a machine of some sort) that isn't true or false, like an orrery or a computer simulation."
Ok; if you will.
The word Orrery was interesting. I see it shows another possible facet of modelling. That the 'replica' or 'simulator' types can be constructed without any knowledge of the underlying principles or theories involved; just as a mechanism which parallels the real thing, based upon observations. No doubt it's predictive powers would be questionable, but at least testable.
So yes I agree, there can be different types of model.
As to 'instrumentalist' or 'scientific realist' I guess I'd start out on the former side rather than the latter. So if you have any simple persuading arguments...
/davblo
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#232 davblo wrote:
the 'replica' or 'simulator' types can be constructed without any knowledge of the underlying principles or theories involved; just as a mechanism which parallels the real thing, based upon observations.
I would argue that the people who constructed such models did in fact have a lot of familiarity with -- and facility with -- the underlying principles and theories involved. They were just the principles and theories of their own day. Most orreries were guided by the Ptolemaic theory, with planets going round on circular tracks ("epicycles") whose centres themselves move on circular tracks (with the Earth at the centre). That theory was a great work of human minds, even though it turned out to be wrong. Most great scientific theories have turned out to be wrong so far (but maybe it's like learning to ride a bicycle).
Observation was absolutely vital for working out how fast the planets move round their "tracks", but no amount of observation could have told anyone that there were such tracks -- in fact there were no such tracks!
So I don't mean to downplay the absolutely vital role of observation, but would urge you to consider what a huge amount of theory -- i.e. cunning guesswork and often beautiful creativity -- was involved, and above all to consider how none of that theory was "based on" observation.
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bowmanthebard #233: "I would argue that the people who constructed such models did in fact have a lot of familiarity with -- and facility with -- the underlying principles and theories involved. ... So I don't mean to downplay the absolutely vital role of observation, but would urge you to consider what a huge amount of theory -- i.e. cunning guesswork and often beautiful creativity -- was involved, and above all to consider how none of that theory was 'based on' observation."
I'll grant you all that.
I didn't mean so much that 'they' had no idea of the principles involved and had no theories.
My point was that the 'mechanical replica' model gave me the idea. That at one extreme end of the spectrum of models, lie those 'analogue' models which are (have/could be) constructed to parallel the real world according to observation, with no need whatsoever for any theories. Simple mimicry.
It struck me as interesting.
/davblo
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234. At 00:56am on 06 Jul 2010, davblo wrote:
That at one extreme end of the spectrum of models, lie those 'analogue' models which are (have/could be) constructed to parallel the real world according to observation, with no need whatsoever for any theories. Simple mimicry.
It struck me as interesting.
It's an interesting idea, but I think we have to reject it. I would argue that it isn't possible to observe anything -- let alone construct an analog model of what we observe -- without "interpreting" it through the "spectacles" of a theory. Even if it's just the classification of everyday things into the categories of common sense, it still a sort of theory.
The people who made orreries were lucky enough to have inherited much of the "common sense" of the ancient Greeks. The Greeks did amazing things with little more than the assumption that the Sun was very far away and so its light arrived in roughly parallel lines. First, knowing that the Earth was round, they measured the size of it by seeing the difference in the angle of the Sun at noon at two different places. Next, they measured the size of the Moon by seeing how big the shadow of the Earth appeared on it during a lunar Eclipse. (It's about the size of Australia.) Next, they could tell how far away it was, given its size and how big the full Moon appeared. Next, they were able to guess how far away the Sun was. And so on. These were stunning achievements, and there is much theory involved, theory that later Europeans were able to use, without being fully aware that they were using it.
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@ Bowmanthebard, #231 ( & davblo)
this discussion certainly is interesting and I have a question, something of an aside, concerning the distinction raised between 'instrumentalists' and 'scientific realists'. It is this:
As a 'scientific realist,' what is your interpretation of the Uncertainty Principle?
I ask since the uncertainty principle appears to be an instrumentalist interpretation of observation and, if we accept the principle, it precludes the absolute knowledge of whether a theory is false (I won't say "true or false" as "true" is not within the remit of the scientific method) since we are prevented from determining the falsifying observation to an arbitrary level of accuracy. How does the scientific realist reconcile the opinion that theories may be literally true or false with the idea that we can never know if a particular theory is true or false?
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bowmanthebard #235: "It's an interesting idea, but I think we have to reject it. I would argue that it isn't possible to observe anything -- let alone construct an analog model of what we observe -- without 'interpreting' it through the 'spectacles' of a theory."
Somehow I new you were going to say that.
/davblo
PS. Thanks for the Greek history lesson!
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bowmanthebard #235.
"..the ancient Greeks"
stood on the shoulders of giants -- Indian and Babylonian in particular.
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Dave_oxon #236 wrote:
As a 'scientific realist,' what is your interpretation of the Uncertainty Principle?
I think that particle physics is in roughly the same state as kinematics when everyone believed "impulse theory". That was the idea that a special force was required to keep something moving -- an idea that was "turned on its head" in the seventeenth century. Our physics has great predictive powers, as did theirs in their time -- but I think we should be much more modest about all so-far attempted interpretations of it, most of which bring trunkloads of metaphysical baggage and macroscopic expectations with them. I think it's likely that some genius will eventually come along and stand the current thinking on its head too.
As an example of "metaphysical baggage", I first suggest that particle physics doesn't say anything about individual particles. It makes statistical claims about classes of particles. Yet people keep connecting it with "probability" as if the theory says something about what ought to be believed, which it doesn't. It says what proportion of particles will end up here rather than there -- in other words, it makes statistical claims about relative frequency rather than how much anything ought to be believed. But if we swallow the latter, it suddenly it looks like physics is intimately connected with minds and consciousness and Tao and Yin and Yang and all that sort of nonsense.
Aa an example of macroscopic expectations, consider this. At the microscopic level, the "arrow of time" is quite different from the arrow of time in our familiar macroscopic world. Perhaps our expectations about causation itself are shaped by the fact that we evolved at a scale (inches, feet, etc.) in which the dissipation of motion is ubiquitous, and therefore there is a strong asymmetry between past and future, but that is pure speculation. Over the years I have speculated that as soon as we drop those expectations about cause and effect and the "arrow of time", the movement of light becomes much less mysterious (it seems to "choose" the path that takes the least time to travel).
But really, all of that is speculation. We are in possession of a brilliant formalism that makes stunningly accurate statistical predictions. But we don't understand it yet, and words like 'uncertainty' and 'principle' are very misleading -- they read far too much into what we actually have, at the same time as misinterpreting it. Half-baked religious ideas that there are "waves of probability" or that "physical reality is consciousness" are too silly and immodest to be taken seriously.
The current state of basic physics is actually the usual state of basic physics. The twentieth century, the seventeenth century, ancient Greece -- we are all in pretty much the same boat: we use formalisms that have predictive power, but we don't know much about why they have such power, because we don't yet understand the microscopic world. All we know is that it is very unfamiliar and very unlike the macroscopic world, with its mind-brains in the modest craniums of medium-sized creatures.
However, outside of basic physics, our understanding of the world through science (by which I mean non-basic physics, chemistry and biology, nothing involving mere statistical extrapolation) is very much greater than that of our ancestors. I think we have good reasons to think science is slowly pulling back the curtain on the world as it really is. It genuinely reveals the structure of reality. But we must be more modest about our abilities. We should be much, much more modest about what can be achieved by mere extrapolation -- as should be obvious from the endless succession of contradictory medical "studies" in the newspapers.
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#236 Dave_oxon wrote:
How does the scientific realist reconcile the opinion that theories may be literally true or false with the idea that we can never know if a particular theory is true or false?
Knowing something does not involve certainty. Of course we can never know with certainty whether a particular theory is true, but we might be lucky and happen to know it as a matter of fact.
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bowmanthebard #239: "At the microscopic level, the "arrow of time" is quite different from the arrow of time in our familiar macroscopic world."
I thought they were pretty similar.
Broken pieces of glass don't (often) jump up off the floor and come to gether to re-form a drinking-glass.
Products of radio-active decay don't (often) come back together and just happen to reconstruct the original atom of radioactive material.
Dump a pile of electrons at one end of a metal bar and they'll disperse and not (often) re-assemble as a group where you put them.
etc...; davblo
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My #241 continued...
or did you mean to say 'sub-atomic' level rather than 'microscopic'?
/davblo
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#236 Dave_oxon
Modern physics certainly isn't a fun place for the old fashioned scientific realist. Actually I'm not sure the distinction even holds for modern physics, so much is based on advanced mathematical analysis Hamiltonian spaces, Rieman curvature, differential equations in multiple terms, renormalization, probability amplitudes, etc, etc.
I was writing one answer then had the brainwave of looking up scientific realist and instrumentalist, talk about hair splitting....
Anyway ultimately I'd say that the uncertainty principle is a realist argument about the limits of instrumentation and observation. There are two schools of quantum mechanics Probabilistic and Non-Probabilistic, I would guess that from a philosophical position both would be called realist by some scientists but then all scientific theory is about modeling reality. -
Probabilistic quantum mechanics - is a way of producing accurate guesses about the quantum world using complex probabilistic rules, in effect looking inside the uncertainty paradox. As such it is a true instrumentalist theory but it is also one of the most useful and successful theories in science.
Non-Probabilistic quantum mechanics - the realist version. In a kind of irony focusing on the actual reality of the quantum world can't easily be used to make useful observations - precisely because of the uncertainty principle.
Of course every proof produced by the probabilistic version is an indirect proof of the non-probabilistic version because one is built on the other, but the argument about the reality of the quantum world isn't fully resolved even after decades of arguing. There is also the long on-going fight over gravity, either QM or relativity must fall - and either space time or the graviton will win.
On the subject of particle physics that is a very different question, but again no one really knows whether the standard model represents ultimate reality or not. It started as an instrumentality theory intended as an interim 'bodge' but its success has gone on and on. However to me there is something of the 'angels dancing on the head of a pin' about the whole field. (not to say it isn't real though)
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Agggh it took out my formating, that first paragraph was meant to be strikethrough!!
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#242 davblo wrote:
"or did you mean to say 'sub-atomic' level rather than 'microscopic'?"
On reflection, I meant teeny-weeny.
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#241 davblo wrote:
Broken pieces of glass don't (often) jump up off the floor and come to gether to re-form a drinking-glass.
But "entangled particles" do seem to do that kind of crazy stuff, as if they can "see into the future" in order to "obey the law".
If we drop our assumption that the future "unfolds" in this or that way as past events dictate, these particles are doing nothing more than "obeying the law". And they're not even "obeying" it -- they're just doing exactly what the law simply describes them as doing. (Thanks again, Wittgenstein!)
I hope you can see that there is a vast "unexplored area" here -- our own concepts, and how they lead us astray.
By the way, some people think that particle physics forces us to give up determinism. I think it forces us to accept a sort of hyper-determinism!
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Greenpeace should go to Mexican Gulf or S. Korea (hyundai built deepwater horizon) instead of chasing Japanese whaling ship. Greenpeace's activity is crime.
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