Greta wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 4:57 am
Serendipper wrote: ↑Wed Apr 04, 2018 8:48 pm
Greta wrote: ↑Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:41 am
Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin. You won't find anything in nature that is entirely chaotic or orderly, but ordered to some degree.
Agree about the subjective side too, but it's not ALL subjective. For instance, your room was more ordered and less chaotic than a cloud, no matter what your Mum said
So what is order?
If I throw 5 coins in the air, they will land in an essentially random pattern; so we'll say the first toss is a scattered pattern and the second toss results in a straight-line formation. Now, why is one considered ordered and the other not? Is that consideration considered natural or artificial?
First thought is that that's pareidolia.
How on earth do you come across these words?
However, the things we encounter in reality display objective order - actual patterns, eg. planets really are more systematised than the space around it.
So it would seem, but what is objective order? How can we make objective statements without being subjective?
Is order simply synonymous with gravity; a force drawing inward? And disorder is a force pushing outward, scattering?
If reality is the interaction between subject and object, then order depends both on the object and the interpretation of it by the subject. And if that is so, then order isn't a thing unto itself, but relative to a specific reality. Do rainbows exist?
Serendipper wrote:No one knows if subatomic particles are the baseline of reality in the same way as no one knows how large the universe is, or if there are others, impossible far away or in another dimension (which might effectively be the same thing, for all we know).
What about the fields? We have electric and magnetic fields, gravitational fields, Higgs field, gluon field and who knows what all. Do you think they are made of something or are considered fundamental?
To the best of my limited knowledge those are bosons. I think of subatomic particles as different kinds of dynamic wrinkles in the quantum foam, of different energy level, mass, shape and spin. Why those particular configurations?
https://www.123rf.com/photo_24987995_di ... and-4.html
Is the quantum foam a collection of particles or a continuum? If a collection of particles, how do the particles affect each other?
We necessarily run into a hard barrier when exploring either the quantum realm or the cosmos because we don't know how large or small reality can be, thus we tend to focus on relativities rather than absolutes. Absolutes may well be there (unless there's some odd dimensional situation) but anyone who claims to know these things with certainty is more engaged in the field of entertainment than science or philosophy.
Yeah I see your point, but I think we can make deductive progress.
Serendipper wrote:Even if randomness exists, there could still be plenty of unknown effects causing at least some of what's perceived as random.
Well, if we suppose a particle is fundamental, then whatever that particle does would have to be random because there is nothing smaller that could determine it. Does that seem right? So unless there are an infinity of particle-sizes, then we're eventually going to find the smallest thing to be random.
Okay, brainstorming: In terms of randomness, theoretically all one might need is the first change for everything to cascade via cause and effect rather than continued random effects (still begs the question of origins). If that's the case then the fundamental particles may be completely orderly in themselves, but buffeted by feedback from larger domains.
Yes but we claim a coin flip is determined, not because of larger domains, but smaller: we claim the nuances of the flip along with arrangement of air molecules, et al collectively determine the fate of the coin. If it is true that determinism is the result of something more fundamental, then either there is no absolute fundamental or randomness exists. If we can hash that out, then empiricism is circumvented by deduction.
However, string theorists would say that the Planck scale "point" is an observer effect,
I don't think we need to determine whether a smallest point exists and the adding of dimensions is just another way of adding more infinitesimal.
with the rest of a string residing in other dimensions (as is often hypothesised about gravity because it's so much weaker than other forces).
My theory of gravity derives from the observation that space is expanding and relying on the assumption that space is not becoming "thinner", then I conclude that space is being created at every point and it is being drawn in by matter. The balance of the creation vs destruction of space determines gravity such as it is. In the case of the black hole, space is being sucked in so quickly that even light cannot outrun it.
A consequence of this theory is that gravity could be variable over time depending how quickly space is being created/recycled (as the case may be). If the creation of space were not as fast as it is, then gravity would be much stronger. I believe that is the dark energy everyone is on about.
Serendipper wrote:... there's feedback coming from all directions. At our scale, much of it is trivial but at the subatomic scale, everything we know of will buffet the most minuscule entities around.
I think of it as a continuum with no separate things to affect each other. The answer to what causes a cause to have an effect is realizing there are no things to cause other things; it's just a process that we divided in half.
Reality as a seething and vibrating undifferentiated "jello"??
I guess. It's a continuum field containing continuously varying densities of energy which happen to have resonances due to relativistic conditions.
I don't care much for quanti. The electron can increase in energy until it finds a resonance that causes it to jump to the next quantized energy level. It's not discrete, but continuous.
Like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w
I don't think it's us doing all of the dividing, I think it's ontic (barring dimensional oddities) - based on dark energy and cooling. The former is thought to drive everything apart and the latter solidifies them.
Dark energy I theorize to be simply the creation/recycling/expansion of space and cooling is simply charges that vibrate against some resistance that then slows the vibrations. Slow vibrations is cool, and fast vibrations is hot. Temperature is a measure of kinetic energy and can't be a force drawing things together.
Matter has a propensity to attract and space tends to expand and the balance of the two determine what we see.
For instance, it appears that many of the older galaxies that have been hurtling apart for billions of years are effectively becoming discrete universes.
I see what you mean, but I still think the spacetime fabric itself is a continuum regardless if light could ever escape the new universe. Neil DeGrasse Tyson said what keeps him up at night is knowing that the universe is exanding and one day in he future there will be astronomers who are not able to see the galaxies that we see today, so he wonders what exists that we cannot see.
Any intelligent entities that evolved in a galaxy where other galaxies are too far away to see would consider their galaxy to be the universe. It's possible we are in a similar situation.
Yes, unless an offsetting force develops.
Serendipper wrote:So the first lifeform to evolve probably couldn't reproduce because how would it know how to? So that means there must have been lots of lifeforms popping into existence until eventually one discovered how to replicate itself and eventually dominated the scene. And if that is true, then it's still happening today.
Yes, that's my impression, that things happened in stages. I also suspect that the first proto life forms would have lived for a matter of microseconds. Then an organism evolved from which we all came that persisted. Once it became established, it's easy to imagine how any fragile new instances of abiogenesis would have quickly ended up as food for our first (biological) ancestors.
Yup, I agree.
Serendipper wrote:About 5 years ago I put some various dirts into jars with water so I could see the soil profile. I left the jars sitting all this time and now there is green stuff growing inside. Did it evolve or did it come from some kind of seed? I want to repeat the experiment with sterilized dirt. My bet is eventually life will spring forth.
Yep, these would have come from microbes, seeds and spores in the soil.
But how do you know? For the first 2-3 years it did nothing. Why would it take so long for a seed to sprout?
My guess is that truly sterilised dirt, perfectly sealed to keep airborne microbes out, would remain sterile, even if heated and watered. The hard part is keeping microbes out in the long term. Maybe generations could theoretically keep your experiment working, ensuring the integrity of the system, but one day it surely break down and the soil would be returned to natural systems.
Did you watch the video I posted about the clay particles providing the structure for assimilation of molecules? It can happen quickly! And the more they dig into fossils, the more evidence supporting the view that life evolved quickly on earth. I highly doubt this is complicated and all that's required is an electromagnetic energy source, such as the sun or radioactive decay from various elements.
Food canned in mason jars do not grow organisms, so they seem fairly sterile, just absent the clay. If sterilized mud and water is sealed in a mason jar, I'm confident nothing can get in to contaminate and I'm confident that if the jar were set on a window sill in the sun, it would eventually grow what we colloquially call life and I think it would be within the span of 5 years.