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| When galaxies collide; and we're not talking Fords | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 21 2008, 05:00 AM (2,348 Views) | |
| Daniel | Apr 22 2008, 01:40 AM Post #101 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Yes, it sounds reasonable. But maybe you didn't see this post before you wrote yours. "To answer your question- most people conceive of truth as a philosophical pursuit, not as a scientific one. To you knowledge is scientific, but Mik's statement, the one you took objection to- colloquially was something like an expression of wonder, not a point to argue about. At least that's how I saw it." |
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| Daniel | Apr 22 2008, 01:44 AM Post #102 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Just to make sure we're on the same page- this is what I'm really interested in hearing an answer to. |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 01:49 AM Post #103 |
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Pisa-Carp
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I didn't see it as an expression of wonder - i saw at as a defense of the point that we don't know anything and his list of things we don't anything about included things we infact do know something about. I'm a big fan of wonder, wonder is what drives me, but wonder and comprehension are not mutually exclusive - it is terrible mistake to associate wonder with ignorance. I would like to know the world as best i can, whether that's labelled a "philosophical persuit" or a "scientific persuit" seems mere semantics particularly since science is just the continuation of natural philosophy. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Daniel | Apr 22 2008, 01:52 AM Post #104 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Ok, Moonbat. Now please answer these questions so I can understand better where you're coming from with this. |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 01:56 AM Post #105 |
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Pisa-Carp
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It's our model of the most fundamental interactions of matter minus gravity. It is indeed a description and it is not simply adequate to describe animals, it is huge overkill. It's way way way too accurate to be at all useable when dealing with animals. edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Daniel | Apr 22 2008, 02:30 AM Post #106 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Which is kind of my point but thank you. |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 02:32 AM Post #107 |
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Pisa-Carp
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I wasn't trying to imply you could use the standard model to predict an animal, only that it ultimately accounts for the behaviour of animals. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Axtremus | Apr 22 2008, 06:47 AM Post #108 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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"Usability" vs. "truth" -- What's "true" is not always "useful" [for a particular purpose]. What's "useful" [for a particular purpose] is not always "true." What's "unusable" [for a particular purpose] is not always "false." What's "false" is not always "unusable" [for a particular purpose]. |
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 07:35 AM Post #109 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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That's an unsubstantiated claim with no experimental evidence. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 07:46 AM Post #110 |
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Pisa-Carp
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There's no experimental evidence for the standard model? Or there's no evidence animals are made up of matter? Or do you think the standard model is violated when it comes to animals - there is some special dynamics for the particles in animals that is different to the particles everywhere else in the universe? |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 08:26 AM Post #111 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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You said the standard model "ultimately accounts for the behaviour of animals", which is in my understanding the same as "determines the behavior", which ultimately means "could be used to predict". There is no experimental evidence that the SM says anything about the behavior of animals. Or even if you take something much more simple, such as a single cell - I don't know of any explanations of cell behavior in terms of physical subatomar entities. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 08:38 AM Post #112 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I think in general one of the limiting factors of science is idealization. Every scientific model is a "simplification" of reality - many factors are disregarded. However, it is highly non-trivial to use the idealized physical models to say something about the real world, where these factors still have an impact. For example, why is it not possible to predict the weather of today in ten years? The answer is - apart from too few observation points and limits in computing power for all the differential equations that have to be solved numerically - that there are just too many factors that influence the weather, and it is not clear how this fits with the idealized physical models. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 08:43 AM Post #113 |
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Pisa-Carp
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SM accounts for the behaviour of animals in the same sense that it accounts for the behaviour of particles. Particles do what SM claims particles do, animals do what SM claims animals do. In terms of predictions you could make statistical predictions - given how messy biological systems are, how robust the dynamics are in the face of noise and that the processes average over large numbers of molecules I'd have thought animals are broadly classical in their behaviour hence in most instances ideal SM predictions would approach unity/zero if one specified the appropriate environmental conditions. But i wasn't referring to determinism when i said it accounts for their behaviour since the SM is a statistical theory. It's absurd to say there is no evidence that SM says anything about the behaviour of animals, the evidence that animals are composed of particles is evidence that SM says something about animals. I mean like i said the SM is overkill QED will account for the dynamics you don't need chromodynamics at all, infact in most instance you don't even need relativistic quantum mechanics! A hybrid model stacked with approximations would account for the dynamics of animals - unless they were in the process of being eaten by a black hole or possibly being placed in a galactic super colider. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 08:59 AM Post #114 |
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Pisa-Carp
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The problem is that you imagine natural scientists think like mathematicians and want what mathematicians want but they don't and they don't. I don't care about having infinite accuracy, when i say that the moon is responsible for the tides i'm not saying that a mathematically precise description is deriveable by a Newtonian account involving soley the sea and the moon i mean that the phenomena that people experience when they look at the tides, the fact that the sea goes in and out in these big movements -that is because of the graviational attraction of the moon. Sure the mathematically exact details will be influenced by everything from a passing seagull to the phase of the nearest star, but the main features of the dynamics are because the water closest to the moon feels stronger acceleration towards the moon than the Earth does and the water furthest from the moon feels a weaker acceleration towards the moon than the Earth does. We make approximations all the time when they are reasonable to make, for instance when we solve quantum mechanical equations to work out what mechanism is responsible for some chemical reaction or other we make all kinds of approximations like we pretend that the nuclei don't move as the electrons move. Infact they do move but they move so slowly relative to the motion of the electrons that pretending they don't move doesn't alter the answers we are interested in. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 09:31 AM Post #115 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Well, but chaos theory says that minimal deviations can have quite significant effects, and if you have a "sufficiently" complex system, there will always be parameters that behave in a chaotic way - hence the traditional scientific method is just not applicable to predict the behavior of the system. It's not about knowing something with a lot of precision. It is about quite significant yes/no differences in the outcome. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 09:39 AM Post #116 |
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Pisa-Carp
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Well you can't make accurate long term predictions for chaotic systems (though )you can make short term predictions), but it's still the usual interactions between particles going on nothing extra is happening. You can understand why we get chaotic weather from lorentz's ultra basic models. The fact that you observe chaotic behaviour of the atmosphere is entirely accountable given the standard model - it's not a physical mystery, it's a mathematical inevitability! |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 09:41 AM Post #117 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Look, sentences like these are why you sometimes come across as condescending. You seem to think that you are in a position to speak for all natural scientists, and others who are "outside the circle" aren't. I for one am not an expert in physics (although I am at least familiar with the major basic ideas), but on the other hand I guess I know a lot more than you about other areas that are equally relevant to natural science, such as information theory, systems science, modeling, logic, or computability. So, please don't try to educate me what "you natural scientists" think. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Apr 22 2008, 09:41 AM Post #118 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Wrong, sir! With many chaotic systems, the name itself is misleading because behind the seemingly chaotic systems, order not only resides but dominates. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 09:44 AM Post #119 |
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Pisa-Carp
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It's not clear to me what you are disagreeing with - that we can't accurate long term predictions or that there isn't anything other than usual particle physics involved, or that one can understand why the weather is chaotic from basic models? |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Apr 22 2008, 09:50 AM Post #120 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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I'm saying that some "chaotic systems," especially those you find in nature, are actually not chaotic at all. They're quite ordered. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Moonbat | Apr 22 2008, 10:04 AM Post #121 |
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Pisa-Carp
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Oh i see, i meant chaotic in the mathematical sense i.e. sensitive dependence to initial conditions rather than just random. |
| Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Apr 22 2008, 10:07 AM Post #122 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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And that's exactly what I'm talking about. The term was changed from "chaos" to "complexity theory" partially for this reason. The name gives false assumptions that these systems are random when in fact they are quite ordered. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 10:11 AM Post #123 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Aqua, if there is no randomness, why does quantum mechanics describe the location of particles by a probability function? |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| The 89th Key | Apr 22 2008, 10:29 AM Post #124 |
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You want randomness? Here you go:
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| Klaus | Apr 22 2008, 10:31 AM Post #125 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Ha, the standard model has already predicted that you would post that pic! |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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