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Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5154
Posted: July 09 2013 at 17:23
Well, let's remember quantum mechanics pioneer Niels Bohr's quote (more or less): 'the point is not whether the theory is crazy, but whether it is crazy enough to be true'.
I personally think that String Theory is not really on the right track but who am I to tell... At any rate it provides some useful principles and concepts and could have some bearing to the actual truth, some of its mathematical 'coincidences' are possibly too striking to be 'just coincidences'. I think we are still rather far for any true understanding of what's really going on, but keeping on trying is great and we should not give up.
A recurring problem in this sort of things is that mathematics has proved to be extremely fertile, there are lots of mathematical facts which are amazing and clearly true but which in principle do not seem to have any bearing at all with the actual physical world. String Theory is possibly a bit on the same path, it builds on some mathematical structures and relationships, but whether it has any significance to the actual physical world in rather unclear.
We expect our universe to behave in a mathematically consistent way, but that does not mean that any mathematically consistent structure is actually deployed by nature in our real universe. We may find lots of mathematically consistent structures which have no physical implementation in our actual universe. And I feel that String Theory is one of these.
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5154
Posted: July 10 2013 at 03:23
Earendil wrote:
Do you think that it's even possible for science to find a theory of everything? What if the results are infinitely regressive?
This is an old dilemma, on one side we strive for understanding ever more and we dream with finding a theory of everything, but if we did ever find it, would might that imply? would 'the future unfold in front of our eyes'?, would there still be randomness and unpredictability preventing us from knowing the future?, would it affect our freewill? would the motivation of knowing and understanding fade away, as if 'there's nothing more for us to do'? In a certain sense, while we search for it, we hope to never find it, for the consequences might be scary.
As for the video, honestly I don't hear anything that scientists are not aware of, he's just blablabla trying to sound transcendental, nothing of what the guy says should be any reason for being anti-scientific.
Joined: November 17 2008
Location: Indiana, USA
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Points: 1584
Posted: July 10 2013 at 08:58
Gerinski wrote:
Earendil wrote:
Do you think that it's even possible for science to find a theory of everything? What if the results are infinitely regressive?
This is an old dilemma, on one side we strive for understanding ever more and we dream with finding a theory of everything, but if we did ever find it, would might that imply? would 'the future unfold in front of our eyes'?, would there still be randomness and unpredictability preventing us from knowing the future?, would it affect our freewill? would the motivation of knowing and understanding fade away, as if 'there's nothing more for us to do'? In a certain sense, while we search for it, we hope to never find it, for the consequences might be scary.
As for the video, honestly I don't hear anything that scientists are not aware of, he's just blablabla trying to sound transcendental, nothing of what the guy says should be any reason for being anti-scientific.
I don't think he's being anti-scientific. My understanding of what he's saying is that this question is outside the scope of science. You can't drive your car to the moon. But you can drive your car to a spaceship and then fly to the moon.
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5154
Posted: July 10 2013 at 12:38
Earendil wrote:
I don't think he's being anti-scientific. My understanding of what he's saying is that this question is outside the scope of science. You can't drive your car to the moon. But you can drive your car to a spaceship and then fly to the moon.
I don't know how far can we drive, nor in how many steps, but let's drive as much as we can and see where do we get to. If you already think that you will hit a wall so it's not worth trying, no good.
Personally I'm also wary of a 'theory of everything', among many other things it's highly doubtful that it would 'explain everything'. Mathematical physics theories as we understand them now are unlikely to be able to explain emergent phenomena such as life, consciousness, chaos, fractals, social behaviour and all other manifestations of emergent complexity, emotions, love... but we should not give up trying to understand ever more, in some way it may seem that learning about the universe where we live in is the reason why we exist.
Joined: November 17 2008
Location: Indiana, USA
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Points: 1584
Posted: July 10 2013 at 12:52
Absolutely. It's amazing to think how much we've learned, and I agree that we should never stop using science to learn more, even if it's only part of the picture.
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Posted: July 11 2013 at 16:51
At any rate, String Theory may be an amusing (or even fascinating) idea to ponder, but at best it remains an interesting hypothesis. Quantum mechanics on the other hand is even more mind-boggling, and it is proven to be true. Now, that is genuinely fascinating. Don't fall prey of popular talking about string theory unless you are already familiar with quantum mechanics, I bet that knowing quantum mechanics and knowing that it has been proven to be true (up to our experimental accuracy limits) is going to give your thought much more food than all that string theory stuff (serious and respectable physics undoubtedly, but still unproven speculation).
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5154
Posted: July 11 2013 at 17:14
Gerinski wrote:
I am actually cautiously respectful of John Wheeler's philosophy which roughly states that the 'purpose of life' is to understand (or rather, 'to make real' or 'make happen') the universe ('the participatory universe principle'), or those who propose that 'consciousness' eventually will evolve to encompass all the knowledge required to understand the universe, effectively making a loop where 'understanding' or 'awareness' and 'physical reality' are just two sides of the same coin.
At the time of writing that post the name of such a view's proponent didn't come to my mind but I remembered it, for anyone interested it's Frank Tipler's Omega Point hypothesis
Joined: November 17 2008
Location: Indiana, USA
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Points: 1584
Posted: July 11 2013 at 17:45
Gerinski wrote:
At any rate, String Theory may be an amusing (or even fascinating) idea to ponder, but at best it remains an interesting hypothesis. Quantum mechanics on the other hand is even more mind-boggling, and it is proven to be true. Now, that is genuinely fascinating. Don't fall prey of popular talking about string theory unless you are already familiar with quantum mechanics, I bet that knowing quantum mechanics and knowing that it has been proven to be true (up to our experimental accuracy limits) is going to give your thought much more food than all that string theory stuff (serious and respectable physics undoubtedly, but still unproven speculation).
I thought I had a decent (non-technical) understanding of quantum mechanics until I just listened to a theoretical physicist as a guest on a podcast. Just as mind-blowing (and incredible that we can know it to be true) as when I first heard about it.
Also amazing, but in a depressing way, most people don't have a clue about any of it.
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Posted: July 11 2013 at 18:07
Earendil wrote:
I thought I had a decent (non-technical) understanding of quantum mechanics until I just listened to a theoretical physicist as a guest on a podcast. Just as mind-blowing (and incredible that we can know it to be true) as when I first heard about it.
Also amazing, but in a depressing way, most people don't have a clue about any of it.
This is an unforgivable cultural shame. One of the most important (if not the most) milestones in human knowledge and it's basically unknown by most of the population. The same with Relativity (both Special and General), they were discovered 100 yeas ago and yet they are not known (let alone understood) by most normal people... but, sure they know about computer games and Facebook... what kind of world are we living in?
Sure, quantum mechanics and relativity rarely touch our daily lives in direct ways, but the fact that such important rules governing our world are known only by a very small part of the population is sad.
Joined: August 11 2005
Location: Philly
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Posted: July 15 2013 at 07:18
Gerinski wrote:
At any rate, String Theory may be an amusing (or even fascinating) idea to ponder, but at best it remains an interesting hypothesis. Quantum mechanics on the other hand is even more mind-boggling, and it is proven to be true. Now, that is genuinely fascinating. Don't fall prey of popular talking about string theory unless you are already familiar with quantum mechanics, I bet that knowing quantum mechanics and knowing that it has been proven to be true (up to our experimental accuracy limits) is going to give your thought much more food than all that string theory stuff (serious and respectable physics undoubtedly, but still unproven speculation).
It wouldn't even be possible to understand an iota of string theory without grasping quantum mechanics first.
"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
Joined: August 11 2005
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Posted: July 15 2013 at 07:19
My research is technically in string theory, so I guess I should say I find it interesting? I'm reluctant to say I do if we're considering it as a physical theory because I have low expectations that it will prove to be viable.
"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5154
Posted: July 15 2013 at 08:57
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
My research is technically in string theory, so I guess I should say I find it interesting? I'm reluctant to say I do if we're considering it as a physical theory because I have low expectations that it will prove to be viable.
That's interesting. I also think it more to be a mathematics theory than a physics one, but that's also fine, many interesting progresses have started by a theoretical mathematics discovery and only later found application in real fields of science.
Joined: March 21 2008
Location: Tigerstaden
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Posted: July 15 2013 at 09:15
my understanding of physics goes in two directions one based on my interest in solarsystem and space, from age of 5 and i feel i take sceince naturaly since it hs been in my life so very long, ( i started with universe science and dinosaur science on the same time, age of 4-5 maybe as earl as 2 years old), so sceince is like water for me, astronomy and palentology as i leanrd thats their name when i was 20ish ).
i have then been through everything, biology, zoology, ornithology, anatomy, geography, geology, cosmology,
but i have also a wide interest in fantastic literature so my taste for philology, mythology, linguistics, symbology, fairy-tales, myth, folklore, theology, humanism,
String theory intrigues both my scientific part of my brain but also the fantastical part of my brain, its feeds on both my curiosity and imagination, my hunger for learning more of science but also hunger for fantasy literature, with multiple dimensions.
Joined: August 22 2010
Location: Indiana
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Points: 20623
Posted: July 15 2013 at 09:23
Just curious......has there been any actual testing of this theory on a practical level via colliders or the like that show there's any merit to the theory..?
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin
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Earendil wrote:
