Physics as changing ideologies?

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 26, 2015

Intelligent Design, News, Physics}

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Further to the current blaze of nonsense re the multiverse and the unfortunate news that naturalism is dead, at Not Even Wrong, mathematician Peter Woit notes, re Arkani-Harmed, here,

A couple years ago I was struck by a talk of his in which he showed a lot of self-knowledge, describing himself as an “ideolog” (see here). There’s more about this in the Quanta profile:

“It’s important for me while I’m working on something to be very ideological about it. And then, of course, it’s also important after you are done to forget the ideology and move on to another one.”

The ideologies on display this time include a very speculative picture of a future union of mathematics and theoretical physics:More.

‘Nuff said. You buy. You own.

See also The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).

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Comments

Mapou: So yes, God loves to play dice with the universe. And so do we :Dmike1962_{September 28, 2015
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IMO, Max Planck was the greatest physicist since Isaac Newton. He essentially taught the world that, unlike Einstein's silly continuous, deterministic block-universe, the real universe is discrete and probabilistic. So yes, God loves to play dice with the universe.Mapou_{September 28, 2015
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I've just revisited the Max Planck page on Wikiquote, and it seems to have been revamped to reveal that Planck was very much a potential UDeist/UDer, repeatedly disparaging the albatross around the neck of science that atheism constitutes. I trust the page won't have been sabotaged by the time you look at it. The new and very revealing quotes are towards the bottom of the page: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_PlanckAxel_{September 28, 2015
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Bornagain77: Something tells me that as long as the researchers deny agent causality then they will forever be ‘working on it’.
This is such an obvious truth — consciousness is so absolutely undeniably fundamental to reality — that one has to ask: what the H*** is wrong with people?Box_{September 26, 2015
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as to this statement from Woit's article:
"Ultimately, he said, anywhere from 10 to 500 years from now, the amplituhedron and these cosmological patterns will merge and become part of a single, spectacular mathematical structure that describes the entire past, present and future of everything “in some timeless, autonomous way.”…"
Hmmmm, a "spectacular mathematical structure that describes the entire past, present and future of everything,,," Including, apparently, the description of the exact day, time, place, and manner, in which Arkani-Hamed and company deduced the amplituhedron itself. That patently absurd claim reminds of Einstein's denial of his own free will:
Physicist George Ellis on the importance of philosophy and free will - July 27, 2014 Excerpt: And free will?: Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will? Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options. I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicist-george-ellis-on-the-importance-of-philosophy-and-free-will/
So did Arkani-Hamed and company deduce the amplituhedron? Or did the laws of physics deduce the amplituhedron and inform Arkani-Hamed and company of the event after the fact? Ironically, in atheists denying that God really exists, at the end of the day atheists end up denying that they themselves really exist as real persons with free will. But instead they end up being forced, by their atheistic worldview, to believe they are merely mindless automatons with no free will or consciousness.
Sam Harris's Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It - Martin Cothran - November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state -- including their position on this issue -- is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn't logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html (1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD Atheistic Materialism – Does Richard Dawkins Exist? – video Quote: "It turns out that if every part of you, down to sub-atomic parts, are still what they were when they weren't in you, in other words every ion,,, every single atom that was in the universe,, that has now become part of your living body, is still what is was originally. It hasn't undergone what metaphysicians call a 'substantial change'. So you aren't Richard Dawkins. You are just carbon and neon and sulfur and oxygen and all these individual atoms still. You can spout a philosophy that says scientific materialism, but there aren't any scientific materialists to pronounce it.,,, That's why I think they find it kind of embarrassing to talk that way. Nobody wants to stand up there and say, "You know, I'm not really here". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg&t=37m51s
In the following article, after playing some heavy politics, Richards Dawkins finally admits to this devastating inconsistency, i.e. the "I am an illusion' inconsistency, in his materialistic worldview:
Who wrote Richard Dawkins's new book? - October 28, 2006 Excerpt: Dawkins: What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do.,,, Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html Faith and Science - Dr. Raymond Bohlin - video - (2015) (48:46 minute mark) https://youtu.be/vTIp1kgSqzU?t=2552
At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins cautiously agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that:
"consciousness is an illusion"
A few minutes later in the debate Rowan Williams seizes the moment and asks Dawkins
”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”. Dawkins vs. Williams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac&t=22m57s
Of note, the amplituhedron simply allows calculations of quantum field theory to be made much more easily to do than they once were. Yet the amplituhedron still does not, in itself, offer a resolution to the number one mystery in physics today. Namely, how to unify Quantum Mechanics and Gravity.
A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics - September 17, 2013 Excerpt: But the new amplituhedron research suggests space-time, and therefore dimensions, may be illusory anyway.,,, Even without unitarity and locality, the amplituhedron formulation of quantum field theory does not yet incorporate gravity. But researchers are working on it.,,, https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/
Something tells me that as long as the researchers deny agent causality then they will forever be 'working on it'.
A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf
Verse and Music:
Romans 1:21-22 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, Hollywood Nights - Feel Like A Number https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WVUkIKr1kg
bornagain77_{September 26, 2015
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Materialism/naturalism is dead because the dreaded combinatorial explosion, the old enemy of BS, killed it before it was even born.Mapou_{September 26, 2015
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...the unfortunate news that naturalism is dead,...
You wish!Seversky_{September 26, 2015
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More related to the "Naturalism is dead" thread, but it appears to me that "naturalness" in the context of physics is very distinct from naturalism that is frequently discussed here. I don't think the Quanta article is saying that naturalism is dead. More background here.daveS_{September 26, 2015
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