"'I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,' he told the newspaper. 'I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark.'"*
I'm a disciple of scienceposted by Celsius1414 at 2:42 PM on May 16, 2011 [13 favorites]
I know the universe is in full compliance with natural laws,
but many place reliance on the psuedo-science of
quacks and morons and fools because,
their educations deficient,
they put faith in omniscient,
make believe beings who control their fate,
but the Hawk ain't with it, dig it,
their Holy writ ain't the least bit legit,
its a bunch of bullshit.
They need to read a book that's not so damn old,
let reason take hold,
though truth to be told,
they're probably already too far gone,
withdrawn, the conclusion foregone.
But maybe there is still hope for the young,
if they reject the dung being slung from the tongues,
of the ignorant fools who call themselves preachers,
and listen instead to their science teachers.
HAWKING: It was in 1963 that I first developed an interest in Wagner, or Wagner, as my speech synthesizer pronounces him. I had just been diagnosed as having ALS, or Motor Neuro Disease. and given a distinct impression I didn't have long to live. I regarded Wagner as music that was dark enough for my mood. My mother bought me tickets to go to the Wagner festival at Bayreuth in Germany, and I went with my sister, Philippa. It was magic. His personal use and conduct were pretty objectionable. But his music, though sometimes pompous and long-winded, reaches a level no one else does.
I don't actually know much about Hawking's work-- can someone explain this to me in not-too-sciencey terms? I thought black holes were black because not even (electromagnetic) radiation can escape their gravitational pull.I read about this on wikipedia the other day. The overview section of the Hawking Radiation explains it, but basically particles and anti-particles pop in and out of existence in ordinary space (so particle and anti-particle) This happens 'inside' the black hole, but in some cases one of the particles will get outside the event horizon due to quantum tunneling.
Q: What is the value in knowing "Why are we here?"Weird. Is he advocating some kind of social eugenics? The thing about evolution is that it's natural selection. Eugenicists actually had it backwards: The people most likely to pass on their genes are usually the poor, people with less education. The most "evolutionarily successful" society has been the Chinese, just in terms of pure numbers. And most of that growth took place while they were desperately poor and pre-modern. And now that they are modern they clamping down on birth rates.
A: The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value.
Please prove this statement, showing all work.Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Modern science is clearly aware of it's own limits. Unless there is some unexpected breakthrough then it will definitely be the case that can't know everything.
we all have our own truths and we shouldn't disrespect others' truthsPerhaps if you change "truths" to "beliefs", but either it's true that the Ganges flows from Shiva's hair, or it's not true. It can't be true for me and false for you.
What of the "infinite universe" theory? Where if the universe is infinite, then all possibilities must exist? Wouldn't an afterlife fit in with that?When you prove that there is a nonzero probability of the afterlife, you may have a point.
"On reading it I had one of those familiar, sinking moments of realisation that my brain is so spectacularly inferior to the interviewee's that all I can do is hold up my hands and say: "Huh?"...posted by dgaicun at 4:57 PM on May 16, 2011
To me, it feels as though he is referring to the idea that there are many possible universes and that we can use Darwinian ideas of natural selection to work out which might be most hospitable to life as we know it, and because they are habitable in some sense we value them more highly. That's my best guess, but I have minimal confidence in it being right."
Christopher Hitchens is unintellectual?He knows a lot of words but are his thoughts
The point of QM is not just that we don't know where something is and how it's moving, but that these qualities don't in fact exist simultaneously. So science is unable to describe something because it isn't there.That is completely wrong. The reason you can't observe the two properties independently (position and momentum, by the way) is that in order to observe them you have to alter them. But they certainly exist. What you wrote is total nonsense.
That's been proven since Goedel and Turing.Another good example, although that's more about math then science.
Actually this is completely wrong, as demonstrated last month in a certain nuclear reactor in Japan or the monitor you're using to view this message, neither of which would be possible if electrons and neutrons actually had a classical position and momentum. (As a matter of fact, you can add your body to the list of things that are impossible applying classical mechanics to sub-atomic particles.)Could you re-state that in a way that indicates you have any idea what you're talking about? Nuclear reactors, as far as I know, have nothing to do with the Uncertainty principle.
Position is the eigenvalue of the position operator. Momentum is the eigenvalue of the momentum operator. The two operators do not commute. They have no simultaneous eigenvalues. Therefore, a state vector represents a particle as NOT HAVING, simultaneously, both a definite position and momentum.Hmm, interesting. What about this from the wikipedia article though:
The Uncertainty Principle is often misstated so as to imply that simultaneous measurements of both the position and momentum cannot be made. There is a simple Gedanken experiment that illustrates what physics does allow. Imagine a hollow evacuated sphere where the internal surface is covered by microscopic detectors that measure the position and time of contact of a He atom. Inside the sphere is one single He atom that bounces randomly from one point to another. Each time it contacts the wall, its position is measured to arbitrary accuracy, therefore its future momentum is uncertain. The time of the contact can be measured with arbitrary accuracy, therefore the future energy is uncertain. However, at the next contact with the inner surface of the sphere another accurate measurement of position and time can be made. Knowledge of those accurate times and positions allows us to compute a history of arbitrarily accurate simultaneous positions and momentums along with times and energies.Which seems to imply that both position and momentum do exist, they just can't be measured simultaneously, but can be measured over time.
Yeah, quite a lot of mathematicians and physicists consider this argument to be nonsense. The incompleteness theorems say nothing about the universe itself, they only apply to axiomatic systems.Do you think the universe is non-axiomatic?
There is a point beyond which our greatest science cannot reach and will not ever reach.
Nuclear reactors take advantage of this by using neutron-moderating materials to increase the positional uncertainty of neutrons, increasing the chances of interaction with a fissionable atomic nucleiThat's not really true. Different atoms have different neutron cross sections, and it happens that U235 has a larger cross section for thermal neutrons, while U238 actually has a smaller cross section so a thermal neutron that's been slowed down in, for example, water will be more likely to hit a U235 atom and continue a chain reaction and less likely to be absorbed in a U238 atom. According to wikipedia anyway:
Most fission reactors are thermal reactors that use a neutron moderator to slow down, or thermalize the neutrons produced by nuclear fission. Moderation substantially increases the fission cross section for fissile nuclei such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. In addition, uranium-238 also has a much lower capture cross section for thermal neutrons, allowing more neutrons to cause fission of fissile nuclei and continue the chain reaction, rather than being captured by 238UHow nuclear cross sections are derived from the standard model isn't made clear, but it doesn't seem to be as simple as you're making it out to be.
"[…] Science is not a tradition, it is the organized use of evidence from the real world to make inferences about the real world – meaning the real universe, which is, in Carl Sagan’s words, all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Science knows approximately how, and when, our Earth will end. In about five billion years the sun will run out of hydrogen, which will upset its self-regulating equilibrium; in its death-throes it will swell, and this planet will vaporise. Before that, we can expect, at unpredictable intervals measured in tens of millions of years, bombardment by dangerously large meteors or comets. Any one of these impacts could be catastrophic enough to destroy all life, as the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago nearly did. In the nearer future, it is pretty likely that human life will become extinct – the fate of almost all species that have ever lived.posted by hot soup girl at 7:21 PM on May 16, 2011 [3 favorites]
[…]
However it happens, the end of the world will be a parochial little affair, unnoticed in the universe at large. The end of the universe itself is a matter of current debate among physicists, a debate that I recommend as providing a salutary, long-term, humbling perspective on human preoccupations and follies."
There is NO basis for moral behavior in rational thought. The last person to even attempt it was Kant, and the effort is now considered laughable.I think what you can say is that people have an innate drive to morality and ethics without needing some other reason. We don't need religion to make us want to have sex, which is necessary for the propagation of the species, why would we need it to behave with a modicum of morality (i.e. not killing each other) which is equally necessary.
It is fine to say, as Mitrovarr does, that "it's plainly obvious we should be good to each other". The point is there's no RATIONAL basis for believing that.There's no rational basis for wanting to have sex or even to continue to live. But we all feel those things. There are plenty of rational reasons not to want to overeat, but in fact it's hard not too.
Oh? Describe an experiment that would prove that.Love is a psychological effect that can be measured empirically. All you have to do is ask people to self-report how much they love certain things. Say on a 1-10 scale. This can be used to predict their behavior towards those things.
The burden is not on me to demonstrate that morality has no rational basis. Since you're the one that believes it does, then the burden is on YOU to prove that it does.No, there is no need to prove that morality has a rational basis. In fact there is no reason for morality to have a rational basis. An irrational basis is perfectly sufficient.
If that's the case, then I suppose you would acknowledge that Hawking's whole basis for finding fault with religion disappears, yes?What is it? All I read was that he didn't believe in the afterlife. I didn't say he thought religion was bad.
And by this standard then, all we need to do to prove God exists is to ask people to self-report their beliefs?No, but we can measure their belief in god that way. You obviously believe that Religion is a real thing with an effect on the world. How is that different then love? Both exist only inside people's heads. All we know about them is what people tell us.
And the idea that we are "wired" for love and respect has as little, or as much, evidence behind it as the idea that we are "wired" for brutality and selfishness.So a couple of things here. First of all there is plenty of evidence for both of those things. And of course people can be incredibly brutal defending the people they love. The individuals these forces are directed at are not the same, thus, wars.
Dear gilrain - It is a great testament to whatever wonderful education system you emerged out of that you are so finely attuned to the casual racism that underpins our imperialist notions of "the savage" and "civilization". Kudos. Why you bring race into a discussion about culture, however, is anyone's guess.As opposed to one that made you feel comfortable opining on 'the savages' without actually being able to name any.
And universally ignored.You're not making a coherent point anymore. The entire basis of your origional argument was that people were good, and they were good because of vestigial religion in society. Now you're saying they're bad. The people in charge of the U.S. government in the 20th century all claimed to be religious, so how can you blame atheism for their behavior?
First of all, we need to acknowledge that the spiral into self-destruction is not an abstraction. Precisely through the lever of triumphant reason, we have come very close to accomplishing this in just the last century. Cuban Missile crisis, anyone? Perhaps we should ask the victims of Hiroshima how barbarous and destructive a society America is? Or the Tuskegeee Airmen? Or the subjects of the tests conducted by the leading members of the cognitive science community, on behalf of the CIA, to determine whether brainwashing was possible?
The sad fact is that small, isolated groups will tend to ostracize and torment those who are different. A single day at an average high school will tell you this.Again, a failure to follow your own argument. You first said it was due to religion based sympathy that Hawking was still alive. Then you said that 'savages' (i.e. people without christian religion) put their elderly on ice-flows contrasting with christian culture of life stuff.
What Adorno saw, and I agree with him, was that such a society was becoming more and more barbarous even as it became gradually more and more committed to the values of the enlightenment. He saw it in Nazi Germany, and he saw it in the United States.Well, I would argue that after the orgy of violence in the middle of the 20th century things have been cooling down. This Adorno guy died in 1969. The world is much less gruesome then it was in 1944. And not only that, if you include disease and not just death dealt from the human hand 1944 was less gruesome, worldwide, then 1844. Certainly it was a better time to be an American, or a Canadian, or a Mexican or a citizen of anywhere in the developing world.
I argued that a basis for believing that people should be "good" could not be furnished by rational systems.Yes, but this has MULTIPLE problems if you're going to use it as an argument that religion makes people good.
The "coherent point" was that the 20th century was one of the most shockingly barbarous and self-destructive in recorded history. It is not an abstraction. It is real.The problem with this is that it's incredibly euro-centric. The united states was far more barbarous in the 19th century then in the 20th. If you look at WWII, it was certainly pretty bad. But it was only 1 decade out of 10. The 1990s, I would bet, were more peaceful and pleasant for the average human then any decades in any prior century. In fact in the U.S. there was a practically monotonic improvement in living standards.
I am not the one equating "savage" and "tribe" with skin color.Well you do everyone a favor and shut up? You're adding zero to the discussion.
Are you so emotionally invested in Metafilter that me being here makes you feel unwell? It makes me sad on many levels.Well, you posted a few more substantial comments since then, but that comment was completely pointless and just a waste of everyone's time. On metafilter you can 'derail' a thread by starting a pointless argument, which is what you were doing.
"Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk"
When I asked Samu to confirm that he had indeed considered killing Etueni, he simply smiled and gave me one of his enigmatic eyebrow raises. Ultimately, though, Samu decided he could not do it. He said he couldn't because he was scared of God.Whether this is actually true or not, I think it is a beautiful story and a great example of what faith really is. Don't get me wrong - I don't think that a belief in God prevented this boy from killing his friend. I think everybody has an innate revulsion of killing. But the stories that were told to this boy give him a reason not to do it. Faith helps keep us sane.
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posted by ericb at 2:28 PM on May 16, 2011