3 ms·

Sorry, what? Is this guy a crackpot or have I missed some kind of joke? "The speed of light is created by our minds?" Then why do machines perceive it? Why do

Sorry, what? Is this guy a crackpot or have I missed some kind of joke? "The speed of light is created by our minds?" Then why do machines perceive it? Why do we notice no changes in it between minds? Why does all of our simple Physics work (e.g. refraction) assuming a fixed speed? Just because you want it to be true doesn't make it true.

TeHCrAzY 16y ago
We made the machines, they are our product, and will reflect that. This is at a much higher level than mere machines. However, I don't think he really explains a great deal. Much of his talk builds up upon itself, without ever seriously trying to back the claims.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Just because we built a machine to measure something doesn't mean it produces what we expect. Arguably, most of science is simply trying to account for the unexpected.
hugh3 16y ago
OK, I didn't watch the entire thing, but I skipped around for long enough to satisfy myself that he was setting off a lot of the old crackpot detectors. 1. There's a bit where he puts a quote from Descartes next to a quote from himself. 2. "You might think you are cosmic. But I hope to convince you you are not cosmic, you are Earthlike. And it's all because of a hypothesis I had..." 3. And the inevitable "conclusions" slide where it turns out that his hypothesis solves (in some way which can't be explained in a twelve-minute talk) all the major problems of physics today (dark matter, grand unification etc) So, Dr Ockels, I'm sticking you in the "provisional crackpot" bin, but if you'd like to explain your theories more carefully, on paper, and with a bunch more equations, I'll have a look at 'em.
gnosis 16y ago
It's questionable whether any being can know what another being perceives (or even if the other being perceives at all). Whether machines "perceive" and what it is they "perceive" (if they do "perceive" at all) is even more questionable. Some have even questioned whether even the individual self perceives, and the very existence of a self and of minds, etc. You don't have to be a crackpot to entertain such ideas. You just have to be interested in philosophy (or religion, as the Hindus came up with the idea that the entire world is illusory... many thousands of years ago).
- Robin_Message 16y ago
  > You don't have to be a crackpot to entertain such ideas. You just have to be interested in philosophy (or religion, as the Hindus came up with the idea that the entire world is illusory... many thousands of years ago). I agree, but you can't claim to be doing physics at the same time.
korch 16y ago
It's truly a sad day for philosophy when an old man who has lived an extraordinary life is rejected outright by the crowd who won't even bother to examine his words because the form of "truth" they can recognize must resemble a fantasy narrative they learned to believe in through 17 years of the modern classroom education format. Just because a thing cannot be expressed succinctly as a tautological formula(F=ma, etc) on a chalk board does not mean it's bunk, non-science and therefore worth completely ignoring. The guy was a friggin astronaut and is a professor of physics! How many people have been to space? Do you think you'll ever go to space in your life? Probably not. It's wise to listen up when one of just a few hundred human beings who have been to space says "hey, I've spent my life thinking about this based on my direct experience of having gone into space, and I want to share it with you because maybe you'll find it useful, and it might not even be perfectly true."

TeHCrAzY 16y ago

We made the machines, they are our product, and will reflect that. This is at a much higher level than mere machines. However, I don't think he really explains a great deal. Much of his talk builds up upon itself, without ever seriously trying to back the claims.

Groxx 16y ago
Just because we built a machine to measure something doesn't mean it produces what we expect. Arguably, most of science is simply trying to account for the unexpected.

hugh3 16y ago

OK, I didn't watch the entire thing, but I skipped around for long enough to satisfy myself that he was setting off a lot of the old crackpot detectors. 1. There's a bit where he puts a quote from Descartes next to a quote from himself. 2. "You might think you are cosmic. But I hope to convince you you are not cosmic, you are Earthlike. And it's all because of a hypothesis I had..." 3. And the inevitable "conclusions" slide where it turns out that his hypothesis solves (in some way which can't be explained in a twelve-minute talk) all the major problems of physics today (dark matter, grand unification etc) So, Dr Ockels, I'm sticking you in the "provisional crackpot" bin, but if you'd like to explain your theories more carefully, on paper, and with a bunch more equations, I'll have a look at 'em.

gnosis 16y ago

It's questionable whether any being can know what another being perceives (or even if the other being perceives at all). Whether machines "perceive" and what it is they "perceive" (if they do "perceive" at all) is even more questionable. Some have even questioned whether even the individual self perceives, and the very existence of a self and of minds, etc. You don't have to be a crackpot to entertain such ideas. You just have to be interested in philosophy (or religion, as the Hindus came up with the idea that the entire world is illusory... many thousands of years ago).

Robin_Message 16y ago
> You don't have to be a crackpot to entertain such ideas. You just have to be interested in philosophy (or religion, as the Hindus came up with the idea that the entire world is illusory... many thousands of years ago). I agree, but you can't claim to be doing physics at the same time.

korch 16y ago

It's truly a sad day for philosophy when an old man who has lived an extraordinary life is rejected outright by the crowd who won't even bother to examine his words because the form of "truth" they can recognize must resemble a fantasy narrative they learned to believe in through 17 years of the modern classroom education format. Just because a thing cannot be expressed succinctly as a tautological formula(F=ma, etc) on a chalk board does not mean it's bunk, non-science and therefore worth completely ignoring. The guy was a friggin astronaut and is a professor of physics! How many people have been to space? Do you think you'll ever go to space in your life? Probably not. It's wise to listen up when one of just a few hundred human beings who have been to space says "hey, I've spent my life thinking about this based on my direct experience of having gone into space, and I want to share it with you because maybe you'll find it useful, and it might not even be perfectly true."