3 ms·

Dr. George Ellis speaks about physicists that knock philosophy, while they themselves regularly engage in metaphysics. [...] George F. R. Ellis, the physicist-

by hachiya 12y ago

Dr. George Ellis speaks about physicists that knock philosophy, while they themselves regularly engage in metaphysics. [...] George F. R. Ellis, the physicist-mathematician-cosmologist, an authority on the Big Bang and other cosmic mysteries. [...] Horgan: Lawrence Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, claims that physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. Do you agree? Ellis: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t. Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.

cromwellian 12y ago
This is a twisting of what Krauss says. Krauss merely shows that the current known laws of physics are not inconsistent with this scenario. He does not claim there is evidence that proves this is what happened. It's not much different than seeing that some solutions of General Relatively permit warp travel. It doesn't prove it can work, merely that the current known theories allow it. Also, the comments he makes on determinism are nonsense, and resemble the claims of creationists. A computer can't arise from the laws of physics because it had a designer? By transitivity, this implies human beings could not have been the result of bottom up physical processes either. Is what way is this claim scientific or testable? "there is a group of people out there writing papers based on the idea that physics is a computational process. But a physical law is not an algorithm. So who chooses the computational strategy and the algorithms that realise a specific physical law? (Finite elements perhaps?) What language is it written in? (Does Nature use Java or C++? What machine code is used?) Where is the CPU? What is used for memory, and in what way are read and write commands executed? Additionally if it’s a computation, how does Nature avoid the halting problem? It’s all a very bad analogy that does not work." This just seems really poorly reasoned out. What does the halting problem have to do with it? Total non-sequitur. Why can't the physical laws merely be a kind of cellular automata? No need to solve any halting problems. Things interact iteratively, new states arise, some of those states lead to more complex forms, etc. Since cellular automata have been proven to be universal, that means in principle, any thing that is computable can be carried out, and therefore, all of classical computer science fits perfectly in this view without having to invoke some kind of Penrose-like "the universe solves non-computable functions" magic. If you asked Ellis how planets or galaxies formed, he would not say "What algorithm caused star/galaxy/solar system formation", or "how does the computer solve N-body problems of trillions of elements". There's no need to posit a designed algorithm for these things, merely that the system interacts with itself in ways that evolve towards these structures, that human beings produce higher level mathematical models to predict and manipulate more easily. I don't think any scientist working today works under the delusion that our theories are anything but models.
- PakG1 12y ago
  I don't think any scientist working today works under the delusion that our theories are anything but models. This. I think this is a key point that the general population doesn't understand. And it leads to debates like this. The debate itself is moot because the debate would be a non-issue if all sides understood this point.
  - onnoonno 12y ago
    Well, but the post you replied to states how humans would fully be part of this deterministic system. So, arguably, s/he made the assumption that science does indeed reflect on reality in a deep way and isn't merely a model.
    - yid 12y ago
      > and isn't merely a model This is a leap in logic.
  - waps 12y ago
    I don't think that an understanding of the concept of models would make the general public understand. Science is replacing religion. And a religion can do anything it wants, on any subject, except for one thing : it can't say "we don't know" on any popular question. Science has a lot of "we don't know" answers. They only really came to light in the 20th century however, after the enlightenment had already so thoroughly captured academia and philosophers in general there was no going back. The enlightenment had also already caused so much death, corruption (resulting in economic disasters) and severed heads, of course, that it was getting swiftly kicked out of government as well, and serious government funds were going to the restoration of the churches' position in society (that only partly worked because of the sheer numbers of clergy killed by said government). So a massive rift between academia and general society opened up, and I'd say it's still mostly there. But after all the hubhub around enlightenment and the switchover of academia, ever more "we don't know" type answers kept coming in. But philosophers are famous for ignoring practicalities, whether we're talking ancient, medieval, renaissance, enlightenment or modern era philosophers. And thus the story that science has all the answers and that it isn't possible that scientific theories have serious shortcomings. In practice, I would say that scientific theories are merely "the best available" theory. And of course, there's the little matter of these theories being used against religion. Big bang theory is rather important. But, let's compare inflation and the speed of light. That can't possibly be right ... (yes I know it explains another "bigger" inconsistency, but I think reasonable people should agree at a rather high cost). Evolution theory. Oops ... higher animals don't evolve through mutation. And the trend towards that evolution works, not on a species level but more on a group, or "group of groups" level. The trend that you can split the genes that are unique to humans in 2 groups : about 30% that come from known bacteria, and 70% we don't know where they came from, but they sure as hell did not come from mutation. And let's just not go anywhere near climate science, or you'll notice just how biased hacker news is, when, of course, there is legitimate criticism against climate science that could mean the whole thing is just simply wrong. Now of course, most of these are interesting questions. So you have some criticism, great ! Let's do some research. But of course, part of the criticism comes from groups that want to push religion (and we're in the west, in the middle east it works entirely different) or government policies. Like in the middle ages and during the renaissance, science is an important source of government policies, and this of course means that politicians can't ignore universities or just leave them be. The enlightenment is a great and horrible thing. It's the new religion. Can't go spoiling that with "we don't know".
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality. See this? This is why I've developed a major skepticism that the field of Philosophy is actually on to anything at all these days. A field that's really finding out about the world should be able to get by without denying the existence of knowledge outside itself.

by hachiya 12y ago

cromwellian 12y ago

This is a twisting of what Krauss says. Krauss merely shows that the current known laws of physics are not inconsistent with this scenario. He does not claim there is evidence that proves this is what happened. It's not much different than seeing that some solutions of General Relatively permit warp travel. It doesn't prove it can work, merely that the current known theories allow it. Also, the comments he makes on determinism are nonsense, and resemble the claims of creationists. A computer can't arise from the laws of physics because it had a designer? By transitivity, this implies human beings could not have been the result of bottom up physical processes either. Is what way is this claim scientific or testable? "there is a group of people out there writing papers based on the idea that physics is a computational process. But a physical law is not an algorithm. So who chooses the computational strategy and the algorithms that realise a specific physical law? (Finite elements perhaps?) What language is it written in? (Does Nature use Java or C++? What machine code is used?) Where is the CPU? What is used for memory, and in what way are read and write commands executed? Additionally if it’s a computation, how does Nature avoid the halting problem? It’s all a very bad analogy that does not work." This just seems really poorly reasoned out. What does the halting problem have to do with it? Total non-sequitur. Why can't the physical laws merely be a kind of cellular automata? No need to solve any halting problems. Things interact iteratively, new states arise, some of those states lead to more complex forms, etc. Since cellular automata have been proven to be universal, that means in principle, any thing that is computable can be carried out, and therefore, all of classical computer science fits perfectly in this view without having to invoke some kind of Penrose-like "the universe solves non-computable functions" magic. If you asked Ellis how planets or galaxies formed, he would not say "What algorithm caused star/galaxy/solar system formation", or "how does the computer solve N-body problems of trillions of elements". There's no need to posit a designed algorithm for these things, merely that the system interacts with itself in ways that evolve towards these structures, that human beings produce higher level mathematical models to predict and manipulate more easily. I don't think any scientist working today works under the delusion that our theories are anything but models.

PakG1 12y ago
I don't think any scientist working today works under the delusion that our theories are anything but models. This. I think this is a key point that the general population doesn't understand. And it leads to debates like this. The debate itself is moot because the debate would be a non-issue if all sides understood this point.
- onnoonno 12y ago
  Well, but the post you replied to states how humans would fully be part of this deterministic system. So, arguably, s/he made the assumption that science does indeed reflect on reality in a deep way and isn't merely a model.
  - yid 12y ago
    > and isn't merely a model This is a leap in logic.
- waps 12y ago
  I don't think that an understanding of the concept of models would make the general public understand. Science is replacing religion. And a religion can do anything it wants, on any subject, except for one thing : it can't say "we don't know" on any popular question. Science has a lot of "we don't know" answers. They only really came to light in the 20th century however, after the enlightenment had already so thoroughly captured academia and philosophers in general there was no going back. The enlightenment had also already caused so much death, corruption (resulting in economic disasters) and severed heads, of course, that it was getting swiftly kicked out of government as well, and serious government funds were going to the restoration of the churches' position in society (that only partly worked because of the sheer numbers of clergy killed by said government). So a massive rift between academia and general society opened up, and I'd say it's still mostly there. But after all the hubhub around enlightenment and the switchover of academia, ever more "we don't know" type answers kept coming in. But philosophers are famous for ignoring practicalities, whether we're talking ancient, medieval, renaissance, enlightenment or modern era philosophers. And thus the story that science has all the answers and that it isn't possible that scientific theories have serious shortcomings. In practice, I would say that scientific theories are merely "the best available" theory. And of course, there's the little matter of these theories being used against religion. Big bang theory is rather important. But, let's compare inflation and the speed of light. That can't possibly be right ... (yes I know it explains another "bigger" inconsistency, but I think reasonable people should agree at a rather high cost). Evolution theory. Oops ... higher animals don't evolve through mutation. And the trend towards that evolution works, not on a species level but more on a group, or "group of groups" level. The trend that you can split the genes that are unique to humans in 2 groups : about 30% that come from known bacteria, and 70% we don't know where they came from, but they sure as hell did not come from mutation. And let's just not go anywhere near climate science, or you'll notice just how biased hacker news is, when, of course, there is legitimate criticism against climate science that could mean the whole thing is just simply wrong. Now of course, most of these are interesting questions. So you have some criticism, great ! Let's do some research. But of course, part of the criticism comes from groups that want to push religion (and we're in the west, in the middle east it works entirely different) or government policies. Like in the middle ages and during the renaissance, science is an important source of government policies, and this of course means that politicians can't ignore universities or just leave them be. The enlightenment is a great and horrible thing. It's the new religion. Can't go spoiling that with "we don't know".

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality. See this? This is why I've developed a major skepticism that the field of Philosophy is actually on to anything at all these days. A field that's really finding out about the world should be able to get by without denying the existence of knowledge outside itself.