Science Forums 2

[AnssiH]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

And that, my dear, is the essence of Newton's theory of gravity. Actually it is pretty obvious if you think about it.

Haha, and what is really interesting, when you think about the logical steps that led to the theory, how far from obvious it was when thought through the previous paradigm. I.e. people stuck in their intuitive ideas are just not capable of thinking these sorts of things through.

It is fascinating, that when it become apparent that our law of gravity does not explain the velocity of the outer stars in large galaxies (they are moving much faster than the newtonian law predicts ), people were quite reluctant to consider the possibility that our law of gravity is wrong. Much easier to keep the old paradigm and add invisible matter to the soup, in just the places where it is needed to explain the observations. To me that tastes a lot like "adding epicycles" (or postulating figure of eight orbits) to an old model until it explains everything we see.

And the history of the world is just chocked full of fascinating examples like this. Here's an interesting quote from "Saint Augustine", and his argument about why the "bottom of the earth" cannot be inhabited by people;


But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled.

Notice how many concepts from the old paradigm are just mixed in his train of thought, even after he already (apparently) believes earth is in fact spherical.


It is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man.


I.e. the bottom half cannot be inhabited by people because all people originated from one place on earth (from Adam, of course), and it has not been possible for anyone to traverse to the bottom half over the ocean that lies in between.

Don't make the mistake that those people were just dumber than people today. It is not a trivial thing to analytically investigate a different paradigm. If you don't recognize the undefendable nature of your beliefs, the different paradigms do sound quite ridiculous. "But if you inquire from those who defend these marvellous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne to the middle, and that they are all joined together towards the middle, as we see spokes in a wheel; but that the bodies which are light, as mist, smoke, and fire, are borne away from the middle, so as to seek the heaven. I am at a loss what to say respecting those who, when they have once erred, consistently persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another."

Even today people argue entirely from within their pre-existing paradigms, and they do not recognize how their argument hinges on undefendable beliefs on very many aspects about reality. The arguments may be more elaborate than those old examples, but if really start analyzing the situation, it is exactly the same.

Furthermore, examination of the implied orbit periods of the rest of the planets in the solar system yield very little reason to disbelieve the theory. In fact, since then most everyone uses that very equation to determine the mass of the various planets.

Yes it is also fascinating that people tend to forget that it was a specific model that allowed us to determine a variable (the mass of a planet), and when they forget that, they start using that determined variable as "experimentally measured and verified fact" as a defense towards the validity of the very model that allowed them to give a number to the variable in the first place. It still is, ladies and gentleman, a pre-existing theory of an atom that allowed us to "probe the atom", i.e. to interpret the results of our experiments.

Of course you can say that there exists dark matter "that does not interact with anything but gravity" (so to speak) and thus "the motion of the stars is the proof of its existence", much like some people readily claim M&M experiment is the proof of relativistic spacetime, and that the redshift of light from faraway galaxies is the proof that "the fabric of space is expanding" (Put this together with "spacetime", and "thus reality began from a singularity" etc.)

It is fascinating that people take the explanations to observations as being proven "ontologically true" by the observations themselves (in the sense that it is "the" way things are), and even though we have done that throughout the history of the world and been mistaken over and over, that belief stays just as firmly in the minds of people today.

I would say it is much more objective to take the theories as an explanation to a given observation, and so explicitly keep in mind that there always exists incredibly many ways to explain anything.

Furthermore it is fascinating to me, that people tend to still use "Occam's razor" to defend their pet explanation, because in their mind it is somehow simpler than another. I have no idea how they became convinced that ontological correctness is measured by the simplicity of a model, and furthermore I have no idea how to measure simplicity. Many people are of the opinion that dark matter is simpler explanation, while other people say modification to gravity is clearly much simpler. That is of course a matter of your perspective. And certainly both can be formulated into equally valid form (predictionwise).

So now tie the two together with a string (loose enough so they don't actually touch one another) and drop them again. Since the heavy one falls faster, it must drag the light one by the string; right? Makes sense doesn't it? Ah, but it brings up another problem; the two rocks together weigh more so the combination (when they are tied together) must fall faster than the heavy rock when it is not tied to the light rock. So the existence of the light rock must cause the heavy rock to fall faster. So exactly how does it do this? It “pushes” the heavy rock through the string?

Heh, that's pretty clever, and it reminds me of another unrelated debate I once had (regarding the philosophy of the mind), which displays nicely the thoughtlessness of people stuck inside their paradigm. This guy had convinced himself that subjective experience is something that everything has got to a degree (panpsychism). It's just the more complex systems that "understand more about nature" (such as our brain), but a rock also has got an experience about the hill it is rolling down, it's just much simpler experience.

So he had a problem with my assertion that subjective experience stands on a model about reality, i.e. a reality needs to be expressed in some form by the configuration of a system (the rock does not hold a definition of "a hill", the defined "objects" can be freely chosen, and the chosen references are quite immaterial), and furthermore one specific definition about subjective experience is that while there are many parts to a system, there is still just a single subjective experience over the "collective effort" of those many parts (which, if you think about it, leads to the so-called "hard problem of consciousness", which upon closer analysis arises from the undefendable assumption that reality is made of "objects" with identity).

So, I led the debate towards the inconsistency of his view, which is upon simple analysis that a rock has got a subjective experience, as does another rock next to it. A lump of clay has got a subjective experience too, and if you halve it, there's 2 different subjective experiences. A pile of sand has got an experience, as has got a pile of rocks (just an order of magnitude more complex subjective experience than the single rock). Tie two piles of rocks together with a rope; voila twice as complex subjective experience arises.

From that point it's easy to move the argument to the fact that in his definition subjective experience occurs to any randomly chosen set of elements and also over the entire universe, and ends up losing all its meaning. The air molecules in a box have got a subjective experience, as does the two halves of the box independently.

At this point we have entered the fact that our definitions of objects are, for all we know, semi-persistent patterns. Any semi-persistent pattern has got subjective experience ("yes" he said). A tornado consists of air molecules; also has got a subjective experience. When you take out the plug from a pool of water and there's that little vortex. Has got subjective experience, of course.

To this day he is of the opinion that the little vortex of water is subjectively aware of its surroundings.

Note that I am not talking about a belief regarding whether that is so or not. I am talking about how his definition of subjective experience lost its meaning with the requirement that it is applied self-coherently on his worldview.

-Anssi