Is Our Perception of the Universe Just a Black Box?

[Physics-Learner]

the big bang is not part of our universe, it created it. neither causality, energy, matter, space nor time apply to the big bang.

as far as what causes us to think is just evolutionary.

life started out because of dna.

as it evolved, organisms would keep things that were beneficial to it. or maybe put another way, lifeforms who evolved with things that were beneficial to it, ended up surviving in greater numbers, and passed those instructions along to the next generation.

much of the genetic changes is thought to occur due to radiation, and other cosmic phenomena. generally, such mutations are less helpful, and die off. but once in awhile, we get one that helps us, in some way.

and an organism simply evolves.

so perhaps why we evolved to be able to think - we can thank the various cosmic waves, radiation, alpha particles, and what have you that caused beneficial lifeform changes.

in other words, we now think, because of the happen chance of various universe phenomena.

heck, and i thought it was because i went to elementary school and was taught - LOL.

 

[petm1]

the big bang is not part of our universe, it created it. neither causality, energy, matter, space nor time apply to the big bang.

as far as what causes us to think is just evolutionary.

life started out because of dna.

as it evolved, organisms would keep things that were beneficial to it. or maybe put another way, lifeforms who evolved with things that were beneficial to it, ended up surviving in greater numbers, and passed those instructions along to the next generation.

much of the genetic changes is thought to occur due to radiation, and other cosmic phenomena. generally, such mutations are less helpful, and die off. but once in awhile, we get one that helps us, in some way.

and an organism simply evolves.

so perhaps why we evolved to be able to think - we can thank the various cosmic waves, radiation, alpha particles, and what have you that caused beneficial lifeform changes.

in other words, we now think, because of the happen chance of various universe phenomena.

heck, and i thought it was because i went to elementary school and was taught - LOL.

Life does not need consciousness. DNA may be the blueprint for life but if you can not use big bang as the cause of our universe then how can you use DNA as the cause of life? The big bang has everything to do with our visible universe just think of it as the blueprint for everything that came after, without BB where would we be? It is the relative singularly that the Big Bang dilated from that makes the theory breaks down in space, in time that same singularly could have existed for who knows how long.

 

[Physics-Learner]

well life is just one big chain of biology. i did not mean to imply that dna was the cause of life, since it is one link, albeit an important one, of a large chain.

various molecules began to form, and over the eons, more complicated chemical structures formed.

assuming the big bang happened, it is by definition the cause of our universe, since it created it. but we know nothing of the singularity. we don't know if it has causality or not.

according to the bbt, space, time, and matter were all part of the creation.

a previous poster replied that the big bang had no causality, but was part of our universe. and i am saying that the singularity was not a part of our universe.

and whatever caused the big bang to happen, if there was a cause, is not part of our universe. we can't make any conclusions about the super-universe. causality, time, space, matter, may or may not exist outside our universe. our universe is all we can know about.

as of yet, we know nothing in this universe that is not causal. i think this is because there is nothing in this universe that is not causal. brainstorm at least holds out for the possibility, if not probability, that we simply can not see non-causality.

 

[Max™]

it simply boils down to this - we see causality everywhere. either that is because we can not see non-causality, or because non-causality does not exist.

Or because we order information in a causal manner, as evolution did not see fit to provide us with the sort of information gathering/processing capabilities which would allow otherwise.

Due to the general behavior of matter, entropy, and such, any chemical reaction complex enough to be called a life form would probably need to shift a bit of entropy around, causing a reduction in one area, to produce usable work/effort/energy/information.

It does no good to observe events in a non-causal manner if your biology depends on causal ordering at the most fundamental levels.

It IS good to be able to consider non-causal outcomes, as it allows one to hypothesize, recall, and all those other wonderful parts of intelligence we take for granted.

 

[petm1]

I'm pretty sure I was there, at least the energy which later condensed into the matter which eventually wound up assuming the arrangement I identify as myself was there.

I agree with this except for the part about energy condensed into matter, would it not have expanded into matter? When I think of matter "now" I think of it as condensed relative to myself, but when it was formed just after BB it was expanding into its present form.

 

[Boy@n]

Universe is like a sandbox for 'consciousness'.

 

[Physics-Learner]

it still seems to me that using the logic of brainstorm, we can nullify anything we want.

for example, perhaps we can only "see" light traveling at c. therefore we could never measure anything else.

perhaps, we can only measure things up to the speed of light. therefore we could never measure anything faster.

etc. etc. they would all be used as tautologies.

look at all we have discovered, so far. it is all causal.

there is a lot to substantiate causality. and a lot to negate should we assume non-causality.

 

[brainstorm]

etc. etc. they would all be used as tautologies.

look at all we have discovered, so far. it is all causal.

there is a lot to substantiate causality. and a lot to negate should we assume non-causality.

Don't be so hasty to lump everything together and assume that what's true must be false because of tautology. The point isn't whether causality is false, it's whether it is an artifact of the universe or of human analysis of physicalities. Causality is like dimensionality. It helps us make sense of observations but it may be just a way of making sense and not something inherent in the physicalities observed. What kind of question would it be to ask what a non-causal universe would be like? That's like asking why existence is a feature of the universe. Of course everything in the universe exists; but there's nothing else to contrast it with.

 

[Physics-Learner]

i am not assuming that what's true must be false because of tautology. your logic is saying that what's true COULD BE false because of tautology.

we simply don't know what we don't know. we can't observe what is not observable.

so any topic you want to bring up, i can use your basic logic that you have presented, to cast doubt.

if this universe is not causal, we sure have an awful lot of physics that seems to do a pretty good job of defining a causal universe. and not one iota to suggest non-causality.

 

[Max™]

Last I checked, the Bell inequalities could still be satisfied by a local/non-causal effect, instead of the more commonly described non-local/causal version of QM.

 

[brainstorm]

i am not assuming that what's true must be false because of tautology. your logic is saying that what's true COULD BE false because of tautology.

we simply don't know what we don't know. we can't observe what is not observable.

so any topic you want to bring up, i can use your basic logic that you have presented, to cast doubt.

if this universe is not causal, we sure have an awful lot of physics that seems to do a pretty good job of defining a causal universe. and not one iota to suggest non-causality.

Are you able to distinguish between analytical tools and the physicalities they analyze? An analytical tool does not have a truth value in itself. It doesn't make sense to say that "length is true," although it can be true that something is 50cm long. This is why I'm pointing out the logical problem with tautological truth. If length or causality can be applied to anything physical, then it is not true or false in itself. It is only accurately applied or not as a tool. It would be silly to apply causality in some ways, such as asking what the cause of air is. Air in and of itself doesn't have a cause, or rather it could have many different causes depending on what aspect of it you're talking about. Causality isn't something about the universe, it is a way of looking at things that happen.

 

[Upisoft]

Last I checked, the Bell inequalities could still be satisfied by a local/non-causal effect, instead of the more commonly described non-local/causal version of QM.

Entangled particles can get pretty far from each other. Do you have any other idea what "local" may mean?

 

[Maui]

Entangled particles can get pretty far from each other. Do you have any other idea what "local" may mean?

He was saying science could be dead. There is no way to disprove a theory that posits that extremely weird coincidental stuff could happen like that, without a cause. You could only hand-wave it as nonsense.

 

[Upisoft]

He was saying science could be dead. There is no way to disprove a theory that posits that extremely weird coincidental stuff could happen like that, without a cause. You could only hand-wave it as nonsense.

Hand-wave your computer that uses QM effects then.

 

[Maui]

Hand-wave your computer that uses QM effects then.

He wasn't saying QM was somehow wrong. He was simply filling in the knowledge gap with fairy-tales(Neils Bohr belonged to this camp till his dying day). I've seen much worse, though.

 

[Max™]

No, I was pointing out that we can state for certain that the universe has either non-local effects, or non-causal ones. There is no way to describe QM with the assumption of locality and causality intact, it is commonly assumed that giving up causality as we know it would be unworkable, but it still technically remains an option.

Which was in response to the "everything we know is causal" post, it may not be possible to describe QM as a local/acausal theory, but to date we don't know for certain. It does seem possible to describe it as a non-local/causal theory though.

 

[Maui]

For the record Bohr didn't specifically say that there didn't exist causes for what we observe, incl. entangled states, but his own interpretation left little room for an underlying mechanism. What he was thinking in his intimate thoughts is not public, AFAIK.

 

[Max™]

I was more thinking of something in between. Not quite totally sacrificing causality and not totally preserving it. I could see something like that being required if such a suggestion were to be plausible at all. Perhaps extending the uh... hell, there's not really language to describe it well... temporal interaction of particles?

I dunno, but if one were trying to find causal violations, I'd start looking for ways to explain QM using them, myself.

 

[Physics-Learner]

Causality isn't something about the universe, it is a way of looking at things that happen.

have you considered that the way things happen IS SOMETHING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE ?

are you suggesting that the things that we have examined are not causal ?

for example, do you think that the light that comes to us from stars is not causal ? it is not the result of stars burning gases, etc. ?

what i am trying to tell you is that non-causality would basically nullify our physics, as we know it to be. yes, our physics, like most everything else, is a way of looking at things.

to gain any knowledge about anything we need to use tools. if you want to negate tools, then what is left ?

since by your way of thinking, tools are subject to tautology, just what method do you suggest we use to determine these physicalities ?

do you recall me saying (may have been in a different thread) that i am more interested in the way things are than what we measure them to be ? i think we get a distorted view of the universe since we don't see everything at once. can you imagine me looking at your face, and getting different time periods for different areas ? your face would look nothing like it does when i see it all at the same time frame.

we use tools to make OUR DETERMINATION of what the speed of light is. by your way of thinking, we do not know what the physicality, light, actually is. we simply have used our tools to make determinations.

as i stated earlier, we are arms and legs and such if we use our eyes to view ourselves. if we use other means, we could see ourselves as a bunch of internals, or a bunch of molecules, or a bunch of atoms, etc, or perhaps just a bunch of energy.

so making judgments about any physicality depends on the tools used.

causality does not try to make judgments about the physicality itself. it simply states a time frame in which things happen. when i kicked the ball, it then moved. the reason it moved, is because i applied a force to it.

are you suggesting that there is a way to view this chain of events as non-causal ? are you suggesting that there is a way to view the ball moving, but it had nothing to do with me kicking it ? it just moved because it randomly decided to do so ?

so i once again say to you - your logic allows us to claim tautologies for anything we want.

 

[Max™]

4D "block" time is not exactly causal, and relativity means things like saying "the ball moved after my foot hit it" might depend on your reference frame.

There is A-series time, this happened before this which happened before this, and so on.

There is also B-series time, this happened when my clock read 2:30 am, another event happened three years ago at this same date and time, there is an event which coincides with my clock reading 3:00 am, though I can only see one of those at any given point.

 

[Physics-Learner]

hi max,

could you please elaborate ?

 

[Max™]

The arguments about the philosophy of time are numerous, this is just one of many, though I do favor the B-series~C-series type of view myself due to growing up reading about relativity and such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_dimensionalism

A-series and B-series
J.M.E. McTaggart famously argues in his 1908 paper The Unreality of Time that time is necessarily unreal. McTaggart introduces three different types of ordered relations among events: the A-series, the B-series and the C-series. The A-series is “the series of positions running from the far past through the near past to the present, and then from the present to the near future and the far future.” [2] The basic temporal distinctions of past, present and future are fundamental and unique to the A-series as well as essential to the reality of time. If the distinctions of past, present and future are not true of reality, then there is no reality in time. The A-series is championed by proponents of presentism.[2]

The B-series is a series of positions that is ordered from earlier to later. Like the A-series, the B-series contains a direction of change. Unlike the A-series, the B-series does not define a present moment that separates past and future. Events are thought to exist earlier and later, rather than in the past or future. This distinction allows one to move away from the terminology employed in the basic conception of time.[2]

The A-series maintains that time is running from past to future while the B-series asserts that events are running from earlier to later, therefore both require a direction. The C-series, consequently, postulates that events have an order but that there is no inherent direction of time. McTaggart asserts that the order of the events does not necessitate change, a concept that he has already established to be necessary to the concept of time. Therefore, the C-series is atemporal and offers a plausible alternative to the conventional conception of time as well as a part of the concept of eternalism.[2]

Also: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/

 

[Physics-Learner]

hi max,

i don't get the differentiation between past, future AND earlier, later. to me, it sounds like saying the same thing two different ways. anything in the past is earlier than anything in the future.

i don't think science, as of yet, has a very good understanding of time. according to einstein, it is actually a physical thing, such that matter warps something we call spacetime. and then the matter simply travels along the lines of least resistance.

i just suspect that this is not correct. light takes TIME to get to where it is going. i think this is the major reason for relativity and other thought processes regarding time. if we could "see" the universe in its entirety (i.e. information traveled instantaneously), we would actually understand what the universe actually is. i also suspect that it is a requirement to understand what the universe actually is. and with any physics of which we are currently aware, this is impossible.

so i simply don't think we will ever really understand the entire picture. i think we will always be one of the blind men on the elephant, and viewing only a portion of the universe, and only getting a skewed understanding of the universe.

thank you for sharing.

 

[Physics-Learner]

1) fatalism is certainly wrong. i have the choice to turn right or left on the road, thus controlling the future event of where i will be.

2) boils down to whether time is independent of the motion of matter. i am on the fence with that.

3) aristotle's logic is wrong. there can indeed be a first moment in time. and in fact, it is easily shown that time, as defined in our universe, DEFINITELY HAS A BEGINNING. we could not exist today, as finite beings, if the universe did not have a beginning - because we would have had to wait an infinite amount of time in order to be born.

6) mark me down as a presentist in our universe. i hope that the concept of eternalism is true somewhere in the super-universe.

7) i do not believe that time travel is possible.

8) mark me down as a 3-d man.

 

[Maui]

if we could "see" the universe in its entirety (i.e. information traveled instantaneously), we would actually understand what the universe actually is. i also suspect that it is a requirement to understand what the universe actually is.

You are not asking what the universe is, but what exstence is(by definition the universe is that which is observed).

 

[Physics-Learner]

hi maui,

i disagree.

it is utter arrogance on our part to think that the universe is what we observe it to be. the universe is what it is, whatever it is. the fact that we have no means to observe it in its entirety at any given instance just means that we are limited in our tools for understanding the universe.

perhaps our tools will become better over the future eons, i don't know.

 

[Maui]

i also suspect that it is a requirement to understand what the universe actually is.

[bolding mine]



What the universe truly is, is the same as what existence is. To know what the universe actually is in its entirety, you'd have to contrast it to something(i.e. non-existence). Hence your question becomes about existence.

it is utter arrogance on our part to think that the universe is what we observe it to be.

That wasn't my point.

if we could "see" the universe in its entirety (i.e. information traveled instantaneously), we would actually understand what the universe actually is.

What if seeing the universe in its entirety would reveal to you that the universe is a set of relationships that manifest into definite, physically observable being after a series of measurements and interactions, would you call that "understanding"? Our human logic seems too black-and-white to accommodate certain notions and it's much more likely that after you "see" what the universe actually is, you wouldn't gain any understanding at all.

 

[Boy@n]

Maui, I find your thoughts holding quality.

I'd just add that perhaps Universe is nothing per-se in actuality, but it forms and changes in corenspondende of counsiousness viewing it.

 

[Physics-Learner]

hi maui,

we seem to be arguing semantics, regarding existence. but it seems to me that one could contrast the universe to any physical thing in the universe, so at least by my defintion of "existence", i am not talking about existence, per se.

in order to stop the car, one must take his foot off the accelerator, before applying it to the brake pedal. if seeing the universe in its entirety would be too complex for us to understand, it would still be a better understanding of what it actually is, than we have now.

at least we would not be so high falootin about how much we know - LOL !

 

[Boy@n]

Physics-Learner, you want to know about vast Universe, what it actually is, how it works, etc. and I wonder, did you figure out already who you are, really?