For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 2584 Location: third from the sun
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:06 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
greenworm wrote:
Did you see the video of the lady living in her car in the open discussion? Did you? See that bothers me and when I think about a flock of people getting in their cars to go pray based on some irrational notion of God that bothers me. Why? Because those are the types of people that sent that lady to live in her car. Remember all the Christians that took the bus to go see the pope in a stadium, well, guess what, they are the sheeple minded flock that ramped up gas even more, supply/demand, right? Causality plain and simple. Nobody thinks in those terms do they? This notion of God sickens me, it has caused more wars than any other variable in history and you want to ponder it for philosophical sport. Be my guest.
You assume lots of unkind things about your fellow humans whom you seem to view as a sort of mass of idiots.
Most people naturally think in terms of causality, that's called "common sense".
It's unfair to blame a "notion of God" (which is really your own sick caricature of any notion of God considered in Western thought) for "causing more wars than any other variable in history". Most wars in history were not religiously motivated.
Frankly I am worried by the narcissism displayed in your comment above. You aren't that much better than other humans. Nobody is
Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 2584 Location: third from the sun
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:11 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
greenworm wrote:
Quote:
And why do any physical laws exist ?
Cause some guy saw mass interact in a certain way and he decided he wanted to explain it using mathematics.
That's not an answer. Let me put it this way.
Why is it possible to capture the behavior of nature through a relatively small number of mathematical laws ?
Btu
PS: As a physicist I'd like to point out that not all interactions are controlled by mass, so let's talk about the fundamental laws of accepted physics in general (classical and quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, general relativity). _________________ only the paranoid survive
Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 2584 Location: third from the sun
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:17 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
And why is it possible at all to describe nature by a relatively small collection of mathematical laws ?
You may have heard of this question as "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences" or "why order (in this very particular sense) rather than chaos.
It is a basic question in epistemology (=the philosophy of science).
Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 2584 Location: third from the sun
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:25 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
greenworm wrote:
It is not possible, mathematically express the growth structure of a tree.
We are discussing the fundamental laws of science and not the issue of the complexity of their solutions.
The tree can be reduced in principle to a huge problem in quantum mechanics :a Schroedinger equation with a very complicated Hamiltonian, whose wave function depends on a huge but finite number of variables. From that point of view there is nothing conceptually new in that problem.
The fact that I might not be able to solve that Schroedinger equation exactly (and that it might be hard even numerically on our current computers) is an issue about the complexity of the solution, which has no bearing on the fundamental law at hand. That fundamental law is still the (time-dependent) Schroedinger equation.
Thus you are confusing complexity with fundamental laws, and your answer above is a red herring.
Btu _________________ only the paranoid survive
Last edited by btu2012 on Fri May 16, 2008 9:29 pm; edited 4 times in total
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
greenworm wrote:
Quote:
Why is it possible to capture the behavior of nature through a relatively small number of mathematical laws ?
It is not possible, mathematically express the growth structure of a tree.
Bifurcation does a pretty good job of mimicking most growth in nature. Each tree is unique of course but you can make things that look alot like trees. Now I am not arguing that we cam model everything we cannot, but the new maths are capable of alot of amazing stuff, especially now that we have computers to do all the number crunching.
Still, I do not think that humans will be able to use science alone to overcome our difficulties or all of our limitations and frailties. _________________ I return to you now at the turning of the tide.
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:29 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
Quote:
You may have heard of this question as "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences" or "why order (in this very particular sense) rather than chaos.
I see alot of chaos, nuclear bombs seem chaotic to me, planetary collision most definitely seem chaotic even the growth structure of trees seem chaotic. Why do some seem ordered and some don't, well, I would look at how it's mass interacts with all the forces it is surrounded by, which could be dam near limitless for some.
How do you explain electromagnetism, gravity, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force as not involving mass?
Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 2584 Location: third from the sun
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:35 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
greenworm wrote:
I see alot of chaos, nuclear bombs seem chaotic to me, planetary collision most definitely seem chaotic even the growth structure of trees seem chaotic. Why do some seem ordered and some don't, well, I would look at how it's mass interacts with all the forces it is surrounded by, which could be dam near limitless for some.
Much of what seems chaotic is actually orderly i.e. subject to laws, because quantum mechanics is a theory about the probability of events. But that probability is strictly causally determined.
Another source of apparent chaos is complexity -- either because "things have many parts" (think statistical mechanics) or because "things are nonlinear". Nonlinear systems exhibit extremely complex behavior near so-called bifurcation points, which appears to be chaotic though it is not (you might have heard of toy models such as fractals etc). This is a highly developed subject in the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems.
Regardless of all this, nuclear bombs etc are described by the same small set of fundamental laws, and if we could solve the equations they would appear deterministic (in the quantum sense).
Quote:
How do you explain electromagnetism, gravity, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force as not involving mass?
What I meant is simply that, except for gravity, these forces are not determined by mass.
Mass is a bit like the "charge" of gravitational interaction. The electric charge determines the EM interaction, there is similarly a weak charge (known as isospin) and a strong charge known as color. Mass is not everything and in fact it is a bit strange in that you really need general relativity to describe (non-quantum) gravity, and in general relativity mass plays a subtle role. _________________ only the paranoid survive
Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Posts: 2584 Location: third from the sun
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:48 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
POAlex wrote:
Actually, shouldn't that say man observed the laws which were already in place?
An extremely good point. The laws of nature are as objective as anything else and thus they "exist" independently of our will.
Any sane ontology(=theory of existence) has to explain in what sense these laws exist. Obviously they don't exists in the sense that we can see them, touch them or smell them.
Greenworm, this is philosophy 101. _________________ only the paranoid survive
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:50 pm Post subject: Re: Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil
Quote:
We are discussing the fundamental laws of science and not the issue of the complexity of their solutions.
Funny, you said 'Why is it possible to capture the behavior of nature through a relatively small number of mathematical laws ? '
Now we are on to fundamental laws, man, I wish I drank a ton of caffeine before I entered this den. When I was coffee drinker I use to think this erraticly.
Why don't we stick with a simple example gravity, sound good?, ok, so the apple falls from the tree and you are wondering why when studied using mathematics, the phenomenon seems to exhibit an ordered numerical pattern, such as the time of fall assuming no wind currents or extraneous variables. If man didn't invent math, that apple would fall the same speed, there is no mathematical pattern until we put one there, you see the tree growth example shows that our laws are limited and there is no order until we achieve it through mathematics, however, the apple will fall just the same with or without it. What this has to do with the notion of God, is simply amazing, but I am sure you are going to tie it all together.
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When I was coffee drinker I use to think this erraticly.
