Garrulous

\GAIR-uh-lus; GAIR-yuh-\, adjective:
1. Talking much, especially about commonplace or trivial things; talkative.
2. Wordy.

~~~~~~~

“Physical evidence only takes you so far” is a phrase I heard quite often in our discussions concerning the natural and supernatural. Indeed, the limits of our understanding have always been inevitably bound to what we have thus far discovered, and what our minds can currently make of it. However, I feel like exploring exactly what it is that waits farther than where physical evidence can take us.

Firstly, I must state the obvious: physical evidence can only make suggestions while existent: for example, if we hadn’t indirectly observed dark matter, what reason would we have to believe it exists? So our theories are only as informed as the evidence behind them.

Then, we must understand how theories build on one another—general relativity on Newtonian gravity, modern psychology on Freud’s psychoanalysis, and so on. Theories grow with several missteps, get refined, and better describe the external world as more information and better theories breach the fray.

And here is where we stop: curious minds seek understanding, find evidence, build theories, and try to make those theories match the world. This is a process I find essentially eternal: the search for truth, constantly informed by humble searching. If this is all that was meant by “physical evidence only takes you so far”, then I whole-heartedly agree. But I think what we often mean is something more.

I’ll continue this in a little while, when I have more time. Check the above post for a continuation.

Recherche

\ruh-sher-SHAY\, adjective:
1. Uncommon; exotic; rare.
2. Exquisite; choice.
3. Excessively refined; affected.
4. Pretentious; overblown.

~~~~~~~

As much as I would enjoy this-world empiricism to be the standard (it would rather simplify a lot of debates in favor of my opinions), it is a wildly unfair approach to bridging the gap between beliefs.

Even were it to shift the arguments toward my views, I would not prefer it, because minds have not been changed, just excluded. Minds excluded from any debate lessen its diversity—and I hold to the proposition that in almost any situation requiring solutions, diversity is the key. Much like in evolution, where diversity allots some creatures the capability to handle difficult scenarios, and continued diversity increases the chance of a species’ survival against environmental changes, so too do humans thrive among social and mental difficulties with the same solution: varied is better. Someone’s bound to have a better answer.

And even if this-world empiricism were invoked, I very much doubt it would stand up for long—imagine being Galileo a thousand years ago, fighting for an idea of the universe that almost everyone tells you cannot be spoken about. Back then, he was even punished! If we invoked a system excluding the supernatural from debate, we would be doing the same thing (in somewhat of the opposite direction) to those firm in their otherworldly (or even supernaturally worldly) views. And sooner or later, the arguments would seep in anyway.

I much prefer letting all opinions be heard, even if it leads to more chaos, because eventually it will lead to more epiphanies, and that’s what we all want, isn’t it? Not just tolerance, but answers?

Tyro

\TY-roh\, noun:
A beginner in learning; a novice.

~~~~~~~

Unable to reconcile the hypothetical situation brought up the other day, I'm going to explore it here.

What I drew in class was a line, with the number 3 at the beginning of it (to represent our 3 dimensional world), and at the end of the line drew a perpendicular one, to bring it to a full stop. This is where spacetime (as represented by the line) theoretically stops, or at the very least every moving thing does. This is just a philosophical consideration--who knows how or why everything would stop moving, but it does. Literally everything in the third dimension.

Then I drew the line onward, and drew another perpendicular line, to represent when time begins again. And I wondered--would such a thing be instantaneous, or only to the things within it that have stopped moving? Conceivably, it would be much like sci-fi or fantasy notions of stopping time--everything stops moving, but for the people within, when it starts again, no 'time' has passed at all.

Thus, the line carving the start and stop would seem, to those moving, to be one line. But then I drew another line, alongside the first, with all the same provisions, except no line where motion stops. This is an alternate universe, and I put a rock and an observer in it. Now, when the first universe stops moving, time/motion does not stop for the second, so conceivably (should they have extra-dimensional perception), someone standing the second reality could recognize the complete lack of motion in the other universe as time passing, but only in their own.

So can it be said that time still moves, even if that universe is not moving at all? But still, something must be introduced as moving to recognize that time is passing at all (this second universe). But this is not to say that without the second universe, time would not pass (as it needn't an observer, I think, to function). Thus, the "time" occurring in the full stop of motion would be relative to a different perspective: a different sort of relative time. But here I've confused myself again, as time is intrinsically related to space, and without space as a referent for bending time, how can we know how and if time continues to progress without motion?

Perhaps there is some way to measure time without the bend of space: time certainly seems intrinsically related (embodied as this wildly different other dimension in making calculations about space), but not necessarily confined to solely the movement of space? I don't know. Obviously I can theorize that time continues to move while motion stops but I have no idea what we would then think of time. But perhaps I'm just running myself in circles because I don't have enough information.

Imbroglio

\im-BROHL-yoh\, noun:
1. A complicated and embarrassing state of things.
2. A confused or complicated disagreement or misunderstanding.
3. An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.
4. A confused mass; a tangle.

~~~~~~~

http://specificrelativity2.blogspot.com/2008/02/circumambient.html

Perdurable

\pur-DUR-uh-bul; pur-DYUR-\, adjective:
Very durable; lasting; continuing long.

~~~~~~~

A scenario (culled in part from a screenplay): a ship several hundred years from now, equipped with the best sci-fi engines that Earth has ever known, sets out for a nearby (only a hundred light years away) planet. This is a necessary mission: say, a meteor is unquestionably going to hit Earth in a couple of hundred years, and they're getting something done now. The first mission sent is a scout - to be certain the planet is inhabitable before hundreds of civilization-ships (with similarly equipped engines) set out. The ship can move half the speed of light (they're fantastic engines, really), so the first ship will reach the planet in fifty years. But, of course, even current day physicists knows this is futile.

By the time they reach the planet, moving that speed, the Earth will be harboring a dust blanket and sporting a gash the size of Brazil. Time would bend around the ship, and well before they'd ever reach the new planet and send back the go-ahead, everyone would be dead.

This is what interstellar travel would be like: entirely disorienting for all involved. Anyone not on the ship beside you will be subject to a whole other timeline, and unless they too are moving at incredible rates, they will age and die very quickly from your perspective. Shows like Star Trek make little sense with this idea: no captain could ever have a continuing dialogue with another unless they move side by side--otherwise both would age differently, relative to their positions and speeds. In the scenario, the first ship would return from its galactic round trip to find spaceships so far upgraded from itself as to be entirely unrecognizable. A ship sent to scout would have rings spun around it by the ship that came next. It's like sending out a car moving 2 miles an hour toward a destination, and because it moves so slow (or, in the case of space, so fast), you have time to build a racecar and leave it in the dust long before it gets where it's going. Calculating interstellar travel will be a mathematical task for nothing less than supersupercomputers.

So where was I going with this... I'm not sure. But after watching that video on the tenth dimension, I'm left curious why there are not more higher-dimension travelers coming around to bop us on the head. It seems we might be able to travel across many of these dimensions (via wormholes and the like), but so far, we haven't experienced any travelers of any kind from any direction or any dimension beyond our own tiny three + one dimensional dust mote.

I'm curious if these dimensions (should they prove true) are merely building blocks for the fabric of the universe, or if they can be consciously navigated. Something tells me it'll be a long time before we know, and maybe never before we can empirically prove. But that doesn't mean I'm overly skeptical of the notion--it seems plausible.

It is ironic, though, that instead of the first dimension being what everything else builds on, it seems more organized (from how I've heard it explained) like a formidable tower of dimensions at the moment of the Big Bang, and either diminished into fewer dimensions or slapped the fabric downward from there.

Limn

\LIM\, transitive verb:
1. To depict by drawing or painting.
2. To portray in words; to describe.

~~~~~~~

Might I imagine, for a moment, a couple of scenarios that might curtail the notion of a linear continuum of time.

Firstly, the formerly proposed (and brought to me via Stephen Hawking) theory of a universal reversal (that's a fun little phrase). It was originally theorized that, should the universe's mass exceed the energy that pushes it (from the Big Bang onward), then the energy would eventually run out, time/space would slow down and stop expanding, and thereafter hurtle back inward like a rubber band. At such a moment, the linear continuum of time might be reversed: effect would precede cause, we would live our lives from birth to death, and the motion of the universe would mirror itself until shrinking into another in an infinite series of Big Bangs. It never made sense to me why they thought time would run backward merely because the universe was shrinking... There are several irregularities with this theory that make it implausible.

I liked the notion of an infinite loop of Big Bangs. But it isn't true: proved only in the last decade, the critical mass was proved insufficient: the universe will go on expanding forever, likely resulting in what's called "heat death" where atoms are torn so far from one another (due to the infinite and exponential increase in gravitational outward thrust as space literally "appears" between objects) as to be incapable of vibration, and everything becomes perfectly still. So much for the first contradiction of linear time.

EDIT: I had other stuff here, but it was wrong. So now I only have one disproved contradiction to the linear continuum of time.

Just hypothetical (and superficial; I'm no scientist) science tonight, I guess. I've yet to believe the philosophy regarding time is much different from the science approaching it (except when considering human-created metaphors and the like), but perhaps (and I think it likely) I'll have more to talk about after class tomorrow.

Magniloquent

\mag-NIL-uh-kwent\, adjective:
Lofty or grandiose in speech or expression; using a high-flown style of discourse; bombastic.

~~~~~~~

Discussed shortly after Constructing Reality ended last time (and in the purgatory between that class and subsequent Logic II), the objective reality is collected in the mind and subject (key word) to our interpretations. The important though minuscule gap between our indubitably subjective experience and the objective reality is often the keyhole for doubting said objective reality or the existence other subjective thinkers entirely. Certainly a test cannot be designed to prod reality and ferry us results without passing through the silty gates of our perceptions. Everything runs through them. Thus, if we doubt our perceptions can be valid (in the sense that they perceive objective circumstances), we are literally doubting everything except the existence of our own thoughts. Hey Descartes. Is it lonely up there?

And as much as I intuitively want to offer a concrete contradiction to this, it (like almost everything) is impossible to verify with complete certainty. Most conclusions are like this, and rightfully so; cheers for error bars and boo to comfortable intuition. However, there are several inductive arguments I find particularly convincing concerning an existing objective reality.

Largely these arguments concern the motives of a human-constructed reality (assuming it was constructed for comfort, and perplexed as to why it would not be): Why do we die? Why have we created a universe that works impersonal of our directives? Why have we created life that needs only to survive, and not necessarily to understand? Why do we subject ourselves to torment, anguish, emotional turmoil, or any discomfit whatsoever? Why is the reality we have constructed not more comfortable, if it is culled for intellectual comfort?

This is only a meager helping of the argument, I'm sure, but I cannot find good reason for why, should we have this intellectual power of influencing seemingly objective constructions, we haven't polished it up. Especially if we're aware of actively constructing reality, more people should be actively deconstructing it in order to better manipulate it--that way, when I want Rock Band 2, I will not have to wait a year, and will instead intellectually conjure it up.

Instead, the universe seems to exist in a certain way--a way that, in many cases, refutes life rather than supports it. A way that influences our perceptions not for any particular purpose, but merely because certain things exist, and we interact with them. A way in which we, too exist.

And this is what Hume and Glasersfeld (as mentioned post-class by Johnson) fail to admit: we are part of the objective reality, and so is everything that comes from us. It is not Universe v. Humans (which is possibly the most classic and enduring conceit in human history, perhaps because sapience can get lonely). It is Universe w/ Humans, humans capable of reflecting on the former category (as it includes the latter).

For us to construct reality, we must first construct ourselves, and without a higher entity (which, again, I say must be involved for the places Radical Constructivism and severe skepticism eventually lead), this seems impossible. There is something our minds refer to when having an experience, and while I fully agree it's wrapped up in our mode of sensory ingestion, our memories, impressions, intuitions, understandings, categories and inevitably, our constructions of what reality looks like, that which we refer to exists independent of us and is constantly unconcerned with us. There is no other way for new (or the original) input to reach us.

You can call that referent the noumenal realm, or God's constant brainfart, or even the grand stage for some spectacular alien deception, but isn't it easier and more sensible to welcome what our senses have always and likely will always suggest, that something other than, and also including us, exists objective to what our thoughts can posit?

Subjective experience in an objective reality. There is literally more sense in it.

~~~~~~~

Feel very encouraged to level disagreements. I'm still too intuitively attached to this theory despite numerous evidential refinements. It needs to be more impersonal before I can trust it.