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On freewill and choice.

 
 
Krumple
 
  3  
Reply Mon 24 Jan, 2011 08:17 am
@Razzleg,
Not to annoy you with a slight modification to your well thought out rebuttal but under the right circumstances, such as knowing enough information, anything is then predictable. The only time something is unpredictable is when we don't have enough information to make a proper prediction.

The example is true for dice. If you knew more information such as how the dice are held, how much energy is placed into them, the angle they were tossed, the friction of the surface they were thrown on and so on and so forth. Any person with a basic understanding of physics could actually predict what the die would land on. But since there are so many factors and the information required to make the proper prediction is unknown we are left to consider the problem unpredictable.

I think the entire universe can be reversed engineered once we understand all the laws involved in how everything interacts. We know a little but there are still some gaps of information. But the information that is still left undiscovered is not impossible to gain, and we will one day possess such information. The problem might be very complex but the solution will be simple, because it always is.
north
 
  1  
Reply Tue 25 Jan, 2011 08:44 pm

a good example of free-will is the law of JUSTICE , why though ?

because since cause and effect define the absence of free-will , meaning that your actions are based on cause and effect , justice demands just the opposite , that you are responsible for your own actions , so that it forces you to grow in your thinking to go beyond just a cause and effect of the mind and brain

0 Replies
 
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Apr, 2011 09:32 am
@Gorilla Nipples,
Yes but you can only hold one preference at a time. so if you chose what you perfer then you only have one choice. you decide what you perfer at that moment and you picked it. if you did not like either you would think of a reason to pick one over the other. For instance i hate red and blue jelly beans but i know someone that would enjoy the blue or red looks bigger and will hurt what i throw it at more. something along those lines. Basically im saying we do nothing without reason and their will never be a situation where both options look equally appealing.
0 Replies
 
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Apr, 2011 09:43 am
@kennethamy,
Sir you are always such a dick to anyone with a differing view than yours. if you want to use words like absurd you should understand what they mean and use them correctly. nothing said in this thread has been absurd. If i claim that Chuck Norris is the inventor of life and the one we call god, that would not be absurd. unlikely yes but not absurd. A four sided circle is absurd. Quantum physics is absurd but the theory's discussed here are just plausible theory's.
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Thu 14 Apr, 2011 12:00 pm
@Doubt doubt,
So... Chuck Norris created the universe.... that is not an absurd notion?
And a four sided circle. That is indeed absurd.

But quantum physics? How is that absurd?
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Thu 14 Apr, 2011 01:21 pm
@Cyracuz,
it is possible that chuck created the universe. things can not be possible and absurd.

quantum is absurd for many reasons. for one the mathematics used with it require our world to be 12 or so dimensional. for another they invent forces. they can not explain gravity so they took the known strength of gravity and say thats the strength of the weak force. they can not explain why atoms hold together so they calculate how much force it would take to do so and call that the strong force. also their math claims that nothing has mass except a so called higs particle that they cans find. i expect they never will because they never thought of it till they realized how screwed they where and asked the world to invent something that could add mass to their massless world. well something like that but hell they dont even attempt to explain angular momentum. none of what we call physics can explain anything. they stumble upon equations that that sometimes work and invent the rest to fit. Unified field theory looks promising (first explanation of angular momentum to include all other known forces)but im sure it will turn out to be wrong as well.
Cyracuz
 
  0  
Reply Thu 14 Apr, 2011 04:14 pm
@Doubt doubt,
And this from a guy who cannot even master elementary grammar? Give me a break.
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Apr, 2011 05:15 pm
@Cyracuz,
Anyone can learn grammar. i could care less about these meaningless things. I am too busy pondering to master something my editor gets paid to do. I suck at math also. maybe that will make you less of an idiot as well. Save your grammar until you have something intelligent to say. thanks.
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Apr, 2011 05:19 pm
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

And this from a guy who cannot even master elementary grammar? Give me a break.


You have the grammar down. Now its time to learn the meaning of the words you type. Hey, I guess neither one of us is perfect but at least i have a point of view of my own. you just come here to quote things you memorize. bet thats why your grammar is good. Are you a Chinese Olympian?
0 Replies
 
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Apr, 2011 05:25 pm
@Doubt doubt,
You just got to love it when a tard who can't even get common phrases right tries to ridicule the findings of some of the most brilliant men in recent history... You're too busy doing something someone else gets paid for.... You must be some kind of genious...
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Apr, 2011 06:52 pm
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

You just got to love it when a tard who can't even get common phrases right tries to ridicule the findings of some of the most brilliant men in recent history... You're too busy doing something someone else gets paid for.... You must be some kind of genious...


Einstein is called a genius even though everything he wrote was wrong. You are a genius for spelling genius wrong. nice grammar though.
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Sat 30 Apr, 2011 01:58 am
@Doubt doubt,
Quote:
Einstein is called a genius even though everything he wrote was wrong


What do you mean by this?
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Mon 2 May, 2011 01:25 am
@Cyracuz,
I meant exactly what i said. I am not about to condense a lifetime of learning into a reply here. Ask anyone that keeps up with physics and they can explain it to you. Aristotle was a genius, which of his theory's turned out to stand the test of time?
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Mon 2 May, 2011 02:27 am
@Doubt doubt,
This should perhaps make you revise your use of right and wrong.
There might be more accurate descriptions of things now, but that doesn't mean that Einstein was wrong. If he was the nuclear bomb, tv's and a whole lot of other stuff just would not work...
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Mon 2 May, 2011 03:09 am
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

This should perhaps make you revise your use of right and wrong.
There might be more accurate descriptions of things now, but that doesn't mean that Einstein was wrong. If he was the nuclear bomb, tv's and a whole lot of other stuff just would not work...


Einstein had no part in the nuclear bomb and TV works because of the work of Nikola Tesla and other electrical engineers.There is a big difference between science and technology. Our world is full of technology and little to no science. WHat is light? Nobody knows. how do magnets work? yep, nobody knows. Angular momentum? you guessed it, nobody knows. I bet you did not know that Einsteins theory of relativity was only a few modifications to Galileo's theory of relativity. Einsteins paper on Brownian motion is a good read though.
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Mon 2 May, 2011 06:35 am
@Doubt doubt,
I get the impression that you have your own personal definitions of most things.
And technology and science are closely linked. Einsteins work on relativity was vital for the creation of alot of technology that we use today.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 3 May, 2011 06:48 am
@Doubt doubt,
You´re wrong, Einstein research on relativity was crucial to the development of a nuclear bomb even if Einstein was n´t directly involved, which he was n´t...as far as I know he wrote several notes opposing its use...but suffices to say that relativity is crucial in order for you to have a GPS properly working in your car...

Quote:
What good is fundamental physics to the person on the street?

This is the perennial question posed to physicists by their non-science friends, by students in the humanities and social sciences, and by politicians looking to justify spending tax dollars on basic science. One of the problems is that it is hard to predict definitely what the payback of basic physics will be, though few dispute that physics is somehow "good."

Physicists have become adept at finding good examples of the long-term benefit of basic physics: the quantum theory of solids leading to semiconductors and computer chips, nuclear magnetic resonance leading to MRI imaging, particle accelerators leading to beams for cancer treatment. But what about Einstein's theories of special and general relativity? One could hardly imagine a branch of fundamental physics less likely to have practical consequences. But strangely enough, relativity plays a key role in a multi-billion dollar growth industry centered around the Global Positioning System (GPS).

When Einstein finalized his theory of gravity and curved spacetime in November 1915, ending a quest which he began with his 1905 special relativity, he had little concern for practical or observable consequences. He was unimpressed when measurements of the bending of starlight in 1919 confirmed his theory. Even today, general relativity plays its main role in the astronomical domain, with its black holes, gravity waves and cosmic big bangs, or in the domain of the ultra-small, where theorists look to unify general relativity with the other interactions, using exotic concepts such as strings and branes.

But GPS is an exception. Built at a cost of over $10 billion mainly for military navigation, GPS has rapidly transformed itself into a thriving commercial industry. The system is based on an array of 24 satellites orbiting the earth, each carrying a precise atomic clock. Using a hand-held GPS receiver which detects radio emissions from any of the satellites which happen to be overhead, users of even moderately priced devices can determine latitude, longitude and altitude to an accuracy which can currently reach 15 meters, and local time to 50 billionths of a second. Apart from the obvious military uses, GPS is finding applications in airplane navigation, oil exploration, wilderness recreation, bridge construction, sailing, and interstate trucking, to name just a few. Even Hollywood has met GPS, recently pitting James Bond in "Tomorrow Never Dies" against an evil genius who was inserting deliberate errors into the GPS system and sending British ships into harm's way.

But in a relativistic world, things are not simple. The satellite clocks are moving at 14,000 km/hr in orbits that circle the Earth twice per day, much faster than clocks on the surface of the Earth, and Einstein's theory of special relativity says that rapidly moving clocks tick more slowly, by about seven microseconds (millionths of a second) per day.

Also, the orbiting clocks are 20,000 km above the Earth, and experience gravity that is four times weaker than that on the ground. Einstein's general relativity theory says that gravity curves space and time, resulting in a tendency for the orbiting clocks to tick slightly faster, by about 45 microseconds per day. The net result is that time on a GPS satellite clock advances faster than a clock on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day.

To determine its location, the GPS receiver uses the time at which each signal from a satellite was emitted, as determined by the on-board atomic clock and encoded into the signal, together the with speed of light, to calculate the distance between itself and the satellites it communicated with. The orbit of each satellite is known accurately. Given enough satellites, it is a simple problem in Euclidean geometry to compute the receiver's precise location, both in space and time. To achieve a navigation accuracy of 15 meters, time throughout the GPS system must be known to an accuracy of 50 nanoseconds, which simply corresponds to the time required for light to travel 15 meters.

But at 38 microseconds per day, the relativistic offset in the rates of the satellite clocks is so large that, if left uncompensated, it would cause navigational errors that accumulate faster than 10 km per day! GPS accounts for relativity by electronically adjusting the rates of the satellite clocks, and by building mathematical corrections into the computer chips which solve for the user's location. Without the proper application of relativity, GPS would fail in its navigational functions within about 2 minutes.

So the next time your plane approaches an airport in bad weather, and you just happen to be wondering "what good is basic physics?", think about Einstein and the GPS tracker in the cockpit, helping the pilots guide you to a safe landing.

Clifford M. Will is James S. McDonnell Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is the author of Was Einstein Right? In 1986 he chaired a study for the Air Force to find out if they were handling relativity properly in GPS. They were.


Link: http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/writers/will.cfm
0 Replies
 
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 May, 2011 09:34 am
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

I get the impression that you have your own personal definitions of most things.
And technology and science are closely linked. Einsteins work on relativity was vital for the creation of alot of technology that we use today.


Science is understood technology is not. technology is something discovered that can be put to use. If it could be explained it would be science. It may be hard for you to believe but it would be hard to fill a single book science book without resorting to passing technology off as science.
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 May, 2011 11:48 am
@Doubt doubt,
Quote:
Science is understood technology is not.


Ehh... technology isn't something discovered... It is something envisioned and created. And even shoes are technology, so don't be so quick to say that technology isn't understood.
If you are saying that we do not understand the full consequences of the technology we make and how we use it, that is another matter, and I would not object to that.
You seem to be very fond of making bombastic claims that have little or no relevance to reality...
Doubt doubt
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Sep, 2011 02:34 pm
@Cyracuz,
A magnet is technology. nobody knows how it work but it can be used/applied. shoes are not technology. tautology.
0 Replies
 
 

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