Relativity

Cypress said:
A very common philosophical view, and misunderstanding of the theory of relativity, is that relativity plays around with commonsense ideas of space and time and makes everything relative.

In the early 1900s, people were using Einstein’s theory of relativity to justify relativistic morals and relativistic aesthetics—all kinds of fields far from science.

Physics is about trying to understand an underlying objective reality, and that reality should not depend on one’s point of view or frame of reference. The speed of light is one quantity that doesn’t depend on your point of view, but more fundamentally, the laws of physics do not depend on your point of view.

The numbers obtained when using the laws of physics, at least for some quantities—such as spatial differences or temporal intervals—do depend on your point of view. Other numbers don’t—such as, for example, the speed of light..

The individual measures of space and time are different in two different frames of reference, but you can combine them to get something that is objectively real: the invariant space-time interval. Space-time is invariant, which means that it doesn’t depend on your point of view; it doesn’t change with your frame of reference. The space-time interval is one example of a relativistic invariant.

Source credit, Richard Wolfson, professor of physics
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Anyone who has read about Einstein's deep and lasting commitment to social justice, pacifism, and religious toleration I think would have to conclude he saw definite and clear shades between right and wrong, and would never have gone along with a program of moral relativism.

Einstein was distressed, however, at the way his theory of relativity was misapplied to moral matters and made to support the erroneous notion that there was no ultimate good or evil. He himself held to firm standards of right and wrong and saw moral relativism, which was becoming widespread in its effects, as a bankrupt philosophy.

https://www.vision.org/biography-albert-einstein-father-relativity-not-relativism-444
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Cypress said:
Anyone who has read about Einstein's deep and lasting commitment to social justice, pacifism, and religious toleration I think would have to conclude he saw definite and clear shades between right and wrong, and would never have gone along with a program of moral relativism.
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People who extrapolate relativity out to "moral behaviors" are doing the same thing as (or worse) a lot of folks do with Quantum Mechanics when they try to extrapolate it out to things like "consciousness".
 
Colloquy said:
People who extrapolate relativity out to "moral behaviors" are doing the same thing as (or worse) a lot of folks do with Quantum Mechanics when they try to extrapolate it out to things like "consciousness".
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So we are going to get a sermon from Colloguy who has got a PhD in physics.
 
Colloquy said:
Actually, do you have anything to add? I assume you are the kind of person who misapplies science because it makes you feel smarter. How do you abuse Relativity or Quantum Mechanics in your philosophy?
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Misapplying science because it makes you feel smarter, is just what you are doing, it's obvious that you don't know what you're posting about.
 
Trumpet said:
Misapplying science because it makes you feel smarter, is just what you are doing, it's obvious that you don't know what you're posting about.
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What on earth do YOU know about QM or Relativity??????? Naaaah, you're just on here to troll. Go ahead, lay some science on me, illiterate one.
 
Here is the translation:

Colloquy said:
You don't ever seem to ADD anything to the conversation but usually just show up when someone replies to a Cypress post. So I assumed you were his sycophant.

:cuss::(Why, oh why can't everyone hate Cypress like I do?! :cuss::(
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Cypress said:
"Brain experiment suggests that consciousness relies on quantum entanglement"
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/brain-consciousness-quantum-entanglement/
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This reads like it's preeeeeeetty speculative.

from the article itself:

"However, there are doubts that today's NMR signals can contain quantum correlations in general, and specifically in the brain environment. Here, we used a witness protocol based on zero quantum coherence (ZQC) where we minimized the classical signals to circumvent the NMR detection limits for quantum correlation." (SOURCE)

I will freely admit that my time with the NMR was brief and I am in no way particularly adept at NMR but it seems like the caveats are starting early.

And besides: they go on to discuss the fact that they could find "evoked signals" but "...We found that those signals had no correlates with any classical NMR contrast." My initial gut instinct is some external signal or noise interpretation in the spectrum. Obviously I don't think I'm smarter than these people, they know their stuff, but it does seem pretty tenative at this point.

Further: why is there a need for quantum anything (apart from the fact that quantum is a consideration in all chemical reactions), but this isn't a quantum state we are talking about. It is very much a MACRO state. Neurons are made up of billions upon billions of atoms. Why would quantum effects be necessary to explain it?

It's like looking at a lightbulb and deciding that it simply doesn't make sense without including quantum entanglement. Nope...it can be turned on or off with a switch and we understand the macro effects without any reliance on quantum effects.

BIG NOTE:. I'm not saying that QM CAN'T possibly be involved in it...but honestly whenever anyone online posts stuff about QM and consciousness 99.9999999999999% of the time it is from a position of pure unadulterated ignorance. It is because QM is weird and consciousness is weird so it's fun for the non-scientists to smash the two together.

These folks at Trinity college MAY BE ONTO SOMETHING, and obviously there are other researchers working in this area. But 99.9999999999% of the folks on the internet who invoke QM for consciousness are doing so out of pure ignorance. None of them are looking at NMR spectra.
 
Colloquy said:
This reads like it's preeeeeeetty speculative.

from the article itself:

"However, there are doubts that today's NMR signals can contain quantum correlations in general, and specifically in the brain environment. Here, we used a witness protocol based on zero quantum coherence (ZQC) where we minimized the classical signals to circumvent the NMR detection limits for quantum correlation." (SOURCE)

I will freely admit that my time with the NMR was brief and I am in no way particularly adept at NMR but it seems like the caveats are starting early.

And besides: they go on to discuss the fact that they could find "evoked signals" but "...We found that those signals had no correlates with any classical NMR contrast." My initial gut instinct is some external signal or noise interpretation in the spectrum. Obviously I don't think I'm smarter than these people, they know their stuff, but it does seem pretty tenative at this point.

Further: why is there a need for quantum anything (apart from the fact that quantum is a consideration in all chemical reactions), but this isn't a quantum state we are talking about. It is very much a MACRO state. Neurons are made up of billions upon billions of atoms. Why would quantum effects be necessary to explain it?

It's like looking at a lightbulb and deciding that it simply doesn't make sense without including quantum entanglement. Nope...it can be turned on or off with a switch and we understand the macro effects without any reliance on quantum effects.

BIG NOTE:. I'm not saying that QM CAN'T possibly be involved in it...but honestly whenever anyone online posts stuff about QM and consciousness 99.9999999999999% of the time it is from a position of pure unadulterated ignorance. It is because QM is weird and consciousness is weird so it's fun for the non-scientists to smash the two together.

These folks at Trinity college MAY BE ONTO SOMETHING, and obviously there are other researchers working in this area. But 99.9999999999% of the folks on the internet who invoke QM for consciousness are doing so out of pure ignorance. None of them are looking at NMR spectra.
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I accept your confession that you never heard of this kind of scientific research, and just leaped to the unfounded assumption it was just some crazy and retarded idea that originated with Cypress.
 
Cypress said:
I accept your confession that you never heard of this kind of scientific research, and just leaped to the unfounded assumption it was just some crazy and retarded idea that originated with Cypress.
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You certainly don't understand the article.

But you have definitely firmed up my decision today. Thanks.


(Hey, forgot: good googling on that Trinity College paper you found....except YOU DIDN"T FIND THE ACTUAL ARTICLE. You found a pop-science distillation. You don't understand the science you read....that's why you always post OTHER people's stuff. But kudos on the Googling!)
 
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