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Thought experiment proposed to reconcile psychological versus thermodynamic arrows of time:
A pair of physicists has proposed a thought experiment to help reconcile the seeming disparity between the psychological and thermodynamic arrows of time. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review E, Leonard Mlodinow and Todd Brun claim their thought experiment demonstrates that the two seemingly contradictory views of time, must always align.
When ordinary people think about time, they see the past as something that has come before and the future as a great unknown yet to come. We can remember the past, because it has happened already, but not the future, because it hasn't. Physicists, on the other hand see time as able to move either forward or backwards (towards greater entropy), which implies that we should be able to remember events in the future. So, why can't we?
It's because of the way our memories work the two say, and they've created a thought experiment to demonstrate what they mean. Imagine, they write, two chambers connected by an atomic sized tube with a turnstile in it. If there is gas in one of the chambers, individual atoms of it will move through the tube to the other chamber (towards higher entropy) tripping the turnstile as they go, in effect, counting the atoms as they pass by, until both sides have equal numbers of atoms-creating a state of equilibrium.
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-thought-psychological -thermodynamic-arrows.html
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/47
http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysR evE.89.052102
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday May 06 2014, @09:08PM
"Scientists have the same dreams and base them upon previous examples of ideas and phenomena that have valid chains of reasoning."
Something I've never understood about faith is the whole lack of empathy thing, and relativity, especially geographic relativity.
It doesn't matter where you were born or what religion you're born into, the hard sciences all work the same way pretty much for eternity. Magnets do about the same thing here as in China, the NMR spectrum of D20 looks about the same, the specific gravity of water is about the same... And not just facts but ways of thinking. Ochem reaction mechanisms are the same everywhere for everyone no matter your activities on Sunday morning, or lack thereof. If I was popped outta mom in Japan, I could solve equations exactly like I do today, here. Aside from boring economic issues, ancestors and location just don't matter. No matter where you travel, geology "just works", like every hard science.
Yet, a biologically identical version of myself can grow up on the other side of the planet and apparently faith means something entirely different to them, up to and including we're supposed to violate the golden rule against the local clone copy in all kinds of unpleasant ways. And supposedly we all have souls but the souls there all hate the souls over here, because souls care a lot about geography, or whatever.
And all I can find in common between these faiths is something along the lines of "reason is unnecessary", although that similarity is apparently not enough to allow peaceful coexistence. Generally when two groups of people are killing each other over belief systems, both sides usually have "reason is unnecessary" at the core of both their systems, which is an interesting correlation.
Its all very much like watching a bunch of jock sports fans talk about their love of "their" team and hatred of the followers of the other team, and a guy who's uninterested in sports saying the whole thing is an unwise form of interpersonal relationship building and getting a rather hard time about it. You wanna watch the Packers on TV because you really like the Packers and hate the Bears, fine, have fun, but don't expect anyone else, anywhere else, to think it actually means anything or is useful out in the real world. The Bears, after all, are human beings just like us, even if they hate the Packers in retribution.
So those committed true believing Christians, if they were born 3000 years ago, they'd be ... Christians? I think not. Welcome to worship of Odin. Or born in Palestine instead of USA, they'd be true believing Islamic suicide bombers, right? So if there is no absolute and all faith means is when and where you were born (vaguely like astrology) then what meaning or worth could it possibly have?
Faith sounds kinda like hard drugs. You can play with them to feel better, but its playing with fire and lots have gotten burned.
"That's really my main fear to be honest. Is that I get marginalized in public because I am a student of philosophy primarily that has participated in"
Don't worry, your guys were gleefully burning our guys at the stake centuries ago not the other way around, but like I wrote, it was centuries ago, and both sides have advanced beyond that. So no worries, at least in a civilized area.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Oligonicella on Tuesday May 06 2014, @11:06PM
"Something I've never understood about faith is the whole lack of empathy thing, and relativity, especially geographic relativity."
That's a broad paint brush loaded with bullshit. Empathy is not associated with either faith or lack thereof. I've known religious people with far more empathy than some atheists I've known. Those people on both sides were both from here and afar.
"Faith sounds kinda like hard drugs. You can play with them to feel better, but its playing with fire and lots have gotten burned."
Exactly the same can be said for those without.
Religious and areligious people have helped greatly and persecuted greatly, and with equal measure and zeal.
"Don't worry, your guys were gleefully burning our guys at the stake centuries ago not the other way around..."
And ours were doing the same thing (mostly with tanks and firing squads) very recently, like even this last month.
"...but like I wrote, it was centuries ago, and both sides have advanced beyond that. So no worries, at least in a civilized area."
Like Russia today? Maybe China? Maybe here in the US?
Atheists can be just as pompous, close minded and bent on persecution as anyone else. To think otherwise is consciously putting on blinders. Just another way of saying "having faith".