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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: 2) by naubol on Tuesday May 06 2014, @10:01PM
Uhh, I really want to respond to you in a way that seems almost colorless and without emotion.
I don't think faith necessarily leads to all those horrible things listed. I think it has been used to do those things and that is when I'm upset. I was trying to draw this distinction between being upset about faith-related matters and being merely "concerned". So, it wasn't meant to generalize to all uses of faith by any means whatsoever. My apologies for not making that clearer.
I don't feel that I agree with how you took my last sentence. I especially don't think it is a question of tolerance, because I make space for you to have your views, etc. I wouldn't attempt to persecute you, prevent you from marrying, or promulgating your ideas in a reasonable fashion. In every sense of the word "tolerate" that I think is important, I would try to tolerate you. It also wouldn't prevent me from becoming friends with you, attending your wedding, or celebrating your success and happiness on this mortal coil.
However, I don't believe that I'm being intolerant if I suggest that people arguing out of positions built on faith have a weaker view and shouldn't be, say, denying climate change or evolution. I think tolerating all things in every possible way that the word tolerate can be used is a very bad idea and it is a culture war what we should "tolerate" based on values we think are better for our culture.
I also don't believe I'm being intolerant if I think you're less connected to reality because you claim to be a person of faith. I think you almost certainly think the same thing of me, and I'm okay with that nor do I see that possible view by you as one of intolerance.
Public marginalization is unavoidable. If you are a trend setter, you have to be okay with this. If your population group is losing credibility for its views, then you will find yourself somewhat marginalized. But, while we should accept this broadly, there are specific things, like burning people at the stake, preventing marriages in the population group, or other such things.... we should not accept these.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 07 2014, @12:28AM
Never argued against that at all, and that's part of the challenge with my position here about how faith and empiricism can coexist. I'm defending the study of philosophy and ontological discussions in general as being intellectual valid and undeserving of the scorn they receive. I feel that is an overreaction to religion and the attempt to correct it goes too far.
There is no position
Faith does not have positions. Faith is logically precluded from participating in science, and other than an inspiration for new avenues of thought, has no place with empiricism.
There is no comparing empiricism with faith in terms of it's benefits towards a cooperative relationship with each other. Empiricism and our abilities to reason lead towards independently reproducible truths, and there is nothing more fair than how that truth is distributed. It's self evident to me that we should use that when making big decisions that affect us all, and all the way down to how we treat other people.
I feel that you are. That's a lot of judgement in that statement. A lifetime could be spent trying to argue that and you could read Groonch's post in this thread about how you are acting as a scientific authority on what is real.
Especially when related the content of this submission. It's some gentlemen proposing a simple thought experiment attempting to explain or present an idea about how something might work.
My problem with that is that it creates a constant battle about what is correct, and what is incorrect, and then heaping shit loads of judgement on the whole thing.
It's simply unnecessary. We may have dialogue about different aspects of our faiths and we may even form groups of like minds. As long as we act like rational adults about it and realize that faith is never about being right, there is no problem.
That's why faith isn't the issue, but human behavior is.
Greed is a sin. However, greed is also a seemingly emergent behavior. Greed is not based on faith, and humans would act greedy even with all faith removed.
Yet how much of religion is involved with greed? All of these truly negative aspects of faith would creep right back into your Utopia of pure science. Instead of an angry God willing to smite greedy little Naubol, it will be a review group of his peers attempting to explain the true consequences of his action with peer reviewed scientific dissertations about the benefits of the proper and equal distribution of the twinkies you took and snarfed down all on your own you bastard.
Consider the problems of Net Neutrality. What part of faith is involved in that again? I haven't heard Comcast claiming that God supported their way to bilk us out of more money. Without faith, the people involved are complete assholes all on their own.
Are you saying that faith itself leads towards the character flaws that express themselves in ways we often discuss and lament here? This is why I deny the assertion that faith is the cause of all these problems.
Faith is a rather large category of distinct groups and is a broad spectrum of how it attempts to interact with empiricism. The organized religions have been undoubtedly harmful, but I will defend the ontological pursuits of our philosophers as valuable to humanity in general and can provide some help in dealing with the human condition.
All sides here want to be correct, but I don't think that faith and empiricism without each other will answer our great questions, and lead towards our harmonious coexistence with each other and the universe. That last part may sound a bit treehuggy, but the whole living in harmony thing is rather important in a closed system with limited resources.
None of what I am saying means it would be better if you believed in a god, or in the same particular beliefs I have. I'm not saying you have to do that. I'm saying it might be a good idea to believe in something, even if you can't prove it's real yet. Don't be afraid to take that leap of faith that something might turn out be to correct even if you can't see the science yet.
Our real challenge is that element of ourselves that can me major assholes and bitches, and having faith, or not having faith, doesn't stop it from affecting our behavior. Faith can give us strength, or it can hobble us, but that is entirely up to us.