Science: Do we believe or do we accept?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

* SHRIEK* sorry but that really gets on my tits. I once watched a 3.5 hour movie on just that called What the bleep do we know and it is the loss of those 3.5 hours out of my life is something I mourn heavily. I'm pretty non-judgemental when it comes to beliefs but some things I just can't take.

Granted I have The Tao of Physics, but I actually didn't find that book flakey or unreasonable.

I saw that movie, mistakenly believing that it was a feature-length treatment of Brian Greene's brilliant book "The Elegant Universe". Boy was I wrong!

To give you a taste of just how painful that movie was for me, I will borrow from Douglas Adams description of Vogon poetry.

"...During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemmoraging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of is own legs off."

It was horrible. It was painful. It was a complete bastardization of the physics.

It is ironic that my introduction into Quantum Mechanics was Fritjof Capra. I read that, then Taking the Quantum Leap, then the Dancing Wu-Li Masters. Then I happened to pick up a book on QM that was not written from a 'spiritual' point of view and fell in love. Here was a description of the science that made the more New Age rendition of that same material fade into ugliness by comparison. The fact that the universe just works this way and it plays out without any apparent interference from an supernatural entity is just awe inspiring to me.

I wrote a paper about the New Age misuse of QM a while back and made myself read and watch The Secret (if I'm going to criticize something, I should at least familiarize myself with the subject matter. I wish more people who are critical of science would do the same). One of the things I find most disturbing is the whole idea of "we create our own reality". I understand that this is supposed to be a 'kinder, gentler' world view but I find it callous. As callous as the kind of Ayn Rand Objectivism philosophy beloved of free market fundamentalists. Typically, when people are talking the 'we create our own reality' line, they are doing so from a relative position of privilege. I think that any of these philosophies should be viewed not from the point of view of someone in comfort but someone in great distress.

The example I always use (and anyone can find their own) is that of a young child whose mom and dad worked above the 100th floor of WTC 1 and WTC 2, who never came home the evening of 11 Sept. Now, according to the The Secret, anything that happens to us is something we attracted. So either this young child attracted the death of her parents or her parents attracted orphaning of their child. What could possibly be more callous than that? One can look anywhere on the planet where misery is a constant companion and one will be moved to ask "so what did that person, this three year old born into a war zone in Sudan" attract here? If we view things that way then there's really no need to feel compelled to do anything to alleviate their suffering. I mean, if you are suffering in a universe that will give you whatever you wish just for the asking and visualizing then your misery is your own. That sounds neither kinder nor gentler to me and yet it is an inescapable conclusion of the logic of The Secret.

Cheers
Aj

[imperfect_cupcake]

As callous as the kind of Ayn Rand Objectivism philosophy beloved of free market fundamentalists. Typically, when people are talking the 'we create our own reality' line, they are doing so from a relative position of privilege. I think that any of these philosophies should be viewed not from the point of view of someone in comfort but someone in great distress.

you might be really interested in a new BBC series put out called "watched over by machines of loving grace" that I loved. I agreed with a lot of the principle statements the writer of the series was making, but I didn't quite agree with the full conclusion at the end. But I really did empathise why he thought that way and it was and interesting take. here's the synopsis for the first episode:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011k45f

if you go to the right in the box you'll see the link to the other episodes. Try googling the names of the episodes, you might be lucky to find a torrent for them.

As for Douglas Adams (one of my favorite authors) and his invention of vogon poetry... yes. I agree. what made it worse was the cartoon of the double slit experiment was a great explanation in lay terms. Like you, I thought it was going to be something about real QM. gosh, it was a horrific discovery as the realisation came through, wasn't it!

I feel very sorry for one of the scientists who later had to claim over and over that they twisted and took out of context everything he said to support their claims. Imagine the piss-take at work when people find out?

[/tangential aside for scientific pity]

I just went to Uncaged Monkeys in oxford with Prof Brian Cox, Ben Goldacher (whos blog on debunking shitty science journalism I strongly suggest for a read if you haven't read him already) and Simon Sing. It was really fun and I loved it but Prof Cox's collegues really took the piss out of him in front of the audience because he's a giganto sex symbol here. I was suprised no one threw their panties on stage. They kept picking the inappropriate questions from women in the audience sent in by text for the Q&A session like "what colour boxers is prof cox wearing" etc. The MC then said, after Cox very patiently declined the questions and exited stage left for the next section in the show, "Thank you audience. Later, Professor Cox will be pole dancing." Ok. I snorted at that one. But poor bastard.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

you might be really interested in a new BBC series put out called "watched over by machines of loving grace" that I loved. I agreed with a lot of the principle statements the writer of the series was making, but I didn't quite agree with the full conclusion at the end. But I really did empathise why he thought that way and it was and interesting take. here's the synopsis for the first episode:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011k45f

Several things leap to mind and I am going to have to watch this series. Hopefully the BBC will stream it.

This particularly caught me, "A series of films about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers."

This reminded me of the following:

“In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the
table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of
nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.”

(George Dyson -- Darwin Among the Machines)

Which then reminded me of this article, written 11 years ago by a very clever man named Bill Joy (he created Java) called "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us"

Cheers
Aj