Madame Blavatsky... the Universe as an acting being

Miscellaneous General
101

Do you? The precession in the perihelion of Mercury was no evidence of GR. SR is taken to be experimentally confirmed by the failure to detect a luminiferous ether and subsequent experiments. The first decisive evidence of GR in history was Gravity Probe B. Look it up.

I don’t want to get into it right now but both SR and GR can be re-interpreted in less exotic ways (the nowadays ever-fashionable “counter-intuitive” interpretations of time and space being stretched or dilated are best understood as errors of reification). From a metaphysical point-of-view, SR and GR are only credible if physicists are indeed correct that we’ve “just about closed the book” on physics. My bets are against that view - we’re only scratching the surface of physics and this will become much clearer in the coming decades. I hope to see the revolution at least begin before I die.

Clayton -

102

Speaking of correlation v. causation and the ability to predict something based upon a model:

When the paradigm was that the earth was the center of the solar system and universe, the mainstream astrophysicists of the day were able to predict the movement of heavenly bodies. Sure, to us today, we look and say why would anyone think that Venus, for example, would move in the pattern it does with earth as the center (the loopy, flower like pattern)? But it didn’t matter at the time because some people were able to predict the motion and so, their theory was viewed as truth. It turns out, as we now know, that while they were able to make accurate predictions and Venus does in fact have that type of orbit when earth is viewed as the center, the theory was incorrect. Venus and the earth orbit the sun, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a different way to predict the movement of Venus. This is the point Clayton and I are making. No one is asserting that the predictions aren’t correct; however we are hypothesizing that the theory is incorrect in the same manner as the geocentric model was.

103

Whatever. It has survived 94 years worth of testing.

No, they cannot. Space is non-Euclidean and circumference = pi * radius is wrong in our universe.

von Mises didn’t seem to have a problem accepting it. I’m not sure what your problem is.

“The solid bodies and light rays of our environment, says Reichenbach, behave according to the laws of Euclid. But this, he adds, is merely “a fortunate empirical fact.” Beyond the space of our environment the physical world behaves according to other geometries.” - http://library.mises.org/books/Ludwig%20von%20Mises/Ultimate%20Foundation%20of%20Economic%20Science.pdf - Ludwig von Mises, Ultimate foundation of Economic Science p.14

That would be exciting. Let’s check in another 94 years to see how GR is doing.

104

On the issue of electrical charge, let’s not get into debates over angels on pin heads. The Earth is a charged body - it’s charged at the surface, it’s charged in the atmosphere and the plasma layers above the Earth carry charge as well. Saying it’s “net neutral” is just spooky hand-waving… every electrical circuit is neutral on net. That’s why it’s called a “circuit”. The key question is whether there is electrical current which is always a sign of separated unlike charges moving toward equilibrium. The Earth’s surface carries a daily electrical current (telluric currents), the atmosphere shows currents (charge flows) in the Aurora, and so on - those are just the more obvious electrical activities.

The Earth is moving through the Sun’s magnetic field and every charged particle that mechanically influences the Earth (whether at the surface, below or in the atmosphere) experiences a net force from the Sun’s magnetism. Talk of whether “the Earth’s” or “the Sun’s” magnetic field is responsible is obfuscatory - the fact is that the Sun’s magnetic field is affecting the Earth’s and, thereby, affecting every charged particle on Earth. The same goes for the plasma layers surrounding the Earth. The Earth’s magnetic field is altered by its interaction with the Sun’s magnetic field, which must necessarily affect (apply mechanical force to and/or alter electrical current flow) whatever is responsible for the Earth’s magnetic field.

Clayton -

105

Yes, that’s what causes aurorae. But the motion of the planets is explained entirely by GR, which you agreed was empirically verified. The net effect of electromagnetism on the planets’ motion is, consequently, zero.

There are are politically-influenced and monetarily-influenced crackpot theories in academia worth assaulting. GR isn’t one of them. At best you can refine it with corrections having to do with quantum mechanics or dark matter or dark energy or something.

GR asserts that the laws of physics must be generally covariant, i.e. the same under any coordinate system, even one associated with a non-inertial reference frame. GR itself obeys this principle. The geocentric viewpoint is thus perfectly correct. And when I spin my body in a circle, the stars actually do whirl overhead at speeds greater than that of light.

In the end, only the math matters.

106

BTW I found the Madame Blavatsky video intriguing. But I found myself not really learning anything from it. I find von Mises more interesting than any of her spiritual “teachers”.

I have no trouble accepting an electron as an infinetismal organism that seeks what it desires and avoids what it dislikes. The mechanical is akin to but simpler than the animate. I can also accept a human being as a mindless agglomeration of mass obeying the laws of physics deterministically; the animate is akin to but more complex than the mechanical.

In the end, I just ended up accepting the platitude mechanical = animate.

107

It depends on how you define radius and circumference, physically (i.e. it’s a matter of how you define measurement). We can define a measure in such a way that Euclidean space is preserved within the measure space. In fact, this is precisely what our perception must do since we can only perceive Euclidean 3-space.

What the hell does that have to do with anything??

Clayton -

108

For what? What does the math matter for?

Clayton -

109

Perhaps for one or two distances. You can say “apply a correction factor of X when measuring the circumference at a distance of Y” to make C=2pi R magically work. But there is no consistent way to do this for all distances between all possible pairs of points that is any simpler than simply accepting curved space. In any case, this is pointless quibling. Positivism, the epistemology of physics, says that the mathematical predictions are all that matters, whether it’s GR or an alternative like a crackpot’s complex intertwinement of plasma-induced numerical hacks.

I’m not really sure what that means. We can visually perceive a distortion caused by gravitational lensing. I have pictures to prove it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG

And near a massive black hole’s event horizon, one would perceive the black hole “below” them as enveloping most of the visible field while the rest of the universe including the part “behind” the blackhole would appear in a small, bright circle above one’s head.

When you see a golf ball rolling toward you, and it begins to veer toward one side, you know that it’s travelling on a curved surface. Nothing magical there. And properly equipped, a human observing or navigating is bound to accept curved space as perfectly natural and commonplace.

110

You can see what I’m talking about here. The transform in this case is mapping Lorentz space to Euclidean 2-space.

“What a black hole would look like to a human” is not a valid thought-experiment because a human would be torn apart by gravity long before he got close enough to perceive spacetime distortion.

Clayton -

111

This is only SR. In this toy problem, there’s no curvature of space (the Riemann tensor vanishes for all observers).

Not true for a supermassive black hole. The tidal forces outside the event horizon are bearable for the human body. There is also the possibility of operating a unmanned probe, of course.

In fact, it is possible for a human body to actually enter an event horizon unscathed, though there is no means for them to tell us about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification

112

Have you read The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov?

113

@gotlucky: I have now… :wink:

I think that Asimov is discussing something slightly different - he’s talking about the gradual process of refinement of physical theory within an otherwise uncontroversial metaphysical framework. The trouble with Einsteinian relativity is that not only does it make physical claims about the world, it also makes metaphysical claims that may or may not turn out to be correct. That is, relativity theory makes a claim that gravity (spacetime curvature) is in fact a causal theory - contra Newton (see the quote I gave above) - and it posits that it is reasonable to claim that gravity is causal because it is a consequence of the universal speed limit, the speed of light.

But when you dig into the reasons for believing that the speed of light is the universal speed limit, you find that it rests on much shakier ground than the consensus of physicists would lead you to believe. The essential reason for asserting the universal speed limit of light speed is the failure to detect a luminiferous ether. This rationale is inconclusive to begin with: “We don’t see it so therefore it must not exist” is hardly incontestable evidence. And it is getting shakier as we learn more and more about the Earth’s electrical and magnetic properties. Specifically, the fact that we do not detect a luminiferous ether could be a consequence of “entrainment”. If you read the article, you will see that relativity theory actually grew out of the attempts to rectify etheric theory with the negative result of the Michaelson-Morley experiment and other problems with etheric theory.

But what makes relativity different is that it abolishes any medium for the propagation of the light wave. This makes light, in some sense, “metaphysically absolute”. It is pure, unmediated wave. It is not the waving of something else, it is raw wave. Hence, the consequences of relativity theory are causally sufficient to explain whatever phenomena they are responsible for - which happens to include gravitation (curvature of spacetime). Basically, Einsteinian relativity says: “Because the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the Universe and is constant in every intertial frame (and some other stuff regarding the equivalence of accelerating inertial frames), gravity causes the Earth to orbit the Sun in the same sense that a baseball bat causes the baseball to fly when struck.” That is much different than noting that the curvature of the Earth is non-zero and, therefore, that the Earth is not flat or even than noting that the heavenly bodies go about the Sun rather than about the Earth. The very meaning of causality is itself being touched by relativity theory.

Clayton -

114

Actually relativity has no problem with tachyons, which would have imaginary rest mass and would be forbidden from transitioning to below the speed of light. But SR does say a particle with positive rest mass can’t be accelerated to the speed of light as that would require an infinite amount of energy. And the dependence of mass on speed is something tested zillions of times a day in particle accelerators.

Not really. All the equations of SR and GR are time-reversible. It is valid in GR for a series of gravitaitonal waves to arrive at the event horizon of a blackhole causing an astronaut to be ejected out. To rule out this miraculous event you need thermodynamic considerations that apply to just about any other theory.

Relativity theory actually undermines causality. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rietdijk%E2%80%93Putnam_argument

Basically, past and future are determined. Instead of saying “past event A causes future event B”, it is more accurate to say “events A and B are related in a way such that the laws of physics remain valid”.

Most physicists don’t care about the metaphysical, unfalsifiable mumbo jumbo. Feel free to give them better narratives or interpretations if you think it will aid them. Just don’t screw up the math - that’s already working.

Honestly, SR and GR are more philosophically satisfying than Gallilean physics. SR puts time on a similar footing to the other dimensions, allowing you to “rotate” into time through a boost (velocity). And GR dispels the mystical notion of absolute space and time and lets us know that coordinate systems are merely arbitrary labels.

In summary, (a) your doubts about the experimental reliability especially of SR are laughably absurd and (b) no amount of philosophical hand-wringing will overthrow SR or GR which are experimentally verified. At best you can restate or extend or refine the theories.

115

*sigh - but how do we measure mass? Energy spectra! In other words, it’s completely circular… it could be that the amount of energy required to move a particular mass to a particular velocity simply increases in the appropriate proportion with gamma. In terms of the math, it doesn’t matter how we interpret gamma, whether as increasing the mass itself or increasing the energy required to move a non-increasing mass.

This goes to the heart of the matter - we are back-porting fictional metaphysical entities (unobserved mass, unobserved energy) and modifying the ordinary meaning of mass, energy and causality to conform to these fictional entities. That is a serious philosophical mistake. A rock does not get heavier when you throw it. It simply takes this much exertion to get that much effect.

Um, yeah, that’s my point. And that’s the whole problem. Causality is an a priori category of knowledge, it’s not subject to revision by subordinate subjects of knowledge, such as physics.

*shrug - this is simply false in any sense that is meaningful to human awareness.

I have no problem with this. Time itself is an attribute of conscious awareness and there is no reason to impose the peculiarities of human consciousness onto those aspects of Nature that are not like human consciousness (e.g. a light particle or a galaxy).

Nobody disputes the math. The math is irrelevant to the scientific problems. Math is just used to organize and compress the data of the phenomena, nothing more.

GR is far from “experimentally verified”. The relationships between mass and energy certainly follow the gamma scaling with velocity but that really doesn’t tell us very much about the inherent structure of the physical world. It is the claims that the speed of light is the same in every inertial frame and that equivalently accelerating frames are physically equivalent that lead to the bizarro world of bending spacetime and black holes. At best, the standard conceptualizations of SR/GR - even if SR/GR are true - are grossly misleading and transport the individual away from the facts of laboratory and science into the realm of theoretical daydreaming.

Clayton -

116

It does. And the enormous energy is imparted on the moved object. A proton so accelerated can have as much energy as a basbeball: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray

“the Oh-My-God particle observed on the evening of 15 October 1991… a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a baseball (5 ounces or 142 grams)”

At relativistic speeds, electrons gain relativistic mass and as such are less affected by resistance. This is one factor in initiating a lightning bolt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_runaway_electron_avalanche

The terms “mass” and “energy” haven’t been used in physics for more than few centures I think, so updating their meaning shouldn’t be so objectionable. Anyway, devise new terms like bloop and gleek if it pleases you. If it helps you feel better, there are others engaging in pedantic arguments over the exact terminology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_special_relativity

"The concept of “relativistic mass” is subject to misunderstanding. That’s why we don’t use it. First, it applies the name mass - belonging to the magnitude of a 4-vector - to a very different concept, the time component of a 4-vector. Second, it makes increase of energy of an object with velocity or momentum appear to be connected with some change in internal structure of the object. In reality, the increase of energy with velocity originates not in the object but in the geometric properties of spacetime itself.

I think I overstated this. In a sense it is indifferent to causality. It is indifferent to whether you choose the interpretation “past A causes future B” or “future B causes past A”. FYI Newtonian gravity and mechanics are also perfectly time-reversible.

FYI, with the knowledge of a finite value of the speed of light from Maxwell’s equations, Newtonian gravity also admits conglomerations of mass from which emitted light falls below the needed escape velocity. But there is a contradiction here - if light travels at constant speed, how could it not escape? Hence SR.

It’s funny that there are those who attack capitalism while enjoying goods like cathode ray tube TV’s, GPS devices, cancer radiaton treatments, MRI, and nuclear power. And then there are those who attack SR and GR while enjoying the same goods.

117

LRC article on problems with the lunar landing myth…

Just to give you an idea of how much ionizing radiation (the kind that scrambles DNA and cell structures) there is in space when not protected by a gigantic magnetic field…

Clayton -

118

Aristophanes - “Blavatsky is a new age goddess. Have you read ther theories on Atlantis and the arians?”

Yes, actually, and whether you believe in the supernatural or not (I do), it is absolute drivel. Madame Blavatsky was a hack, and was even recognized as such by other occultists in her day. She did have a great deal of influence on German occultists, though, for reasons that should be obvious.

119

She was an entrepreneur in the spiritual services industry. :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously, though, she pretty much just collected stories and ideas from Victorian occult society and disseminated them in a form nearly suitable for consumption by polite society. She was kind of like the Gene Simmons or Ozzie of her day… just bad enough to give her “cred” but not so bad she couldn’t sell her books. Crowley was much the same act though I think he was aiming for a smaller and more affluent market niche.

I’ve been searching up and down the internet for a transcript of the article that the YT video in the OP is supposed to be quoting from and I simply cannot find it. I’m starting to wonder if Blavatsky is misattributed here. In any case, it doesn’t really matter, the video pretty much presents a form of animism but what I liked about it was the “conscientious anthropomorphism” employed. It’s not merely saying “the world is spirit” for the sake of trying to be shocking… it’s saying, “one way to think about the Unvierse, that humans might find beneficial, is to think of everything in the Universe as if it were an acting being, seeking what it likes and avoiding what it dislikes.”

As a computer engineer, I can attest that computer hardware is much more fruitfully thought of as if it has a goal or end which it is seeking. If the Universe, at root, is more like a computer than it is like a geometrical construction, a conscientiously animistic view of the behavior of physical entities will be much more profitable than the rote numerical model by which everything in the Universe blindly follows laws. I think it’s safe to say, at this point in time, that the computational metaphor has surpassed the geometrical metaphor.

Clayton -

120

“one way to think about the Unvierse, that humans might find beneficial, is to think of everything in the Universe as if it were an acting being, seeking what it likes and avoiding what it dislikes.”
Isn’t that just basically true, though? The basic parts that form physical reality (atoms, elements, and so forth) attract or repel things based on their characteristics. The things they make up attract or repel other things accordingly, and so forth.

How I would personally apply this basic fact is: It would make sense that this doesn’t change just because a bunch of these parts happen to form something we—with our indescribably limited knowledge and scope of understanding—think of as “conscious”, “autonomous”, or having “free will”.

So who are we to say we control ourselves? We can’t even fathom what’s going on in the machine that causes our actions. And, to your point, who are we to say our parts don’t respond to input we are consciously unaware of?