CERN likely to announce discovery of Higgs boson

[Brixtan]

There needs to be a warning thrown into the title: "Those with low IQs be warned: Brain Explosion Imminent"

It should be part of Peri's sig imo!

[Ingmartin]

There needs to be a warning thrown into the title: "Those with low IQs be warned: Brain Explosion Imminent"

Those with low IQs? Lol...

Understanding big concepts is something we do everyday without even knowing it. Gravity is felt by every object. We feel it's pull. Understanding how it works doesn't mean there is no understanding from someone of a low IQ. A tree understands gravity, even though it doesn't know how it works, because it stays rooted to the ground for survival.

In this theory, the opposite must also apply. If you do not understand gravity, nor feel it, nor experience it, then it doesn't exist and would not apply to you. Want to fly? Figure out a way to detatch yourself from understanding gravity.

Good luck!

[Arkham]

A tree understands gravity, even though it doesn't know how it works, because it stays rooted to the ground for survival.

You'd have to use a pretty loose definition of the term "understand" for that sentence to make sense. What makes you think the tree stays on the ground out of anything other than the circumstance it's in (i.e. being subject to gravity)?
Rocks stay on the ground too -- and not out of a sense of survival. They do it anyway. Would you say they "understand" gravity as well? If so, based on what? If not, where does this discrepancy between rocks and trees come from?

[Zidders]

Want to fly? Figure out a way to detatch yourself from understanding gravity.

Good luck!

"How To Fly

© by Douglas Adams
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.

That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration. Bob and float, float and bob. Ignore all consideration of your own weight simply let yourself waft higher. Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful. They are most likely to say something along the lines of "Good God, you can't possibly be flying!" It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly.

DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY.

When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly easier and easier to achieve.

You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your maneuverability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it were going to anyway.

You will also learn about how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly screw up, and screw up badly, on your first attempt.

There are private clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitchhikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them."

(I might be in the low IQ crowd, but I sure know funny)
((Peri-One of the few equations I do understand is that quality > quantity + grace with a dash of mischief = Peri)
8)

[Ingmartin]

A tree understands gravity, even though it doesn't know how it works, because it stays rooted to the ground for survival.

You'd have to use a pretty loose definition of the term "understand" for that sentence to make sense. What makes you think the tree stays on the ground out of anything other than the circumstance it's in (i.e. being subject to gravity)?
Rocks stay on the ground too -- and not out of a sense of survival. They do it anyway. Would you say they "understand" gravity as well? If so, based on what? If not, where does this discrepancy between rocks and trees come from?

Yes, my definition of understanding is very loose. Just because we see the rock on the ground doesn't mean it's just a rock. It certainly may have consciousness on a level that we cannot perceive. Remember, every sense that we have...taste, sight, hearing...all are evolutionary developments that allow us to survive and get around. If you cannot see, hear, taste, feel, or smell, it doesn't mean there isn't consciousness. Just ask Helen Keller. The rock cannot do any of these things, so we assume the rock is without understanding of its own world.

We are trying to understand our known universe using five senses. A rock may be trying to understand its world using 80 million senses...or zero senses...doesn't mean it lacks understanding. We just do not have the capacity to understand as the rock understands. Which segway's to....the Turing Test.

I have a hard time accepting the Turing test as the eventual method for determining artificial intelligence in a computer. We assume it doesnt have consciousness, but that is a potentially faulty assumption. Just because it doesn't understand things as a human doesn't mean it doesn't have consciousness.

[Ingmartin]

@zidders

Ahhh, Douglas Adams...the funniest scientifically minded paranoid schizophrenic surrealist who ever lived.

[Zidders]

Just because we see the rock on the ground doesn't mean it's just a rock. It certainly may have consciousness on a level that we cannot perceive.

"Ummm...scuse me..you gonna eat that?"
/not a member of RETR (Rockbiters for the Ethical Treatment of Rocks)

[Arkham]

If you cannot see, hear, taste, feel, or smell, it doesn't mean there isn't consciousness. Just ask Helen Keller. The rock cannot do any of these things, so we assume the rock is without understanding of its own world.

We assume it reasonably. Hellen Keller can reasonably be said to have had a central nervous system; we cannot reasonably say the same about the mineral-composed rock, and we know of no other way of possessing consciousness.

Saying something "may have consciousness" just because we don't yet know everything about anything is too broad of a possibility spectrum to be of any real use. Conjecture is fun and all, but there is no reasonable basis to say, as you said, that a tree or a rock understand gravity when there is a) no logical or empirical basis for thinking that rocks and trees understand anything, and b) no reason to think gravity only gets "obeyed" because things understand it.

[Ingmartin]

You are bogged down by facts! Facts change. The world was flat, now it's round. The moon was made of cheese, now it's rock and leftover space junk from NASA.

Of course I know it is far more likely that the tree doesn't think, nor does the rock. We know that Helen did think because she learned to communicate. I used her as an example to highlight my point that just because we don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. Empirical evidence of a thinking rock will never occur as long as we apply human terms to them. No, a rock does not have a central nervous system like a human does. It's a rock made of minerals!

But can we honestly say with any sort of absolute proof that a rock's consciousness doesn't exist? No, we cannot, because we attribute biological terms to a non-biological thing. Who says all life is carbon based? Not NASA.

The point is that we are still in our infancy as far as understanding our universe and our position in it. Hell, we're still in utero (earth being the womb).

Perhaps the technological singularity will be the true birth of humanity. Perhaps we will be stillborn. Who knows?

[Webbstre]

Facts = Things that are true no matter what we think or observe about them in our limited capabilities. Aka, the world was never flat, people only got closer to the truth.

[Arkham]

You are bogged down by facts! Facts change. The world was flat, now it's round. The moon was made of cheese, now it's rock and leftover space junk from NASA.

I had a feeling you would mention something like this. I have something I would like you to read, regarding this: a letter, written by Isaac Asimov to someone trying to make a similar point.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/ ... fWrong.htm

But can we honestly say with any sort of absolute proof that a rock's consciousness doesn't exist?

Looking for absolute proof to a negative is a futile and unnecessary endeavor.
There is no absolute proof that there isn't (to make up a particularly outlandish example) an invisible unicorn, completely undetectable by all our existing instruments, circling the moon and gently breathing its amazing unicorn-breath on the moon to keep it circling the Earth and prevent it from crashing into us. But, this explanation is completely implausible (Occam's razor), completely unsubstantiated (no evidence + largely untestable hypothesis), and completely unnecessary (how the moon stays in orbit around the earth is already adequately explained).
Thus, one understands that -- unless and until supporting evidence is presented -- ruling something like this out as a possibility is a perfectly sensible thing to do. Treating it as a plausible possibility (to say nothing of treating it as just as plausible as any other possibility) is not sensible.

Again, idle conjecture is fine and fun, but there is no basis for saying rocks and trees must understand gravity because they wouldn't be bound by gravity if they did not. There is no basis for saying that being subject to gravity is caused by knowledge of it (whether implicit/instinctive knowledge or explicit/cognitive), and there is no known model for rocks and trees having consciousness either; and there can only be a plausible assertion of "types of consciousness" that are very different from ours once different types of consciousness have been reasonably shown to exist. Not before.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible for alternate types of consciousness to exist. And certainly attempting to look for such things, or make suppositions about how such a different consciousness would operate, would be a reasonable thing to do. But there is a difference between that, and making the claims you made.

[Ingmartin]

Oh I am not claiming anything at all...this is all conjecture and philisophical musings of a bored overnight hotel worker with nothing better to do than argue about unarguable things. There is no such thing as absolute fact...group perspective is required for a fact to exist in the first place, and since the only perspective we can have is our own (no matter how hard we try, we can only view our existence through our own 5 senses) absolute fact is simply impossible.

I just love attempting to fuse philosophy with physics. They are not isolated from one another in any shape or form.

[TheLurker]

"Check out the big brane on Brett!"



"Mmmmmmm......branes...."



Turns out they're all Boson Buddies.

(I might be in the low IQ crowd, but I sure know funny)

You do not have a low I.Q.

The most fascinating conjecture is the "holographic universe concept". We are nothing but three dimensional representations of the two dimensional borders of the known universe...where time does not exist. It explains how a particle can be in two places at the same time.

Someone's been keepin' up with Brian Greene, have we?

Did you catch his latest 4-parter on PBS?

If you accept this as a distinct possibility, then by extrapolation, the Hindu concept of Maya does not seem all that far-fetched - not at all.

Rather prescient, in fact.

--------

As much as I love science, I have to say that the 'contributions' of Bacon and Descartes et. al., while quite useful (in many cases)...have been, in some ways, both the best - and the worst - thing to happen to our overall understanding of the nature of things than we've ever had the occasion (or misfortune, even) to be subjected to, in modern times.

I do not necessarily see that the Hegelian Dialectic is the exclusive purview only of science, and its methods, either. And among some of those that do, I find perhaps a rather dismissive attitude at times towards other models, in the same vein as those folks who discount the scientific evidence of Climate Change at the other end of the spectrum.

Just knowing that the mere act of observation of something can change the actual outcome of events is staggering. And, why quantum physics - and metaphysics - are more closely tied together than most people will ever truly understand in this lifetime.

Science, while certainly a Noble Pursuit (no pun intended - that would be a 'Nobel Pursuit'), is merely a starting point - not an end unto itself. In the absence of a larger framework, it becomes almost superfluous.

And this coming from someone who has had, between high school and university, more than five years of Biology, four of Chemistry, and ~3 1/2 or so of Physics.

----

I sincerely hope that today's researchers keep an open mind as to all the possibilities that their work truly entails.

And, as I've spoken to a number of them involved in various disciplines over the years, know that I'm not alone in this - not by a long stretch.

I've had very good teachers over the years, in many areas, and for that I feel truly blessed. I would hope that all of you have the same opportunity to further your education as I have had - from the Alpha, to the Omega.

The true Renaissance is just beginning, folks. Stay tuned.

Nope. I'm just another relatively anonymous contributor to Runic's forums
- P.

I'm sure you've never spent any time around H******s.

....Mmmm...now, that has me thinkin' 'bout crêpes and Dim Sum...

----

After this story broke - somewhere underground, in hollowed-out bunkers surrounded by irradiated cans of food, emergency radios, and life-saving aluminum foil caps, I'm sure more than a few folks are lying awake, fearing the 'Micro Black Holes' that are now threatening to swallow the Earth whole...

All due to unCERNtainty.

-TL


P.S. "But, this Universe goes to Eleven."

[Ingmartin]

Did you catch his latest 4-parter on PBS?

No, I don't get PBS in Puerto Rico, which sucks ass because I like the guy. But I like to keep up on some of the more interesting mindf*** theories out there, and the holographic universe theory seems to be as good a theory as any religious concept of reality..and far more likely.

Where is Christopher Hitchens when you need him? Oh yeah, having a cocktail with the worms. Or is he?

But what begs to be answered, more than anything else in the holographic universe concept...who created the holograph? Why was the holograph created? And what is the purpose?

I believe our known universe is nothing more than a Higgs Boson particle in are larger universe, which is a Higgs Boson particle of another universe and so on...into infinity. But it is all the same universe, looping over and over upon itself like perpetual motion machine. Never ending, never beginning, never pausing.

[Webbstre]

absolute fact is simply impossible.

That statement would appear to work on the assumption that reality is defined by the mind, not that the mind just tries to interpret reality. As I have yet to manage to make myself fly and shoot lightning from my hands, I'm gonna stick with facts = truth = reality, and let you believe whatever you want

[belgarathmth]

I agree with Arkham and Webbstre in this discussion. Arkham has argued my own philosophical skepticism and empiricism with much more skill and with more sympathy for the other side than I myself could.

When I was a young philosophy and religion major, I used to quite regularly fall into the temptation to try to use science to legitimize any cosmological ideas or conclusions about "God" and "the Universe" that I happened to be entertaining at the time. Some of those ideas were actually quite harmful to me and my mental health as a human being, inducing "crazy" and sometimes almost desperate attempts to continue believing that there is evidence to support the idea that a benevolent "God" exists and acts in the lives of individuals.

I actually beat mental illness by becoming a skeptic, a hard empiricist, and an atheist.

I was very stimulated by and found myself agreeing with the essay by Asimov. Truth and Falsehood, "Real" and "not-Real" are not absolutes, but rather asymptotes or mathematical limits that can be approached with greater or lesser degrees of certainty and efficiency. When given such important graphical axes, where one pole represents something very desireable toward bettering the human condition ("Truth", understanding reality), and the other pole represents something so inimical ("Falsehood", greater human suffering due to religious fanaticism, disease, and so many other things), I think it is vital to always keep moving toward the Truth axis, while moving as far away as possible from the axis of Falsehood. And I believe that science as understood and advocated for by Asimov, Arkham, and Webbstre is our best and most effective tool for this endeavor.

We have to be very careful what kinds of suppositions and conjectures we start entertaining as being true. Ideas like "rocks and trees are conscious" have implications that affect our decision making as human beings, in such areas, for example, as environmental policy and resources management. We are harmed as a society when we carelessly accept any idea or proposition as having a high truth value when in fact, it plots on our hypothetical Truth-Falsehood graph as very, very close to the "False" axis - perhaps close enough to be considered "crazy" or "insane".

And, at the risk of being thought unkind, I can't help sighing, rolling my eyes, and shaking my head every time I hear some version of "well, you can't prove it's not true, so I think it's a good idea, and it's probably true because I like it, and I want it to be true, so I intend to believe it and make my decisions based on it."

And so, getting back to the original thread topic, I think the recent experiment regarding the Higgs boson is important regardless of the findings. I don't yet understand exactly what those findings are, but I doubt they will need to throw out the whole Standard Model and start over from scratch. Rather, the results, when replicated and verified, will serve to move us that much closer to Truth and understanding reality. And that, in my opinion, can only improve the human condition.

[adoomgod]

I simply love brian green. I feel its only a matter of time before he is declared the Einstein of today.

After all, it is he that taught me that our universe is three dimensional by chance. At the beginning of time, when everything was nice and compact, there was a higher probability of string particles colliding and thus cancel each other out. It just happened the 3 surrounding our physical dimensions did. Imagine if we were four dimensional instead. There is the chance that such a universe exists.

Look, we can argue and debate on why's and definitions until we are red in the face. The thing is, if you spend too much time staring at microscopic particles you'll miss the, well, big picture: The tiny spec of dirt we call home in the black void of space is actually pretty beautiful. That's part of the reason I haven't destroyed yet. (I'm getting around to it.)

And am I the only one here who feels we are monkeying around with some pretty powerful forces? I wonder if someone could weaponize a hadron collider.

[Webbstre]

...

Our universe has more than 3 dimensions. Vertical, Horizontal, Depth, Time, The bending of space, and distortion of rates of time... that's at least 6 dimensions right there.

[adoomgod]

Our universe has 13 dimensions mathematically proven Webbstre. I'm not an imbecile. I was just referring to the 3 spatial dimensions that expanded at the beginning of the universe.

*edit* I mean, we could go into the discussion of what we can learn about our universe after understanding what a tesseract is, hypercubes and what not... but I feel that while exciting, the simpler things in life can better fill one's soul.

Also interestingly enough, "tesseract" is not a word defined by my computer's auto-correct feature. I guess whoever designed it wasn't interested in physics.

[Webbstre]

Aha, but I listed the dimensions we can actually experience and comprehend. Bwahahaha.