Puzzled About Galactic Collisions

[cronus]

The past appears to be clockwork so the future might be too. Perhaps you need to be a vastly more advanced technological civilization to have a chance of resolving some of these very hard problems? The limitations are computational power and conceptual imagination combined with relying on ape biology for the necessary intuitions?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The past appears to be clockwork so the future might be too. Perhaps you need to be a vastly more advanced technological civilization to have a chance of resolving some of these very hard problems? The limitations are computational power and conceptual imagination combined with relying on ape biology for the necessary intuitions?

You clearly didn't read my last post. The past is not clockwork. Quantum Phsics effectively rules out the ability to predict either the future or the past given present conditions - mainly because it is impossible to know what the present conditions are!

[Jason]

We know something!
What?
We can't know anything!

Damn you philosophy!

[cronus]

Quantum Mechanics doesn't invalidate straightforward cause and effect at the everyday level, does it?

[Jason]

If a tree falls in a perfect vacuum, does it actually fall?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Quantum Mechanics doesn't invalidate straightforward cause and effect at the everyday level, does it?

It depends what you mean by that.

Relativity ensures that effects always follow their causes (although to do so, it necessarily dispenses with absolute simultaneity). However, quantum mechanics asserts that we cannot predict the cause from the effect with 100% certainty. At a quantum level, this uncertainty is hugely significant. As we scale things up to macro levels, however, it dwindles until it practically vanishes - but it is still present.

But once you extrapolate things back to a few moments after the big bang, everything is on a quantum level! So you cannot derive the past from the present.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

If a tree falls in a perfect vacuum, does it actually fall?

A vacuum would negate air resistance - so it would fall faster.

[MiM]

The past appears to be clockwork

How . Appears, maybe to you. But how do you convince me that it has been? To me it appears quite random and erratic.

[MiM]

As we scale things up to macro levels, however, it dwindles until it practically vanishes - but it is still present.

And has been explained here already a couple of times. Things that happen on the quantum scale (radiation) can directly effect the macro scale in quite a serious manner (cancer, atomic bombs...), without the effect dwindling or vanishing at all.

[cronus]

There are millions of cds of The Beatles that prove the past happened exactly as it did. That to me is credible evidence we live in a clockwork universe. The evidence is the recording not what was recorded....the past can be put on repeat.

[MiM]

There are millions of cds of The Beatles that prove the past happened exactly as it did. That to me is credible evidence we live in a clockwork universe. The evidence is the recording not what was recorded....the past can be put on repeat.

as it did. Not as it had to do . There are thousands of failed Beatles CD burns too.

[cronus]

There are millions of cds of The Beatles that prove the past happened exactly as it did. That to me is credible evidence we live in a clockwork universe. The evidence is the recording not what was recorded....the past can be put on repeat.

as it did. Not as it had to do . There are thousands of failed Beatles CD burns too.

As it did so it had too, or otherwise these recordings would be different not simply failed but different mixes....because a cd is a window into another time, sort of.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There are millions of cds of The Beatles that prove the past happened exactly as it did. That to me is credible evidence we live in a clockwork universe. The evidence is the recording not what was recorded....the past can be put on repeat.

as it did. Not as it had to do . There are thousands of failed Beatles CD burns too.

As it did so it had too, or otherwise these recordings would be different not simply failed but different mixes....because a cd is a window into another time, sort of.

What do these CDs tell you exactly? They are a digitisation of an analog recording - one of many possible such. Do they tell you which guitar parts were overdubbed? What Ringo was smelling when he was playing? Exactly where George had an itch during that tricky sitar part?

No, they are a photograph, not a window. A still life with no information beyond the music itself.

[cronus]

There are millions of cds of The Beatles that prove the past happened exactly as it did. That to me is credible evidence we live in a clockwork universe. The evidence is the recording not what was recorded....the past can be put on repeat.

as it did. Not as it had to do . There are thousands of failed Beatles CD burns too.

As it did so it had too, or otherwise these recordings would be different not simply failed but different mixes....because a cd is a window into another time, sort of.

What do these CDs tell you exactly? They are a digitisation of an analog recording - one of many possible such. Do they tell you which guitar parts were overdubbed? What Ringo was smelling when he was playing? Exactly where George had an itch during that tricky sitar part?

No, they are a photograph, not a window. A still life with no information beyond the music itself.

They could tell such things even though they don't. Your analog is lame and trite.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There are millions of cds of The Beatles that prove the past happened exactly as it did. That to me is credible evidence we live in a clockwork universe. The evidence is the recording not what was recorded....the past can be put on repeat.

as it did. Not as it had to do . There are thousands of failed Beatles CD burns too.

As it did so it had too, or otherwise these recordings would be different not simply failed but different mixes....because a cd is a window into another time, sort of.

What do these CDs tell you exactly? They are a digitisation of an analog recording - one of many possible such. Do they tell you which guitar parts were overdubbed? What Ringo was smelling when he was playing? Exactly where George had an itch during that tricky sitar part?

No, they are a photograph, not a window. A still life with no information beyond the music itself.

They could tell such things even though they don't. Your analog is lame and trite.

Not really. Your CD only plays what was recorded. It contains no information whatsoever about how it was recorded, when it was recorded, by whom it was recorded, when and how it was remixed, equalised, digitally encoded, etc. You can only speculate on such things based on other people's words and opinions and circumstantial evidence.

In much the same way, the existence of the universe as it is contains only imperfect information about how it came to be that way.