Re: humanity shortening the life of the universe

On 24 Nov 2007 02:06:05 GMT, Gary Bohn
<gary.bohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Friar Broccoli <EliasRK@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:6bee2fa5-994a-4bc4-8b21-a0e5a2c0ac11@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

On Nov 23, 8:05 pm, r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 24 Nov 2007 00:50:00 GMT, Gary Bohn
<gary.b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:besek31fropqp18s8e2dtkm2fd7p8jqlar@xxxxxxx:

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:43:29 -0800 (PST), Vend
<ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 23 Nov, 22:52, wf3h <w...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If it wasn't in a serious newspaper, i'd have thought it was in
the 'onion'.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/21/
sci
...

Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our
activities may be shortening the life of the universe too.

The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists
investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory,
the most successful theory we have.

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists
claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe
closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti
gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion
of the cosmos.

IMHO, Dark energy might turn to be just an artifact due to the
fact that our theories of gravity are incorrect.

Still, all those astronomic observations are collapsing a
tremendous number of wave functions. Certainly that must be
involved in hastening the collapse of the universe, itself.

I thought science had dispensed with the requirement for an
intelligent observer. Will not any interaction collapse the wave
function?

Every time I looked, I found it already collapsed. How else to
really determine it?

Could you ask a republican to look for you?


And how do you know whether there really are any interactions if you
never observe them?

You've lost me here. What are you observing?


And another thing -- about that tree falling in the forest.....

It's NOT falling. It's in the state of superposition.
bordering Utah.



I thought it was used to build the box around the cat.

Now I have no idea if I'm coming or going.

--
Gary Bohn

Science rationally modifies a theory to fit evidence, creationism
emotionally modifies evidence to fit a specific interpretation of the
bible.

?Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.? ? Noam Chomsky, 1957


The sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", was
presented by Chomsky, as a great example of a series of words
strung together randomly. Not only is it grammatical according to
the lexical classification, and non-sense on a semantic level. Or
so goes the claim. But is the claim correct?

A green idea is, according to well established usage of the word
"green" is one that is an idea that is new and untried. Again, a
colorless idea is one without vividness, dull and unexciting. So
it follows that a colorless green idea is a new, untried idea
that is without vividness, dull and unexciting. To sleep is,
among other things, is to be in a state of dormancy or
inactivity, or in a state of unconsciousness. To sleep furiously
may seem a puzzling turn of phrase but one reflects that the mind
in sleep often indeed moves furiously with ideas and images
flickering in and out.

So what is the poet telling us? (One assumes that the quoted line
is from the work of a poet working in a medium of studied
precision and ambiguity. Or rather, as we shall see...) Very
simply the poet seems to be saying that new ideas, not yet
sharply defined, circulate in the unconscious, rapidly altering
at a furious rate.

One is left then with a question. Why is this nice bit of poetic
imagery cited by its author as a quintessentially meaningless
sentence? Here we have an exquisite bit of irony. The author
evidently has a turn for poetry, a turn which he turns his face
against. And the hidden face, the denied self, has taken its
revenge. The scientist has called on his creative self to exhibit
a bit of nonsense. The poet denied has replied with a sentence,
apparently meaningless, which is no such thing when listened to
with an attentive ear. And yet consider; this sentence is a very
intellectualized production - it is indeed "colorless". It was,
we suspect, a new idea, a variant of a possibility, still new at
the very moment of production, one occurring by chance in the
froth of the unconscious.

In short, the cited sentence was a colorless green idea that had
slept furiously.

--


Richard Harter, cri@xxxxxxxx
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: humanity shortening the life of the universe
    ... activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. ... closer to its death by observing dark energy, ... or in a state of unconsciousness. ... So what is the poet telling us? ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: humanity shortening the life of the universe
    ... Richard Harter wrote: ... activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. ... closer to its death by observing dark energy, ... So what is the poet telling us? ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: humanity shortening the life of the universe
    ... Richard Harter wrote: ... activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. ... closer to its death by observing dark energy, ... So what is the poet telling us? ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: humanity shortening the life of the universe
    ... activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. ... Science rationally modifies a theory to fit evidence, ... emotionally modifies evidence to fit a specific interpretation of the ... So what is the poet telling us? ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: A reconciliation of theistic evolution
    ... about god from observing the universe. ... all of them in my ability to perceive truth. ... and always provisionally) is the scientific method or something ...
    (talk.origins)