I understand, it is a peeve of mine when theory is used as a synonym for idea. But if we must be correct, we must all be correct. This isn’t debate class and no one is getting graded (right?!), but we must all hold ourselves up to our standards.
And with that I am going back to the Questions thread where I can be a moron.
that’s a good pet peeve to have, since the “theory” = “guess/idea” meme is at the core of biblical creationists’ misunderstandings about the theory of evolution.
Heh, why are unambiguous, clearly defined words so hard to use correctly? 
yeah well, personally, i have a working theory that most of people intractably against the acceptance of the theory of climate change are members of a lizard syndicate. but i dont waste anyone’s time on BB with it.
Hey ugh -
Appreciate the rhyme (would try it myself but would just end up looking stupid(er)). I believe that the universe is made of information without thinking it’s a simulation (or even necessarily digital). For one thing, with a simulation, there’s a container world problem. Say you’re in the Matrix. Well then, the world that’s running the Matrix is real, or it, too, is a simulation run by some other world. Either it’s simulations all the way up, or at some point, you’ve got a non-cyber-engineered world.
Then there are statistical arguments - what are the odds that this world, of all potential worlds, is a simulated one? Or, what are the odds that this world starts suffering from glitches in reality, Matrix-style, revealing it to be a simulation, during the short time we’re observing it by being alive? Don’t know how the math works, but it seems statistically unlikely that we’re the unwitting stars of a sim universe.
Yep.
Questions are valuable. Ideas are valuable. But the chance of us ever knowing “the truth” is laughable. So positing hypothesis and testing experiments is the best we have.
(Its turtles)
I’d take it more seriously if not this this line: “the cosmic equivalent of 42-year-old strippers who are somehow only as old as toddlers”. Not exactly the kind of analogy that belongs in a science article.
Hey Dumbass, er sorry, Mr Genius, I believe you can’t say the universe is made of information because that is just a way of looking at things. That seems like confusing representation with the thing itself which is not like anything else, pretty obviously. Analogies are useful, but should not be taken too seriously. They can be stretched beyond useful too easily.
I keep coming back to Feynman and his edict that if you think you understand QED you don’t understand it at all. This must be true of the universe in general, no? Science, for this non-scientist, is a source of humility and awe. I love reading about what real scientists do and try to understand, realizing my understanding will always be stunted because I have other shit to do that takes the bulk of my time and my level of discipline does not match those who have made a difference there.
I carry around a device in my pocket that has around a trillion inter-related working parts. I use it to play solitaire and look at maps when I am lost. I am grateful there are people capable of making such things, but would not ever think I might have something to add to that conversation.
Good on you for jumping into this viper’s nest of experts with your fascination and enthusiasm. I hope you will take away a desire to refine your method of communicating those things for this audience. That is a real challenge. The people here are a mixed lot, but some of them are awesomely informed about the things they do and don’t take kindly to strangers invading their turf with half-baked whims unless they are presented with a framework of questions and a willingness to listen and absorb good information from well informed experts. Not your average online community by any means.
The trope of “all articles should submit to my immediate interpretation” is tired. Also read the one about websites and articles you disagree with.
As an aside I hate being “that guy”, but as Gobe put it so succinctly, Come On!
Then don’t start your post with Mr Dumbass.
Kinda thinking it’s Rosner who’s the troll here.
I’m not a scientist either, but I’m pretty sure what you have is a hypothesis at the most. A theory requires evidence, loads of sweet, sweet evidence.
For the sake of FSM, he has done nothing other than posit a thought on a general purpose website. I smell envy like no ones business.
He succinctly made points, misused some words (which also annoys me), but a troll? Do we all need to fear intellectual dogma?
And as with almost all questions in print the answer is No. Rebut hypothesis. Don’t ad hominem.
troll:
One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument. (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll)
Seems like he fits the bill.
C’mon Elmer -
Thought trolls made nasty fun of everyone. I earnestly believe in what I wrote. Yes, it got people riled up, but that wasn’t my intent. Wanted people to think, “Hey, that’s an interesting idea” and to realize that the Big Bang, which most of us believe in without significant reservation, has been the mainstream belief for only 50 years. And not long before that, there was no reasonable belief, because we didn’t have enough information about the overall universe.
So it goes like this - all of human history until the early to mid-20th century: no decent theory of the universe.
Last 50 years - the first pretty serviceable theory of the universe.
We would have to be incredibly lucky to get it right the first time. And I think we’re half-lucky - large parts of Big Bang Theory will survive. As Einstein kinda said, the universe isn’t maliciously complicated. But I think the Big Bang part of the Big Bang - that the entire universe is uniformly expanding from some T=0 - will mostly go away. Close to T=0 is where our information about parts of the universe that aren’t part of the current apparent co-expansion drops to close to zero.
Big Bang Theory accounts for much of the universe’s uniformity through cosmic inflation right after T=0. My guess is much of this uniformity comes from repeated iteration and the rules of information for newly lit-up galaxies which exchange lots of information (billions of years’ worth) with each other via radiation.
Totally disagree. In fact I think Discourse is the aim (see what I did there? 
)
I guess the way I look at this is of some one asks, “how do I play in C sharp flat?”. There are valid ways of talking about that (and it may be relevant.if you think about it) but saying names does nothing.
What I’m confused about here is why some people who claim to know all about physics seem to be denying that information-theory-ripe hypotheses of the physical nature of the universe have been put out there for years by some very bright and well-respected physicists? This is NOT a new idea, people. “It from bit?”
Another point is that many scientific ideas we now regard as solid theory are rooted in ideas that originally struck certain influencers as not much more than intuition. The article’s poster hardly suggested “everybody should believe this because I’m saying it.” It’s an idea, and ideas can lead to paradigm shifts in thinking accompanied by, you guessed it, a rigorous scientific approach backed by experimentation and refinement based on results. But no interesting experiments can be developed without the ideas that lead to them. Clearly we do NOT have “all of physics” sorted out – anything but. Why shoot down novel ideas? I agree, probably should have been termed a “hypothesis,” although if you think about it, the author-stripper posits that certain measured results do seem, on their face, to contrast with at least some versions of currently-accepted models.
At the end of the day, the question of “how can something come from nothing” has to be relegated to philosophy, and not physics, because physics cannot explain it terribly well. The biggest issue I think, is that it simply doesn’t hold up logically. Something really can’t come from nothing, and it’s not logically possible for nothing to exist. Clearly there is much for us to learn, and I appreciate people who do consider such subjects. It’s NOT just author-strippers on bb who are considering this subject. Hardly.
Just playing along. It is his user name here. Or did you miss that?
