What is the basis for scientific materialism?

originally posted by: CB328

Show me the proof that the universe is materialistic as you say

Well the fact that matter at the macro level follows predictable patterns that we can measure and verify seems like proof to me. Now if you are talking about quantum physics that is another story, though it still seems to be all about pieces or matter and energy affecting each other.

a reply to: CB328

They're doing experiments on a macro level as well.

Experiment shows Einstein’s quantum ‘spooky action’ approaches the human scale

a reply to: dug88

You sound ridiculous. You said:

It's funny, you've spent this whole thread blasting science, yet you quote physicists....sorry you quote the media's interpretation of the work of physicists....

LOL, this isn't the media's interpretation of physics and this is why I posted videos of everyone from Brian Greene to Leonard Susskind saying the same thing.



Here's a lecture from Susskind:



You don't need a third dimension of matter. In fact, the laws of physics prohibit this. All of the information needed to describe a 3D object can be expressed in 2 dimensions. If you try to express a 3D object in terms of 3D volume, you will exceed maximum entropy and the 3D object will collapse into a black hole.

We see information is paramount when it comes to quantum teleportation. Information from point A is teleported to point B and what we call a particle doesn't contain the information anymore and becomes an incoherent mess.

You and others have to provide more than just vacuous hyperbole. I can care less as to how much this offends your materialistic sensibilities.

You don't refute anything that has been said or provide any actual studies, articles or published papers to support anything you're saying just gibberish. You said:

In the end we'll never know what the universe is. It's never going to happen ever...we'll never stop trying to figure it out...but we'll never get it.

Nope, in the end, YOU MAY NEVER KNOW, because you don't want to accept what experiment after experiment is saying about the nature of reality. You can keep sticking your head in the sand and living in the cave of ignorance, but others don't have to.

There's no evidence that an objective 3D material universe exists and you or no one else has presented any evidence to support such a notion. Just these meaningless statements void of any substance.

There's no reason why the universe has to be explained in the context of materialism.

originally posted by: TheBandit795
Hi all,

I'm no expert in this, but I find it very interesting. There are some videos that I've found to explain in detail why consciousness is fundamental. There are a lot of scientists who claim this as well (more on that later).

This is one of them:

Furthermore there is a researcher who is really good at explaining this in easy to understand terms (for laypeople like myself)

His name is Bernardo Kastrup. Here's one of his latest articles: Thinking Outside the Quantum Box

The problem is that quantum theory contradicts our intuitive understanding of what “real” means. According to the theory, if two real particles A and B are prepared in a special way, what Alice sees when she observes particle A depends on how Bob concurrently observes particle B, even if the particles—as well as Alice and Bob—are separated by an arbitrary distance. This “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein called it, contradicts either local causation or the very notion that particles A and B are “real,” in the sense of existing independently of observation. As it turns out, certain statistical properties of the observations, which have been experimentally confirmed, indicate the latter: that the particles do not exist independently of observation. And since observation ultimately consists of what is apprehended on the mental screen of perception, the implication may be that “the Universe is entirely mental,” as put by Richard Conn Henry in his 2005 Nature essay.

Here he goes more in detail (pdf file):

Making Sense of the Mental Universe


EDIT: Adding another one of his articles:

Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?
Inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm

Every generation tends to believe that its views on the nature of reality are either true or quite close to the truth. We are no exception to this: although we know that the ideas of earlier generations were each time supplanted by those of a later one, we still believe that this time we got it right. Our ancestors were naïve and superstitious, but we are objective—or so we tell ourselves. We know that matter/energy, outside and independent of mind, is the fundamental stuff of nature, everything else being derived from it—or do we?

In fact, studies have shown that there is an intimate relationship between the world we perceive and the conceptual categories encoded in the language we speak. We don’t perceive a purely objective world out there, but one subliminally pre-partitioned and pre-interpreted according to culture-bound categories. For instance, “color words in a given language shape human perception of color.” A brain imaging study suggests that language processing areas are directly involved even in the simplest discriminations of basic colors. Moreover, this kind of “categorical perception is a phenomenon that has been reported not only for color, but for other perceptual continua, such as phonemes, musical tones and facial expressions.” In an important sense, we see what our unexamined cultural categories teach us to see, which may help explain why every generation is so confident in their own worldview.

So to salvage the current paradigm there is an important sense in which one has to reject the predictions of QM regarding entanglement. Yet, since Alain Aspect’s seminal experiments in 1981–82, these predictions have been repeatedly confirmed, with potential experimental loopholes closed one by one. 1998 was a particularly fruitful year, with two remarkable experiments performed in Switzerland and Austria. In 2011 and 2015, new experiments again challenged non-contextuality. Commenting on this, physicist Anton Zeilinger has been quoted as saying that “there is no sense in assuming that what we do not measure [that is, observe] about a system has [an independent] reality.” Finally, Dutch researchers successfully performed a test closing all remaining potential loopholes, which was considered by Nature the “toughest test yet.”

The only alternative left for those holding on to the current paradigm is to postulate some form of non-locality: nature must have—or so they speculate—observation-independent hidden properties, entirely missed by QM, which are “smeared out” across spacetime. It is this allegedly omnipresent, invisible but objective background that supposedly orchestrates entanglement from “behind the scenes.”

It turns out, however, that some predictions of QM are incompatible with non-contextuality even for a large and important class of non-local theories. Experimental results reported in 2007 and 2010 have confirmed these predictions. To reconcile these results with the current paradigm would require a profoundly counterintuitive redefinition of what we call “objectivity.” And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this by pronouncing, “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality.”

This is a really good post.

Here's some quotes from Werner Heisenberg:

“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
― Werner Heisenberg

“[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”
― Werner Heisenberg

originally posted by: neoholographic
What's the basis outside of belief?

I get into a lot of debates surrounding these issues and it amazes me how many scientist and people in general act like the universe must be explained in materialistic terms. There's no reason why this is the case. There's no evidence that an objective material universe exists but still this must be the case.

Let's define materialism:

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions.

en.wikipedia.org...

Why is this the case? Why does the universe have to have a material explanation?

Did some scientific Moses come down from Mt. Sinai with tablets that said:

Thou shall explain the universe only in terms of materialism.

What's the basis for materialism in science?

probably the study of physics and the fact that obiwan kenobi is a fictional character exhibiting fictional abilities. mass is kind of crucial to the mechanics of existence. why is it so important to believe in holographic projections and coded reality?

a reply to: neoholographic

context is everything. can you illuminate some of the material surrounding these observations?

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: dug88

You sound ridiculous. You said:

It's funny, you've spent this whole thread blasting science, yet you quote physicists....sorry you quote the media's interpretation of the work of physicists....

LOL, this isn't the media's interpretation of physics and this is why I posted videos of everyone from Brian Greene to Leonard Susskind saying the same thing.

Here's a lecture from Susskind:

You don't need a third dimension of matter. In fact, the laws of physics prohibit this. All of the information needed to describe a 3D object can be expressed in 2 dimensions. If you try to express a 3D object in terms of 3D volume, you will exceed maximum entropy and the 3D object will collapse into a black hole.

We see information is paramount when it comes to quantum teleportation. Information from point A is teleported to point B and what we call a particle doesn't contain the information anymore and becomes an incoherent mess.

You and others have to provide more than just vacuous hyperbole. I can care less as to how much this offends your materialistic sensibilities.

You don't refute anything that has been said or provide any actual studies, articles or published papers to support anything you're saying just gibberish. You said:

In the end we'll never know what the universe is. It's never going to happen ever...we'll never stop trying to figure it out...but we'll never get it.

Nope, in the end, YOU MAY NEVER KNOW, because you don't want to accept what experiment after experiment is saying about the nature of reality. You can keep sticking your head in the sand and living in the cave of ignorance, but others don't have to.

There's no evidence that an objective 3D material universe exists and you or no one else has presented any evidence to support such a notion. Just these meaningless statements void of any substance.

There's no reason why the universe has to be explained in the context of materialism.

So where are your references to peer reviewed articles...videos are not the same.

You keep spouting the same # over and over again saying it must be the way things are....repeating your self over and over again doesn't increase the validity of what you're saying. You're the only person that keeps making huge claims without any kind of theory or evidence...you post videos of people conjecturing about possibilities then you claim the universe must be this way because.....

I personally made no claims to the nature of the universe and was merely pointing out the extreme ignorance displayed as to how scientific work is actually carried out. People tend to listen to the results of scientific work because scientific research is carried out in such a way that the experiments are repeatable and testable by others, the data are typically collected in objective, logical ways. The way you talk about the people in those videos and your posts in general, is like some fanatic spreading the word of god or some #. You seem to have a fairly intense need for your view of the universe to be true.

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...what you have posted is not enough to make claims the universe is that way...none of the scientists you actually reference say at any point yup the universe is definitely a 2d hologram.

To say for certain the universe is either or is ridiculous....we've observed barely any of the universe and occupy an infinitesimally small area of it. The universe could be 2,3,4 or #ing 1000000 dimensions and there's really no way for anyone to say for sure because we really just don't know....

You can believe whatever the # you want. Personally I have no problem accepting our existence will probably remain a mystery until long after any of us are dead and even then it'll still probably be just our best guess. We haven't figured it out in the last 10000 years or so...probably not gonna happen any time soon.

Honestly for all we know the universe is just a giant's #ing fart bubble and our entire universe exists in nothing more than the time it takes for it to disperse. How's that for an expanding universe?

originally posted by: Astrocyte
lol @ there is no evidence that a material universe exists.

What happens to a brain that ceases to manifest a particular function - such as recognizing another persons face and being able to 'know' them based on that 'information'? This state, called "prosopagnosia", happens, and ones its recognized at the descriptive, diagnostic level, lo and behold, the injury to be found is almost ALWAYS in thefusiform gyrus

What does this then mean? It means your consciousness 'arises' like 'a mist' from specific brain interactions between different 'nuclei' in the subcortex and the six layers of the cerebral cortex (with it's 16 billion neurons).

I could literally go through the brain at a fairly detailed level and provide evidence for what these specific nuclei 'do'.

Do you know what evidence science can muster? Comparative evolutionary biology reveals the presence of a formative homology (or shared structure) between all animals with a brain. Evidence like this, which was not known by Darwin, makes evolution virtually indisputable - undoubtedly, based on evidence each person can explore and ascertain on ones own - and this makes the theory of evolution the most epistemologically plausible explanation for how things work.

Now, Platonic idealism claims the exact reverse of this picture (I bet you believe this yourself). It is the only other possibility.

Now, even more importantly, "scientific materialism", or 'physicalism', is true by recognizing the need to start from the origin of things, and work from there. This is how every situation is worked out; I bet you can barely have conversations in your own life that don't make reference to, and rely upon, 'origin' metaphors. In fact, it would be impossible to even say anything coherent without noting the significance of cause and effect, and therefore, if cause and effect are the most important categories for clear thinking, the person who seeks to ignore is playing with reality as if it didn't at the same time mean "playing with your own self-structuring". I love quoting Eco here:

“So we attempted to do what was not allowed us, what we were not prepared for. Manipulating the words of the Book, we attempted to construct a golem.” “I don’t understand….” “You can’t understand. You’re the prisoner of what you created. But your story in the outside world is still unfolding. I don’t know how, but you can still escape it. For me, it’s different. I am experiencing in my body everything we did, as a joke, in the Plan.” “Don’t talk nonsense. It’s a matter of cells….” “And what are cells? For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My cells have learned that you can blaspheme by anagrammatizing the Book, and all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells joke, without faith, blindly.” – Umberto Eco, Foucaults Pendulum, pg. 566, Harcourt, 1988

In other words, if you continue to pursue your "to the left, to the left" (like in the Beyoncé song) ideology, you will continue to reason along the lines of a way of thinking that allows you to feel safe. The universe is nice this way: it provides succor to even delusional, even evil propositions, simply because its basis in symmetry - which means, symmetry between physically separate, individual human selves - in "moments of being recognized by an other", is the real source for psychological action, and with this source, now 'abstractized' as the self's relationship to the 'universe at large', the self gets carried away with the thought that everything it does happens in some 'mental realm' - as if there wasn't a physical brain producing specific, complex functions, which - if you were to take it away, would probably mean an irreversible transformation of what we could call "experience".

In other words, in a body, you can have control by organizing your awareness around this 'point'. But take the body away? I'd imagine you lose all control - all leverage - over psychological and perceptual experience. Cognition - the capacity to "do", probably goes by-by as well; or, perhaps, like in actual reality, maybe 'love', gives freedom (even ontologically, after death); whereas the stuff in this human society of ours, going by thousands upon thousands of years, is based in rote action, wishfulness, pridefulness, shame-phobia (pretty much only the Jews emphasize it in their holy writings), and most of all, a completely idealistic way of relating to ideas and actions. To 'fetishize', seems to be consonant with 'paganism'. Its the putting of an insignificant self-organized value, deriving its existence from actual interactions experienced by the self in relation to "not being recognized or known" (i.e. "respected", treated as a person with value to offer), over the cause and effect facts that ultimately make us what we are.

To have such a negative relationship to what is felt by me to be a simple 'matter of fact' thing, is to ignore what trauma has done to you and deny that it has any importance.

Do you know what mourning is? It's a mammalian homeostasis response to profound loss to an object the self is attached to. There's even a part of our brain dedicated to representing the PANIC of not having the longed for other. It is the source of the emotion - and no "magic" will make that dynamical process go away. We can dissociate; we can pretend, and imagine, and idealize, that the physical world doesn't work by constantly repeating laws, but we will screw ourselves emotionally as well as in our relationships if we decide to relate to the world this way.

Anyways, humility precedes sanity. You really need to accept your fundamental 'equality' with the other - neither better than, nor worse than - if you're ever to resolve the conflicts within your psychoneurological experience.

It's all symmetry. Unfair or illogical reasoning motivated by anger is not symmetrical: it does not honor what reality tells you is real. It's you ignoring reality and arrogantly superimposing your wish for it to be different.

Anyways, my position is that of CS Peirce: objective idealism. This means mind is the basis of things, but it is impossible to say 'how' that is. "Objective" means there are primary forces which apply at all the different scales we look at, implying that there is a 'ordering' to the universe which is beyond human control to change.

So to sum up what you said.

You're basically saying, we're victims of our own machinations. Victims of our thinking.

a reply to: dug88

What?

I have provided you with tons of evidence and you haven't refuted anything. It's just a hodge podge of nonsense. You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...what you have posted is not enough to make claims the universe is that way...none of the scientists you actually reference say at any point yup the universe is definitely a 2d hologram. what you have posted is not enough to make claims the universe is that way...none of the scientists you actually reference say at any point yup the universe is definitely a 2d hologram.

Listen to what you said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

THAT'S ALL LOL!!

That's the point of the thread and nobody has presented any evidence to refute the evidence I presented.

Again, by your own words:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

I've presented evidence that the 3rd dimension is an illusion based on the evidence. Can this change? Of course but there's no evidence right now to refute what I'm saying and the evidence keeps getting stronger year after year.

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: dug88

What?

I have provided you with tons of evidence and you haven't refuted anything. It's just a hodge podge of nonsense. You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...what you have posted is not enough to make claims the universe is that way...none of the scientists you actually reference say at any point yup the universe is definitely a 2d hologram. what you have posted is not enough to make claims the universe is that way...none of the scientists you actually reference say at any point yup the universe is definitely a 2d hologram.

Listen to what you said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

THAT'S ALL LOL!!

That's the point of the thread and nobody has presented any evidence to refute the evidence I presented.

Again, by your own words:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

I've presented evidence that the 3rd dimension is an illusion based on the evidence. Can this change? Of course but there's no evidence right now to refute what I'm saying and the evidence keeps getting stronger year after year.

Lol anyway you can present as much evidence as you want but it still doesn't make it any more than a theory. I also think you really need to work on your reading comprehension.... because it doesn't really seem like you actually read a single #ing thing i've written in any of my posts that you keep responding to...

a reply to: dug88

What? Do you understand how science works? It works by presenting evidence which strengthens the theory. According to you, I did just that. You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

This is science. I've presented evidence that hasn't been refuted.

You haven't written anything of substance like evidence that points to maximum entropy of a volume of space being proportional to it's 3D volume.

You haven't done anything but bloviate about nothing. You say things like this:

You can believe whatever the # you want. Personally I have no problem accepting our existence will probably remain a mystery until long after any of us are dead and even then it'll still probably be just our best guess. We haven't figured it out in the last 10000 years or so...probably not gonna happen any time soon.

This is asinine nonsense that has nothing to do with the thread. You present no evidence and your responses are devoid of any science.

We have figured a lot of things out and that's why you're typing on a computer right now. This is why you can watch a flat screen TV and GPS a location. It's because we have figured many things out about the nature of reality. This is a VACUOUS comment that's meaningless. We're debating current evidence. If you're right, people might as well stop working on things like gene therapy or quantum computers because according to your vacuous statement we will never figure anything out.

Again you said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

Yes, I presented EVIDENCE. You haven't presented a shred of evidence to refute anything I have said.

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: dug88

What? Do you understand how science works? It works by presenting evidence which strengthens the theory. According to you, I did just that. You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

This is science. I've presented evidence that hasn't been refuted.

You haven't written anything of substance like evidence that points to maximum entropy of a volume of space being proportional to it's 3D volume.

You haven't done anything but bloviate about nothing. You say things like this:

You can believe whatever the # you want. Personally I have no problem accepting our existence will probably remain a mystery until long after any of us are dead and even then it'll still probably be just our best guess. We haven't figured it out in the last 10000 years or so...probably not gonna happen any time soon.

This is asinine nonsense that has nothing to do with the thread. You present no evidence and your responses are devoid of any science.

We have figured a lot of things out and that's why you're typing on a computer right now. This is why you can watch a flat screen TV and GPS a location. It's because we have figured many things out about the nature of reality. This is a VACUOUS comment that's meaningless. We're debating current evidence. If you're right, people might as well stop working on things like gene therapy or quantum computers because according to your vacuous statement we will never figure anything out.

Again you said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

Yes, I presented EVIDENCE. You haven't presented a shred of evidence to refute anything I have said.

Hmmm well...I wasn't trying to prove anything...this is why I asked about your reading comprehension. At what point in any of my posts was I trying to prove something I needed to provide evidence for? What claims did I make? I'm honestly not sure what kind of evidence I'm supposed to post because I never said anything one way or the other. If you could show me where I made some counter theory of the universe please do because I have no idea what the # you're ranting about. About the closest i came to making some claim was calling the universe a giants #ong fart bubble...and if you didn't realize that wasn't meant seiously well...

The only person claiming anything about the universe is you. I looked through the things you presented...decided it's about as good as any theory we've come up with so far...and left it at that. I just pointed out we really won't know for sure either way...that's not a claim that requires evidence...that requires some #ing common sense to figure out....as far as I'm concerned whether the universe is a hologram or not makes zero difference to my daily life so in all honesty I don't really care...it'd be cool to find out...but I'm really not expecting it...I'm sure people thought we had all that # figured out when they thought such a thing as aether existed....and im sure the Greeks were pretty #ing positive there were 4 elements and we were full of bile. Things change as we learn new things, I'm really not expecting the things we discover today are any more the exact truth than all of those things are.
In the end...it's really not worth getting so worked up over dude...chill out.

a reply to: dug88

More bloviating. No evidence. Do you know you're in a Science and Technology forum? You have no understanding as to how science works. You said:

The only person claiming anything about the universe is you. I looked through the things you presented...decided it's about as good as any theory we've come up with so far...and left it at that. I just pointed out we really won't know for sure either way.

Yes, we will know for sure either way and that's why you accumulate evidence. You talked about the EXACT TRUTH. That's just nonsense. Science has never been about exact truth.

At the end of the day we can be sure that Quantum Mechanics describes the universe and General Relativity describes gravity on a classical scale.

This is because of EVIDENCE. You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

This is why I asked you to refute what I'm saying because this is how science works. You present evidence and then you present evidence that can refute the evidence presented. What are you on a science and technology forum for if you're talking about exact truth? That has nothing to do with science.

Now, in order to refute quantum mechanics, you have to present evidence that explains things like photons or the way electrons behave around a nucleus. Over time, quantum mechanics accumulates evidence and we can be sure the quantum mechanics is correct.

You would need to present evidence that replaces QM or shows that hidden variables are behind QM or entangled particles are connected by wormholes. You have theories that gravity is an emergent property or theories of quantum gravity.

Again, I want to remind you that you're in a science and technology forum. Science never talks about exact truth and yes we can know for sure either way because of the accumulation of evidence. We know for sure that QM describes the universe at planck scales. There's questions and other theories but these things needs evidence. Evidence doesn't provide exact truth, it can strengthen or weaken a theory. Again, you said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

Here's a newsflash, this is what you're supposed to do when your debating science.

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: dug88

More bloviating. No evidence. Do you know you're in a Science and Technology forum? You have no understanding as to how science works. You said:

The only person claiming anything about the universe is you. I looked through the things you presented...decided it's about as good as any theory we've come up with so far...and left it at that. I just pointed out we really won't know for sure either way.

Yes, we will know for sure either way and that's why you accumulate evidence. You talked about the EXACT TRUTH. That's just nonsense. Science has never been about exact truth.

At the end of the day we can be sure that Quantum Mechanics describes the universe and General Relativity describes gravity on a classical scale.

This is because of EVIDENCE. You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

This is why I asked you to refute what I'm saying because this is how science works. You present evidence and then you present evidence that can refute the evidence presented. What are you on a science and technology forum for if you're talking about exact truth? That has nothing to do with science.

Now, in order to refute quantum mechanics, you have to present evidence that explains things like photons or the way electrons behave around a nucleus. Over time, quantum mechanics accumulates evidence and we can be sure the quantum mechanics is correct.

You would need to present evidence that replaces QM or shows that hidden variables are behind QM or entangled particles are connected by wormholes. You have theories that gravity is an emergent property or theories of quantum gravity.

Again, I want to remind you that you're in a science and technology forum. Science never talks about exact truth and yes we can know for sure either way because of the accumulation of evidence. We know for sure that QM describes the universe at planck scales. There's questions and other theories but these things needs evidence. Evidence doesn't provide exact truth, it can strengthen or weaken a theory. Again, you said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

Here's a newsflash, this is what you're supposed to do when your debating science.

Well to start with I was never disagreeing with you...this is the problem. You've just been repeatedly babbling about there being absolutely no evidence to a materialistic universe.
I wasn't debating you because I don't care.All I know is whether or not matter really exists if you stand in front of a #ing truck a whole lotta matter's gonna get squished..whether it's 2d, 3d whatever. So in the end hologram or not I live every day of my life affected by material objects...as do you. This is why we look at the world this way. If you don't believe me try standing in the middle of a busy road for a while and tell the truck it's a hologram mostly full of empty space as it crushes all that emtpy space you're made of into a pulp of empty space.

Science focuses on material things because that's kinda the way everything that affects us works.

The universe may be a hologram or not but for anyone that's not a theoretical physicist ot really doesn't make the slightest difference. All of the things most of us interact with every day work on a material level so that's where our science focuses.

Now as to how science works...well as someone who has successfully written proposals to get grant money to conduct studies I can tell you this much.

If you have such a great theory...instead of ranting on an internet board do what other scientists do. Write a proposal outlining your theory and a proposed methodology to test it, apply for a funding grant, carry out your study, write a report and send it for peer review. This is how it's usually done.

applying for theoretical physics grants

How to Write a Grant Proposal

Here's some links to get you started.

I'd be happy to take a look at your paper when you finish and debate you properly about this. But I'm not going to sit here and argue with some videos and some bolded rants on a conspiracy theory website.

a reply to: dug88

What?

NEWSFLASH on a Science and Technology forum people debate...SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY!

You made this asinine comment:

I wasn't debating you because I don't care.All I know is whether or not matter really exists if you stand in front of a #ing truck a whole lotta matter's gonna get squished..whether it's 2d, 3d whatever. So in the end hologram or not I live every day of my life affected by material objects...as do you. This is why we look at the world this way. If you don't believe me try standing in the middle of a busy road for a while and tell the truck it's a hologram mostly full of empty space as it crushes all that emtpy space you're made of into a pulp of empty space.

Science focuses on material things because that's kinda the way everything that affects us works.

The universe may be a hologram or not but for anyone that's not a theoretical physicist ot really doesn't make the slightest difference. All of the things most of us interact with every day work on a material level so that's where our science focuses.

Some of this is just incoherent babble but based on some of the things I can decipher, you're saying you don't care and if the universe is a hologram it doesn't make the slightest difference. Question:

WHY ARE YOU IN A SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FORUM IF YOU DON'T CARE AND IT DOESN'T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST DIFFERENCE TO YOU?

This makes no sense at all. People debate these issues on this forum because it does make a difference to them. People debate issues like AI, Quantum Computing, Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity and much more on this SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY forum because the nature of reality and our latest scientific understanding of these things makes a difference to them.

You're asking why do people care about debating the latest theories in Science in a Science forum!!! That's asinine.

You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

That's all? What else is there when you're debating scientific theories? That's like saying:

You've posted evidence that supports quantum entanglement...that's all.

You've posted evidence that supports the Higgs Boson...that's all.

I can go on but anyone can see how ASININE that sounds.

In Science what else is there? You provide EVIDENCE that either strengthens or weakens a theory. There's no exact truth.

the Question is: What is the basis for scientific materialism?




Probably because of the works & enlightenment by Steiner… of Occult/ Arcane Mystery Schools & the like...
bing: Rudolf Steiner was an influential thinker whose philosophy of anthroposophy would influence children's education. Learn more about his life at Biography.com. Born: Feb 27, 1861 Died: Mar 30, 1925

Madame Blavatsky probally also contributed to the blowback brought on by Spiritualism...
bing: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian occultist, philosopher, and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy...


& then came the Thiel society & Nazi occult...

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: dug88

What?

NEWSFLASH on a Science and Technology forum people debate...SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY!

You made this asinine comment:

I wasn't debating you because I don't care.All I know is whether or not matter really exists if you stand in front of a #ing truck a whole lotta matter's gonna get squished..whether it's 2d, 3d whatever. So in the end hologram or not I live every day of my life affected by material objects...as do you. This is why we look at the world this way. If you don't believe me try standing in the middle of a busy road for a while and tell the truck it's a hologram mostly full of empty space as it crushes all that emtpy space you're made of into a pulp of empty space.

Science focuses on material things because that's kinda the way everything that affects us works.

The universe may be a hologram or not but for anyone that's not a theoretical physicist ot really doesn't make the slightest difference. All of the things most of us interact with every day work on a material level so that's where our science focuses.

Some of this is just incoherent babble but based on some of the things I can decipher, you're saying you don't care and if the universe is a hologram it doesn't make the slightest difference. Question:

WHY ARE YOU IN A SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FORUM IF YOU DON'T CARE AND IT DOESN'T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST DIFFERENCE TO YOU?

This makes no sense at all. People debate these issues on this forum because it does make a difference to them. People debate issues like AI, Quantum Computing, Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity and much more on this SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY forum because the nature of reality and our latest scientific understanding of these things makes a difference to them.

You're asking why do people care about debating the latest theories in Science in a Science forum!!! That's asinine.

You said:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

That's all? What else is there when you're debating scientific theories? That's like saying:

You've posted evidence that supports quantum entanglement...that's all.

You've posted evidence that supports the Higgs Boson...that's all.

I can go on but anyone can see how ASININE that sounds.

In Science what else is there? You provide EVIDENCE that either strengthens or weakens a theory. There's no exact truth.

Again....
If you have such a great theory...instead of ranting on an internet board do what other scientists do. Write a proposal outlining your theory and a proposed methodology to test it, apply for a funding grant, carry out your study, write a report and send it for peer review. This is how it's usually done.

applying for theoretical physics grants

How to Write a Grant Proposal

Here's some links to get you started.

I'd be happy to take a look at your paper when you finish and debate you properly about this. But I'm not going to sit here and argue with some videos and some bolded rants on a conspiracy theory website.

The links are in the part of my post above that you ignored...I'm not going to bother reposting them in this one.

a reply to: dug88

Please

You're not making any sense.

You talked about exact truth on a forum debating science and that looked silly.

Now you say this:

If you have such a great theory...instead of ranting on an internet board do what other scientists do. Write a proposal outlining your theory and a proposed methodology to test it, apply for a funding grant, carry out your study, write a report and send it for peer review. This is how it's usually done.

What?

This is a debate on the Science & Technology Forums where people debate theories or technologies and present evidence either for or against the theory or discuss some cool new technology.

This isn't the Above Top Secret Journal. I don't need to submit posts to a peer review board. This is a place to debate and present evidence for or against a theory. I did just that according to you:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

Read what you said LOL. YOU'VE POSTED EVIDENCE THAT SUPPORTS..........

This is what you do on a Science & Technology Forum. Why is that so hard for you to grasp? Maybe it's because you talked about "exact truth" in a science debate.

You're complaining that I'm talking about scientific evidence on a forum that's about SCIENCE!!

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: dug88

Please :

Now you say this:

If you have such a great theory...instead of ranting on an internet board do what other sc

This is a debate on the Science & Technology Forums where people debate theories or technologies and present evidence either for or against the theory or discuss some cool new technology.

This isn't the Above Top Secret Journal. I don't need to submit posts to a peer review board. This is a place to debate and present evidence for or against a theory. I did just that according to you:

You've posted links to evidence that supports the theory of a non-3d universe....that's all...

Read what you said LOL. YOU'VE POSTED EVIDENCE THAT SUPPORTS..........

This is what you do on a Science & Technology Forum. Why is that so hard for you to grasp? Maybe it's because you talked about "exact truth" in a science debate.

You're complaining that I'm talking about scientific evidence on a forum that's about SCIENCE!!

Lol alright dude...you know what seeing as you're getting so #ing worked up about this...fine...here's some of this evidence which any good scientist would have already read through before making a claim, that counter the claims made in your theory....

study made using a holometer that shows no evidence of holographic noise in the universe

Study showing null result to holographic principal

excellent stack exchange post explaining the problems with the holographic universe theory

debate over the lack of experimental evidence for strong theory (which the holographic principle is based on)[/url

[url=http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4572]why you can't test the holographic principle

paper on holographic dark energy in a non-2d universe

But, I gotta add...the last thing a scientist is ever supposed to so is get emotionally attached to their theories...that leads to bad science. Any scientist should be ready to not only discard or rework their theory but should be constantly testing and trying to prove their own theories wrong. The more often you can't prove your own theory wrong the stronger it becomes. It's easy to say something is right. It's a lot harder to say something is never wrong or eve wrong most of the time. The strongest theories we have about the universe are not the ones proven right...but the ones that have never been proven wrong.

I'm not a physicist. But I have worked as a biologist. We never tried to prove anything right. The studies I worked on took a theory and tried to prove it wrong. And either we did and came up with a new theory...as in the case of when we discovered an endangered species where it wasn't supposed to be and had to.come up with a new idea about it's preferred habitat..which we then tested by searching new areas for this species....or in the case of most of the things we did our studies ended up supporting previous claims but we added to the data that backed up those claims.

I wasn't being facetious when I said you should write a paper if you believe your theory. If you conduct a proper study and add your data and knowledge to the existing data it only benifits everyone. You can debate on a forum all you want but that does nothing. Armchair science, quoting real scientists then ranting does nothing..it goes nowhere and does nothing useful.

If anything it adds to the ridiculous cult that seems to be building around science. If you really give any kind of # about science like you claim...don't be another armchair scientist.

You keep screaming about presenting evidence and claiming that makes it science...I'm assuming you didn't read the article I posted earlier about the scientific method but to summarize said evidence needs to be falsifiable. Anyone can claim anything they want, you can present all kinds of evidence foe lots of different things. Science uses a falsifiable experimental method. If you can't do this...you can have all the evidence in the world but it doesn't make it science.

The theory the holographic principle is based on is not experimentaly testable. There is no way to actually test that string theory, dark matter or any of the other bull# physicists have started.making up to fit their mathematical models are any more real than the aether scientists made up to fit their models of the universe 100 years ago.

All of these theories are based on models

The main thing I learned about doing science with models(for some.god forsaken reason they use models in ecology based on economic models...) is that if the real world and the the model don't match up...the model is right.... the way models are used is some of the most ridiculous # i've ever encountered and most of theoretical physics are based on models because we have no way to actually test any of the math or ideas behind this.

This is the part that gets left out of the videos and news articles...that all this # is based on making some math equations...also created by humans...fit a model of the universe that was created by humans.

Take dark matter for an example...scientists literally made that # up because of it didn't exist their equations would be wrong...without ever taking the time to stop and think...Hmmm maybe our equations are wrong.

If you look back over human history literally every time humans made some # up to fit their idea of the universe it was wrong. This time is no different.

I'm honestly not against discovering the truth behind the universe...that'd be really awesome to find out...but once people start vehemently defending ideas without trying to prove themselves wrong we end up down the wrong path. Progress has only been made by taking ideas and throwing them away when they don't fit. For the last 30 years or so theoretical physicists have been coming up with a lot of theories full of things thrown in to fit their models with no way to prove it right or wrong other than some math equations.

While I do read through such things and take them as seriously as any other theory...they're still just that...theories....and until you can give me experimental proof rather than abstract mathematical proof...I'm not going to accept it as any more valid than the numerous other theories out there.

Lol and honestly dude i'm done with your thread. Science is hard #ing work....trust me i've done it unlike you I actually am a #ing scientist...i've got a #ing name tag to prove it I've also put the work into collecting and analyzing data to support a theory....and trust me there was a lot more to it than watching some #ing videos. It was more like spending hours and hours outside sampling or sitting their staring at hundreds of #ing sonograph files or writing page after page of justifying spending thousands of dollars on some # no one cares about...yay science

a reply to: dug88

If you're a scientist, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Half of what you say is incoherent babble. It's obvious you don't know what you're talking about because you posted links without any context. Scientist don't talk about exact truth. You just posted links and said go fish LOL. So I will go fishing for you since you don't understand what you posted. The fact is you destroyed your own argument with your blind posts. First you posted about Hogan and the holometer but you failed to read this from a link you posted.

The Fermilab holometer aims to test one interpretation of the so-called holographic principle, which states that the amount of information that can be crammed into a region of space and time, or spacetime, is proportional to the region's surface area. If the holographic principle holds, then the universe is a bit like a hologram, a two-dimensional structure that only appears to be three-dimensional. Proving that would be a big step toward formulating a quantum theory of spacetime and gravity. The principle implies a kind of information shortage that, according to the experimenters, makes it impossible to say precisely where an object is. The holometer aims to prove that position is inherently uncertain. Not everyone cheers the effort, however. A co-inventor of the holographic principle says the experiment has nothing to do with his brainchild. Others say they worry that the experiment will give quantum-gravity research a bad name.

science.sciencemag.org...

Again, this is a link you posted. One of the people that came up with the Holographic Universe says the experiment has nothing to do with his theory 3 years before hand and Hogan's experiment has nothing to do with recent papers like this:

From Planck Data to Planck Era: Observational Tests of Holographic Cosmology
Niayesh Afshordi, Claudio Corianò, Luigi Delle Rose, Elizabeth Gould, and Kostas Skenderis
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 041301 – Published 27 January 2017

journals.aps.org...

Here's an article on the paper.

Professor Kostas Skenderis of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton explains: "Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field. The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card. However, this time, the entire universe is encoded."

Although not an example with holographic properties, it could be thought of as rather like watching a 3-D film in a cinema. We see the pictures as having height, width and crucially, depth—when in fact it all originates from a flat 2-D screen. The difference, in our 3-D universe, is that we can touch objects and the 'projection' is 'real' from our perspective.

In recent decades, advances in telescopes and sensing equipment have allowed scientists to detect a vast amount of data hidden in the 'white noise' or microwaves (partly responsible for the random black and white dots you see on an un-tuned TV) left over from the moment the universe was created. Using this information, the team were able to make complex comparisons between networks of features in the data and quantum field theory. They found that some of the simplest quantum field theories could explain nearly all cosmological observations of the early universe.

Professor Skenderis comments: "Holography is a huge leap forward in the way we think about the structure and creation of the universe. Einstein's theory of general relativity explains almost everything large scale in the universe very well, but starts to unravel when examining its origins and mechanisms at quantum level. Scientists have been working for decades to combine Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum theory. Some believe the concept of a holographic universe has the potential to reconcile the two. I hope our research takes us another step towards this."

phys.org...

This is very important and could actually point to data that may have given birth to our universe.

You found some articles about Hogan and the Holometer but I haven't mentioned Hogan. I talked about Hoof't and Susskind. The Holometer has nothing to do with anything I've posted. This is why you just blindly posted without any context. Here's what Physicist I have posted said about the Holometer years before Hogan's experiment started.

Ralph Bousso:

But some experts on the holographic principle think the experiment is completely off-target. “There is no relationship between the argument [Hogan] is making and the holographic principle,” Bousso says. “None whatsoever. Zero.” The problem lies not in Hogan’s interpretation of the uncertainty relationship, but rather in “the first step of his analysis,” Bousso contends.

Bousso notes that a premise of special relativity called Lorentz invariance says the rules of physics should be the same for all observers, regardless of how they are moving relative to one another. The holographic principle maintains Lorentz invariance, Bousso says. But Hogan’s uncertainty formula does not, he argues: An observer standing in the lab and another zipping past would not agree on how much an interferometer’s beam splitter jitters. So Hogan’s uncertainty relationship cannot follow from the holographic principle, Bousso argues.

The experiment can do no good in testing the holographic principle, Bousso says, but running it could do plenty of harm. The holometer has garnered an inordinate amount of attention in the blogosphere and in press accounts, he says, raising unrealistic expectations. “They’re not going to have a signal and then there is going to be a backlash saying that the holographic principle isn’t valid, and we’ll look like we’re on the defensive,” Bousso says. “That’s why I’m trying to get the word out [that the experiment won’t test the principle] without appearing to make excuses.”

Susskind:

Not everyone cheers the effort, however. In fact, Leonard Susskind, a theorist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and co-inventor of the holographic principle, says the experiment has nothing to do with his brainchild. “The idea that this tests anything of interest is silly,” he says, before refusing to elaborate and abruptly hanging up the phone.

www.math.columbia.edu...

Please, stop blindly posting things you don't understand. This way I don't have to dig through your links because you haven't read them. This way you can post a link then add some interesting comments on the links instead of incoherent babble.

Even though nothing in reality is solid, the word 'solid' is still used because it reflects the perception of 'mass' to our senses. So you are not arguing about science, you are arguing about the use of labels in language. These labels represent the mental construct of data from our senses. So even if reality is proved scientifically to be a projection, the term 'solid' will still be used to represent our mental construct perceived from our senses.

A solid will always be a solid if our brain perceives it that way.

a reply to: neoholographic

What's the basis for materialism in science?

Because it provides the most pragmatic results. If you begin from a position of radical spiritualism, everything is explicable in terms of "the will of the gods." Why is there a flood?" It is the will of the gods. "Why is there a drought?" It is the will of the gods. "Why am I ill?" It is the will of the gods. Radical spiritualism leads to ignorance, fear, and stagnation.

Science does not exclude non-material factors entirely. Indeed, modern physics sometimes takes on a metaphysical character. By approaching situations in an objective, observation based way, explanations can be found that lead to practical applications. "Why is there a flood?" The snow in the mountains is melting. We should build a dam. "Why is there a drought?" It is hot. We should store some water underground where it is cool. "Why am I ill?" Your humors are not in balance. Science does not always get it right the first time, but it remains open to better solutions. This leads to knowledge, understanding, and growth.