None. Flat Earth is characterized by their denial of science. By performing empirical experiments then rejecting the results.
That is antithetical to the very core of science. So any scientist who is given experimental data that contradicts their theory is, should make new theories.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with saying the Earth is flat, and then thinking about the implications, and then verifying the implications match reality, and then when you get bad data you modify your hypothesis. We need creative and curious minds to challenge the status quo with new measurements data and science. It’s the rejection of empirical data that is the death of science
I imagine there are many academics that won’t budge from their current beliefs even when confronted with proof.
They might be academics, but definitely not scientists
Some scientists, might. There is no shortage on hubris in the scientific community.
I think we’re talking No True Scientist here
Yup! I don’t understand the downvotes, because this absolutely happens. Especially when technology has progressed to enable us to answer certain questions that we couldn’t in the past. Old curmudgeonly academics can definitely be resistant to accepting that they’ve been wrong, even when confronted with proof. Sometimes the only way for old theories to die is for their proponents to die or retire. It’s a shame, but ego can be a massive problem in some disciplines.
Some, sure. And they are indeed acting like flat earthers. I think they’re likely to be the minority though and they’re not acting like scientists if they do that.
Sorry, it’s just how I phrased the question. Sorry to be a Debbie downer but I was really interested in the answer.
No need to apologise mate, sorry if my answer came across as curt, wasn’t intended that way :-)
Sounds like you’re saying The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is flawed because those pesky stubborn holdouts weren’t scientists.
Holding out on a belief when presented with a mountain of evidence to the contrary is definitively unscientific. What don’t we call people who are unscientific about their methodologies?
I guess I would have called them “bad scientists” – scientists who are bad at their job and hold everyone back. But still scientists.
For instance they correctly applied the scientific method in most other cases. They just were blind to or intentionally obstructive to certain things.
I try my best to be rational and apply Bayes’ theorem now and then, but I am sure I am still missing some invisible monsters which will make me look arrogant or foolish in the future. I don’t experiment much with software I am unfamiliar with, even if it could improve things at work. I do now and then of course, but should I allocate more time to trying new things? Yeah probably, but I don’t, and my job still gets done.
I don’t disagree that people can be stubborn and refuse to accept reality. This whole thread is known as Planck’s Principle.
OP asked what “what possible misunderstanding of nature could make current academics look like flat earthers”. I think it’s implied that they’re talking about a scientific consensus today which we later find to be flawed, in which case I don’t think that anything would make current academics look like flat earthers. The difference is, literally no flat earther lived in such a time where the scientific consensus said the world was flat; they all became convinced of a falsehood after it was known to be a falsehood, which is orthogonal to Planck’s Principle.
So I guess the answer to OP’s question is: if an academic becomes convinced of a falsehood with full knowledge of an overwhelming amount of evidence to show that it is false, then they would look like a flat earther. But I don’t think that’s the situation they’ve laid out.
OK this makes sense to me now.
No, the possibility still exists because the current academic community continues to exist even into the future, where a breakthrough is possible. At the very least you are being pedantic.
An appropriate level of pedantry, I think. You asked for everyone for their opinion, it hardly seems appropriate for you to call me pedantic for providing just that.
It also feels like maybe you didn’t pick up what I was putting down, because the “breakthrough” scenario is irrelevant. The important part is: did science already accept X as true (read: highly probable) at the time that a person decided they believe X is false? Because to me, that’s what makes someone “look like a flat earther”. But I can’t fault someone for not being convinced by some evidence, and choosing instead to stick with (what they believe to be) a null hypothesis.
You’re using too strict a definition of what makes a flat earther. Flat eathers are characterized by many different things but their defining feature is their refusal accept evidence that disproves their belief. My phrasing does not disclude this interpretation.
If you apply the scientific method, you’re a scientist. Congratulations
If a Maxwell’s demon was ever proven practical it would basically disprove the second law of thermodynamics.
Wait, why? What does knowing a perfect state of system has to do with the law of thermodynamics?
Maxwell’s demon knowing in advance the exact state of the system isn’t really practical as a solution. Sure you can concoct such a situation, but that isn’t useful.
how so? the little door demon needs a power source right? otherwise it couldn’t operate the door.
Yes, but potentially less than is gained by the separation.
Sure, but that is like saying potentially my pig might grow wings and start flying.
I mean I guess, but my pig is probably statistically significantly more likely to fly off than entropy is to decrease with time.
How could the earth be round? People would fall off the bottom.
Consciousness being an emergent property of the universe instead of the universe being an emergent property of consciousness.
This is a good answer. Bernardo Kastrup argues this; check out his very eloquently titled book Why Materialism is Baloney.
Thank you for this. I was just thinking about it and how it implies consciousness is shared or linked in some way.
We are all the same entity, just different instances, existing inside of the greater consciousness that is the universe. We have performed every great and evil act to ourselves, as we are all the same entity.
Well said, me. Bravo!
This is an idea explored in The Egg by Andy Weir.
I can’t say we are the same. Not definitively. Only similar.
I dont mean that we are the same as in each human is exactly like one another.
I mean we are the same as in there is no “we”, “we” is an illusion. There is only one of us, experiencing existence through the lens of each living creature simultaneously. “We” are the universe itself. The humans, the animals, all of the matter and energy are just perturbations in our collective fabric. The current body in which you are experiencing life is just one of many appendiges.
You are yourself and you are your parents. You are the primordial cavemen. You are hitler, and you are ghandi.
All of these experiences of each life feed back into the greater consciousness.
In a way, but we are also different and our own experiences/thoughts belong to only us. As far as we know.
I have a story I want to tell where in our dreams we reconnect with the “tree of life” and this is our opportunity to split from combined consciousness or recombine with the singularity.
In this space we are searching and experiencing different realities, lifetimes, or similar lifetimes where only a single choice is made different, where time isnt exactly 1:1 and when we wake there are remnants of our experiences in these states. It will explain how death isn’t a inevibiltiy but in this search we find where we think we want to be. It’s just that it’s a vast sea and the searching never truly ends.
Makes me think about how many might chose to be a cell or more complex life.
I came here to say this.
Modern physics already gives special status to observer objects and properties that “non-observer” objects don’t have, and every universe needs to be defined from some particular point of view instead of “objectively” from outside. There are a couple other weird things but those are two big ones to me.
And so a physicist from the 2100s where physics is defined in relation to consciousness asks a modern physicist, so why did you think it was all just atoms and numbers in an “objective” universe?
And the modern physicist says what the fuck are you talking about don’t get all weird and religious on me
And the future physicist says okay dude good luck then
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of an “observer” - it’s not a conscious entity literally observing something. It’s simply an object whose state depends on the quantum particle in question.
Why does the detector in the double slit experiment not cause an interference pattern if its state depends on which slit the particle went through, but then it resets its internal state after, without transmitting the result?
There’s no way to fully erase the state, as information cannot be destroyed. There will always be consequences of the state measurement in the detector (e.g. through heat).
Absolutely false. You have apparently never heard of the exact aspects of quantum mechanics which so surprised physicists when they were first discovered? (which are pretty much its defining feature) IDK, it kind of sounds that way.
I’m honestly not saying it’s as simple as the pop science oversimplification of QM, even though my comment was kind of invoking exactly that oversimplification. But yes, things like having the detector erase its measurements without recording them were exactly the types of experiments which started to point to something much stranger going on than just one object’s state depending on another.
Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiments demonstrate that extracting “which path” information after a particle passes through the slits can seem to retroactively alter its previous behavior at the slits.
Quantum eraser experiments demonstrate that wave behavior can be restored by erasing or otherwise making permanently unavailable the “which path” information.
Emphasis is mine. If I’ve misunderstood something then fill me in, sure.
There’s apparently a answer to this I’ve been told by physicists, but I’ve never quite understood it lol.
That the universe is infinite. It’s unknown if it is but commonly called infinite. It could, however, be finite in some way, such as be wrapping back around on itself out past observable space.
What would cause it to do that? Only thing I can think of is gravity, no? That would imply there’s something in the middle that keeps everything from straying too far?
Or do you simply mean that our perception of space is limited and we simply can’t perceive it properly and thus we’d go in one direction and end up back where we started? But if that’s the case, it means we’ve also misunderstood light? Doesn’t it go infinitely? So shouldn’t there be a light source that reaches us from different directions?
Only thing I can think of is gravity, no?
They’re not talking about the stuff in the universe being finite. The space itself could be finite, for example by looping back on itself. Tthe usual comparison is to a circular track - you can drive as far as you like on it without hitting an edge, but you’ll eventually come back to the point where you started. Now scale this up to three dimensions.
That would imply there’s something in the middle that keeps everything from straying too far?
Even if we’re talking about a system held together by gravity, it does not need a central mass. The overall system just needs to be dense enough that each piece is stabilised by all the others.
That the many worlds interpretation is sort of correct, but incomplete. Hear me out.
Many worlds isn’t as mind bogglingly ridiculous if the worlds are constantly merging back into each other. Like the universe where a photon bounced left and the universe where it bounced right are functionally identical, then they ARE just the same universe. As long as which way the photon bounced didn’t make a meaningful difference, those two realities aren’t suddenly new separate lines, they’re like a rubber band that stretched in two directions, then bounced back together.
But let’s say you measure the photon and keep records of it. Now there’s two versions of you right? One measuring the photon going left, one measuring it going right. You’re in separate universes that shall never meet right?
No… you’ve stretched the rubber band a little further. Over a timescale that’s totally meaningless compared to the age of the universe, you will die, your records will decay and once the information is effectively scrambled into chaos… the two realities can just snap back together. Two universe… but now one again.
Now for some really mind bendy stuff… this stretching isn’t just localized in time it’s also localized in space. Meaning… if you measure your photon and split into two versions of yourself, but I’m on the other side of the world (or even just down the street from you) and I have no idea that there’s two versions of you, stretched across this temporary universe split… Well, there’s still only one version of me. Up until I encounter one or the other version of you. And if I never do… or if we just cross paths in the local grocery store and your photon experiment doesn’t come up at all… there’s still just one version of me.
And that one version of me can EASILY encounter both versions of you simultaneously without me ever knowing or it making a meaningful difference in my life. So your split reality is localized… possibly even microscopically in your body (like… most of your neurons in your brain didn’t really change at all because of your experiment, only a few of them have to fire differently, the rest don’t have to split… also, wtf) and in the parts of your lab equipment that kept records of the photon measurement.
Now, even whackier… the remerging isn’t perfect, just perfect enough that the universe doesn’t fall apart. Like… you know how sometimes you’re SURE that the neighbor had a red car, but then you look outside and it’s green and your spouse tells you it’s always been green? Stuff that fuels r/glitchinthematrix.
“OK thebardingreen,” you say, “sure, but wouldn’t that mean our records would detect the imperfections all the time and we’d have clear evidence when we go an check the database that it’s impossible to keep consistent records because of this spliting and remerging?”
“NO!” I say, “because of entropy.”
See, if the universe is going to try to flow along the arrow of time to it’s lowest energy state… and as we all know, something stretched (like a rubber band, but ANYTHING really) is in a high energy state. If we found lots of evidence this was going on, well that would keep the universe stretched out more, over longer periods of time. The universe can’t have that, so when you start checking records, things tend to snap to their lowest energy state (possibly even to the point that you realize the neighbor’s car WAS always green, and you just had a dream last night that it was red. But something’s bothering you about that… doesn’t seem quite right. You post on the internet and tell a eerie story about your strange experience and then go on with your life. The feeling fades. Becomes a funny party story.
Decades later, your grand kids remember a story you used to tell… and they retell it, but they don’t quite remember what color you said the car was. There’s no need for them to split into multiple versions (one who says red and one who says green), they just both say “the car was blue, then it turned out to be yellow.” The universe is FULLY collapsed.
(Also, we KNOW that keeping perfect records / taking perfect measurements is actually incredibly hard and we tend to throw out anomalous results as garbage data, especially if we can’t reproduce them, this could be going all the time and we would just consider it statistically insignificant bad data, within our expected margin of error, easily explainable as a common, everyday screw up)
So yes, that means there could be a small infinity of parallel universes where evolution / history went differently. A universe where sapient rat people are squeeking over their version of the internet about weird science facts. Sure… but so what? The sun is going to expand into a red giant and consume the Earth and erase most of that information and then the local planetary stretch collapses back into it’s lowest energy state… one where there might have been rat people, or hairless ape people, but either way, they’re gone.
Ready for MORE whackyness?? THIS is the Great Filter. Sort of.
Intelligent civilizations spreading across the stars will create a HIGH energy state, as all those potential diversions splinter in more and more ways across greater distances. SO the universe will tend to favor outcomes where chaotic, clever and unpredictable life forms DON’T spread out of their own solar system, or travel across vast distances, because THAT would be a high energy stretch state. Although even just spreading across a galaxy is still only a LOCAL stretch as far as the universe is concerned. Heck, beings 100 light years away who never build a huge solar system sized radio telescope to pick up our faint emissions don’t need to cause weird reality splits. They could exist in a weird little myriad of their own stretched realities and NEVER interact with ours in a meaningful way. And if one day one of their radio astronomers detects a strange radio signal from our star that NEVER repeats and is NEVER explained… well it really doesn’t matter to them at all if we sent that signal or the rats did or the sun just hiccuped in way their physical models can’t explain. Our whole solar system becomes a Schrodinger’s cat box in which both us AND the rat people sent that signal existing in a superpositioned state until someone measures it… which they probably won’t and probably CAN’T so the universe maintains it’s low energy state.
So if you’re ever like “If I go back in time and kill my grandfather, does that mean I never existed”, what if you just created a weird stretch reality that will paradoxically persist for a while and then all collapse back together as soon as the universe can get away with it?
In this thought experiment, it’s possible that a small infinity of time travelers showed up to Stephen Hawking’s time travel party. BUT, that would cause a high energy stretch over a weird knot in time… so the universe will TOTALLY favor outcomes in which no one showed up, so in the vast majority of universes, NO time travelers show up to hang out with Stephen Hawking, BECAUSE that’s less stretching for the universe to do before it snaps back to a low energy state.
So, the many worlds interpretation doesn’t mean that infinities of universes are being created constantly, it means there’s JUST one universe, but multiple pocket realities can exist in it, localized in both space and time, and these pocket realities are constantly snapping back and merging with each other, sometimes inconsistently. Which is EXACTLY what we’d expect from an energetic system progressing through time, experiencing entropy.
Man I want whatever drugs you have.
(Honestly this was a fun read, thank you!)
I like it, and also second the request for whatever drugs you’re on
While it does appear that facts can be relative, it does not appear the universe bends backwards over itself to resolve the discrepancy when it happens:
https://www.science.org/content/article/quantum-paradox-points-shaky-foundations-reality
This doesn’t feel accurate for some reason. Maybe because I’m on drugs.
I like it, but after reading this my brain feels like it needs a nap.
Nature religions were right and we’re all part of a single bigger organism of which every part can feel and communicate with every other part.
We’re like fingers who don’t know there’s a hand
Thinking of it as quantum first.
Before the 20th century, there was a preference for the idea that things were continuous.
Then there was experimental evidence that things were quantized when interacted with, and we ended up with wave particle duality. The pendulum swung in that direction and is still going.
This came with a ton of weird behaviors that didn’t make philosophical sense - things like Einstein saying “well if no one is looking at the moon does it not exist?”
So they decided fuck the philosophy and told the new generation to just shut up and calculate.
Now we have two incompatible frameworks. At cosmic scales, the best model (general relatively) is based on continuous behavior. And at small scales the framework is “continuous until interacted with when it becomes discrete.”
But had they kept the ‘why’ in mind, as time went on things like the moon not existing when you don’t look at it or the incompatibility of those two models would have made a lot more sense.
It’s impossible to simulate the interactions of free agents with a continuous universe. It would take an uncountably infinite amount of information to keep track.
So at the very point that our universe would be impossible to simulate, it suddenly switches from behaving in an impossible to simulate way to behaving in a way with finite discrete state changes.
Even more eyebrow raising, if you erase the information about the interaction, it switches back to continuous as if memory optimized/garbage collected with orphaned references cleaned up (the quantum eraser variation of Young’s double slit experiment).
The latching on to the quantum experimental results and ditching the ‘why’ in favor of “shut up and calculate” has created an entire generation of physicists chasing the ghost of a unified theory of gravity while never really entertaining the idea that maybe the quantum experimental results are the side effects of emulating a continuous universe.
Sometimes the Dark Matter, Dark Energy conversations reminds me of waves moving through aether
As long as we are talking esotericlly, I think of fixed points on a primordial map. Like the fabric of everything and where the aether concentrates celestial bodies emerge. Like the backside of a cross stitch where we only see the stitch work rather than the image.
edit:
I don’t know enough about black holes to speak credibly on the subject but another thought comes to mind.
Pretend there is a loading point for any fixed volume of space that when the gravity gets massive enough matter can collapse in on itself. That matter still exists but it now occupies space within matter.
I think dark matter is spot on. We’re not finding it because it isn’t a thing.
However… Relevant explanation of why people think there’s dark matter.
Dark matter IS A THING. At least there is some thing out there that interacts weakly with the elctroweak force and interacts normally with gravity. We have plenty of evidence of it EXISTING. The problem of dark matter is we don’t know what it is… But sure as hell there is something. See the Bullet cluster if you don’t believe me. And if you are a bit physics savvy, you can understand that it’s evidence is imprinted in the CMB. We just don’t know what it is.
The gravitational effect is the only prerequisite. The WIMP theory predicts weakly interacting dark matter but even primordial nucleosynthesis does not require weakly interacting, just that it be nonbaryonic. So only if WIMPs are right is it going to be weakly interacting.
Well I’m not the one to argue with you but dark matter is only a thing because our current assumptions are a thing.
If we had to change our thinking because of new knowledge of some fundamental assumption (such as the reason for red shift), it could very well do away with dark matter. I’m sure such a change of thinking will seem as ridiculous to scientists today as heliocentrism seemed to astronomers of Galileo’s day.
It is just not one observation that the new assumption has to fit. There are multiple options that fit some but not others, dark matter fits most we just don’t know what it’s made up of.
Yes, there may be an alternative answer. Just need to throw general relativity out of the window.
To be fair, future physics may indeed throw it away so there’s that.
Parallel reality could be the next zodiac sign. That, or the n-body problem could become a FUD, with scientists proving that all it required was watching separated oil bubbles in lava lamp or something, I don’t know.
I’m late the game here, but I think I found the answer.
This one of those, “thought terminating cliches”?
Yep.
Followed by one of those “snarky ‘lil passive aggressive question cliches”, I see.
Oops, did i offend you?
Not in the least sweetheart.
When we finally figure out and understand, in a real world mechanical sort of way, quantum mechanics, all bets will be off.
It’ll open up a new perspective on the Universe (dare I say Metaverse?), and where we fit in with everything.
Something simple like if we just ignored Gravity we could move faster than light.
Or time maybe?
Gravity is an unproven hypothesis.
The universe is a black hole. All black holes create new universes. Ergo, you reincarnate in some fashion.
Yeah, I’m not smart enough for thread, imma head out
I read some odd magic words like fabric of the universe idk if sounded like scufi and fintasy I got confused
