Truth

[maquiscat]

Post me a video of you folding up some ashes.

The lack of knowledge on how to break the sound barrier did not negate the truth that we could travel faster than the speed of sound. The current lack of knowledge on how to break the light barrier, does not negate the truth that we can (albeit not currently) travel faster than the speed of light. Sometimes the truth of something is not readily visible or known, so while we can only go by the truth we can currently perceive that is not the true truth.

 

[RAMOSS]

The lack of knowledge on how to break the sound barrier did not negate the truth that we could travel faster than the speed of sound. The current lack of knowledge on how to break the light barrier, does not negate the truth that we can (albeit not currently) travel faster than the speed of light. Sometimes the truth of something is not readily visible or known, so while we can only go by the truth we can currently perceive that is not the true truth.

of couse.. it also could be that the speed of light is a limit that can not be exceeded.

 

[CrabCake]

I am making my own philosophy, not taking from another set idea.

You may believe that to be true, but the truth is that you are simply using different words to describe the same exact thing most people already believe. It might make you feel like its your own philosophy since you use different words, but it isn't. All you are accomplishing is making it more difficult to have a conversation with you on this topic since you refuse to use the same words everyone else uses.

 

[zyzygy]

The lack of knowledge on how to break the sound barrier did not negate the truth that we could travel faster than the speed of sound. The current lack of knowledge on how to break the light barrier, does not negate the truth that we can (albeit not currently) travel faster than the speed of light. Sometimes the truth of something is not readily visible or known, so while we can only go by the truth we can currently perceive that is not the true truth.

And what does that have to do with burning a piece of paper and then folding it up?

 

[maquiscat]

And what does that have to do with burning a piece of paper and then folding it up?

That simply because we cannot perceive how to accomplish such a task currently, it does not mean it is an absolute truth that it cannot be done. It is a conditional truth to say we do not possess the current knowledge how yet. Or conditional by saying that one is not allowed to reform the carbon ash into a graphine (sp)? piece of paper and fold that. A lot is also depending upon what your subjective view of material use is the truth. In truth when I make paper and fold it, I am folding a tree into quarters and eighths

 

[maquiscat]

You may believe that to be true, but the truth is that you are simply using different words to describe the same exact thing most people already believe. It might make you feel like its your own philosophy since you use different words, but it isn't. All you are accomplishing is making it more difficult to have a conversation with you on this topic since you refuse to use the same words everyone else uses.

Not necessarily. All ideas are built upon those that come before, as is all technology. As far as his philosophy goes he may well be basing it upon several different sets and while the mentioned aspect might have originated mostly for a particular other set, it is not necessarily identical.

 

[zyzygy]

That simply because we cannot perceive how to accomplish such a task currently, it does not mean it is an absolute truth that it cannot be done. It is a conditional truth to say we do not possess the current knowledge how yet. Or conditional by saying that one is not allowed to reform the carbon ash into a graphine (sp)? piece of paper and fold that. A lot is also depending upon what your subjective view of material use is the truth. In truth when I make paper and fold it, I am folding a tree into quarters and eighths

A piece of paper is not a tree. Graphene is not paper. It is an allotrope of carbon.

 

[maquiscat]

A piece of paper is not a tree. Graphene is not paper. It is an allotrope of carbon.

And ashes are then not paper. If you are going to hold that changing the form of something makes it no longer what it was, then burning paper, it is no longer paper. So, what you want is someone's who can fold ashes, and ultimately it doesn't matter where those ashes come from.

 

[William Rea]

What is truth?

Truth is what actually is reality.

We have beliefs about truth based upon on what appears to accord with our perception of that reality.

 

[CrabCake]

Not necessarily. All ideas are built upon those that come before, as is all technology. As far as his philosophy goes he may well be basing it upon several different sets and while the mentioned aspect might have originated mostly for a particular other set, it is not necessarily identical.

He switched the word "belief" for the term "personal truth" and the word "fact" for the term "ultimate truth". That doesn't make it his own philosophy, just his own language.

 

[Binary_Digit]

I'd also add that even 'objective' truths aren't always what they seem when it comes to relativity and quantum mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics requires absolute simultaneity in all frames. The ToR says absolute simultaneity is impossible because everything is relative to an observer. Clearly at least one of the theories is wrong. My money is on the ToR. As great as it is, it has some flaws just like Newton's laws do. If A happens before B, then A happened before B no matter what some observer may witness due to his/her relative motion and the cosmic information speed limit. I think that highlights the difference between absolute truth vs. some observer's perspective giving them a false impression of the truth. 1 + 1 = 2 regardless if anyone thinks it's 3.

The lack of knowledge on how to break the sound barrier did not negate the truth that we could travel faster than the speed of sound. The current lack of knowledge on how to break the light barrier, does not negate the truth that we can (albeit not currently) travel faster than the speed of light. Sometimes the truth of something is not readily visible or known, so while we can only go by the truth we can currently perceive that is not the true truth.

One essential difference between those two is, before humans broke the sound barrier, we had observed many things in nature already breaking the sound barrier. But we've yet to observe anything in the universe moving faster than the SoL; humans or otherwise. In this case, the truth is nobody has observed anything in nature exceeding the SoL. So the conclusion (not to be confused with the truth) is that it's impossible for anything to exceed the SoL.

 

[Nilly]

Quantum Mechanics requires absolute simultaneity in all frames. The ToR says absolute simultaneity is impossible because everything is relative to an observer. Clearly at least one of the theories is wrong. My money is on the ToR. As great as it is, it has some flaws just like Newton's laws do. If A happens before B, then A happened before B no matter what some observer may witness due to his/her relative motion and the cosmic information speed limit. I think that highlights the difference between absolute truth vs. some observer's perspective giving them a false impression of the truth. 1 + 1 = 2 regardless if anyone thinks it's 3.

One essential difference between those two is, before humans broke the sound barrier, we had observed many things in nature already breaking the sound barrier. But we've yet to observe anything in the universe moving faster than the SoL; humans or otherwise. In this case, the truth is nobody has observed anything in nature exceeding the SoL. So the conclusion (not to be confused with the truth) is that it's impossible for anything to exceed the SoL.

Yeah but if A happened before B according to whom? The very nature of c means and the lack of an absolute time (or space) frame means that all frames have to be considered equally. ToR may end up being improved on but I'm not sure whether that pillar of it will every be overturned, it's a necessary result of the fact that information travels at finite speed.

Not to mention ultimate truth is an impossibility in many facets of QM also. Particles don't 'exist' or 'not exist', nor do they take 'this path' or 'that path'. Existence itself is simply a probability distribution, it's not binary.

 

[Binary_Digit]

Yeah but if A happened before B according to whom? The very nature of c means and the lack of an absolute time (or space) frame means that all frames have to be considered equally. ToR may end up being improved on but I'm not sure whether that pillar of it will every be overturned, it's a necessary result of the fact that information travels at finite speed.

Good one! I think that's one of the problems with ToR; everything requires an observer, to the point that seemingly nothing can exist without one. Even Einstein didn't feel right about this, and famously asked "Does the moon exist only when we look at it?" He knew the answer was "yes", but he spent the rest of his life trying to come up with a way to prove it and could not.

My answer is: A happened before B according to the universe itself. All observations of the events and in what order they occurred are just that: observations of a truth, not a truth in and of themselves. If 10 people witness a car crash and they each write a report, you'll get 10 different reports. That doesn't mean there were 10 different car crashes. There was just the one truth (the actual crash + all related details), and then 10 different observations of that truth.

Another one I like to think about: imagine someone about 50 yards away bouncing a basketball. You can see the ball hit the ground before you hear it, I'm sure you've seen this yourself. Just because the sound information is lagging behind the event, doesn't change when the event occurred one iota. So why should the actual order of events suddenly be called into question when the event information is carried by light waves instead of sound waves? It's still a case of observers not knowing about the events until after they occurred. If a nuke exploded on the moon at 12:00 GMT Earth time, nobody on Earth would see it until 12:01 GMT. Does that mean it didn't actually explode until a full minute after it exploded, just because we didn't see it until then? Of course not, that's absurd.

Not to mention ultimate truth is an impossibility in many facets of QM also. Particles don't 'exist' or 'not exist', nor do they take 'this path' or 'that path'. Existence itself is simply a probability distribution, it's not binary.

Another good one! The double-slit experiment is still one of the great mysteries in physics. And the unpredictability of where an electron is located at any given time, since it's more like a field than a particle. But I don't think this suggests there are no truths in that world, only that we haven't yet discovered them all.

 

[Fritz]

You may believe that to be true, but the truth is that you are simply using different words to describe the same exact thing most people already believe. It might make you feel like its your own philosophy since you use different words, but it isn't. All you are accomplishing is making it more difficult to have a conversation with you on this topic since you refuse to use the same words everyone else uses.

I never refused to change vocabulary, and I made my own conclusions independent of other people, even if the thought already exists. You are trying to get me to conform and have consensus with other people, and I appreciate it. However, like languages the same meaning can be conveyed in different ways, so I don't know why you are getting aggressive.

 

[jet57]

What is truth?

Positive energy that completes a circuit as the energy travels.

 

[lurchadams]

"There are four lights!" - Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise

 

[the_recruit]

I'd also add that even 'objective' truths aren't always what they seem when it comes to relativity and quantum mechanics.

We need to be careful here. Relativity and QM are both entirely objective theories. Under relativity, for example, all observers will agree on the facts of the matter. For example: that spaceship A is traveling at B mph with respect to reference frame X. This is true for everybody regardless of your frame of reference. It's just that concepts like velocity (and length, time, energy, etc) are relativistic - they only make sense with respect to a reference frame. Specifying velocity is meaningless without specifying a reference frame. In exactly the same way that "taller" is meaningless without specifying a reference: Bob is taller. Huh? Taller than what?

The "disagreement" between observers under relativity arises in precisely the same way - by being sloppy with language. Claiming that "Spaceship A is traveling at B mph" isn't enough. This is ambiguous. Traveling at B mph with respect to what? If all observers are careful to specify the frame to which they are referring the "disagreement" vanishes.

 

[the_recruit]

Not to mention ultimate truth is an impossibility in many facets of QM also. Particles don't 'exist' or 'not exist', nor do they take 'this path' or 'that path'. Existence itself is simply a probability distribution, it's not binary.

But you just stated the "ultimate truth" of the matter: The particle isn't a little discrete marble that either goes through one slit or the other or neither. Instead its "existence" is smeared across a distribution of potentials, it exists as whatever strangeness wave functions are describing. This (or some other interpretation of QM) is a fact, "the ultimate fact" of the matter - an objective one (ie, it is true for everybody, regardless of anyone's attitude toward particles or waves or QM).

 

[Binary_Digit]

A single particle does pass through either one slit or the other - when it's being observed. The distribution of many particles over time makes an interference pattern - when they're not being observed. The only "ultimate truth" we can glean from that right now is, there's some spooky weird **** going on that we don't understand just yet.

The notion that a particle exists in all possible locations at once (Many Worlds interpretation) is just one of several "guesses" on how to explain this spooky weird ****, and should not be confused with any sort of "truth" or "theory".

The "truth" of something always exists, regardless of whether or not we can correctly determine that truth.

 

[Nilly]

But you just stated the "ultimate truth" of the matter: The particle isn't a little discrete marble that either goes through one slit or the other or neither. Instead its "existence" is smeared across a distribution of potentials, it exists as whatever strangeness wave functions are describing. This (or some other interpretation of QM) is a fact, "the ultimate fact" of the matter - an objective one (ie, it is true for everybody, regardless of anyone's attitude toward particles or waves or QM).

If you're happy to admit that the 'ultimate truth' is inherently unknown then sure I guess.

It's like if someone asked you who won the superbowl and you answered 'a superposition of the falcons and the patriots' then most people wouldn't consider that a good answer.

There is also the matter that events in QM can retroactively change (or appear to violate causality) which kind of kills the idea that an ultimate truth is actually even important in QM

 

[Nilly]

But you just stated the "ultimate truth" of the matter: The particle isn't a little discrete marble that either goes through one slit or the other or neither. Instead its "existence" is smeared across a distribution of potentials, it exists as whatever strangeness wave functions are describing. This (or some other interpretation of QM) is a fact, "the ultimate fact" of the matter - an objective one (ie, it is true for everybody, regardless of anyone's attitude toward particles or waves or QM).

Also it's important to note that a probability distribution or a superposition of states isn't a physical 'thing'. When observed, these distributions and states collapse. A probability distribution is a theoretical model or framework that acts as a tool to allow us to make sense of the real world. A probability distribution doesn't 'exist' in real life. A particles existence doesn't actually physically manifest as a distribution of potentials, that's just the best way to describe it because it turns out to be useful.

To me, including that as an 'ultimate truth' bends the definition of what an 'ultimate truth' should be.

 

[CrabCake]

I never refused to change vocabulary, and I made my own conclusions independent of other people, even if the thought already exists. You are trying to get me to conform and have consensus with other people, and I appreciate it. However, like languages the same meaning can be conveyed in different ways, so I don't know why you are getting aggressive.

No one is being aggressive. I'm just pointing out that we already have a language for describing what you are describing. If you choose to make up your own language, you've only accomplished one thing...making communication with you more difficult. Now we need a dictionary to talk with you so that we can figure out that to you:

Truth = facts and/or beliefs
Personal truth = belief
Ultimate truth = facts

Coming up with new words is great if you are trying to bring out certain nuances or describing something that didn't exist before, or a special instance of something, etc. It's kind of pointless when we could have replaced your terms with a single already existing word.

 

[RAMOSS]

No one is being aggressive. I'm just pointing out that we already have a language for describing what you are describing. If you choose to make up your own language, you've only accomplished one thing...making communication with you more difficult. Now we need a dictionary to talk with you so that we can figure out that to you:

Truth = facts and/or beliefs
Personal truth = belief
Ultimate truth = facts

Coming up with new words is great if you are trying to bring out certain nuances or describing something that didn't exist before, or a special instance of something, etc. It's kind of pointless when we could have replaced your terms with a single already existing word.

I would put it this way.

Truth = facts and/or beliefs
Personal Truth = belief
Objective Truth = fact
Ultimate Truth = Unsupported claims being presented as objective truth.
.

 

[Binary_Digit]

I would put it this way.

Truth = facts and/or beliefs
Personal Truth = belief
Objective Truth = fact
Ultimate Truth = Unsupported claims being presented as objective truth.
.

I think it can be even simpler than that:

Truth: Something that the physical universe asserts as fact, regardless of whether any living being actually realizes it or knows about it.

Everything else: Observations and conclusions based on what we think are truths, to arrive at something else we think is also truth.

 

[Fritz]

No one is being aggressive. I'm just pointing out that we already have a language for describing what you are describing. If you choose to make up your own language, you've only accomplished one thing...making communication with you more difficult. Now we need a dictionary to talk with you so that we can figure out that to you:

Truth = facts and/or beliefs
Personal truth = belief
Ultimate truth = facts

Coming up with new words is great if you are trying to bring out certain nuances or describing something that didn't exist before, or a special instance of something, etc. It's kind of pointless when we could have replaced your terms with a single already existing word.

Geez, Sorry that you don't like my views on vocabulary, it is my opinion anyway. Why are you putting your opinion into mine??? This exchange is silly.