Well... today the scientists, mainly the physicists, search for a "theory of everything", a theory which explain all the physical phenomena in the universe.
But i (as a physicist) believe they wont suceed.
Imagine that you are an observer, and are examining, lets say, an atom. I know that atoms are not rigid spheres, but its not the point. If you were doing so, when you looked at the atom, you would see something like the picture below.
If you didnt know that what you was seeing on the surface of it was your own image reflected, you surely would try to make a theory to explain why the atom had a man pictured in its surface. If you looked at several atoms, all of them would show the same man, sometimes greater, sometimes smaller. But surely you would have to explain why all the atoms had a man in its surface.
While the truth would be that the atoms hadnt anything in their surface. They were only reflecting the one observing it (and its surroundings as well).
So, my point is: The physical theories are not a description of the world by itself, but a description of how we humans percieve the world.
When we look at anything, we are not seeing it as it is, but as it is percieved by our human minds, brains, etc, which is obviously a very limited view of how it actually is.
If we only were able to see, let say red, we would say that the world is red. And would have a hard time trying to imagine the possibility of the world dont be red at all.
Thats why the physical theories are so well explained using math. Because math is the way that our minds use to understand the world. It is not that the universe follows math, cause math is a human minds creation. The universe does anything, we humans are the ones who filter the doings of the universe into mathematically expressed relations, and then say that they are the "laws of the universe". But they are not. They are only the "laws of how our mind percieves the universe".
So, a "theory of everything" should be able to explain the way our mind percieves the universe, or at least, to point that the laws were a result of the existence of a human observer looking at the universe. The theory of everything should be able to say "the atoms have NOT a man in its surface. That man is the observer looking at the atom, and not the atom itself".
But as until today most scientists still think that is possible to create a theory of everything without including the observer in it, thats the reason because i think they wont suceed. Always there will be the mistery of "why does all the atoms has a man in its surface?"

EDIT: Thats my 2004th post! And 2004 was the year i started to smoke!

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"Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference." Don Juan Matus - Tales of Power

I think you're right about not finding M-theory untill the people doing the research fully understand that they have to factor their observation into the equation.
Since the collective conciousness of all people combine to create our physical reality how can you find a theoretical framework that doesn't recognise the ovservers roll in what is observed?
It would be nice if our society (and i mean global society) could regain some of the spirituality of the old shamanistic cultures.

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there's a special on the Discovery Science network with portuguese physicist Joao Magueijo about even rethinking E=MC²... pretty trippy shit

João Magueijo's Big Bang : Science Channel

I'm quite certain that a Unified Theory will eventually be understood. When I was young we had only recently discovered that the Milky Way is not the universe, and Shapleigh was at the cutting edge of astronomy. ( I still have a problem with Guth's "inflation" being the excuse for the physics following the Big Bang)

Excellent post Coelho. Scientists, philosophers, medical practioners, and Joe Schmoes throughout history have wanted to find a single cause for all phenomena relating to their field. In the 1800's, chiropractic was put into organized practice in the west with the original idea that all ills could be traced to misallignments of the spine. Chinese medical theorists postulated God-knows how long ago that all illness could be traced to an imbalance in chi. Socrates put forth the theory that ailments were all the result of an imbalance in one or more of the four humors. Sorry to use medical referrences, it's what I'm mainly familiar with. But you see my point here.

I've always found it a bit annoying that so many people, including a friend of mine, have tried show me "proof" in the existence of God by pointing out intricately balanced mathematical formula's that show up repetetively throughout the universe. I tried to explain to him that the all-mighty fibinachi (sp?) sequence is an inevitable product of gravitation and energy efficiency, but they continue to insist upon the amazing numerical balance of the universe. No I won't turn this into a God debate, that's not even the central issue of what I'm saying. It's just that conceptual formulations applied upon the physical universe are only a way of explaining an idea via human language. It's much like realizing that millions of species each have a name, then insisting upon mysterious forces as the reason for all of them having names, rather than crediting the names as something we applied to them to conceptualize and organize the subject. I'm glad at least you understand this, because it seems so few do.


You know I'm just gonna go ahead and blast another quasi-scientific religion that's given rise into people's consciousness these days: The Secret. I am so sick to death of everybody telling me that all my problems can be solved if I just watch The Secret and apply it to my life. Been there, done that, doesn't work; though others will insist that I of course didn't will my desires hard enough or in the right fassion. Folk these days (well, probably all days past and future) hear an argument from an authoritative source and become so enthrawled in their impressive dialogue without actually questioning, challenging, and learning the material themselves. It's bad enough that those who are utterly ignorant of the scientific process and it's potential fallabilities read an article that says "studies show", and they think it has now been proven beyond a doubt. *sigh*


Do my a favour Coelho: breed like a rabbit and spread your seed to the farthest reaches of the planet. It seems the critical thinking gene is in steep decline.

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Gandalf's word for the day:

Logic is just the Devil whispering in your ear.

"I think your love of the halfling's pipeweed has slowed your mind"

- Saruman

^^Thanks for you kind words, man...
I cant give you rep right now, so look at my profile page... you will find there what you want...

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"Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference." Don Juan Matus - Tales of Power

I think that most exisitng complicated, inconsistent, or non-unified physical laws will eventually reduce into a very simple set of unified laws that will explain the fundamental forces and types of matter and energy. Eventually there will be a Grand Unified Theory.

However, even very simple laws can yield unimaginable complexity given enough time and energy. So I think we will have an ultimate kind of fundamental physics. But as you move outward from physics to all the disciplines of science and knowledge that build on physics or are consequences of our physical world (chemistry, biochemistry, biology, botany, horticulture, agriculture, psychology, theology, etc.) there will never be an end of discovery.

Physics is about reduction and simplification, and it has an endpoint. But other disciplines are about complexity, and there is no end to complexity.

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More of the same: Renger's Rantings

coelho...

i follow you on the whole issue of only being able to see our perception of reality and not reality itself, but what about that means that a unified theory (of our perception of reality) will never be reached? even if it is not actual reality, would that matter if it simply connected the dots of the quantum and macro world to our reality?

hope that question is clear... i have been sober for 4 days prepping for a drug test and i'm just not thinking clearly

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"Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last. You realize the sun doesn't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round." ~Flaming Lips

My theory for everything: Infinity.
Same theory, different word: Nothing.

Infinity is to nothing, as nothing is to infinity.

A blank canvas is to Nothing as a painting is to Infinity.

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And now for something completely different:

www.myspace.com/hippystonersob
go on go look, that is me! n_n

http://atotpd.proboards45.com/index.cgi
if anyone is interested in joining a sci-fi style spiritual/fantasy RP, click the above link n_n

The earth is my bible, the harvest, my Christ. God is the life within me and all things outside me.

I think it wont be reached because this theory should have to explain also the act of observing, of percieving. It should have to explain the relationship between the matter being observed and the observer. As observation is perception, and perception is consciousness, follow that a theory of everything would have to explain also consciousness. What i doubt any physical theory, today or in any near (or even far) future, would be able to do.

The physics is the study of the things that can be mathematically expressed. Only things that follow numbers and mathematical (or logical) rules can be physically defined and explained. But the quantum mechanics showed that the actual behavior of the particles is ruled by chance, and thus not mathematically describable, what limites greatly the range of knowledge of any physical theory.

For example... take the Schroedinger cat experience. In this experience a cat is in a box with a gun pointing to it, and the gun is fired following the decomposition of a radioactive atom.
All what the physics can say is that there is a probability of the atom decompose during some amount of time, but the actual moment when it will decompose is at chance, and cant be known by any physical theory.
So, the life of the cat depends exclusively of chance... and no amount of physics can change it.

__________________
"Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference." Don Juan Matus - Tales of Power

I believe that every atom is "programmed" with a measurable rate of decay aside from other environmental variables. We can guess the rate of decay, and sort of measure it as it happens (I think?), but like you said we're not sure of when it will actually happen for that atom. We don't have a way of determining the exact life expectancy of the atom, but I'm sure it's not gonna decay all by chance. We just lack a way of measuring it before it happens, to know exactly when it will happen and how long it will take to complete.

To say its all by chance would open up the door to crackpot theories like spontaneous combustion... if the atoms are gonna behave all by chance, then they can just do anything they want at any given time? To say an atom is gonna behave by chance is to give it an infinite amount of possibilities for doing anything... but nah, it's gonna eventually decay at whatever rate it shall depending on the forces that cause it to begin.

That cat experiment seems to be nothing more than a quantum version of the tree falling in a forest... will it make a sound, or not because there was no one there to hear it.. it's all actions and reactions.

Though, given infinite time/space, infinite possibilities would exist for everything, giving a "chance" for complete randomness... but in every system there's still gonna be rules and laws to follow.. dang, science turns into a loop of logic for me sometimes.... an infinite loop lol oh no! i'm stuck!


Anyways, I also doubt we'd be able to merge all the theories together... it doesn't even take into consideration the possibility of things that are much bigger than our scope of reality... macroverses are trippy to think about.

I totally love physics... but the more I try to learn about it, the more I realize that everything is a theory based on our limited observations... nothing is concrete... it's all too............. random. At least some numbers remain constant, as far as we know.. mwahahahah

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"There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion." - 12 Monkeys.
The hemp plant is our perfect symbiote! Down with capitalism, materialism, fascism, war, and superficialness! Long live the biosphere! *Proud offspring of a draft dodger*

Pictures of my first grown buds!

coelho... can you tell me a bit about your beliefs on existence? i know it is a broad question but maybe answer it as if you had to give a definition for a belief system we know as "coelhoism"...

__________________
"Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last. You realize the sun doesn't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round." ~Flaming Lips

You just blew my mind. Haha
I've read and thought about the observer/environment relationship and how it will effect the overall perception of reality, but using that picture and analogy just made my brain click. The Everything Theory would not necessarily be "how" it all works, just how we perceive it to be, relative to our position of observation. I wonder though, if we define an ultimate theory... would it automatically be incorrect simply because it is filtered through our eyes? Couldn't our biased observations be correct? Also, if there even is a measurable difference between the "actual" ultimate theory, and our "filtered" theory... would it matter? If our reality is determined by how our mind perceives our environment, then our filtered and biased theory would be the only relevant theory our species would need. I hope I didn't lose everyone there. It's late. Does that make sense?

This post made me think a lot and I like that.

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Unfortunately, not even Cannabis is helping me to accept this world.
I am preparing to vanish......
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Makes sense to me. Once or twice someone's claimed to be close to linking the theories together, so I'm sure they'll find a solution for explaining it for our perceptions of reality, but not for actual reality. We'd just be one step closer to half-assed understanding everything. I'd like to think that there's still a slim chance that our observation could be 100% accurate (infinite realities type theory right there). And like you said, about our reality being determined by how our mind perceives the environment... I think that bit right there gives the chance for all our theories being correct and linked together.

I still have my doubts, but I'm not letting go of hope.

I hope we can at least figure this stuff out after we die!

__________________
"There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion." - 12 Monkeys.
The hemp plant is our perfect symbiote! Down with capitalism, materialism, fascism, war, and superficialness! Long live the biosphere! *Proud offspring of a draft dodger*

Pictures of my first grown buds!

Well... the rate of decay is a measured thing after the atoms decay... its statistics, not science. For example: if you throw a coin, as we usually dont know anything about the movement of it, statistics will say that, in average, the chance of you get heads or tails is the same. So, if you throw several times, you would get about the same number of heads and tails. But the coin doesnt know that it must respect an average. If you throw the coin and get heads several times repeatedly, the chance of getting a tail wont be any greater because of this. What the coin does is governed mostly by chance, and statistics is only an way to disguise our lack of better knowledge about the matter being studied.
So, as we know that the coin has two sides, we assume that the coin will fall with one of this sides upside. But as we absolutely dont know what the coin will do, and thus would be prejudiced to say that one side has greater chance of being upside, we say that the chances are the same for the both sides. But its only a nice way to say that we dont know anything about it. (Statisticists forgive me, but its true... )

Regarding the specific example of radioactive emission... the atoms nucleus can be viewed as a cloud of flies flying around a lamp. The flies being the protons and neutrons, and the lamp being nothing. (The protons and neutrons are attracted by themselves, but the flies are not... thats why they need a lamp). Anyway, details aside, the fact is that the subatomic particles are in movement into the nucleus. When two particles fast enough collide, they emit radiation.
But we cant know (due the uncertainity principle) the position of this subatomic particles, so we cant know when they will collide and emit radiation. And nor they (the particles) do, they dont know that the kind of atom they are part has some measured decay rate. The particles just spin around, carelessly, until two of them collide. And as nor we nor they know when they will collide, we say that it happens by chance.

There is a chance of get 10 tails repeatedly when throwing a coin. There is also a chance to get, lets say, 100, or even 1000 tails repeatedly. But we dont see it happening because its very improbable. (about 1:1,000,000,000 for only 30 repetitions). We could make a law like "one coin never falls with the same side upside for more than 30 consecutive throws", and this law would only be wrong at about 1/1,000,000,000th of the time. Increasing the number of maximum throws, the range of validity of this "law" would be greatly increased. But it wouldnt be a true nature law. Cause there is nothing that forbide a coin to fall heads or tails repeatedly by any number of times. If one were lucky enough it could be done. So, again, statistics shouldnt be used as tool for making laws.
Of course sooner or later the atoms will decay... but its by the same reason of why we cant get more than 20 or 30 (or even 10) repeated heads or tails throwing a coin. By chance (or lack of luck).
And yes, even the most improbable things are allowed by physics to happen, but as the chance of they happen is VERY small, we say that its impossible for all useful purposes.

I dont know... i think that what we call rules or laws are patterns noticed by our minds... but nothing ensures us that the nature must obey the patterns our mind makes...

Me too... and as understand what you say about realizing its limitations, cause i feel it myself too... thats why i started to search other things.
And the numbers only remains constant because they are defined as constants... if they are, by definition, constant, they just cant have any hope of changing their status. For them the life is deterministic indeed...

Man... its a very broad question indeed... i wouldnt know even for where to begin... if you could make it a bit more specific, i could try to answer.
And please dont think about starting some "coelhoism"... i think the world is already full enough of "isms"...

Man... it happened the same with me when this thought appeared into my mind at the first time... i was high (as always ) and noticed that this picture was a very good analogy of the relationship between observer and object...

It wouldnt be incorret, but incomplete. The filtering done would erase some information, and so we always would lose some knowledge.

Yes, it does. But then we should admit that our knowledge and even our "theory of everything" would not be actually a theory of everything, but only a theory of what we can understand and percieve, and be aware of its limitations.
So, for example, physics would be called "Mathematical patterns of the universe when observed by the human mind", and not "The Laws of Nature".

Well... i dont want go off topic so i wont enter in details... but i believe that what we call reality depends heavily on how "tuned" (actually like a radio) our mind is with the reality. Like, when we are stoned our mind is "tuned" differently than when were sober, we percieve things differently. So, our notion of reality depends on the tuning of our mind. If we tune it in some very different "station", the reality we will percieve will be very different from the usual, and surely will have its own laws that may be different of the ones we notice when sober.
And if it actually were so, as there are several different "tunings" of the mind, there would be several sets of laws, one for each tuning.

__________________
"Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference." Don Juan Matus - Tales of Power