2012 - What does it mean to you?

[NJFemmie]

We believe what feels right within. I think the original question was "what does it mean to you" - and those answers are not always going to be comprised of answers based on scientific fact, everyone's rationalization is going to be what feels right to them.

What do people get out of believing such things?

For me, it's illogical to think that everything is purely scientific and "logical". Because in reality, NO ONE REALLY KNOWS - they only know what they do know - and if the universe is infinite, so are the possibilities.

[SuperFemme]

I believe I thought NJ's sig line referred to the Yoruban Goddess until about one minute ago.

Ohhh. OCEAN.

I believe in lots of stuff because I choose to. Astrology being one of them.

End of the world predictions? Not so much.
I like surprises.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

We believe what feels right within. I think the original question was "what does it mean to you" - and those answers are not always going to be comprised of answers based on scientific fact, everyone's rationalization is going to be what feels right to them.

What do people get out of believing such things?

For me, it's illogical to think that everything is purely scientific and "logical". Because in reality, NO ONE REALLY KNOWS - they only know what they do know - and if the universe is infinite, so are the possibilities.

I read the question a bit differently. For instance, let's take, as a point of contrast, belief in a divine being (which I also see no reason to believe in). This can be a comforting belief. But what does one gain from believing, for instance, that a now extinct civilization (not the people but the civilization) predicted some ill-defined cataclysm? It's certainly not comforting NOR is there anything one can do about it. As another point of contrast, consider (if you're old enough) the response to fears of a nuclear war that dominated the (industrialized) world from 1948 until the early 1990's. Here there WAS something that could be done about it. Fear that Goldwater might be crazy enough to attempt to fight a nuclear war kept him from the Presidency and, quite possibly, prevented us from getting into one. Or consider the somewhat more remote possibility of a planet-killer asteroid out there. If we can spot it we MIGHT be able to divert it (it's essentially a physics/engineering problem). But if the threat is ill-defined (something will happen, who knows what) then what is the point? As I said yesterday it sells books and movie tickets but other than making Hollywood moguls and New Age gurus a little heavier in the wallet, what actual *good* does it do?

As far as everything not being scientific and logical, this depends upon what you mean. To give another illustration, I'll take something I mentioned in the paper I linked to yesterday. You are mostly empty space. Everything is. There is a non-zero probability that you could walk through a wall. However, because both you and the wall are macro-objects if you started *today* to try to walk through a wall and you attempted once every second to do so, you would have to wait until the universe were around a hundred billion years old before you had done enough attempts that it would have some probability of actually happening. We can, therefore, treat walls as solid objects that it is impossible to pass through.

What's more, there are things that are *conceivable* but so highly improbable that we save a great deal of time by treating them as impossible. For instance, there is no law of physics that prevents air from *spontaneously* re-inflating your tire when it goes flat. The process that deflates your tire is, in fact, time-reversible meaning that it is process-reversible. However, the statistical nature of the movement of molecules means that it is very *unlikely* to ever actually occur. (This, by the way, is one way of understanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics: e.g. entropy)

Lastly, I would have to say that the possibilities are not actually infinite nor is there any reason to take our *profound* ignorance about nature to mean that anything goes. It is simply true that, to the best of our knowledge, it is *impossible* to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light through space-time. We can safely treat any claims that someone has built a device that can achieve acceleration to the speed of light as a false claim. The same applies for perpetual motion machines (any machine where it generates its own energy without any loss: e.g. 100% of the energy used by the machine can be used for work). To say that 'no one knows because the universe is infinite' is to treat the laws of physics as nothing more than just some localized, arbitrary caprices when, in fact, they are not.

I want to tack on another question: what is WRONG with the universe having limits on us? Why is it that people balk at that? Why does the universe 'owe' us perpetual motion machines, psychic powers, or a divine being that cares for us (but, interestingly, doesn't condemn us to hell). Why is it illogical for nature to be governed by some set of rules that are discoverable by any species clever enough to hit upon the idea of the scientific method?

It seems to me that this claim is actually somewhat testable. For instance, if there are psychic powers (whatever that might mean) then we should expect that these powers would exhibit SOME kind of behavior. For instance, Einstein came up with a clever suggestion about how to determine if psychic powers existed. If they are a field then they should fall off according to the inverse square law (just like every other field does) if they don't, in other words if distance from the source has no effect on strength, then they don't exist because *every other single field we have discovered* obeys that law. Now, alternatively, if psychic powers aren't subject to the inverse square law of fields then those who argue in favor of them have the burden of proof placed on *them* to explain the nature of these powers and why they are the exception.

This is just a matter of consistent thinking and an attempt to keep the cognitive dissonance to the absolute minimum possible.

Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

I am not a scientist (obviously) but have been giving the subject of why people believe in religion, astrology and so forth much thought.

I wonder, in some cases, like for example astrology, psychic ability and so forth, if it is possible that somehow there are perfectly rational explanations? (science we don't know yet).

Could the planets have a pull on us like the moon might?

So many scientific discoveries have happened in our lifetimes alone that I have to think there are many completely rational explanations for things we might consider "magical thinking".

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

I am not a scientist (obviously) but have been giving the subject of why people believe in religion, astrology and so forth much thought.

I wonder, in some cases, like for example astrology, psychic ability and so forth, if it is possible that somehow there are perfectly rational explanations? (science we don't know yet).

Could the planets have a pull on us like the moon might?

If they did, then this pull would be of a completely DIFFERENT kind of field (meaning one we have never detected before). The only field from the other planets that have ANY effect on us here on Earth is the electromagnetic field (light). The only other field that the planets have that would effect us here would be the gravitational field but because of how fields fall off with distance we are not significantly affected by the gravitational fields of EITHER of our two nearest planetary neighbors (Venus and Mars) and outside of the effect of Jupiter hoovering up objects as they traverse into the inner solar system, Jupiter has no effect on us. That means that this 'astrological field' (if you will) either has to be energy in some form that we cannot detect (but it's NOT dark energy that we can be certain of) or it does not obey the inverse square law. It's not electromagnetism (because we could detect it if it were, there's no part of the EMF spectrum that we cannot detect) and it can't be gravity (for the reason cited above).

This puts the burden of justification on the proponents of astrology to explain what kind of energy it is, to propose tests we could use to determine if this energy exists and whether or not it obeys the inverse square law (and if it doesn't why and how it breaks what appears to be a *fundamental* rule).

Here's the thing that I think is lost in a lot of science education taken at the high school and non-science major undergrad level: a universe with, say, psi powers looks very different than one without. If one is going to propose these powers, okay, but then one should be prepared for curious sorts to ask probing and difficult questions.

Because I'm more comfortable talking about how this works with various scientific issues (because there's no danger I'm going to step on someone's cherished beliefs and thus insult them) I'll use an example of the kind of questioning and curiosity I'm talking about. Let's take string theory.

String theory is a mathematically *beautiful* structure that seeks to explain, amongst other things, why the four forces have the strengths they do and what those four forces would look like if unified. I will admit that from the minute I became aware of string theory I was captivated by it. I would really LIKE for the universe to work this way. However, there are some non-trivial problems with the theory and after five years of reading everything I could find that was in support of string theory I heard on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday an interview with someone who had been a prominent string theorist who wrote a book called "The Trouble with Physics" which argued that string theory was almost certainly wrong. I went out and bought that book and another book by a mathematician with an interest in the subject called "Not Even Wrong". I waded through both (they're very dense and the subject matter is extremely arcane) but after reading both of those and some various journal articles on the subject, came to the conclusion that string theory was unlikely to be true. While I still hold out SOME hope it might be rescued from its problems, I am dubious this can or will happen which means that no matter how much I might *want* the universe to work this way, it is vanishingly improbable that it *does* work that way.

It required me to ask some very deep and difficult questions and whenever there was resistance to question MY motivations for that resistance. However, the rules are the rules and the two biggest problems string theory has are not trivial. There are some 5 *million* possible permutations of string theory any of which might be true with no way to whittle that down to a manageable number. This means that string theory is not falsifiable as a practical matter and it may not be falsifiable even in principle. If it's only the former, then it's a matter of time but if it's the latter then no matter how beautiful string theory is, it isn't science. The second problem is allied to the first. String theory requires 9 MORE dimensions than our familiar 3+1 (time is its own dimension) which are curled up so small that they are not detectable. This goes back to the falsifiability issue.

The reason I bring this up is to illustrate how I think about these things and what scientific thinking looks like. I also bring it up to show that when I ask these questions about, say, astrology I am applying the SAME standard to that idea that I apply to ideas I actually DO believe might have something to them. I do so because it's only *fair* to do so. It would be unfair for me to have one standard for astrology and another for string theory and it would be terribly inconsistent to boot. To the best of my ability I want to be consistent and fair-minded and that means treating all kinds of claims about the universe as being on an equal footing and not privileging some kinds of claims above others just because some are labeled 'spiritual' and some scientific.

Cheers
Aj

[NJFemmie]

My only suggestion is to investigate astrology. I could go on and on about it, but honestly? I really have no desire to, lol. It wouldn't be fair to turn this thread into science vs. metaphysics - since my original intent was to simply answer a question about what I thought about 2012.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

My only suggestion is to investigate astrology. I could go on and on about it, but honestly? I really have no desire to, lol. It wouldn't be fair to turn this thread into science vs. metaphysics - since my original intent was to simply answer a question about what I thought about 2012.

Well, so that the thread doesn't die I'll bow out of it. Obviously, it's more entertaining to talk about, on the one hand, vague, non-specific events than it is to actually delve into the grounding issues of what might happen and why. I thought that good information about the science would crowd out bad information but that only works if people want good information which, clearly, they don't.

So enjoy the 23 month "the Mayans said the world will end!" party. On 22 Dec 2012, I'll be giggling my butt off and wondering how many people will have the courage to admit that 2012 was just another year.

Cheers
Aj

[NJFemmie]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Well, so that the thread doesn't die I'll bow out of it. Obviously, it's more entertaining to talk about, on the one hand, vague, non-specific events than it is to actually delve into the grounding issues of what might happen and why. I thought that good information about the science would crowd out bad information but that only works if people want good information which, clearly, they don't.

So enjoy the 23 month "the Mayans said the world will end!" party. On 22 Dec 2012, I'll be giggling my butt off and wondering how many people will have the courage to admit that 2012 was just another year.

Cheers
Aj

Everyone isn't going to care about the details. Details can be quite boorish. The web is vast and there's tons of information on it for those who want it though.

[friskyfemme]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

My only suggestion is to investigate astrology. I could go on and on about it, but honestly? I really have no desire to, lol. It wouldn't be fair to turn this thread into science vs. metaphysics - since my original intent was to simply answer a question about what I thought about 2012.

Off topic but I tend to wander off alot...LOL
Is this pic with the cat an image of mouse in 'light' form intentional? or am I having a '60s flashback'?

[Toughy]

2012......I will be 60 yrs old (June 24) and that's a number I cannot even understand.......laughin..........

It reminds me of a bumper sticker found all over NM during the Y2K hype:

Y2K is everyday in NM

Meaning: if all the hype had come true, nothing in NM would have changed........laughin....

I must admit I did go out to Point Reyes with a bunch of friends and 'harmonically converged' when we were supposed to do that to save the planet..........it was a great time hanging at the beach and doing a bit of meditation to the sound of the waves and the light of the moon.

It's the Solstice and I will be having a Solstice Celebration just like I do every year. It's a celebration of the return of the light.