Quantum mechanics unveils the spaghetti code on which our universe runs
145String theory… further proof that breaking your spaghetti violates the fundamental laws of the universe.
57i can't wait to see the source comments
"this should NOT work, yet it does, if you touch this i will flay you alive"
18This is beautiful, it’s poetry.
17
Just because you know how something works doesn't make it not magic
78If you understand how quantum mechanics works, why are you keeping it a secret?
30Out of pure spite.
28If you understand magnets you know how magic works. Hell, even aerofoils seem like a glitch in reality.
7
Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from science!
5Totally agree. I just witnessed my sister delivering her baby a few days back.
1
As a matter of fact, reality is far more exciting than magic. Magic is limited by what our feeble human minds can dream up. Science has shown time and time again that reality is far more complex and far more interesting.
66The difference between magic and science is that magic is centered on humans in the way that the entire cosmos was once thought to rotate around Earth. Both a magical universe and a scientific universe contain rules that humans can discover and tools that humans can use to influence their environment, but a magical universe is for humans and about humans whereas a scientific universe is not even indifferent to humans.
I admit that it would be nice to have gods and even the very fabric of reality care about what I want...
15Reality is a social construct and is therefore limited by human imagination.
1
As a former evangelical Christian, the natural universe we inhabit is magical and exciting and fascinating in a way that it simply isn't when you believe it was the creation of an all-powerful God as basically a training ground for Heaven or whatever.
There is so much more to learn and understand. It is fucking awesome!
31As someone raised by Christians I'm glad you made it out too.
7That is very kind of you to say, and the same to you.
3
I do agree but if you wanted to make to case for 'God' they could have made sure some of their creatures evolved to understand his work, assuming they did it in a logical way. I'm not a person with faith but just try and think a way is possible, though usually trying to understand weird comic and media universe type actions.
We are the way for a universe to understand itself (paraphrased from Sagan). Though his writing is much more interesting than this comment. I just think there's room for belief if it works for people, but not for the strict literal interpretations that many seem to believe.
4i think if we're arguing anything as magic, it's probably the fact that we're here, on earth, and that earth is the perfect planet, and that it has plenty of resources for us to exploit, and that we just happen to be intelligent forms of life capable of exploiting such resources.
Who gives a fuck about anything else when the pure and fundamental question of "why us" is literally the only thing you need to keep your going until you die.
2
God doesn’t play with dice
-Einstein<An infinite number of dice appear at the plank scale>
Tada!
-God31If I watch too much fantasy world or read about it too immersively , I think about how all of their powers are normal to them. Light, fire, storms, electricity, the states of water, tides, giraffes, etc., they're all magical. We've just named them and have ways to describe how they work in an orderly, understandable, format.
29Ah yes the giraffe, the most magical being
11I appreciate you. https://imgur.com/gallery/new-favorite-gif-EkO9uj8
3
Scientists are this world's wizards
3
5
A good illusion is still spectacular even when the illusion is broken. The magical world was boring to begin with.
29Pen & Teller have entered the chat.
2
Science is just a stepping stone to philosophy.
Actually, all roads lead to philosophy.
24Philosophy is just science, except without the requirement that things align with reality.
4TLDR: Science only exists because philosophers laid out the framework for science. The entire concept of the scientific method was designed and refined by philosophers, the whole concept of science was created by philosophers. The dangers and risks of science were identified by philosophers. It is the duty of the scientist to gather knowledge, it is the duty of the philosopher to question science.
Science runs because philosophy walked.
Philosophy of science looks at the underpinning logic of the scientific method, at what separates science from non-science, and the ethic that is implicit in science. There are basic assumptions, derived from philosophy by at least one prominent scientist, that form the base of the scientific method – namely, that reality is objective and consistent, that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that rational explanations exist for elements of the real world. These assumptions from methodological naturalism form a basis on which science may be grounded. Logical positivist, empiricist, falsificationist, and other theories have criticized these assumptions and given alternative accounts of the logic of science, but each has also itself been criticized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Philosophy_and_discourse
Francis Bacon (no direct relation to Roger Bacon, who lived 300 years earlier) was a seminal figure in philosophy of science at the time of the Scientific Revolution. In his work Novum Organum (1620)—an allusion to Aristotle's Organon—Bacon outlined a new system of logic to improve upon the old philosophical process of syllogism. Bacon's method relied on experimental histories to eliminate alternative theories. In 1637, René Descartes established** a new framework for grounding scientific knowledge in his treatise, Discourse on Method, advocating the central role of reason as opposed to sensory experience.** By contrast, in 1713, the 2nd edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica argued that "... hypotheses ... have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy[,] propositions are deduced from the phenomena and rendered general by induction." This passage influenced a "later generation of philosophically-inclined readers to pronounce a ban on causal hypotheses in natural philosophy". In particular, later in the 18th century, David Hume would famously articulate skepticism about the ability of science to determine causality and gave a definitive formulation of the problem of induction, though both theses would be contested by the end of the 18th century by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. In 19th century Auguste Comte made a major contribution to the theory of science. The 19th century writings of John Stuart Mill are also considered important in the formation of current conceptions of the scientific method, as well as anticipating later accounts of scientific explanation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science#Modern
Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose and meaning of science as a human endeavour. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of scientific practice, and overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, logic, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and the concept of truth. Philosophy of science is both a theoretical and empirical discipline, relying on philosophical theorising as well as meta-studies of scientific practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
Does SCIENCE = TRUTH? (Nietzsche + Mega Man) - 8-Bit Philosophy
2“Philosophy is just science, except without the requirement that things align with reality.”
Philosophy is just history, except without the dates, events, and locations.
As they said in The Muppet Movie, “its like an ocean cruise except there is no boat and you don’t actually go anywhere”.
1
“Science is just a stepping stone to philosophy.”
I somewhat agree with this.
The most essential activity in science is observation. Consensus on the facts is the most essential thing.
As a bonus, you can propose explanations. The only acceptable ideas are those that agree with observation.
A “good” scientific idea is one that not only agrees with known facts but also predicts facts not yet known. That way you can “test” the idea to get a stronger sense of how useful it is. Most ideas are not even valid, never-mind good.
So the most important aspect of science is to test ideas against observation. But where do the ideas come from?
That brings us to philosophy…
3You need philosophy to do science. So, philosophy leads to science, not the other way around.
2Philosophy is the way we try to assign (semantic) meaning to science/scientific observations.
Does the universe really exist outside of our minds? Is the position of matter actually the position we view it at? What is consciousness? I mean it depends on what you mean by existing, or being in a state, or consciousness. When you break language down far enough it becomes clear that it's not objective, and it's entirely suited to each person's unique subjective understanding and interpretation with the context. Language is definitions all the way down. It doesn't make sense to use human language to describe anything objectively, yet we try anyways.
At least, that's how I feel about philosophy as a linguist and someone who really likes theoretical universe stuff.
1
its funny to me, the existence of science being something as mundane as "rubbing three moderately flat surfaces against each other in succession will inevitably produce a flat plane as it is the only functional outcome for that problem"
opposed to the incredibly complex and intricate technicalities of steel smelting, and even beyond that, casting properly.
and then also, we know why cicadas make so much noise, it's really simple. Just a little bit (ok well a lot of bit) of constructive interference. But actually, we also have no fucking clue how they manage to count such long periods of prime duration reliably and consistently.
There's also the technicality of being able to explain how molecule level physics works, but then not being able to comprehend molecule scale physics in something like biology until recently.
I'm convinced that science is just reverse engineering the universe. Eventually, one day, we will figure out how to create an entire universe, and we will.
Science is the ultimate version of philosophy.
20Science shows us why the world is excting and lets us find even more exciting things. That beings said, it's still a funny joke.
15The woo doctor says there's fairies in the garden and unicorns in the forest, and never shows them to me. The biologist says there's birds the size of your thumb that flap their wings so fast they become a buzzy blur, and there's huge winged creatures that fly through the ocean called "Manta rays." He shows me pictures and specimens of both.
The woo doctor says my fever is caused by a lack of yellow bile, eat this dandelion it's yellow. The physician says my fever is caused by an infection of tiny creatures inside my body, look you can see them if you look at this snot sample under a microscope. We have a chemical that kills these organisms called antibiotics, eat those and you'll get better.
The woo doctor says the dot in the sky he thinks of as the god of time has traveled into the crab part of the sky so I probably shouldn't make any big decisions this week. The astronomer looked through a bunch of old records, noticed a pattern, and predicted the next appearance of a comet down to the finest detail, years in advance.
The woo doctor says things that can burn are full of a substance called phlogiston, which is released by fire into the air, which can only hold so much phlogiston. The chemist says it's hydrocarbons or carbohydrates combusting into carbon dioxide and water vapor, and proves it by burning a variety of things and condensing water from the vapors that emerge. He's built way better lamps and is starting to build these powerful engines based on his techniques.
The woo doctor tells fun stories sometimes I guess. The scientist has all the actual cool stuff.
14The woo doctor says there's fairies in the garden and unicorns in the forest, and never shows them to me. The biologist says there's birds the size of your thumb that flap their wings so fast they become a buzzy blur, and there's huge winged creatures that fly through the ocean called "Manta rays." He shows me pictures and specimens of both.
This sounds so much like a writing prompt.
5
All basically being bubbles of probability where a field of energy exists, in a seething universe of virtual particles (fields) coming into existence and getting annihilated by it's anti-part again.
The "universe of whirling chaos, birthing existence" i've seen in some Manga as origin story of gods, doesn't seem so far fetched now.
11I dont care about particles moving through walls because of science, i want to move through walls by yelling a word because of magic
9Quantum mechanics is not magic. Magic specifies the outcome, but not how a system evolves to reach that outcome. Quantum mechanics has precise equations describing how a system will evolve over time, but is famously bad at describing the outcome.
By the same token, we can see that thermodynamics and conservation laws, while widely accepted, are magic. I have heard legend of a deeper magic known as "Lagragians", although knowledge of that lost art remains confines to the warlocks' ivory tower.
7The rules for magic and the rules of existence in most fictional universes are significantly more defined (and, arguably, more solid) than the rules for science and existence in this world.
Even the brush off of "Its magic. I don't have to explain it," at least indicates that SOMEONE understands the effect and its relative existence.
If you find 5 people who say that they fully understand a single branch of science then I'd bet all of my money in my pocket that you found them in a padded recovery room sans shoe laces.
5I always like the comparisons to how magical our world would seem to someone in an alternate reality where transistors or maybe even electricity wasn't a thing.
Like you can dumb it down to really magical sounding things like calling a cpu "runes etched in sand".
8
The internet has definitely stolen a lot of the magic from the world. Foreign places aren't mysterious anymore. I've seen a million videos and pictures of every place I want to visit already, and I talk to the people who live there every day. The Burmuda Triangle isn't something mysterious anymore, The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, UFOs, everything, it's all pretty much disproven now. Even ancient Chinese medicine has been peer reviewed and either proven or disproven. Where's the magic that existed before the internet? I guess in the quantum realm, but that doesn't have the same type of mystery.
4Open your mind, and you'll see it again. Below organisms lay organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and even before you hit the quantum it all works together spectacularly, in ways that nobody really understands.
e.g. is there a cure for Alzheimer's, or "cancer", or death? Can we grow new limbs, either from the patient's own cells or at least off the rack generically? We've convinced ourselves that just bc we have a good enough microscope to view the book of life (DNA, plus some other stuff like mitochondria and centrioles) that we "understand" it, but we do not, I promise you, or else we would have all of those aforementioned things.
But don't take my word for it: pick one of those places you mentioned and visit it - I mean actually go there. You will see what even the locals who have lived right next to it for their entire lives do not. Or start reading a Wikipedia page for something you have always been interested in but never taken the time to learn about, and you'll see that you may never want to stop... The mystery is nowhere close to being gone, we've just told ourselves that it is.
17Your third paragraph hits on something I had to realize in my “how to enjoy existence” journey. Put simply, don’t discount meatspace. Sometimes your brain needs those experiences even if you think you don’t. Plus with any current or near future technology, consuming media about a place is not the same as being there. There is no comparison vs the data throughput of all of your senses, even before you get to the social/cultural aspect and being able to interact.
I’m in the US and have coworkers in Europe along with the ones local to me. We talk almost every day, and interacting with them led me to learn a bit on my own about their area, culture, etc.
I’ve also gotten to visit a couple times over the past couple years, and yeah like I said there’s no comparison. You get a lot of the vibe for a place in all that extraneous data your senses are always generating. Just seeing how the people carry themselves, and the different ways various mundane everyday stuff is done, it all incrementally builds into a more cohesive experience.
4
The only people claiming UFOs are disproven are feds or patsies.
Two eyewitness and a whistleblower testifying seeing nonhuman craft under oath to Congress:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?529499-1/hearing-unidentified-aerial-phenomenaIf UFOs are so disproven, why is congress trying to declassify projects involving them? And why is the Military Industrial Complex pushing back and claiming that they need to be able to patent reverse-engineered technology?
I'm not saying believe me, I'm saying that if you take a serious honest look at the phenomenon it's very plain that there's something there
0
Every coin has two side, uh....
3For those in the unknowing state: https://existentialcomics.com/
3Wow, this is the first time I've disagreed with an Existential Comics take
2Thats not what quantum mechanics shows at all.
What is being described is the pop-sci version quantum mechanics.
That version has people believing in multiverses and wormholes and other nonsense that is not falsifiable like magic and has no evidence like magic but people believe in it because people desperately want magic to be real.
2Quantum tunneling effect is very much magic, on the same way that relativistic time is magic.
3
