Physicists on LSD?

[Tor]

I sometimes think about some of the crazy things physicists are discussing nowadays. I have no problem with such ideas/theories, but I'd like them to be falsifiable. If they are not they should be threated as philosophy, not science.

This recent article about freaky brains (it's about cosmology, not neuroscience) illustrates what I think is philosophy, not science.

Here's a quote:

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

I wonder how many of the physicists mentioned in this article would have a hard time imagining that psi-phenomena were worth considering...

Anyway, it is strange that the notion of freaky brains are openly discussed, while modern psi experiments are left in the dark.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Tor

I sometimes think about some of the crazy things physicists are discussing nowadays. I have no problem with such ideas/theories, but I'd like them to be falsifiable. If they are not they should be threated as philosophy, not science.

Totally agree, nothing is to silly or bizarre to be tested by scientific methods, the problem is once an established viewpoint is accepted scientists stop looking properly in other directions (due to their philosophy it cannot exist) and anyone who claims evidence otherwise is dismissed as a crank

I wonder how many of the physicists mentioned in this article would have a hard time imagining that psi-phenomena were worth considering... Anyway, it is strange that the notion of freaky brains are openly discussed, while modern psi experiments are left in the dark

True, David Deutsch, one of the leading many worlds theorists, thinks the telepathy is bunk ....

[Tor]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Totally agree, nothing is to silly or bizarre to be tested by scientific methods, the problem is once an established viewpoint is accepted scientists stop looking properly in other directions (due to their philosophy it cannot exist) and anyone who claims evidence otherwise is dismissed as a crank


True, David Deutsch, one of the leading many worlds theorists, thinks the telepathy is bunk ....

It is not surprising that MW-supporters think telepathy is bunk. This interpretation basically goes back to the old physics of billiard balls, as it tries to remove consciousness/mind (as something different from matter) from the universe, making everything neat and clean. So everything is mechanistic again. Then there is the small problem of actually observing these other worlds...

If you're a MW-supporter you also have to accept that some universes will by chance show extreme psi effects all the time, all through it's lifetime. It's improbable to live in such a universe, but because there are almost infinite of them, they must exist. So we're back to the freaky brains scenario again..

[jacob]

I guess you wanted to call it "Physicists on LSD" and not LCD, right, Tor?

[Tor]

Originally Posted by jacob

I guess you wanted to call it "Physicists on LSD" and not LCD, right, Tor?

Yes, I just pointed that out. Too bad we can't change headings

[jacob]

I changed for you

[Tor]

I wonder what would happen if we suddenly discovered that at the basic level of the universe, everything wasn't entirely random after all. Then all of these freaky brains ideas would be unnecessary

Maybe only those universes that have observers would be truly real. As Andrei Linde said in 2002:

"The universe and the observer exist as a pair," Linde says. "You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words— it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead."

I don't know if this prohibits freaky brains from appearing though