Re: 25 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

You can't actually "roll back the clock", though.

  Yeah, that's right.

Stephen Hawking proposed considering an apparent
beginning of time in the sense that at the Earth's
South Pole, there is a beginning of land.  A place
which is so south, that everywhere else is north
of it.  But if you go there, you don't see a
singularity.  You just see land all around the
South Pole.  You can walk back and forth across it.
It's only our standard of measurement that implies
that a singularity exists there.

  There are singularities that are just "coordinate singularities".
  All that means is our coordinate system falls apart at a certain spot,
  but it does not necessarily mean the physics breaks down there. You
  can just switch to a different coordinate system and clear that up.

  With a black hole, the general consensus is that any singularity at
  the horizon is just a coordinate singularity, but the singularity
  in the center of the black hole is a real physical singularity.

  As far as I know, people say the Big Bang is also a real singularity,
  not just something that comes from the coordinate system.
 

I have trouble conceiving a situation in which
that question has any answer - if we rule out
saying "God made everything" and not allowing
the question to include "why does God exist?"
As reasonably, "nothing" also means "no God".

  Language lets us put down sentences that do not really make
  logical sense, but just bring up certain ideas or feelings. You
  are absolutely right that with a question like that, you really
  need to take a close look to see if it actually means anything.

Consciousness is the special thing that important
entities possess (humans, the government) and others
do not (animals, plants, artificial intelligence,
immigrants).  This special thing has not been shown
to exist, in my opinion.

  I notice my own consciousness, and because of that, it exists
  for me just like the things I see or hear. I also get the
  sense that all higher animals have consciousness, but when it
  comes to other entities (like plants), I really have no idea.
  But I just can't put into words what I mean by "consciousness".

"How do we resolve the measurement problem in quantum physics?" -
another head-scratcher for today's physicists.

This may be only a mental problem, as physics seems
to work, whether you think that you understand it,
or not.

  It's also a language issue, since you want to lay out the rules
  of quantum physics in a way that's spot on. For that, you need
  to be able to say if there are differences between quantum systems
  and measuring devices, and what those differences are, if any.

  Right now, that's still up in the air. Physics is supposed to
  describe what people actually observe, but quantum physics deals
  with superpositions that folks just don't see (like "Schrodinger's
  cat"). That contradiction still needs to be sorted out.

What happens inside a black hole, stays inside a
black hole!  So don't worry about it!

  Hawking radiation probably comes out of a black hole. According to
  quantum theory, it should have all the information that fell in there
  before. (Actually, there are some newer ideas saying that all matter
  gives off Hawking radiation, just not as much as black holes do.)

The physicists seem to have settled how the earth,
sun, moon, and stars came to be, anyway.  That is
all long after the big bang.  Thus is the book of
Genesis disposed of.

  Religious texts might still hold a kind of metaphorical truth.

  The creation story talks about how geological stuff like "waters"
  and "dry land" comes first, and then biological things like
  "living creatures", which is not totally out of step with how
  we see things now.