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October 11, 2024

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That was a great post, loved it!

Not because any of that was new per se, but I loved the sheer sense of the wonder that is the world, and the wonder that is the human endeavor to understand it all generally, and science particularly, that your quotes so well express and celebrate, and you as well in your commentary, Brian.

And it was fascinating properly going through out those specifics as well. While none of them was new per se, but it was still fun to properly think through each of those specifics.

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And one of those specifics required me to brush up a bit, stuff learned a long time ago, back when the world was young. The part about mass increasing when your velocity increases. Does mass increase, or does it decrease? And why does it do that, exactly, per relativity principles? Afraid I couldn’t clearly think that through on my own steam, not to my satisfaction. And I had to look it up.

Here’s why, the basics of it (for the benefit of those whose basic grasp of relativity might have gotten rusty, as mine has):
Link: https://bigthink.com/hard-science/speed-of-light/

And here’s another brief article that discusses this with a bit more nuance, and with just a wee bit of math thrown in. (Only very basic math, nothing to get scared about, not even if your grasp of all this has gone all rusty, like mine has.)
(It’s a simple enough article, and short enough, but ideally read the one above first, and then this. Assuming your de facto starting point is as basic on this specific as mine was.)
Link: https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/mobile/2013/06/18/can-you-go-fast-enough-to-get-enough-mass-to-become-a-black-hole/

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And that bit, about how a pendulum’s frequency does not change as its amplitude does? That’s straightforward enough, but I completely loved the specific everyday example there that illustrates and explains that principle. I mean how the pitch of a (musical) note is not affected by volume.

(That’s an example I’ve not heard before, and yet it’s so very apposite. Or maybe I *have* heard it discussed, back when, and have ended up completely forgetting it. Either way, loved it.)

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Science is a truly wonderful thing. It’s a pity most students are not fired with the beauty of it when they’re actually being taught it. I know I wasn’t, back when. I mostly studied it back then as something not particularly unpleasant, and certainly looked to it as knowledge whose utility and necessity there was no doubt about; but not as something remotely inspiring. It was philosophy that fired me up then, including religious philosophy and theology as well. Which is good, which is great; but my point is, the fact that science speaks to exactly those very same questions, except it speaks to them so much more reliably and sensibly and coherently, is a fact that most students do not end up grokking, as I had not, back then. The true wonder that is science is something I had to rediscover all over again, much later. …In my/our defense, rarely is science actually taught in those terms, nor really appreciated in those terms by most workaday teachers and professors, so no surprise really.

I just now revisited my comment, in order to check out those two articles one more time. (I'd only speed-read through them, given time constraints, and while that was adequate enough for my purpose, but I wanted to make sure now, over a more careful read, that I wasn't going away misreading anything.)

Haha, how right you are, Brian, to title your post as you do. Absolutely, common sense is indeed a poor guide to objective reality, particularly such of it as lies well beyond the scope of experiences us homo sapiens evolved to deal with.

Just to point out one very obvious fallacy that, despite how obvious it is, I've personally seen asked, and in fact been asked myself, many times, both IRL as well as in comment conversations right here. That fallacy goes something like this: Your big bang is completely weird, your quantum whatsis is completely crazy, so why reject my particular beliefs --- about the Trinity, about God generally, about sonny boy getting skewered on the cross to save us, about Advaitic Brahma/Oneness, about yogic superpowers, and so forth --- even though my pet beliefs are no more crazy than yours, and in some cases less crazy and offers a more complete explanation all things considered?

Yes, I know. Completely utterly obvious. And yet, so many do, in all seriousness, think this and voice this.

The answer to that simple puzzle is straightforward, and twofold:
1. First, how crazy a proposition sounds is irrelevant. More crazy or less crazy doesn't matter. Because, and as you point out, intuition is a poor guide to objective reality.
2. And two, because evidence!


Heh, this is so elementary that it may appear like strawmanning to even mention this. And yet many's the time I've personally been asked this, both IRL as well as right here; and even more times seen this asked in serious discussions.

No, the fact that QM is weird, or the fact that the BB leaves many questions unanswered, does NOT mean that that lets open an opening for either random speculations or for detailed structured but completely unsupported theology.

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