Our world of Hype

We live in a world dominated by Hype.

All of this: warp drives, wormholes, time dilation, gravity displacement, the Matrix, AI... we talk about them as if they are reality and feasible, yet we have not a clue how to assemble or contain any of them.

We associate some of them with propulsion, where there is no propulsion going on... nothing to push against and no opposite reactionary force.

We talk about traveling faster the speed of light which we know is impossible. Whatever that would be would not be "traveling".

We talk about "The Matrix", as if we knew what the hell that is! Often we read or hear the statement -"Must be a glitch in the matrix..." What glitch? What Matrix?. The movie itself cannot even adequately explain what that is.

We even renamed programming with the term AI, which does not exist until a machine has an original unsolicited thought.

This is the short list. The actual one could take up most of this thread, so please feel free to add to it.

We should save a lot verbal diatribe and printing space and just replace the term for what we do not know, whatever it is, as "?", a big question mark. That is one strange thing we can actually see, in fact the James Webb Telescope found a question mark galaxy...(Image Below) , so fitting!

a reply to: charlyv

We live in a world dominated by Hype.

All of this: warp drives, wormholes, time dilation, gravity displacement, the Matrix, AI... we talk about them as if they are reality and feasible, yet we have not a clue how to assemble or contain any of them.

I sympathize with your feelings, but you must surely realise that only crackpots believe these things presently exist, or are likely to exist any time soon.

Outside the hermetic little worlds of sci-fi and conspiracy theory, no-one gives them any attention except advanced physicists, who understand full well that they are only taking baby steps in vast fields of research and who don’t believe -- or, in fact, approve of -- the hype. They know, better than anyone else, how false it is.

Of course there are the Michio Kakus and deGrasse Tysons of the world, who help generate the hype. But they're TV talking heads, not real scientists.

Avi Loeb is a... special case.

It sells books.

a reply to: charlyv

We dont need new methods to fill the void of our ignorance with garbage, religions been doing that juts fine for the last millenias.
Prolly has to do with science becoming slowly but surely the new religion, they have to keep up the good work...

a reply to: charlyv

So you have a problem discussing theoretical things?

I am glad you hate your computer or smartphone that you used to post that. Go ahead and throw them out as you don't want them to exist.

Without discussing things that don't exist yet, how are we to discover ways to make them?

You should run for congress, they think the way you do and stifled the space program.

a reply to: beyondknowledge2

So you have a problem discussing theoretical things?

charlyv didn't say that, or anything that could be so interpreted.

you hate your computer or smartphone

They didn't say that either, nor speak a word against any real, extant technology.

Without discussing things that don't exist yet, how are we to discover ways to make them?

That's for the experts in those fields, people who actually know what they're talking about, not self-appointed pundits arguing with each other on the internet.

I don’t agree with the OP either, but your post is just a vicious personal attack on them.

a reply to: Astyanax

It is not a personal attack on anyone. The op is just illogical and your reply is also ether a misinterpritation or illogical.

How are the experts to speculate on something that proves them totally wrong? It took some guys that had a bicycle shop to get off the ground in powered flight on a heavier than air machine. The experts said it could not be done.

I do consider the op an attack on imagination applied to knowledge.

a reply to: charlyv

Actually, the world is dominated by ideas. Hype, trends, fads are merely a preoccupation with external appearances, without regard for a work's content, its essence, its driving force is an idea. When science stumbles upon a truth, no sooner do sensationalist popularizers appear on the scene, no sooner does everybody start proclaiming they know exactly what it's all about and turning such concepts into an absurdity.

This phenomenon really has its origins in the philosophical sphere, where unprincipled, pragmatic thinkers borrowed ideas from others (i.e. Hegel and Fichte exploited Kant's discovery, Nietzsche exploited Schopenhauer's ideas) and shewed themselves as clever at the expense of others. The savants all pretend to be against each other, but this is merely a stage act for the masses. As soon as a new idea appears, they call a truce and form coalitions against it.

Yes, scientists can never know the "how" or the "why", they barely understand the "what". They should emulate Robert Boyle, who refrained from drawing assumptions. Almost all of his theoretical concepts have been realized! To what did he owe his success? kottke.org... - royalsociety.org...
___

On Fichte:
books.google.com...=onepage&q&f=false - books.google.com...

For Fichte, "it was not a matter of truth for him, but of attention, for the promotion of his personal goals."

"It is exactly the same as with the valve trumpet – hardly was this facility discovered when all melodies were played with it. The same with ideality: hardly had Kant discovered it when everybody started making nonsense of it." (Wagner)

Thanks to the praise heaped up on Hegel, “everyone, of course, now thinks himself entitled to serve up confidently any thing that may happen to come into his sparrow's brain... The gentlemen of the philosophical trade are anxious before all things to obliterate Kant's philosophy, in order to be able to return to the muddy canal of the old dogmatism and to talk at random to their hearts content upon the favourite subjects which are specially recommended to them: just as if nothing had happened and neither a Kant nor a Critical Philosophy had ever come into the world.” (Schopenhauer)

originally posted by: Astyanax
Of course there are the Michio Kakus and deGrasse Tysons of the world, who help generate the hype. But they're TV talking heads, not real scientists.

They are both TV talking heads, but otherwise it sort of pains me to hear them lumped together like that, because I hear people like Eric Weinstein saying Michio Kaku is out of control, and I haven't heard people saying that about deGrasse Tyson.

Why Eric Weinstein Thinks Michio Kaku Is Out Of Control! | Eric Weinstein

Michio Kaku's claim to fame is that he says he invented string theory. But is that science or just mathematics? Some interesting thoughts on how string theory has been over-hyped, (Weinstein says even Brian Greene admits we may have been a little over-exuberant) and the negative effect the (so far) failure of string theory has had on science communication, in this video:

string theory lied to us and now science communication is hard

Avi Loeb is a... special case.

No doubt. The same scientist who made the above video, also made a video about the special case of Avi Loeb.

harvard & aliens & crackpots: a disambiguation of Avi Loeb

a reply to: charlyv
Travelling at the speed of light is impossible? Not impossible just not probable at the moment. People still believe Einstein when he says the speed of light is a constant and you can't travel faster than light. The speed of light is not constant, in fact the speed has been altered a few times. The General Conference on Weights and Measures, CGPM, decides the speed.
In fact it has been proven that sub atomic particles, tachyons, luxons, and tardyons all move faster than light. We'll just have to wait and see.

originally posted by: crayzeed
a reply to: charlyv
Travelling at the speed of light is impossible? Not impossible just not probable at the moment. People still believe Einstein when he says the speed of light is a constant and you can't travel faster than light. The speed of light is not constant, in fact the speed has been altered a few times. The General Conference on Weights and Measures, CGPM, decides the speed.

Regardless of how we define the speed of light in a vacuum, so far all indications are, it's a constant in nature. Our changing our definitions, doesn't affect nature's constant.

In fact it has been proven that sub atomic particles, tachyons, luxons, and tardyons all move faster than light. We'll just have to wait and see.

Tachyons are hypothesized particles never been shown to exist, the explanation of them in wikipedia contradicts your claim about faster than light particles:

A tachyon (/ˈtækiɒn/) or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are inconsistent with the known laws of physics.

So I don't think it's been proven any of the things you mention move faster than light. We've hypothesized things moving faster than light like the tachyon, but never found them.

Yeah the speed of light in a vacuum has not been changed at all. At least, not by us and we have no evidence for it.

What has been altered is the phase velocity using matter or a few cleaver tricks. but thats not the same as changing C

a reply to: charlyv

All of this: warp drives, wormholes, time dilation, gravity displacement, the Matrix, AI... we talk about them as if they are reality and feasible, yet we have not a clue how to assemble or contain any of them.

Just because you don't know how these things work, doesn't mean there aren't any exceptionally clever physicists scattered around in various military black projects who DO know how they work, and how to contain them. Or they're working hard on the problem. If you read JP Farrell's books regarding ancient physics, or secret Nazi weaponry, then you'll get the germ of the idea that these things are very much feasible, if they haven't already been created.

originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
If you read JP Farrell's books regarding ancient physics, or secret Nazi weaponry, then you'll get the germ of the idea that these things are very much feasible, if they haven't already been created.

JP Farrell's book Reich of the Black Sun Talks about how the Nazis were able to develop perpetual motion machines only after discarding the "Jewish science" of Einstein's relativity.

I’ll jump right to the biggest problem with The Reich of the Black Sun – it’s unintentionally pro-Nazi. The thesis of the book is that Nazi scientists when they discarded as “Jewish science” relativity were able to make incredible scientific and technological advances – including anti-gravity and perpetual motion machines that could power long-ranged submarines – even though the Nazis lacked the wealth and freedom of the West (and, particularly, the unbombed United States that benefited from the immigration the largest portion of Jewish scientists fleeing the Nazis)...

Once past the racist interpretation of science, which is a hell of a barrier, the book is a test in either a person’s credulity or tolerance to punishment to see how many stupid things can be strung together before madness takes root.

Farrell has no proof for any of his silly claims, whereas the evidence supporting Einstein's relativity is nothing short of overwhelming, so it doesn't seem credible that discarding something that works so well is going to help anybody do the impossible things Farrell claims.

Farrell's writings sound about as believable as the flat Earth hypothesis, but wait, you believe that too, right?

What I stated is all hype and conjecture and trying to stuff it down peoples throat without any proof feeds all of the pseudo-science freaks, of which there are too many of them out there to count.

Facts and Reality. That is all there is. Some get it, others never will.