Thursday, April 18, 2013

Stephen Hawking: Still At It

Stephen Hawking always seems to make big news, and his pronouncements go uncriticised in the MSM. Now he is at Caltech and giving lectures regarding his personal beliefs and his personal disdain for Theism. At least that is how it is reported.

Hawking preached M theory to the crowd, which was reported as follows:
“He closed by outlining "M-theory," which is based partly on ideas put forward years ago by another famed physicist, Caltech’s Richard Feynman. Hawking sees that theory as the only big idea that really explains what he has observed.

M-theory posits that multiple universes are created out of nothing, Hawking explained, with many possible histories and many possible states of existence. In only a few of these states would life be possible, and in fewer still could something like humanity exist. Hawking mentioned that he felt fortunate to be living in this state of existence.”

The belief in M theory requires a belief in String Theory which in turn requires a belief that infinity divided by infinity equals 1. I.e. undefinable divided by undefinable has a specific finite value: 1. These assumptions are made cavalierly in String Theory, as even Hawking admitted.

Also non-credible is the concept that matter just jumped into existence from nothing whatsoever. The problem here, unaddressed by Hawking… ever, at least in his books, is that nothing means no constraints as well as no preceding mass, energy, fields, quantum soup or pudding or pies, or rules. Yet without rules, such as self-limitation, there should be mass, energy etc. popping into existence everywhere, all the time, from absolutely nothing, and without constraint. And that should be empirically observable, everywhere, all the time, and without constraint. It obviously is not.

These issues don’t stop Hawking from his celebrity appearances. And no one ever asks him about them, at least not in public.

6 comments:

Rikalonius said...

The metaphysics that are veritably oozing from the humanist origin hypotheses have been apparent to me for a long time. Back in the 70s they were much more open about it, but they've begun to better obfuscate it in their professional lexicon.

I was watching The Universe not long ago and I remember hearing one of the scientist being interview admitting to an ordered universe, but then realizing the misstatement he quickly attempts to back track, whipping out the old canard "That doesn't mean its and old man in the sky." Man are they predictable.

Anonymous said...

Rikalonius,

I Agree that such theories regarding multiple universes result more in a metaphysical conjecture regarding the origin of this universe, it does not say more than that.

I keep seeing youtube videos that try to explain "scientifically" the Multiverse theory by assuming different boundary conditions for them to happen.

I would not call that science in the sense that there is not an experimental background, where any empirical data could be interpreted, so the only choice is to use an extended stochastic mathematical model and apply it in a probabilistic fashion, so is apparently "controllable".

Heck even the electronic universe theory is more plausible! at least there are ways for experimentation and data interpretation.

Another problem with the use of mainstream materialistic interpretation of theories and the application of the scientific method for such, is the definition of contingency and observability. Quantum phenomena is not directly observable, yet there are environmentally controlled experiments that give enough data for different theoretical interpretations, where naturalistic and non-naturalistic view alike are valid, and this is the crux of the problem.

I'm not a physicist, but from what I read, it is obvious to notice, that a Neutrino has not even been directly observable, and theories like Autodynamics, are alternative theoretical interpretations of the behavioral aspect of such phenomena.

The physics establishment does not want to budge one tiny bit. The common perception of science by the common public is changing by consequence.

Kind Regards.

yonose said...

Rikalonius,

I Agree that such theories regarding multiple universes result more in a metaphysical conjecture regarding the origin of this universe, it does not say more than that.

I keep seeing youtube videos that try to explain "scientifically" the Multiverse theory by assuming different boundary conditions for them to happen.

I would not call that science in the sense that there is not an experimental background, where any empirical data could be interpreted, so the only choice is to use an extended stochastic mathematical model and apply it in a probabilistic fashion, so is apparently "controllable".

Heck even the electronic universe theory is more plausible! at least there are ways for experimentation and data interpretation.

Another problem with the use of mainstream materialistic interpretation of theories and the application of the scientific method for such, is the definition of contingency and observability. Quantum phenomena is not directly observable, yet there are environmentally controlled experiments that give enough data for different theoretical interpretations, where naturalistic and non-naturalistic view alike are valid, and this is the crux of the problem.

I'm not a physicist, but from what I read, it is obvious to notice, that a Neutrino has not even been directly observable, and theories like Autodynamics, are alternative theoretical interpretations of the behavioral aspect of such phenomena.

The physics establishment does not want to budge one tiny bit. The common perception of science by the common public is changing by consequence.

Kind Regards.

yonose said...

Stan,

Please delete the duplicates. Maybe I have some problems while accepting scripts (I'm using noscript for the sake of security) with my web browser.

My Apologies.

Kind Regards.

Stan said...

yonose,
Done. For some reason those comments wound up in the Spam Folder, which I don't look at all that often. So they were delayed, sorry.

yonose said...

Stan,

That's OK.

A good spam filter is a real necessity, specially useful for cross-scripting vulnerabilites...

There's a lot of malicious people in this world. It is natural the need to watch our backs.

Kind regards.