Tuco
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I'm definitely 100% asking the why. The affect of gravity on objects is as obvious as apples falling from trees. The reason for it is unknown.
Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?
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Lithose
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Why space time bends is unknown. But why that bend would cause gravity? That is known. So why the apple falls, or why the pencil is attracted to your hand? That's easy to visualize (Watch the video)., and we know why that happens. What we don't know is what causes that why. (If that makes sense--meh, maybe I'm still misunderstanding).
Grayson Carlyle
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Eomer
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Fair enough. It sounded before like you were saying you couldn't visualize gravity, which I thought odd because it's pretty easy to visualize spacetime bending. But if that wasn't what you were getting at, fine.
Lithose
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So, in this theory, for example. Light would bend around a large mass because the energy in any object of mass would be moving toward entropy and trying to form an equilibrium, thereby attracting the light? Or am I completely off base here?
The whole entropy as an effect of the "finger" of time (Or vice verse) blows my mind.
I think he meant the equation wasn't true. Which it isn't, it fails to accurately account for several observed phenomenon that you need relativity to account for. Orbit of Mercury being the big one they usually teach you about. But then it was only ever meant to be descriptive...
yes, of course there are tons of relativity and post-relativity factors to count, but as gravitation force itself, the equation is right
Why is a question that two to three year-old obsess over. How and what are the questions we should worry about.
That's not snide bullshit either. Science is the action of observing and quantifying and the quest to understand **what actually IS**. While science does indeed ask "why" a hell of a lot, it is ancillary to asking "how" in my opinion. If I can answer all the "how"s then the whys and the whens and so on become somewhat moot.
In another perspective, if me doing this makes that other thing happen then that's fucking fantastic. Why it does that is also fascinating but one needs to deal with the idea that for every single why there are ten more. Everything has a framework or manifold or domain or whatever other term you like. Shit works within certain parameters and if you find shit that works everywhere, that means you just have not yet found the boundaries.
This is all fine by the way. Since the start of science we have kludged the shit out of it and string theory is really no better than the aether. (No worse either!) Doesn't mean it isn't *true* I guess but damned if I'll buy it as THE TRUTH that explains all. I love me some maths but shit son, if you have to tweak your model *that* often without any empirical data... that's just math guys jerking off until I see better.
We somehow saddled ourselves with the idea that hypotheses and theories even should contain 'beauty' or elegance and while that debate is largely settled (there actually are good reasons according to our present understand of the universe) it becomes odd at the best of times.
That's not snide bullshit either. Science is the action of observing and quantifying and the quest to understand **what actually IS**. While science does indeed ask "why" a hell of a lot, it is ancillary to asking "how" in my opinion. If I can answer all the "how"s then the whys and the whens and so on become somewhat moot.
In another perspective, if me doing this makes that other thing happen then that's fucking fantastic. Why it does that is also fascinating but one needs to deal with the idea that for every single why there are ten more. Everything has a framework or manifold or domain or whatever other term you like. Shit works within certain parameters and if you find shit that works everywhere, that means you just have not yet found the boundaries.
This is all fine by the way. Since the start of science we have kludged the shit out of it and string theory is really no better than the aether. (No worse either!) Doesn't mean it isn't *true* I guess but damned if I'll buy it as THE TRUTH that explains all. I love me some maths but shit son, if you have to tweak your model *that* often without any empirical data... that's just math guys jerking off until I see better.
We somehow saddled ourselves with the idea that hypotheses and theories even should contain 'beauty' or elegance and while that debate is largely settled (there actually are good reasons according to our present understand of the universe) it becomes odd at the best of times.
Ambiturner
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You can't use Newton's law of universal gravitation as proof as the equation itself isn't accurate and breaks down significantly when taken to extremes. That's not saying a pebble can't affect another pebble a billion light years away, we just don't know, and if it does it's almost certainly due to reasons not contained in that particular equation.
Julian The Apostate
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I hate to knit pick but this is incorrect. The effects of gravity travel at the speed of light not instantaneously.
Edit: to clarify a little more, in about 2.5 million years the effects of your gravity will reach Andromeda.
Tuco
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I don't really enjoy philosophical debates and maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying but I will say that the details of why something works (In this case, why does mass bend space time?) are often the key to understanding how to both hypothesis its effect on a system as well as how to control it to produce the desired effect.
Ex: Until we understood why magnetism worked we couldn't control it via electromagnetism.
I think you could look at literally any great technology of man (flight, electricity, combustion, nuclear energy etc) and point to when we understood why the physics around that technology worked as the beginning of our mastery of it. It's my expectation that until we understand how and why mass bends space time we won't begin to master it.
iannis
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Theres that easy trap to fall into with that question. Why is a kidney shaped like a kidney? Because it is. Is there another shape which a kidney could take? Most likely, but it's shaped like a kidney.
Gotta be careful with why, there are a lot of dead alleys inherent in the question. But yes, we are philosophically concerned with why. Over concerned at times, which leads to the anthromorphization of process and physical forces.
Not in the case of gravity, but it everytime someone talks about evolution choosing a trait for survival I die a little bit inside. It's not a shorthand way to express the idea, it's a wrong way to express the observation. And they do it a LOT. On wide distribution science programs.
Gotta be careful with why, there are a lot of dead alleys inherent in the question. But yes, we are philosophically concerned with why. Over concerned at times, which leads to the anthromorphization of process and physical forces.
Not in the case of gravity, but it everytime someone talks about evolution choosing a trait for survival I die a little bit inside. It's not a shorthand way to express the idea, it's a wrong way to express the observation. And they do it a LOT. On wide distribution science programs.
Tuco
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I agree with you that asking why can sometimes be obtuse and unnecessary and a trap.
Could you expound upon why you cringe at someone talking about traits surviving because of evolution?
Ambiturner
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I disagree. Asking "why" can only miss the point if you're asking about intent. And more specifically asking intent for something like gravity that doesn't appear to be capable of intent.
The why question in evolution where the answer is along the lines of "because that is the mutation that happened to take place and who's DNA managed to be predominately passed down to future generations" is a very important concept for a lot of people to understanding evolution. A lot of people believe it's a straight arrow towards progress when it's really just billions and billions of random dice throws. Explaining "just because" doesn't help anybody.
Back on topic, his question wasn't about intent if any particular being. It was simply trying to go one level deeper on his current understanding.
The why question in evolution where the answer is along the lines of "because that is the mutation that happened to take place and who's DNA managed to be predominately passed down to future generations" is a very important concept for a lot of people to understanding evolution. A lot of people believe it's a straight arrow towards progress when it's really just billions and billions of random dice throws. Explaining "just because" doesn't help anybody.
Back on topic, his question wasn't about intent if any particular being. It was simply trying to go one level deeper on his current understanding.
Tuco, read up on the anthropic principle. A lot of 'why' in science is simply because we are here to observe it. That doesn't make other possible universes with different manifestations of gravity impossible, but in this universe gravity is the way it is because we are here to observe it acting as such. It could act entirely different in other universes, but those universes are unlikely to be able to harbor intelligent life able to ask the question of why.
Simply put, there is no why a lot of the time. All manifestations are possible, but in our reality this is the version we have.
Simply put, there is no why a lot of the time. All manifestations are possible, but in our reality this is the version we have.
Evolution doesn't 'choose'. It isn't intelligent. It is just the process. The traits that survive are the ones that are favored by the environment. Think about antibiotics on bacteria. The ones that survive have some trait that grants them resistance to the drug, maybe some genetic defect that doesn't process it as fast. Whatever the trait is, those bacteria are likely to survive and pass on those specific traits. No sentient entity choose for them to survive, they just had traits that allowed them to survive in the environment and pass on their genes.
Tuco
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Hehe I think this discussion illustrates the frailty of human language. I ask a question to see if we still don't know how gravity works and I get the following different answers:
1. The newtonian equation for gravity.
2. A discussion of how worrying about why gravity exists is a waste of time.
3. An explanation going one level deeper than two objects attracting one another by illustrating how mass bends space-time to create gravity wells.
4. A confirmation that yeah, we still don't understand gravity.
I will accept all blame, I didn't word my query well.
Observant, thanks for expounding on what Iannis was complaining about with people being loose with the word evolution. I get a little bothered too when people with less understanding about evolution than I have misuse the term, but it can get pretty tiring being precise with statements like, 'this mutated trait allowed this offspring to survive in this new environment, thereby allowing it to reproduce more than its peers resulting in the next step in an evolutionary chain' instead of being lazy by saying, "evolution choose the one with the big dick"
1. The newtonian equation for gravity.
2. A discussion of how worrying about why gravity exists is a waste of time.
3. An explanation going one level deeper than two objects attracting one another by illustrating how mass bends space-time to create gravity wells.
4. A confirmation that yeah, we still don't understand gravity.
I will accept all blame, I didn't word my query well.
Observant, thanks for expounding on what Iannis was complaining about with people being loose with the word evolution. I get a little bothered too when people with less understanding about evolution than I have misuse the term, but it can get pretty tiring being precise with statements like, 'this mutated trait allowed this offspring to survive in this new environment, thereby allowing it to reproduce more than its peers resulting in the next step in an evolutionary chain' instead of being lazy by saying, "evolution choose the one with the big dick"
iannis
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Yeah, but when you get down to it, in this inflection of the word, "just because" pretty much is the reason and it's pretty much always going tobethe reason. That's the philosophy of science. It is fundamentally nihilistic.
Which is good. I prefer Empirical Nihilism over Wellsian Imperialism. It's just a tool. If you're looking for God (and remember that God has a thousand names)-- look elsewhere. Not even Newton expected to find God in science any more than you can find God in a pasture.