Posts by Martin

Welcome Ontologix!

"Engaging In Discovery" should be changed to "Making a Discovery" or similar because the path to a discovery is more or less painful, as expressed in quotes attributed to Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein on the ratio of inspiration to perspiration. We can skip the "Great" because the pleasure I had with my small discoveries was certainly not less than the great physicists had with their great ones, in analogy to the "Great Physicist" and the lion.

Welcome back JMGuimas!

Welcome O2x Ohio!

Sorry! I took a nap and overslept, then somehow could not find the Zoom link on the smart phone.

In most cases, the term to be used instead of "dimension" during today's discussion was "scale", i.e. instead of "in another dimension": "on another scale".

Welcome Ernesto.Sun!

Welcome Hubblefanboy!

Welcome ZarathustrasGarden!

Welcome Sam_Qwerty!

Welcome Simteau!

The worst part of that AI overview is that the AI misrepresents our position in a way that it appears to contradict Epicurus' philosophy. A reader with some familiarity with Epicurus but not us is likely to dismiss epicureanfriends.com.
This shows that attempts to countercheck AI by letting it contrast different positions may still lead to misleading nonsense. You already need to be an expert to make good use of AI.

Welcome DistantLaughter!

Grok misclassified Sabine Hossenfelder. Her insistence on hard determinism makes her the most extreme physicalist among those listed.

Response to Bryan's comment #19:

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"A lot of data has been automatically bent to fit incorrect assumptions."

No!

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"Every year there are many good students, potential physicists, who do not accept the current model and therefore have been turned away from the priesthood."

I did not encounter such students while I studied physics in Cologne. So, the many good is "exaggerated" if not outright wrong. Being able to apply established models to solve simple problems usually assures graduation. You do not have to accept the current model as "true" or adequate to graduate.
In Germany, more than half of the students who start studying physics give up, mostly because they are just bridging the time until getting accepted for another subject or at another university. The second most common reason is that the mathematics courses in the first year, i.e. just mathematics as a tool set to be mastered without reference to physics, is too difficult for them. I never heard of disagreement with the "current model" as a reason.

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"Real atoms are too small for machines to detect, and what looks like the bending of space is really just the effect of “oceans” of these invisible atoms and their wakes."

No! Electrons and photons are adequately described as elementary particles, i.e. "atoms" in Epicurus' sense, and can be detected by our equipment. "Invisible atoms and their wakes" sounds more like Heraclitus' flux than Epicurus' atomism.

Epicurus' seems to have conceived the "atoms" (i.e. the elementary particles in today's language) as hard bodies, which has been refuted by modern physics. Therefore, Epicurus' inferences from that hardness are not sound. This concerns in particular the interaction between atoms and the formation of compounds. Nevertheless, modern physics does describe interaction between atoms and the formation of compounds.
Although the analogy between today's physics and Heraclitus’ flux might appear stronger than between today's physics and Epicurus' hard atoms under that aspect, Heraclitus' flux is useless for meaningful modelling of reality whereas Epicurus' hard atoms can still be used for simplistic starter models to explain some phenomena.

Welcome David!

On a similar note, forest cemeteries have become popular in Germany in recent decades. My siblings fed the ashes of our mother to a tree in such a forest cemetery. The urn was buried with those of several others around that tree.

Welcome Sam!

Welcome Ceiltechbladhm