Physicists believe that an unknown force could be acting on sub-atomic particles known as muons.
  • fear@kbin.social
    815·
    11 months ago

    Forces of Nature

    1. electromagnetism
    2. strong nuclear force
    3. weak nuclear force
    4. gravity
      5?. whatever the hell might be acting on the muons in this article

    Quick, everyone ignore 0 because it’s “too hard”, even though it’s the only reason we can study 1-5: consciousness

    • Zalack@startrek.website
      111·
      11 months ago

      Why would you assume consciousness is a fundamental force rather than an emergent property of complex systems built on the forces?

      • fear@kbin.social
        59·
        11 months ago

        Why would you assume it’s an emergent property and thus should be dismissed as not being a force of nature? I’m making fewer assumptions than you are by wanting to list it alongside the other forces until we can determine if it is emergent or not, and the implications of such emergence. It’s kind of a big deal that we can sit here and ponder the forces of nature with some degree of control over our little sack of atoms.

        It’s safe to say that this list is going to change over time and represents a current snapshot of humanity’s limited understanding. Under the current snapshot of human understanding, leaving it off of the list seems to me to indicate an ironic bias on the behalf of researchers who must use the very force in question to do anything. By necessity, it is the overarching phenomenon surrounding all other forces since the only place we can definitively know these forces even exist is within our own mind. To say anything more is to make assumptions.

        While I agree that a certain level of assumptions are necessary if we’re going to get anywhere, I’m also acutely aware that they’re still assumptions and that assumptions are not scientific. If we’re going to be scientific about this, we need to make as few assumptions as possible.

        • Zalack@startrek.website
          61·
          11 months ago

          At a sketch:

          • We know that when the brain chemistry is disrupted, our consciousness is disrupted

          • You can test this yourself. Drink some alcohol and your consciousness will be disrupted. Similarly I am on Gabapentin for nerve pain, which works by inhibiting the electrical signals my nerves use to fire, and in turn makes me groggy.

          • While we don’t know exactly how consciousness works, we have a VERY good understanding of chemistry, which is to say, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism (fundamental forces). Literally millions of repeatable experiments that have validated these forces exist and we understand the way they behave.

          • Drugs like Gabapentin and Alcohol interact with our brain using these forces.

          • If the interaction of these forces being disrupted disrupts our consciousness, it’s reasonable to conclude that our consciousness is built on top of, or is an emergent property of, these forces’ interactions.

          • If our consciousness is made up of these forces, then it cannot be a fundamental force as, by definition, fundamental forces must be the basic building blocks of physics and not derived from other forces.

          There are no real assumptions here. It’s all a line of logical reasoning based on observations you can do yourself.

          • fear@kbin.social
            23·
            11 months ago

            I find emergence to be the least reasonable of the 3 main hypotheses I consider, but I still accept that it’s possible since I can’t disprove it. However, it is illogical to conclude your hypothesis must be true at this stage.

            Your comparison proves nothing. It is no different than insisting a radio must be creating the signal it’s picking up, because if you poured alcohol or liquid gabapentin all over it, it will no longer be able to play music. I’m sure you realize that if your radio breaks, that doesn’t mean the radio signal has disappeared. It is possible our brains are simply interfacing with consciousness rather than inexplicably fabricating it from more than the sum of its parts.

            Based on everything science has taught me, it seems far more likely to me that consciousness is not magically created by my brain, but rather one of two things are happening:

            1. My brain is able to interface with a conscious field

            2. Consciousness is a force inherent within the universe, and our brains are able to make use of the force

            • Zalack@startrek.website
              21·
              11 months ago

              I actually think the radio signal is an apt comparison. Let’s say someone was trying to argue that the signal itself was a fundamental force.

              Well then you could make the argument that if you pour a drink into it, the water shorts the electronics and the signal stops playing as the electromagnetic force stops working on the pieces of the radio. This would lead you to believe, through the same logic in my post, that the signal itself is not a fundamental force, but is somehow created through the electromagnetic force interacting with the components, which… It is! The observer might not understand how the signal worked, but they could rule it out as being its own discreet thing.

              In the same way, we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn’t a discreet phenomenon. Fundamental forces can’t have parts or components, they must be completely discreet.

              Your example is a really really good one.

              • fear@kbin.social
                32·
                11 months ago

                we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn’t a discreet phenomenon

                This statement begins with the assumption that the brain produces consciousness, then says that because the thing that produces consciousness has components, that it can’t be fundamental. This is a really really good example of circular logic.

        • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          11 months ago

          Consciousness is relevant, and your point should not be dismissed. But it is difficult to measure, so science is not able to comment on it yet, rightfully so.

          Force of nature or not, some abstract philosophical conceps will have to wait to be tested experimentally or better described empirically in order to be applied the same way.