I don't think the Big Bang and quantum mechanics should be lumped together. Quantum mechanics is at the basis of several inventions in use today. It tells you what is going to happen. That information is fed into design and turned into engineering. Just because it is counter-intuitive doesn't mean it isn't real. I was taking issue with Andy V Twin who said "Mankind should leave some things well alone and rest it in the hands of the Gods", which sounded very much to me like the arguments being put about to stifle the Enlightenment (though to be fair to him, it could have been a tongue in cheek comment). For me, the universe is infinitely strange and staggering and religious explanations are rather prosaic and tedious in comparison, whilst at the same time not explaining anything. But I didn't start this thread to knock the people with their head in the sand, just to applaud and express my enthusiasm for a superb programme.
I have long struggled with the difference between AI and the human brain, I do not believe that true consciousness can emerge from AI, that we are truly conscious goes beyond a complex machine. I am very interested in what the second program may have to say.
They say that the human brain is the most complex structure yet discovered in the universe. I'm not sure if that overlaps with quantum theory. My problem with AI is not that it will reproduce the human brain (it won't) but that it will be dangerous as it will do various things a lot more efficiently than the human brain can (calculations, essentially) and that once it decides for itself what it wants to do, we will lose all control of it. Stephen Hawking seems to subscribe to this view. Not that he is infallible - he also thinks we should be aiming to colonise Mars. A view that the human race should trash Earth and move on is not one I subscribe to.
If we have true choice there needs to be a disconnect between "life" and the mechanistic view of the universe where if you know the starting conditions with sufficient accuracy you can accurately predict the future. Could quantum physics provide that ? I haven't a clue :Wideyed:
Going off down the AI tangent for a second... I remember years ago my dad told me a joke that goes like this... The Russians and the Americans finally decide that it's not worth arguing anymore, so they get together with the Chinese, the British, the Germans, et al - and decide to take all the computer knowledge to create one masive, giant, super-computer by linking all their biggest, best computers together. When they've managed to do that, they decide that they need a really big question to ask this really big computer, so after days of pondering the lead scientist types in the question - "is there a god?" The computer thinks about it for a while, and then the answer appears on the screen... "There is now..." ! Sound familiar ?
And going down the religion tangent... My observations of this have produced the following view : Religion, at its most basic, personal level, can provide a set of guidelines for being a good person and living a good life. However, at a global, international level it is nothing more than a way of taking power and money from the poor huddled masses and of keeping them all under control. At the highest level religion in all its forms has been responsible for more wars, povety, hunger, destruction and pain than anything else in history - in fact porobebly more than everything else in history combined. "Standing in a church doesn't make you Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car". Doesn't necessarily make you a nice person either. Some of the most biggoted, unpleasant people I have ever met are religious people, and yet some of the nicest people I have ever met are aetheists - strange old world, isn't it ?
Good thread, shame it has started to centre on religion bashing again. I am similar to you Bradders in that I have come to the point in my life where I prefer to deal in hard facts - There is a God? Prove it, We came to exist as a result of bacteria on a rock somewhere? Prove it. Until either of these are answered with black-and-white one hundred percent true answers I can't see what the point is in bickering about it.
Same can be said about much of science Chris. 20 years work, and hundreds of millions of pounds, to stick a box on a comet and it report back 'it's rock' for half an hour. Can't tell me that isn't based on blind belief 'something must be there'.
Aliens know all about Quantum Physics. :Cigar: Don't go bashing religion. Everyone has a right to their beliefs, whatever that may be.
We can trace the evolution of life back through the fossil record to that algae in an ancient rock pool. You either have faith or you don't.
Predicted this of course John, sorry doesn't count as proof as requested - my further following silence means that I just can't be bothered
Actually, that is not true: It has been measured that the universe is expanding, and that planets are moving away from each other. This means that if you reverse this expansion you must get contraction, and we can calculate how long it has taken to get where we are now from those observations. The result is that the expansion would have began 13.75 Billion years ago. This is fact. See: Big Bang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The bit that's up for debate, and that scientists are not sure about, is what happened at the initial stages of the universe - was there nothing before, did the universe "bounce" or was there something else? There's lots of theories, including Multiverse and the mentioned Old Universe, and even the theory that there's also a universe where time runs backwards... 'Mirror universe' suggests Big Bang created place where time goes backwards - Science - News - The Independent
Of course the fossil record, genetic, geochronological and cosmological evidence could have been planted 6000 years ago, and I concede that it would be impossible to disprove that hypothesis, in the same way that you cannot disprove that a spaceship from a distant galaxy landed in my garden last night.
