Certain people can't ever get it right

[honorentheos]

The real test that your theory is on the right track is successful prediction and biology still doesn't do that so well.

Too true. But in a sense your description of the event horizon between us and the first cause left me with a weird perspective on the state of things. To use your comment to jump off from, it seems what physics is doing is not so much predicting as reporting on conditions already "caused". But when required to do the heavy lifting of real prediction (sorting out the fundamentals that will give rise to what's already risen if you will) it's not really better off than biology. It just has us fooled about how predictive it is because the time frames that matter already happened and are in the past. Physics is just prologue of the big bang.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Gad makes a good pinpoint observation. What’s an eternal now other than a gibberish term?

- Doc

[honorentheos]

Gad makes a good pinpoint observation. What’s an eternal now other than a gibberish term?

- Doc

That's the problem with how MG is using infinity here, too, it's just not as obvious because infinity also has legit meaning. He uses infinity as a stand in for something incomprehensible, beyond human conception and on the same plane as God. Joseph Smith did us the favor of making the tautological nature of attempting to use this to talk about God explicit (God's love is eternal love, eternal punishment is God's punishment. D&C 19) But that doesn't stop MG from trying to use it to muddy up conversations.

For reference from D&C 19:

10 For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore—

11 Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.

12 Endless punishment is God’s punishment.

So what's an eternal now? God's now I guess. Or, maybe it's a Buddhist thing referencing consciousness as the only reality which we experience as a string of "nows". Or it's just as Gad said, nonsense.

[Physics Guy]

Physics does seem to be truly predictive, but unpacking "seems to" into something fully coherent unfortunately seems to be bring in horrible philosophical conundrums that were otherwise just minding their own business and willing to let us alone, namely the conundrums about free will.

It seems as though we can control new initial conditions in laboratories. With quite a lot of work, we can isolate a few measurable things from most of everything else to a high enough degree, and then tune enough of the remaining things that we can't isolate away to be what we want, that we can conduct empirical tests of the hypothesis that If A then B. And for us A and B are not binary conditions but continuous numbers that we can control and measure to many decimal places, leaving the Bayesian chance that our theory is only looking right by good luck at essentially zero.

Physics doesn't officially recognise human free will as any kind of additional causal mechanism, though. It's all just quarks and electrons and such doing whatever they were inevitably predestined to do from the beginning of time. But now and then some of these electrons seem to turn out to have been predestined to have the notion—collectively—to spin some dials on a lab bench, and when they do then there ensue correlations.

Except maybe for quantum mechanics, which is rigidly deterministic about how the quantum state changes in time but then punts with this kludgy probability stuff whenever you talk about measurements, which seem as though they can be defined arbitrarily by human free will. What's the difference between "a measurement" and any other kind of motion of atoms? Good question. A really good question.

We have no formal answer. The official answer of physics to "What counts as a measurement?" is, pretty much, "We know them when we see them." Okay, it's a little better than that. We can talk about irreversible amplification. Then we can talk about what "irreversible" means. If you let us talk long enough you'll notice that our style of speaking has changed significantly from the nice lucid way that we could talk about motion of planets. At the best, we trail off and shut up. Some people will keep trying to snow you but if you've been around the block a bit you'll be able to tell that it's snow.

It all still works fine in practice; reliable measurements of ultramicroscopic things are so hard to make that there is never any ambiguity in practice about whether or not you are doing a measurement. If you are there's this massive machine in the room, and if there isn't you're not. As a consistent story about how cause and effect really work, though, quantum mechanics is still pretty disappointing, though after more than a century now it's still the state of the art. I mean science.

Our predictions do work, and they work really impressively. I can calculate things on paper and have a sort of High Noon showdown with experimentalists who have just done the measurements, to see if I'm right. I've actually done that a couple of times, and I was right.

If you want to go beyond heuristic procedures that seem to work fine in practice, however, and make a rigorous theory that truly explains everything without hand-waving and having to accept "somehow it all just works", then I'm afraid we're not there. And this free-will and cause-and-effect stuff might really not just be a pesky little technical challenge. It might be a big problem, I think. The Big Bang may be The Big Gap in science but it isn't the only gap, sadly.

[honorentheos]

One thing that strikes me about the predictive abilities of physics is they work in both directions, as the relational framework of space and time is rolled forwards or backwards. It gets slightly more difficult for chemistry and impractical for your stamp collecting efforts as one moves further away.

So...if the framework of space-time scrolls forwards and backwards around a particular chosen position for physics, why get hung up on calling the results predictive just because the framework is scrolling forwards? It's predictive success was baked in at some point (big bang?) where it stops being able to scroll and goes stamp collecting, too. The rest is like a magicians trick with a baked in result which the magician then acts out the steps to arrive at it after it was decided.

I'm just kidding around. It's not an attempt to argue against physics having predictive abilities that are fortunately reliable. But more of a reframing the difference between physics and stamp collecting to one where physics isn't categorically so different as it just has all the stamps already and is busy flipping through their collection books instead.

[Chap]

I am grateful for the bolded part, at least.

One thing that strikes me about the predictive abilities of physics is they work in both directions, as the relational framework of space and time is rolled forwards or backwards. It gets slightly more difficult for chemistry and impractical for your stamp collecting efforts as one moves further away.

So...if the framework of space-time scrolls forwards and backwards around a particular chosen position for physics, why get hung up on calling the results predictive just because the framework is scrolling forwards? It's predictive success was baked in at some point (big bang?) where it stops being able to scroll and goes stamp collecting, too. The rest is like a magicians trick with a baked in result which the magician then acts out the steps to arrive at it after it was decided.

I'm just kidding around. It's not an attempt to argue against physics having predictive abilities that are fortunately reliable. But more of a reframing the difference between physics and stamp collecting to one where physics isn't categorically so different as it just has all the stamps already and is busy flipping through their collection books instead.

[Physics Guy]

I guess it's kind of like someone claiming to be able to control gravity with mental power, and proving it by rising into the air. Well, if they can really control gravity then rising into the air is nothing special. If gravity is no obstacle then rising is no different from falling.

For everybody else, though, there seems to be quite a difference. Anyone can fall but only that magical person can rise. Hence the focus on rising.

Anyway I'm trying to say that prediction is indeed nothing special, if time runs deterministically with a one-to-one relationship between cause and effect. It seems to be only in physics, though, that one can possibly say that. In other fields it seems to be a lot easier to explain things in hindsight than to predict them in advance.

But I guess that even there the real difference is not so much whether you're hypothesising about past causes or future effects, but about whether you can make your hypothesis today, before you can tell for sure whether it's right, and then test it tomorrow and find that it is right.

Maybe an evolutionary biologist could conclude that a certain kind of fossil must exist in a certain previously unexcavated stratum in a certain region, because modern wallabies must have had that kind of ancestor. If paleontologists could then go and check that stratum and find that previously unknown fossil, that would count as a successful prediction even though it would really be a prediction about the past.

[huckelberry]

The Mormon "eternal now" idea is sheer nonsense.

It would be to anyone that believes that you’re born and then you die. Full stop.

Regards,
MG

I am puzzled. I do not recall the words ''eternal now'' being used in a Mormon context. Is it a new thing? How is it used? I believe Gadianton mentioned the D and C comment about torment being called eternal because it is Gods torment. I see no reason to think that is intended to be a definition of eternal. I see nothing more than a speculation on hells indurence.

I completely miss why eternity would be understood differently between people who believe we continue as persons after we die and those who do not. Perhaps MG could clarify.

Eternal now means to me that it is always now. That does not tell me much about life after death or about God.

[Chap]

I do not recall the words ''eternal now'' being used in a Mormon context. Is it a new thing?

Actually Smith himself used the expression:

Times and Seasons, 15 April 1842

(My emphasis)

The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence, or ever the “morning stars sung together for joy,” the past, the present and the future, were, and are with him one eternal now; he knew of the fall of Adam, the iniquities of the antedeluvians, of the depth of iniquity that would be connected with the human family; their weakness and strength, their power and glory, apostasies, their crimes, their righteousness, and iniquity; he comqrehended the fall of man, and their redemption; he knew the plan of salvation, and pointed it out; he was acquainted with the situation of all nations; and with their destiny; he ordered all things according to the council of his own will, he knows the situation of both the living, and the dead, and has made ample provision for their redempton, according to their several circumstances, and the laws of the kingdom of God, whether in this world, or in the world to come.

Goodness knows why I am bothering with this!

More interestingly, it seems to occur in the writings of the mystic Meister Eckhart, born c. 1260:

https://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/ ... ts-sayings

To be receptive to the highest truth, and to live therein, a man must needs be without before and after, untrammelled by all his acts or by any images he ever perceived, empty and free, receiving the divine gift in the eternal Now, and bearing it back unhindered in the light of the same with praise and thanksgiving in our Lord Jesus Christ. . [German sermon 6, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

I doubt very much that Smith was quoting him directly ...

[Gadianton]

“The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence, or ever ‘the morning stars sang together’ for joy; the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal ‘now;’

\

--Teachings.

https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Time_and_Eternity

The thesis that God is beyond time has sometimes been introduced to account for God's omniscience or foreknowledge. Only if God is somehow transtemporal, it is argued, can he view past, present, and future as "one eternal now." This position is assumed by much postbiblical theology. But, again, this leads to contradiction: What will happen in the infinite future is now happening to God. But "now" and "happening" are temporal words that imply both duration and change. For Latter-day Saints, as for the Bible, God's omniscience is "in time." God anticipates the future. It is "present" before him, but it is still future. When the future occurs, it will occur for the first time to him as to his creatures. The traditional concept of "out-of-time" omniscience does not derive either from the Old or the New Testament but is borrowed from Greek philosophy.

an interesting one:

https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.p ... -g-madsen/

What happened is that Truman arranged for me to meet with Neal Maxwell after I had written a paper about divine timelessness for a class. After Truman read it he told me that I had expressed it better than he thought he could (that sounds arrogant to say, but that is what he said) and he asked me to go discuss the issue with “Neal” because they had discussed the issue and he had never been able to convince “Neal” that timelessness would not work. I met with Elder Maxwell and explained why timelessness may work for Boethius who he had quoted, but not for Joseph Smith. I explained why I thought that the idea of timelessness per se was incoherent and contrary to scripture. I explained why, from my POV and the historical context, the statement about God’s time being one eternal now did not mean what he had quoted it to mean. After our discussion Elder Maxwell stated that he had not understood how the idea interacted in different theological systems and how it would work for Boethius but not for a God who had a body. He asked me to publish a footnote about our discussion as a way of clarifying and clearing up the matter. That is what you see represented in this article.

I believe that after I published this article Elder Maxwell later returned to quoting the “eternal now” quotation and D&C 130:7 about the past, present and future being “before God” and God’s time being measured only to man to support a more or less classical idea of timelessness. None of these entail such a view in my opinion, but how Elder Maxwell saw it is what you asked about.

...Don't say I never did anything for you, MG.

(chap hadn't posted when I started this)