I get wanting proof, but the theoretical basis for space rockets only (arguably) came into existence with Tsilokovsky's rocket equation in 1896. Before that, a modern rocket would have failed your "show me the engine" test.
And that's just the difference a century or so makes. An alien species could be hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years older than us.
My understanding is that earlier science never exactly forbade any modern technology like space rockets at a fundamental level. There didn't exist any models that would give you a clear framework of how to build a space rocket, but generally it wouldn't be thought of as impossible. Rather it'd just be considered an extremely hard engineering problem.
But at this point prohibitions on going faster than light are exactly as fundamental as prohibitions on breaking causality, in fact general relativity has shown them to be identical. We know for a fact general relativity is an incomplete model of reality, but a more complete theory won't be changing any of those fundamental principles. For example, before Einstein came along scientists already knew Newtonian physics was an incomplete picture of reality, but they also knew a more complete theory wouldn't be changing fundamental principles like conservation of momentum. These more accurate theories typically give us a more detailed understanding of the limits of our universe rather than blowing up the limits we already know of.
Science will never be over of course, there will always be more to discover. But I don't think that necessarily means we're bound to invent more and more powerful technology forever as time goes on. There's really no reason to think that the rapid, exponential technological development of the past couple thousand years has to continue on forever.
That said, my point basically boils down to how hard it is to predict the results of even 150 years of human advancement, so we can't really even begin to fathom what a hypothetical alien species with 500 or 1,000 or 10,000 years of additional advancement might understand that we don't.
I'm not saying that the UFOs are here and they're probing our cows. I'm really just saying that we fundamentally don't know what we don't know.
You could have infinite time, you still can't break the laws of physics, which is the problem the magical tic tac faces.
I could just as well say that the clouds are disguised UFOs but we can't tell because it's magic alien technology. It's an unfalsifiable defense in the same vein as teacups floating in outer space.
The laws of physics as we understood them in 1896 were not the same as we understand them to be now. I imagine that in 2896 they'll be different to how we understand them to be now.
Believing that our current understanding of physical laws is correct and immutable is anti-materalistic. There are still many physical forces and phenomena that we don't understand, or are barely even aware of.
Inertia defying tic tacs sounds like bullshit space magic to us now, but if you showed streaming a video over wifi to a scientist from the 1800s they'd probably think it was bullshit aether magic too.
Edit: Just to be clear though, I don't necessarily think that UFOs have visited Earth, I just think that denying the possibility based on our understanding of science is wonky reasoning.
Ok? Defying inertia is nowhere near the same thing as streaming. The internet doesn't violate one of the most basic laws of physics. You could defend perpetual motion machines using the same logic.
It's not out of context, it fits perfectly. It's basically impossible to prove you wrong since you can always respond if "what if science is wrong tho".
"Science has been wrong before" is a thoroughly debunked line of reasoning, usually trotted out to defend homeopathy and the like. But maybe, just maybe, we'll find an apple that falls upwards onto the tree rather than the other way around, because geocentrism was a thing once.
My argument is not that science is wrong, it's that science scientific understanding from time to time is imperfect. That's why science keeps doing things that were previously thought impossible.
"Science has been wrong before" as used to disprove science is, of course, bullshit. However, the idea that any of our current understandings of science is absolutely true and immutable is also equally anti-scientific bullshit.
The theoretical physicists working on things like tachyons would like nothing more than to be the next people to rewrite the laws of physics. Equating them to homeopaths and luddites is laughable.
inertia is a weird one. mostly it just means the state something is in when there are no forces acting on it. but general relatively theorized that an object in a gravitational field with no other forces acting on it is also in an inertial frame. it implies gravity isn't a force in the same way as electromagnetism - gravity bends space and time such that you're moving on a straight (inertial) line in free-fall even though you, for example, appear to be in a circular orbit.
so there's definitely room for our understanding of inertia to evolve, especially as we work out how to put gravity in the same framework as the other fundamental forces. I don't think it'll lead to faster than light travel but I'm speculating now on work thousands of brilliant people have failed to crack. just pointing out that there's a giant gap in our knowledge here where we have two very well verified theories that straight up disagree.
Is it also anti-scientific to say perpetual motion is impossible because we might be wrong about thermodynamics?
It is not anti-scientific to say that perpetual motion or faster than light travel or inertialess propulsion are impossible given our current understanding of physical laws. It is anti-scientific to say that our understanding of physical laws is perfect and not subject to change.
Nothing can ever be disproven. You could use this argument to claim anything and everything on the basis that the counter-evidence might be wrong.
My argument is not that inertialess propulsion exists and that we have observed it. I am not trying to prove that UFOs exist.
The only thing I am asserting is that scientific understanding is always imperfect and prone to to being expanded upon and corrected. Unless you really disagree with this statement, we really are just arguing around in circles.
Sure, but the fact that our understanding of these physical laws changes over time without the underlying laws changing at all leaves open the possibility that our understanding will change again in the future to allow some kind of practical space travel.
My honest opinion is we are pretty much at the end of our 'tech tree' and there is little else in the way of big advances that will allow us to travel beyond the stars. The only future tech that is theoretically possible at this point is fusion energy, which would be great, but would still not allow for reasonable space travel for any biologic.
Theory of relatively very cleanly disallows movement of mass at near light speed, so its extremely unlikely we will ever leave our solar system. There is no other known phenomenon that we could speculate that would make things any easier.
I get wanting proof, but the theoretical basis for space rockets only (arguably) came into existence with Tsilokovsky's rocket equation in 1896. Before that, a modern rocket would have failed your "show me the engine" test.
And that's just the difference a century or so makes. An alien species could be hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years older than us.
My understanding is that earlier science never exactly forbade any modern technology like space rockets at a fundamental level. There didn't exist any models that would give you a clear framework of how to build a space rocket, but generally it wouldn't be thought of as impossible. Rather it'd just be considered an extremely hard engineering problem.
But at this point prohibitions on going faster than light are exactly as fundamental as prohibitions on breaking causality, in fact general relativity has shown them to be identical. We know for a fact general relativity is an incomplete model of reality, but a more complete theory won't be changing any of those fundamental principles. For example, before Einstein came along scientists already knew Newtonian physics was an incomplete picture of reality, but they also knew a more complete theory wouldn't be changing fundamental principles like conservation of momentum. These more accurate theories typically give us a more detailed understanding of the limits of our universe rather than blowing up the limits we already know of.
Science will never be over of course, there will always be more to discover. But I don't think that necessarily means we're bound to invent more and more powerful technology forever as time goes on. There's really no reason to think that the rapid, exponential technological development of the past couple thousand years has to continue on forever.
I basically agree with everything you've said.
That said, my point basically boils down to how hard it is to predict the results of even 150 years of human advancement, so we can't really even begin to fathom what a hypothetical alien species with 500 or 1,000 or 10,000 years of additional advancement might understand that we don't.
I'm not saying that the UFOs are here and they're probing our cows. I'm really just saying that we fundamentally don't know what we don't know.
CW: debate nerd shit
You could have infinite time, you still can't break the laws of physics, which is the problem the magical tic tac faces.
I could just as well say that the clouds are disguised UFOs but we can't tell because it's magic alien technology. It's an unfalsifiable defense in the same vein as teacups floating in outer space.
The laws of physics as we understood them in 1896 were not the same as we understand them to be now. I imagine that in 2896 they'll be different to how we understand them to be now.
Believing that our current understanding of physical laws is correct and immutable is anti-materalistic. There are still many physical forces and phenomena that we don't understand, or are barely even aware of.
Inertia defying tic tacs sounds like bullshit space magic to us now, but if you showed streaming a video over wifi to a scientist from the 1800s they'd probably think it was bullshit aether magic too.
Edit: Just to be clear though, I don't necessarily think that UFOs have visited Earth, I just think that denying the possibility based on our understanding of science is wonky reasoning.
Ok? Defying inertia is nowhere near the same thing as streaming. The internet doesn't violate one of the most basic laws of physics. You could defend perpetual motion machines using the same logic.
Comrade, there's debate nerd shit and then there's ignoring the thesis and argument to pick at an example out of context.
It's not out of context, it fits perfectly. It's basically impossible to prove you wrong since you can always respond if "what if science is wrong tho".
"Science has been wrong before" is a thoroughly debunked line of reasoning, usually trotted out to defend homeopathy and the like. But maybe, just maybe, we'll find an apple that falls upwards onto the tree rather than the other way around, because geocentrism was a thing once.
My argument is not that science is wrong, it's that science scientific understanding from time to time is imperfect. That's why science keeps doing things that were previously thought impossible.
"Science has been wrong before" as used to disprove science is, of course, bullshit. However, the idea that any of our current understandings of science is absolutely true and immutable is also equally anti-scientific bullshit.
The theoretical physicists working on things like tachyons would like nothing more than to be the next people to rewrite the laws of physics. Equating them to homeopaths and luddites is laughable.
Equating physicists working on tachyons to denying inertia is laughable too.
Is it also anti-scientific to say perpetual motion is impossible because we might be wrong about thermodynamics?
Nothing can ever be disproven. You could use this argument to claim anything and everything on the basis that the counter-evidence might be wrong.
inertia is a weird one. mostly it just means the state something is in when there are no forces acting on it. but general relatively theorized that an object in a gravitational field with no other forces acting on it is also in an inertial frame. it implies gravity isn't a force in the same way as electromagnetism - gravity bends space and time such that you're moving on a straight (inertial) line in free-fall even though you, for example, appear to be in a circular orbit.
so there's definitely room for our understanding of inertia to evolve, especially as we work out how to put gravity in the same framework as the other fundamental forces. I don't think it'll lead to faster than light travel but I'm speculating now on work thousands of brilliant people have failed to crack. just pointing out that there's a giant gap in our knowledge here where we have two very well verified theories that straight up disagree.
It is not anti-scientific to say that perpetual motion or faster than light travel or inertialess propulsion are impossible given our current understanding of physical laws. It is anti-scientific to say that our understanding of physical laws is perfect and not subject to change.
My argument is not that inertialess propulsion exists and that we have observed it. I am not trying to prove that UFOs exist.
The only thing I am asserting is that scientific understanding is always imperfect and prone to to being expanded upon and corrected. Unless you really disagree with this statement, we really are just arguing around in circles.
yeah but 1896 is pre-theory of relativity, which pretty much makes near light-speed travel absolutely impossible.
Sure, but the fact that our understanding of these physical laws changes over time without the underlying laws changing at all leaves open the possibility that our understanding will change again in the future to allow some kind of practical space travel.
My honest opinion is we are pretty much at the end of our 'tech tree' and there is little else in the way of big advances that will allow us to travel beyond the stars. The only future tech that is theoretically possible at this point is fusion energy, which would be great, but would still not allow for reasonable space travel for any biologic.
Theory of relatively very cleanly disallows movement of mass at near light speed, so its extremely unlikely we will ever leave our solar system. There is no other known phenomenon that we could speculate that would make things any easier.
This reads to me like physics as presented by Francis Fukuyama. I don't think I've ever seen a scientist seriously propose this view.