Comments for Jim Al-Khalili's Website

Comment on The Life Scientific by Ferda Yamanoğlu

Ferda Yamanoğlu — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:32:12 +0000

Where is the antimatter?It lives in the unıverse of antimatter.Quran(55-17)(36-36)

Comment on The Life Scientific by Ferda Yamanoğlu

Ferda Yamanoğlu — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:48:06 +0000

Hello.İf you write my name on google,you can read my writings.

Comment on Do we have free will – a physicist’s perspective? by Ray

Ray — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:49:22 +0000

Every person who responds to this blog is exercising his free will.
No one or no thing is exerting influence or pressure to respond.

However, the ability to agree or disagree with what has been said by others is not in the realm of free will.

A response will be governed by the past experience and motivation of the respondent and they no more have the ability to deny the imperative need to respond as they do in taking their next breath.

Schopenhauer’ : “a man can do as he will, but not will as he will.”

Comment on Shock and Awe by mohamad

mohamad — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:08:36 +0000

this is good…very good . but i can’t find any subtitle for it….not english even..please …i neeeeeeeed subtitle

Comment on Determinism and free will by Jane

Jane — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:16:07 +0000

There is also a serious problem if one denies freewill because that would mean that appeals to rational argument have no basis. If the explanation for why one holds a particular set of beliefs and why we make particular choices, is reduced to descriptions of the blind motions of the particles in our brains, how then can we claim that one set of motions is more rational than another?

What goes on at the emergent level of minds needs to be explained at the emergent not reductionist level. And at that level, the explanations for our choices are our hopes, desires, fears, beliefs etc. All quite consistent with any meaningful notion of freewill.

Comment on Higgs, shmiggs.. who cares? by http://tinyurl.com/nwsclion43281

http://tinyurl.com/nwsclion43281 — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:43:13 +0000

I actually believe this amazing article , “Higgs, shmiggs.
. who cares? |”, rather enjoyable not to mention it was
indeed a fantastic read. Thanks-Jodie

Comment on Do we have free will – a physicist’s perspective? by 31428571J

31428571J — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:45:44 +0000

”So do we have free will or don’t we? The answer, despite what I have said about determinism, is yes I believe we still do. And it is rescued not by quantum mechanics, as some physicists argue, but by chaos theory. For it doesn’t matter that we live in a deterministic universe in which the future is, in principle, fixed. That future is only knowable if we were able to view the whole of space and time from the outside. But for us, and our consciousnesses, imbedded within space-time, that future is never knowable to us.”

Just because the future consequences of ‘chaos’ are unknowable, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t still deterministically ordered in some way.
(even ”random” could be purposeful… but remain forever beyond the scope of human ability)

”So, thanks to chaos theory our future is never knowable to us. You might prefer to say that the future is preordained and that our free will is just an illusion, but the point is our actions still determine which of the infinite number of possible futures is the one that gets played out.”

An infinite number of possible futures running parallel with (the same) infinite number of universes sounds rather ordered to me.

”That future is only knowable if we were able to view the whole of space and time from the outside.”

Thanks for this professor, now I know why I am a panentheist:-)

Comment on Do we have free will – a physicist’s perspective? by alQpr » Blog Archive » I can’t help doing this

alQpr » Blog Archive » I can’t help doing this — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:21:27 +0000

[...] don’t have free will” or who assert that complex chaotic systems’ unpredictability “is what gives you free will” are both either unprincipled or naive in accepting that the idea of “free will” has any [...]

Comment on Do we have free will – a physicist’s perspective? by Me & My Free Will | My Blog

Me & My Free Will | My Blog — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 13:32:33 +0000

[...] recently asked: “So do we have free will or not?” The question came midway through an essay on the subject, and his answer is, [...]

Comment on Do we have free will – a physicist’s perspective? by Adam

Adam — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 09:47:57 +0000

I suppose one might see it that way; if one is committed to the reality of a discrete self. However, I think folks as varied as Siddhartha Gautama and David Hume would disagree with that notion..