XPost: alt.astronomy   
      
   I was trying to contact the group that was researching "disappearing   
   stars" to try and compare notes against what seems to be happening in   
   the sky as seen from various space telescopes (i.e. whether centered   
   on the earth, low earth, cis-lunar, or solar orbit).   
      
   The VASCO people are looking at old telescope images that appear to   
   show stars in some images and not show them in other images sometimes   
   taken just days earlier or later. The interesting aspect is the images   
   are culled from old records from the US Navy and Palomar Observatory   
   and mostly pre-date satellites or man-made objects that could easily   
   explain the features being seen.   
      
   But they are like many another groups that appear to be a bit tardy in   
   replying to email. (This may in itself be a good mental model to   
   answer one of their quandaries; keep reading).   
      
   The item that turned up in my inbox this morning and SOMEHOW it   
   disappeared even from the spam and trash box after I went out to feed   
   the cat and came back to think up a reply. These sort of things tend   
   to happen when you are blind. Maybe I hit the wrong button somewhere,   
   or my speech-recog s/w might have taken one of my comments to myself   
   out of context and done it for me. In which case don't know why it   
   wasn't even in the trash bin. Dan dem compooters! ;)   
      
   The substance of the email was very familiar to anyone that's done any   
   reading on "science" UFO research, such as it is.   
      
   The list of questions in the email included: Why is UFO evidence so   
   crappy? Why don't aliens (if that's what they are) just talk to us   
   instead of providing only crappy evidence?  Why don't UFO's make sonic   
   booms? Doesnt this prove they are not real? Normal objects compress   
   air when they move very fast. Why are all the photos so blurry even   
   when everyone has mobiles? Why don't telescopes see them?  Why hasn't   
   NASA seen them?  And a few others along those lines.   
      
   As I said, why aliens (if that what they are) don't land in Washington   
   and declare themselves might be simply they have experience and they   
   assume (or "know" in one or other sense) we don't. VASCO doesn't seem   
   to answer emails.  Possibly for exactly that kind of reason.   
      
   But in general, if you try to use the archaic reasoning we all   
   supposedly learned in grade school you maybe should not expect to   
   always expect to get sense in science. Grade school reasoning is about   
   deduction. It works great for geometry where all assumptions are know   
   to start with. Deduction goes from the general to the particular.  But   
   science is about induction -- going from the particular to the   
   general. You don't know the assumptions to start with.  You don't know   
   how the universe works to start with.  You are trying to learn what   
   the assumptions are from what you see.  Unfortunately and infinite   
   number of sets of assumptions can all lead to the same   
   observations. And while some rules talk about "the simplest" it turns   
   out there's a math proof that you can't figure out what the "simplest"   
   of anything in general is -- it's mostly a mathematical   
   self-contradiction. So it turns out inductive reasoning is much much   
   harder than deductive reasoning, theoretically. I've written briefly   
   about this before and wont try to duplicate the mountain of academic   
   research here.   
      
   But more specifically, if you get a bunch of contradictions when using   
   deductive reasoning then you have made an incorrect assumption.  Given   
   you now *know* you have a mistake somewhere, you can't trust yourself   
   to pick *where* it is. The older assumptions are no more likely right   
   than the latest one in the mix. You might hope the old ones are   
   "good".  But really even this is not a good assumption. You can't be   
   sure you have all the assumptions in there.  Another "undecidable problem".   
      
   If you get a contradiction then you know at least one of your   
   assumptions is wrong.  If you get a whole bunch of contradictions then   
   likely you have made a whole bunch of mistakes and you don't really   
   know where.  But it sounds possible and maybe likely even your   
   fundamental assumptions about (whatever) are totally off.   
      
   We know from the "best 2 scientific theories we have" -- quantum   
   theory and general relativity -- reality is screwy.  There are   
   observations that don't fit the theories. There are problems getting   
   the 2 theories to agree at the very small and very large scale. They   
   are great (apparently) for the data they were tuned on. But they don't   
   seem to be entirely robust out of their special areas. This is a very   
   common data science problem. :)   
      
   But one thing our 2 best theories agree on -- the nature of reality   
   may be totally different from classical understanding. I.e. most of   
   our everyday assumptions are totally wrong. Relativity is "famous" for   
   pointing at the possibility the universe is like a frozen fish-tank   
   (Bloch Universe). When you make "spacetime" the basic model of how the   
   universe works then "nothing changes".  The history of some particle   
   wiggling and waggling across the universe just gets to be a "world   
   line" -- a fixed path through 4-d spacetime. The world line doesn't   
   change. It's like a plot on a piece of paper. It might *describe*   
   "change". But itself is fixed.  If nothing can change in 4-space then   
   how do you remember anything?  How to you move a rock from one place   
   to another?  What happens to cause an effect?  What happens to free will?   
      
   Unfortunately the same thing mostly happens in the other Big Theory.   
   In quantum physics a system is modeled by a fixed set of "base states"   
   plus a function that tells you the probability of information moving   
   about the system -- the wave function (possibly time-varying --   
   whatever time is -- check with GR). The "possible states" are fixed.   
   Only the wave function can change. The wave function doesn't exist   
   inside the system. So how that is meant to operate is not explained.   
   The time that controls the wave functions is apparently not inside the   
   system. Maybe neither exist at all, in the philosophical sense. But it   
   seems to make sense to think of the "base states" as unchanging and   
   immutable. Another (set of) frozen fish tanks. Even scientists expert   
   in the specific area are of 2 minds whether time (in the time-varying   
   part of the mess) must always be regarded as coming in chunks or   
   whether it can be a continuum which obviously has a lot of math   
   problems with divergence and ending up with many answers looking like   
   infinity divided by infinity and you have to just guess what happens   
   and try to make it look like you know what you're talking about.   
      
   I have some experience writing programs for quantum computers.   
   In a WC the base states are all the possible bit patterns in   
   a computer memory. The quantum program changes the wavefunction --   
   maybe you could imagine it *is* the wavefucntion -- so that   
   eventually when you measure some part of the system you get the   
   answer you are looking for. Maybe.   
      
   You note that each combination of bits in the computer is fixed.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)