Analyzing our discussions in other forums
I frequent several boards about several topics, mainly fandom-related ones. In the large majority of them, I’ve eventually felt the urgent need to inject some rationalist ideas into threads that seemed to be sorely needing them.
Even in the best of cases, those that don’t devolve into flame wars and remain overall polite, I usually meet with limited success at best. So I wonder—assuming my own experience is shared by others here—should we perhaps share links for some of those threads, and discuss here how we could have handled the conversation better, possibly how we could have had more success injecting rationality than we actually did?
The most recent such discussion I had was today, in the forums of Gunnerkrigg Court. I made a post very early on in the thread in question, but my real contribution began here after another poster (who actually seemed science-minded in desire, if not in practice!) asked “What if the soul is the energy?” I had to cringe at that, and tried to explain how meaningless a statement that was—but I don’t seem to have succeeded much, even though I don’t know how I could have done better.
Please say what you think about my idea of discussing our threads in other forums in general, and/or any ideas you have about how I could have handled better that specific thread in particular...
I didn’t review the exchange in detail, but my $0.02 in general: if I’m dealing with someone who is making claims that seem incoherent to me, and I decide it’s actually worth engaging with that person, my preferred approach is to ask them specific questions to clarify what their claim actually is.
So, faced with something like “what if the soul is the energy?” and the decision to engage with it, I’d be inclined to follow up with some version of “OK, what if it is? What would I expect to experience if it were, and how is that different from what I’d expect to experience if it weren’t?”
But I don’t know that it’s any better.
I know this is somewhat anecdotal, but that’s the approach that the hosts on the Atheist Experience call-in TV show have learned to take with religious callers, over the course of years of experience. It seems to be simply the right thing to do in this kind of discussion: ask questions, and let the other guy dig the grave for his ideas. For one thing, this forces the person you’re talking with to think, rather than just repeating incoherent ideas while ignoring anything you say. For another, it lets you argue with what they’re actually saying, rather than what you think they might be saying.
It’s Judo-style arguing: instead of throwing the other guy to the ground, you guide his motion so he falls down from his own weight. I’ve personally found this to be the most effective method for such arguments, especially when you can maneuver the other person into seeing a contradiction or unfortunate implications.
(nods)
That said, I know lots of people who seem to prefer the more punch-to-the-solar-plexus style of arguing, and it seems to work pretty well for them to achieve the goal of making other people “fall down” efficiently.
For my own part, I’m usually less interested in knocking people down in conversations than various other things we might be doing, so I don’t care too much… but different people have different goals.
I find that opening lines like this tend not to work, once its an argument the other person has lots of incentives to argue against you, and treat counterarguments as enemies.
Though, the rest of it seemed to go pretty well, considering that.
You didn’t really seem to talk about how beliefs should constrain anticipation, or how energy means a specific thing in physics, and how what they said didn’t make sense in that context.
Overall though, I agree with TheOtherDave’s advice.
I like the idea of discussing our discussions. Upvoted.
As for your specific event: I think you succeed a bit. People did start trying to define their terms and someone concluded, based on those, that there’s probably no such thing as a soul. Next time, I’d suggest linking a relevant LW post if forum etiquette allows. It might make your point clearer or even get someone to follow a couple of links.
Actually, reading further into the discussion, I think that at least as much confusion probably resulted from attempting to argue by definitions. In response to assertions of the definition of the soul, I would ask
Good suggestion! Instead of trying to figure out what his definition was, I should have taken a step back and asked him what the definition was supposed to do; detail a construct or circumscribe a phenomenon.
Upvoted.
In that specific instance, I think I would have taken the approach of asking
I like the way you’re approaching this, and this doesn’t take away from the point you were trying to make, but there’s one thing you said that I’m not understanding.
Why do things with energy have to have mass? Photons contain energy, and they are massless. And even more generally, if there is potential energy (say, gravitational) then the energy is in the field, which isn’t even a particle.
Photons do not have rest mass, which describes the energy they possess when stationary relative to a given frame of reference, because they’re always moving at the speed of light relative to any frame of reference, and the formula that relates rest mass to relativistic mass returns infinity for anything with finite rest mass moving at the speed of light.
They do, however, have mass equivalency. They exert a (very small) gravitational pull, can impart momentum equal to their mass equivalency times the speed of light, and if an object absorbs a photon, it gains mass equal to its mass equivalency.
If an object gains or loses potential energy, it also gains or loses relativistic mass. For instance, if you pull something out of a gravity well, its relativistic mass increases. These changes usually don’t occur on a large enough scale to be observable, but we can easily observe the relationship between potential energy and mass in high energy interactions such as nuclear fission or fusion.
Ok, thanks for clearing that up for me
You’re welcome.
Actually, to correct myself for further precision, if an object gains or loses potential energy, it’s not necessarily gaining or losing relativistic mass. The relativistic mass is the sum of all the energy in the body times the speed of light squared, including potential energy. So if you throw a ball upwards in a vacuum, it’s not gaining relativistic mass as it ascends because its kinetic energy is being converted into gravitational potential energy. Its relativistic mass was increased when you imparted energy by throwing it.
My own experience of learning physics has been a long series of discarded confusions imparted on me by imprecise instruction.
One thing that confused me when I studied special relativity in my undergraduate physics class: is all potential energy actually mass? For example, if you had a sensitive enough inertial balance, could you measure a change in mass in a spring when it is coiled and when it is uncoiled? Or between a charged capacitor and an uncharged one? E/c^2 would indeed be very tiny, but it wouldn’t be zero.
I don’t think this mass (relativistic?) could be real. Because potential energy is relative, and depends on context. For example, a marble at the bottom of a bowl doesn’t know it’s also sitting on a table … in a deep canyon … 4000 miles from the core of the Earth. These things can’t be affecting it’s actual mass?
Relativistic mass is, as the name suggests, relative. It depends on your frame of reference. If you observe a spaceship traveling at .9C, for example, then from your perspective its mass will be significantly greater than from the perspective of the passengers. This doesn’t affect its intrinsic mass, if that’s what you mean by “actual” mass, but it’s still a measurable phenomenon. Intrinsic mass and relativistic mass are interchangeable, such as when a nuclear reaction releases products with a lower rest mass than the reactants, at high atomic velocity.
Yes, a charged capacitor has more inertial and gravitational mass than a discharged one. No, I don’t think this is humanly measurable.
If you accept that one form of energy contributes to inertial and gravitational mass, you should expect all to. You can short a capacitor, converting that electrical potential energy to heat. It would be somewhat surprising if this changed the inertial or gravitational mass. Special relativity says that kinetic energy contributes to inertial mass and general relativity that it contributes to gravitational mass; thus all forms of energy should.
This actually makes potential energy less “mysterious” (if “mysterious” is the word I’m looking for) - it’s a thing that’s actually there to be measured, instead of a mathematical abstraction that depends on everything else around it that smells suspiciously like a fudge factor. ;)
“Q: What’s potential energy? A: Mass.”