This reminds me of a scene in that great movie, Animal House, in which Donald Southerland, playing a professor, smokes a joint with a student while engaging in similar speculation. There I believe it was what if the universe was but an atom in a larger structure?
But then if, before Einstein, you had told that me a tiny amount of uranium could destroy a whole city or about the results of the double slit experiment, I would have said the then equivalent of “no _______ way.” (present participle omitted).
Still I’m guessing that this is more like Southerland than my physics examples. And, even if you believe that truth exists apart from verifiability, the likely lack of that as a possibility seems either a big drawback or a big virtue.
“Caleb Scharf, Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University has postured the theory that perhaps the universe is in fact the ‘brain’ of a hyper-advanced alien race.”
That’s a new one for me. I have heard of proposing a theory or positing a theory or putting forward a theory. But posturing? That impostor is preposterous.
adam: I totally missed that. Weird. Must have come from the mind of an alien. The writer was maybe trying for “posing” a theory? “Postulating” a theory?
November 18th, 2016 at 3:46PM
This reminds me of a scene in that great movie, Animal House, in which Donald Southerland, playing a professor, smokes a joint with a student while engaging in similar speculation. There I believe it was what if the universe was but an atom in a larger structure?
But then if, before Einstein, you had told that me a tiny amount of uranium could destroy a whole city or about the results of the double slit experiment, I would have said the then equivalent of “no _______ way.” (present participle omitted).
Still I’m guessing that this is more like Southerland than my physics examples. And, even if you believe that truth exists apart from verifiability, the likely lack of that as a possibility seems either a big drawback or a big virtue.
November 18th, 2016 at 4:43PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-university-agrees-to-settle-civil-fraud-lawsuit/
November 18th, 2016 at 6:03PM
“Caleb Scharf, Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University has postured the theory that perhaps the universe is in fact the ‘brain’ of a hyper-advanced alien race.”
That’s a new one for me. I have heard of proposing a theory or positing a theory or putting forward a theory. But posturing? That impostor is preposterous.
November 18th, 2016 at 6:08PM
adam: I totally missed that. Weird. Must have come from the mind of an alien. The writer was maybe trying for “posing” a theory? “Postulating” a theory?