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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6738070" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, of course these are all perfectly good points <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. I think there are processes which are fundamentally incalculable though, like the exact shape of a cloud which will appear over a given point on the surface of the Earth a week from now, no amount of detailed information about the current state of the Earth will let you calculate that, not even in principle (maybe a week is too little, its hard to say, but I know enough about non-linear dynamical systems to know that there are FUNDAMENTALLY incalculable results). So maybe a 'wormhole to anywhere' really is perfectly feasible. It goes SOMEWHERE, but you won't know where until after you open it, and if the only openings have to be outside causally connected space... Its sort of like the weak anthropic principle, I'm just saying &quot;the opening is where the opening is, and that place meets the criteria for where an opening can be&quot;. Things like quarks of course ARE 'observable', in the same way that a book is observable, they have effects that can be sensed by our senses and thus affect changes in our mental state which represent our knowledge of their existence. The TRULY unobservable is different, and of course making statements about it is in some sense 'non-scientific', but there's that area of 'speculation' in which we use the rules we have derived from the process of science, as opposed to just say painting a dragon over there and talking about how cool the space dragon is. I think there's a meaningful difference there. So I would side with people who speculate about other Universes and etc calling those 'scientific' speculation. Not science precisely perhaps, and the difference is meaningful, but still not simple blind invention without reason.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6738070, member: 82106"] Well, of course these are all perfectly good points :). I think there are processes which are fundamentally incalculable though, like the exact shape of a cloud which will appear over a given point on the surface of the Earth a week from now, no amount of detailed information about the current state of the Earth will let you calculate that, not even in principle (maybe a week is too little, its hard to say, but I know enough about non-linear dynamical systems to know that there are FUNDAMENTALLY incalculable results). So maybe a 'wormhole to anywhere' really is perfectly feasible. It goes SOMEWHERE, but you won't know where until after you open it, and if the only openings have to be outside causally connected space... Its sort of like the weak anthropic principle, I'm just saying "the opening is where the opening is, and that place meets the criteria for where an opening can be". Things like quarks of course ARE 'observable', in the same way that a book is observable, they have effects that can be sensed by our senses and thus affect changes in our mental state which represent our knowledge of their existence. The TRULY unobservable is different, and of course making statements about it is in some sense 'non-scientific', but there's that area of 'speculation' in which we use the rules we have derived from the process of science, as opposed to just say painting a dragon over there and talking about how cool the space dragon is. I think there's a meaningful difference there. So I would side with people who speculate about other Universes and etc calling those 'scientific' speculation. Not science precisely perhaps, and the difference is meaningful, but still not simple blind invention without reason. [/QUOTE]

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