*promote babblefish & Higgs-Boson reference .

It's my favorite when he smacks his t's.

I still don't get how they used this to find the Higgs Boson.

part of a longer talk at Skepticon 5
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Sean-Carroll-Higgs-boson-fundamental-nature-of-reality

Sean Carroll: Higgs boson & fundamental nature of reality has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims.

I want to talk about something that to my regard is pure lunacy. But, to me, though I appreciate the doubters, the ones who question everything; would change their attitudes completely. None of the atheists should go on ranting until they take the ultimate bungie jump a human can have: DMT. One thing I would note is that I do not know if it was put there by aliens, evil spirits, sacred spirits, the Earth itself, God. No, I do not know and no one knows. I do not know if there is a price to be paid by having witnessed the underpinnings of technology, soul, afterlife, the universe, consciousness, the brain or whatever the hell it is. I have no idea, I just know that this experience is as real as fuck. Mind blowing. Scary. Terrible and healing all at the same time.

I was agnostic going into this, did not believe in soul, appreciate string theory, quantum mechanics but do not believe in it at some factual level, did not believe in any sort of God, or the afterlife. In mere seconds all my notions of what I thought or did not think or could never had merely thought up, all my permeating existential beliefs were thrown off like a nuclear bomb had gone off; revealing some partial truth of what we really are, witnessing an alien computer program, based on simple equations that manifests consciousness itself. Not a new conclusion and one I thought only drug addled scifi writer or schizos would ever believe.

It were as though I had found some way to put my head into the Large Hadron Collider itself whilst every proton turned into Higgs Boson; I then found out that this is not uncommon for such an experience. I know that can sound incredibly narcissistic, incredulous, unbearable, impossible. But what I got out of it was humble and that is another story.

There are experiences out there in which a person can feel as though they had been thrown into another dimension, experienced the Big Bang and met Gods of the Ultimate Power, they may or may not be and died on levels not many ever knew possible. In mere seconds the regular doors of perception are shut and a new life is born. That is where it gets tricky.

Until any of these guys can figure out why the human mind can explode on an infinite universe level of pure digital consciousness, think it can perceive these things and witness them on all levels and in new ways and come back to a normal human life in a normal brain without having in fact died? Well, I think they ought to stop talking and do more research. We have no facts and an experience like that will make it very apparent that the walls of reality can be so easily shattered to see new alien worlds, languages, dimensions, spirits, births and rebirths beyond all human comprehension. It sounds like the ultimate atheist experience, right? Not at all, it leaves room for something of the highest power that is manifested through pretty much any religion. We have to remember... you have to go to school, you have to get a job, we get wrapped up in our world. We have to act like we know what we are talking about and I am saying there is no evidence out there to support the fact that anyone can say that there is absolutely no God. There is absolutely no afterlife. Anyone that feels that they know anything about the nature of reality and who they are or what any of it means and apply lectures to it in the event that they become so arrogant and stubborn that they say what they think is absolutely correct when it is not accounted for by science, should do this. Do it after a lot of research. I say science but it is a paradox, I believe in Science first and foremost, it is our hope for tangible evolution, repeatable fact, but I am fairly sure this is something Science will never figure out. And after reading a similar experience: http://ewwty.com/2012/02/24/dimethyltryptamine-dmt-experience it seems in this experience there are some reoccurring themes. Science has so far written this off in the easiest way it can: to call it a psychedelic or a hallucinogen. So, find out. We know absolutely nothing in a very non existential way.

>> ^ponceleon:

Don't have time to see the whole thing now, but I feel like the new challenge for journalism in the information age is that they need to understand that freedom of the press is not freedom to report without checking facts. Sensationalism is the rule rather than actual reporting. In an age where "reality" TV is scripted and caters to the lowest commmon denominator, as a society we have to hope that this too will bounce back.
If anyone saw last night's South Park, it was pure brilliance. We just need James Cameron to come in and raise the bar dammit!


Journalists work for money the same as most folks. Good journalism in the sense you're talking about takes time, and therefore is expensive. Furthermore, balanced, dry articles about the nuanced nature of the world around us don't lend themselves well to attention-grabbing headlines, a problem perhaps exacerbated by the need for page views and the ability to track, per article posted, what people view most.

I mean, really, what are more people going to want to read - or rather, see - "Higgs Boson identified with high probability" or "Lady Catherine caught with her tits out - photos inside!"?

We've conflated information with entertainment. I wonder how to turn that particular tide back.

"Speaking to a packed audience Wednesday morning in Geneva, CERN director general Rolf Heuer confirmed that two separate teams working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are more than 99 percent certain they've discovered the Higgs boson, aka the God particle—or at the least a brand-new particle exactly where they expected the Higgs to be.

The long-sought particle may complete the standard model of physics by explaining why objects in our universe have mass—and in so doing, why galaxies, planets, and even humans have any right to exist."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120704-god-particle-higgs-boson-new-cern-science/

Ummm.... no.... The Higgs Boson is NOT confirmed by these new papers! It is again, merely proof that they have found a new particle while looking for the Higgs. It is not proven to be the Higgs yet.

>> ^charliem:

Food for thought: Peter Higgs despises media calling it the God Particle.
True story.


Yup... Apparently it was supposed to be called the goddamn particle because it was so hard to detect...

In reply to this comment by messenger:
Unoriginal insult, missed the mark besides, boo.>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^messenger:
Boo for propagating the "God particle" meme. It's just mass; it's not god. And this is ancient news, relatively. And it's delivered so fluffily. Boo all around.

Sir, please try our Camembert sample or possibly our finest aged cheddar for that big fuckin' bottle of wine you have.




Insult ? hey we are all friends here. If you think that was an actual insult you need your shirt ironed out as the lady boy wrinkles have set in.

Unoriginal insult, missed the mark besides, boo.>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^messenger:
Boo for propagating the "God particle" meme. It's just mass; it's not god. And this is ancient news, relatively. And it's delivered so fluffily. Boo all around.

Sir, please try our Camembert sample or possibly our finest aged cheddar for that big fuckin' bottle of wine you have.

>> ^messenger:

Boo for propagating the "God particle" meme. It's just mass; it's not god. And this is ancient news, relatively. And it's delivered so fluffily. Boo all around.


Sir, please try our Camembert sample or possibly our finest aged cheddar for that big fuckin' bottle of wine you have.

>> ^charliem:

Food for thought: Peter Higgs despises media calling it the God Particle.
True story.


Me too.

This one starts off the explanation (3:30 or so) with the often repeated falsehood that, "...the Higgs boson is the particle that is responsible for giving mass to the other particles." It's already a massive particle itself; it cannot give mass. It's the Higgs field that gives mass, as clearly explained in the rest of the video. The Higgs boson (particle) is an artefact of the field, and, as explained in this video, is the only way so far we've been able to detect the field. This video makes more sense if you take that one statement out.

Another cool animated explanation here: http://videosift.com/video/The-Higgs-Boson-Part-II-What-is-Mass