"The speed of light is created by our minds?" Then why do machines perceive it? Why do we notice no changes in it between minds? Why does all of our simple Physics work (e.g. refraction) assuming a fixed speed?
Just because you want it to be true doesn't make it true.
1. There's a bit where he puts a quote from Descartes next to a quote from himself.
2. "You might think you are cosmic. But I hope to convince you you are not cosmic, you are Earthlike. And it's all because of a hypothesis I had..."
3. And the inevitable "conclusions" slide where it turns out that his hypothesis solves (in some way which can't be explained in a twelve-minute talk) all the major problems of physics today (dark matter, grand unification etc)
So, Dr Ockels, I'm sticking you in the "provisional crackpot" bin, but if you'd like to explain your theories more carefully, on paper, and with a bunch more equations, I'll have a look at 'em.
However, I don't think he really explains a great deal. Much of his talk builds up upon itself, without ever seriously trying to back the claims.
Some have even questioned whether even the individual self perceives, and the very existence of a self and of minds, etc.
You don't have to be a crackpot to entertain such ideas. You just have to be interested in philosophy (or religion, as the Hindus came up with the idea that the entire world is illusory... many thousands of years ago).
I agree, but you can't claim to be doing physics at the same time.
Just because a thing cannot be expressed succinctly as a tautological formula(F=ma, etc) on a chalk board does not mean it's bunk, non-science and therefore worth completely ignoring.
The guy was a friggin astronaut and is a professor of physics! How many people have been to space? Do you think you'll ever go to space in your life? Probably not.
It's wise to listen up when one of just a few hundred human beings who have been to space says "hey, I've spent my life thinking about this based on my direct experience of having gone into space, and I want to share it with you because maybe you'll find it useful, and it might not even be perfectly true."
We would of course then not invent instruments that keep track of time. Is it possible that our clocks don't keep track of time, but of our notion of time. Just wondering??
1. We create (physical) reality to some extent at least. By thinking time exists, we are able to create something which can track the progression of something which only exists in our thoughts.
2. Jungian collective unconscious: we all seem to have the same idea of time. The sun rises, then sets, it doesn't re-wind part way through the day, or simply appear in the middle of the sky.
2b. Unless, of course, this is all a / your dream.
Not to say that this is impossible (just try to disprove it), just convoluted and counter to most of what we (seem to) know.
If by "original" you mean, in response to Hume's earlier statements on the origins of the idea of time. :-)
http://seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/kant-hume-causality/
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treatise_of_Human_Nature/Book_...
Sure Ancient Hindu and Buddhist mystics had said this about time using the language of religion, but it was only a century after Kant's era that the holy texts of those religions were translated for Europeans. Before then few Westerners would have even heard of Buddhism. Schopenhauer was one of the first Western philosophers to have read the Upanishads and other Eastern religious texts, and then to also work Eastern ideas into the historical backdrop of Western philosophy.
It's true that the value of the speed of light depends on units that are relevant to humans. To suggest that this implies something about physics is absurd. Physics is in fact independent of the actual value of the speed of light.
The idea that the speed of light in vacuum is constant in all reference frames is a postulate of special relativity. Both special relativity and general relativity are confirmed by numerous experiments.
Edit: Note this is also a TEDx talk, not regular TED.
Try to not take life so seriously. The speaker is being philosophical, which will not change the physics we have already documented but could help us think outside the proverbial box.
There is no information in this talk.
Go outside, get some sun, smell some flowers. Not all life is hard math. Most of science isn't even hard math. By the time science involves hard math, we usually have an intuitive sense of what the answer will be and just have to verify it. It takes an immense amount of aimless philosophical wandering to arrive at a question which has a mathematical answer.
Back when he was an astronaut, when his shuttle landed and he stood up in gravity for the first time, he felt like he was on an elevator going up at 1g. I think it's neat because his brain had learned during the space flight that any acceleration means motion. Once he was back on Earth, his brain had to re-learn that the constant 1g we feel does not mean motion.
I think that has more implications for how our brain works and interprets stimuli than it does physics, but it's still neat.
Wow. Spoken like a true theoretical scientist. Of course they're right; time will show they're all right. Except those others who only thought they were right: they're morons.
