Ten famous ideological labs

 

Ten famous ideological labs

 
1. Brain A Vat)
 
 
There is no more influential Ideological experiment than the so-called "brain in the cylinder" hypothesis. This ideological experiment covers fields from cognition to philosophy to pop culture. In this experiment, imagine a crazy scientist taking your brain out of your body and putting it in some kind of life-holding liquid. An electrode is inserted into the brain and connected to a computer capable of generating image and sensory signals. Because all the information you get about the world is processed by your brain, this computer is capable of simulating your daily experience. If this is true, how do you prove that the world around you is real, not a simulated environment generated by a computer?
 
 
Explanation:
 
 
If you think this sounds like the hacker empire, you are right. This film and some other sci-fi works were created under the influence of this ideological experiment. The core idea of this experiment is to let people question the essence of their own experiences and think about what the true meaning of being a person is. The original prototype of this experiment can be traced back to Cartesian. In his book meditations on the first philosophy, Descartes found out whether he could prove that all his sensory experience is his own, this is not a question raised by an evil devil. Cartesian uses his classic famous saying "I think so I am" to answer this question. Unfortunately, the "brain in the cylinder" experiment is more complicated because the brain connected to the electrodes can still think. This experiment has been widely discussed. There are a lot of rebuttals on the premise of this experiment, but no one can respond to its core question: How do you know what is true?

 

 

 

 

 
2. Schrodinger's cat)
 
 
Xue dingyi's cat was first proposed by Xue dingyan, a physicist, and is a paradox in the field of quantum mechanics. The content is: a cat, some radioactive elements and a bottle of gas are enclosed in a box for an hour. In a small period, the probability of radioactive element decay is 50%. If it decay, a hammer connected to the Gaige counter will be triggered, and the bottle will be broken, the gas will be released, and the cat will be killed. Because the probability of this event is equal, Xue dingyi believes that the cat in the box is considered dead and active before the box is opened.

 
Explanation:
 
 
In short, the core idea of this experiment is that when an event occurs, there is no observer, and the cat in the box is in all its possible states (both dead and active ). Xue dingyi first proposed this experiment when replying to an article discussing the superposition of quantum states. Xue dingyi's CAT also illustrates how incomprehensible the theory of quantum mechanics is. This ideological experiment is notorious for its complexity and has inspired a variety of explanations. The most strange of them is the "Multi-World" hypothesis, which indicates that there is a dead cat and a live cat, and the two cats exist in different universe, and there will never be an intersection.
 

 

3. Chinese Room)
 
 
The Chinese room was first proposed by the American philosopher John Searle in early 1980s. This experiment requires you to imagine a person who only speaks English in one room. This room is closed except for a small window on the door. He carried a book with a Chinese translation program. There is enough paper, pencil and cupboard in the room. A piece of Chinese text is sent to the room through a small window. According to Searle, people in the room can use their books to translate the text and reply in Chinese. Although he does not know Chinese at all, Searle believes that through this process, people in the room can make anyone outside the room think that he can speak fluent Chinese.

 
Explanation:

 
Searle has created an ideological experiment on the "Chinese text room" to refute the ideas that computers and other artificial intelligence can really think about. People in the room cannot speak Chinese; they cannot think in Chinese. But because he has some specific tools, he can even make Chinese-speaking people think that he can speak Chinese fluently. According to Searle, computers work like this. They cannot really understand the received information, but they can run a program, process the information, and give a smart impression.
 

 

4. Monkeys and typewriters)

 
Another thought experiment that occupies a large part of popular culture is the "infinite monkey theorem", also known as the "monkey and typewriter" experiment. The content of the theorem is that if countless monkeys randomly typed on countless typewriters for an infinite period of time, at some point, they will certainly write all of Shakespeare's books. The idea of monkeys and typewriters was promoted by the French mathematician Emile Borel in the early 20th century, but its basic idea-countless people and countless times can produce anything/everything-can be traced back to Aristotle.
 
 
Explanation:

 
Simply put, the monkey and typewriter theorem is one of the best ways to describe the infinite nature. The human brain can hardly imagine infinite space and unlimited time. The infinite monkey theorem can help to understand the width of these concepts. It seems that a monkey can write "Hamlet" as it happens to be a violation of intuition, but it can actually be proved in mathematics. This theorem itself cannot be reproduced in real life, but it does not stop some people from trying: in 2003, a British zoo scientist "tested" the infinite monkey theorem, they put a computer and a keyboard into the plant. Unfortunately, the monkeys did not make any fourteen poems. According to researchers, they only printed five pages of paper with almost all the letters "S.
 

 

 

 

5. Galileo's gravity Experiment (Galileo's gravity experiment)

 
Galileo constructed a simple Ideological experiment to refute the theory that the rate of free fall of an object depends on the mass of the object. According to Aristotle, if a light object is bound to a heavy object and then dropped from the tower, the falling speed of the heavy object will be faster, the rope between two objects is dropped straight. At this time, the light object will generate a resistance to the heavy object, which slows down the falling speed. However, from the other hand, the quality of the two objects after they are bound together should be larger than that of any other object, so the whole system should fall at the fastest speed. This contradiction proves that Aristotle's theory is wrong.
 

Explanation:
 
 
This experiment proves a very important theory: regardless of the object quality, regardless of the resistance, the rate at which all objects fall freely is the same.
 

 
6. The ship of Theseus)
 

One of the oldest ideological labs. It was first recorded by procatch. It describes a ship that can sail on the sea for hundreds of years, thanks to uninterrupted repair and replacement of parts. As long as a piece of wood rot, It will be replaced, and so on, until all functional components are not the first ones. The question is, is the final ship still the trius ship or a completely different ship? If it is not the original ship, when will it no longer be the original ship? The philosopher Thomas Hobbes later extended this. If he used the old part of the ship of theasticus to re-build a new ship, which of the two ships is the real ship of trius?

 
Explanation:

 
For philosophers, the ship of thus is used to study the nature of identity. In particular, whether an object is equal to the sum of its components. A more modern example is a continuously evolving band, until there is no original member in a certain stage of the band. This problem can be applied to various fields. For enterprises, the original name remains unchanged after the merger and replacement of the parent company. The human body continuously performs metabolism and self-repair. The core idea of this experiment is to force people to reflect on their identities only in the knowledge of actual objects and phenomena.
 

 

 

7. Einstein's Light Beam)

 
Einstein's famous special theory of relativity was inspired by his thought experiment at the age of 16. In his autobiography, Einstein recalled that he was imagining to pursue a ray in the universe. He argues that if he can move at the speed of light next to the light, he should be able to see the light as "an electromagnetic field that is constantly oscillating but stagnant in Space ". For Einstein, this thought experiment proves that for this Virtual Observer, all physical laws should be the same as observed by an observer relative to the rest of the Earth.
 

Explanation:

 
In fact, no one knows exactly what this means. Scientists have been arguing that such a simple thought experiment has helped Einstein complete such a huge leap in special relativity. At that time, the idea in this experiment was contrary to the "ethereum" theory that has been abandoned. However, after years, he proved that he was correct.

 

 

 

 

8. the ticking time bomb)

 
If you are concerned about political events in recent years, or have watched action movies, you must be familiar with the "time bomb" Ideological experiment. It requires you to think of a bomb or other weapons of mass destruction hiding in your city, and the countdown to the explosion is almost zero. There was a hacker in custody who knew where the bomb was buried. Will you use torture to obtain information?
 
 
Explanation:
 
 
Similar to the tram puzzle, the time bomb scene is also an ethical issue that forces a person to choose from two immoral acts. It is generally used as a counterclaim to those who say that torture cannot be used under any circumstances. It is also used as an example of law that can be placed second in an extreme situation-just like the United States law that prohibits abuse of prisoners. Thanks to TV programs and various political debates like "24 hours", the time bomb scene has become one of the most cited ideological experiments. Earlier this year, a British newspaper gave a more extreme view. The newspaper suggested that if the terrorists did not respond to torture, the authorities would be willing to torture his wife and children for intelligence.
 

9. The cow in the field)

 
 
One of the most important ideological experiments in the field of cognitive theory is "cows in the open space ". It describes how a farmer worries about losing his winning cow. At this moment, he sent his nurse to the farm and told the farmer not to worry, because he saw the cow in an empty space in the attachment. Although the farmer believes in sending milk workers, he looks at them in person. He is satisfied with the familiar black and white shapes. After a while, the nurse will go to the vacant space to confirm again. The cow was there, but it hid in the woods, and there was a large piece of black and white paper wrapped around the tree in the open space. It was obvious that the farmer had mistaken the paper as his own cow. The problem is that, although the cows are always in the open space, the farmers say they know that the cows are correct when they are in the open space?

 
Explanation:
 
 
The cows in the open space were initially used by Edmund gettier to criticize the mainstream JTB (justified true belief) theory defined as knowledge, that is, when people trust one thing, it becomes knowledge; it is actually true, and people have verifiable reasons to trust it. In this experiment, the farmer believed that the cows were in the open space and was confirmed by the testimony of the milkman and his own observation of the black and white objects on the open space. This is also true after being confirmed by the nurse. Even so, the farmer does not really know where the cows are, because he thinks that the guidance of the cows is based on a wrong premise. Gettier uses this experiment and other examples to explain the theory that needs to be corrected to define knowledge as JTB.
 

10. the trolley problem)

 
The tram puzzle is one of the most well-known ideological experiments in the field of digital ethics. Its content is roughly as follows: a madman binds five innocent people to the tram track. An out-of-control tram drove towards them, and soon it was about to crush them. Fortunately, you can pull a lever to drive the tram to another track. But there is another problem: the madman also bound a person on the other track. Considering the above situation, should you pull the lever?
 
 
Explanation:

 
The tram puzzle was first proposed by the philosopher Philip foot to criticize the main theories in ethical philosophy, especially utilitarian. The utilitarian viewpoint is that most moral decisions are made based on the principle of "providing the greatest benefit to the most people. From a utilitarian point of view, the obvious choice should be to pull a lever to save five people from killing only one person. However, utilitarian practitioners believe that once you pull a tie, you will become an accomplice to immoral behavior-and you will be partly responsible for the death of a single person on another track. However, others believe that, in this situation, you need to do something. Your inaction will be equally immoral. In short, there is no complete moral behavior, which is the focus. Many philosophers use the tram puzzle as an example to show that in real life, a person is often forced to violate his own moral principles, and there is still a situation where there is no full moral practice.