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 Now online (1)big ...and 403 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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Members 8025Messages 2614125 Today 4 Topics 127542 |
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well, unlike sound waves, which need a medium, electromagnetic waves are self-propagating, they are in essence their own medium. |
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well, if empty space doesn't exist, what's the difference between you and all that "stuff" in between planets and such? i know space has some matter floating around, and things that we believe to be solid have a good deal of "space" to them.. but it really doesn't make sense to me to think that there could be matter, and not be an absence of matter. it seems like the only thing to define matter, it's something that IS.. but something needs to exist in order to cease existing.. but that doesn't mean that everthing that doesn't exist has to have existed in some way.. er... like, you need to have lived in order to die.. darkness needs to exist, in order for sunlight to mean anything.. but it doesn't mean that the light wouldn't be anything if that's all there was, it just means that there really needs to be an absence of something for it to register in our brains as being something and not nothing.. i guess those are all just subjective human examples.. again, i don't know what i'm saying. maybe i just proved my own point wrong.. |
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A confession of memetic unoriginality: I merely stole the topic title from: and my 1st comment from |
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mmm...i consider space to be a huge molecular field. the atoms are moving randomly thus creating a magnetic field around the planes so they can rotate around their axis. the same thing is with light...this energy wave that is created by random patterns of atoms give the carrier to the light. |
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well, i think i agree with you. it's almost academic to talk about the difference between something and nothing like they're two distinct things. were you refering to how i mentioned that empty space wasn't really empty? well, sure, even if there are particles popping in and out of existence there is still some space not occupied by matter, and so there's still empty space. all i was really saying was that all the vast tracts of so-called empty space appear to infact not be as empty as was previously believed. |
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actually not just planets or light but the whole existance as we know it. just imagine the picture...u got massive amount of random patterns that atoms create, and all of the sudden the critical point arrives thus making the esential part we all need. |
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randomness is one of my favorite subjects to pontificate about. can there really be any true randomness in the universe. even if the uncertainty principle is accurate, that does not require randomness, it just means we are unable to dicern the information. and if randomness can not exist, even if impossible due to the uncertainty principle, then given enough computational power, wouldn't it be theoretically possible to calculate ever single event that would occur in the universe? personally, i don't see how true randomness can exist. |
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hwo, thaTs kwewl |
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ah. i see. i agree with you, i think. or as much as it is really possible to "agree" on ideas this shaky and unfathomable. but, i wonder, if something and nothing both exist, is there a perfect balance between them? if something were to be effectively destroyed in some way, could that offset the eternal equilibrium of everything and trigger the "destruction" of everything? ..maybe that's rhetorical.... |
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ha ha, pontificate, a nicely chosen word. I pontificate that only pseudorandomness exists. The perception of "randomness" is more of a property of brains and other analytic engines (um, I think I meant a different word) that observe/compute the universe. |
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ah. i see. i agree with you, i think. or as much as it is really possible to "agree" on ideas this shaky and unfathomable. excellent way to put it. i think you're falling into the trap of thinking of nothing as something, a something different than the other something. if the something were to be completely destroyed, then all we'd have is nothing, which would then really be undefined because there's nothing to define what it is. but, how could the something (the matter and energy) be completely destroyed? where would it go? unless it's all 'borrowed' from the nothing in matter/antimatter pairs which then annihilate themselves. but then what? ah, i don't know. |
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well u got a point here...we aren't ready to concieve the meaning of what we call "random". it would only be a case of higher mental activity...then again what is necassary to start using the higher percentage than 10%??? so this is actually a deadend street. |
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EXACTLY!! |
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so this is actually a deadend street. yeah, i basically agree with that, but it's sometimes still fun and sometimes even feels worthwhile to talk about it. |
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this is what is all about...you came the the begnning point while trying to explain urself. it's all se evident |
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Hmm, so here's a question. Does the absence of true randomness therefore imply that *everything* is the result of cause and effect? |
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yeh,but what is needed to make the cause? |
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well, that's interesting because if there were no true randomness and everything followed established physical laws (that were mostly transparent to us, possibly), then how much meaning would cause and effect have? i think the idea of cause and effect are only useful when vivisecting reality into smaller parts. and it's also akin to a child asking "why?" repeatedly to an adult trying to answer a question. eventually they would get down to the one true cause of everything, and the one true effect is what is being, and has been, played out throughout the universe. i wonder if that makes sense to anyone except me? |
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randomness implies no real connection between one cause/effect pair and another which itself gives rise to multiple cause/effect pairs, but if there were no true randomness, you couldn't look at it that way. right? |
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ha ha, except for the very first cause which was random. |
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ah, yes, what do we do about that first cause? holy shit, i think i just proved the existence of god! oops. |
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but, how could the something (the matter and energy) be completely destroyed? where would it go? That's interesting since it implies we have, say, exactly 37.6532 mass units and always will have that exact amount. Why this particular amount? Is that ALL there is? (I don't know anything about antimatter stuffamajig) We'll evole artificial intelligences that will answer these questions, but they still won't be able to reveal the answer to us because our brains are too stupid and primitive to understand. |
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We'll evole artificial intelligences that will answer these questions, but they still won't be able to reveal the answer to us because our brains are too stupid and primitive to understand. i doubt that, because they will be a part of the same system, and will have the same limitations. essentially i think that's the problem. if we could remove ourselves outside of the universe to some other realm, then i think we have the potential of fully understanding it, at least to the degree we think we understand anything about it, but it's because we are a part of (and a product of) what we're studying that we can never know it fully. |
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Oh no, I have the most points on this page. I feel embarrassed and pathetic. Plus the artificial intelligences will be indifferent to the answers and see no point in helping us understand, as well as no point in continuing to exist and seek further answers. |
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I don't know... get a society of Super AI's together, each a trillion times smarter than a human brain, and they might just come up with some unprecedented ineffable unfathomably wicked solutions like building, provided they had any motivation (and I sort of doubt they would). |
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"like building..." Oy heah... I sort of forgot to complete my thought before I posted. I happens (to idiots). And it's just as well. |
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I'm ashamed to have posted seven thousand four hundred and foryt five messages here. |
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how do you feel about seven thousand four hundred and forty six, and seven thousand four hundred and forty seven? |
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Those are better. I think 7445 was just the exact point of my midlife crisis, which means I'll either be dead or stop posting here by 14890. |
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Well no, you haven't proven the existence of god, merely fallen into the trap of not being able to explain something and filling the gap with god. Sadly, mankind has fallen into this trap many, many times over the centuries and that's why religion is such a powerful influence on people today. |
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I'll be there soon, mister w M w |
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I think there will come a point where our knowledge of the universe will be equal to the knowledge in the universe. It's perhaps the ultimate destination of the evolutionary process. Our knowledge would give us the ability to experience anything and everything simultaneously and continually and also imply complete command of the mechanics of the universe. The universe, the mind and time would be as one. Perhaps that's how we got started out in the first place. The inhabitants of the universe that came before us reached such a state then something came along that disrupted it and set off what we now know as the Big Bang. Or perhaps those universal ancestors nearly reached that state, but some tiny flaw threw everything into flux and that set in train the events that have brought us here. I think that latter point more likely. I guess that when you're on the edge of an absolutely perfect state, the whole system becomes more pricarious, the slightest thing that goes wrong having the ability to completely wreck it all. |
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The universe is holistic; collapse of the wave function as an example. |
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talk about deja vu! i KNOW i had this exact conversation at a sleepover in 1992. |
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[contextual note] tone of voice is so hard to convey over the internet. that post should have heaping helpings of lightheartedness applied to it. :) |
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About a month ago, I ate something that made it so everything I did was accompanied by extraordinarily strong feeling of déjà vu. The feeling has since stopped, but I still do not feel completely right again – it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever felt. |
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i had the same thing happen to me once actually, and it was intensely frightening. the position of everyone and their actions, the lighting in the rooms, my mood, what was being said, the time of day, the fact that i was having deja vu... every single tiny insignificant detail. it lasted for about 45 minutes until i passed out. VERY intense. |
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kinda makes me feel wierd even thinking about it. |
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is the universe signifying nothing? |
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That'd make some fucking good science fiction, not that I ever read science fiction anyway... and despite your proposing it as a theory, not fiction. |
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these conversations annoy me for some reason. probably because i can't accept to hear it from you feeble humans. |
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it's just a mathmatical equation. we assign meaning to it so we don't feel so lonely. |
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Why should it signify anything? After all, significance is just a human invention, like sliced bread. Deja Vu: on hallucinogens, I think it's like that "Whoa, this seems oddly familiar" thing where everything is like an intricate mystery that you're just trying to put your finger on exactly _what_ it is. Also smoking weed I get deja vu that I've seen every single television program and commercial before; but it can't be true since I usually didn't even watch television before hand for a while, and when flipping channels, it's impossible that it could take the exact same sequence of commercials/shows. I can't predict what's going to happen next anyways, it's all in my head. |
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Knuth is considered a famous programmer, known for his geek humor: as examples, he pays a finder's fee of $2.56 for any typos/mistakes discovered in his books because "256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar". |
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ha ha, Version numbers of his TEX software approach ð, that is versions increment in the style 3, 3.1, 3.14 and so on |
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There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary, and those who don't. (Old joke, I know, it's been here before) |
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approach (pie) |
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what the fuck is ð? dalef? |
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without the e (I think). If that's not correct, I will post no further comments about it. *sneezes* |
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nevermind, Latin Small Letter Eth ð fuckð thee, thou knavð, thou |
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Messageboard index
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