Curse

Manderlock · May 09, 2005, 12:57 AM // 00:57

This thread has now Officially soared far over my head.

Care Less · May 09, 2005, 01:45 AM // 01:45

you can never prove that there is a begining or an end to anything no matter how hard you try , no matter how smart you think you are

you cant prove that birth is the begning or that death is the end

you cant find a exact (or even close) date to when the world will end , if it will ever end , the world might just be in its "womb" atm and nobody can know about it

PS. never try to replay to stuff like this while drinking..its bad..

Dreamsmith · May 09, 2005, 02:52 AM // 02:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Super Awesome War Bunny

Your placing a lot of weight in thinking that we know all there is to know about this science.

No, I'm not, not even close. I am simply placing weight into the fact that the double-slit experiment and the existence of quantum tunnelling do indeed prove that the statement I made is correct, and that the statement you made must be false. I'm absolutely certain we do not know all there is to know about this science. But that doesn't mean we don't know anything at all, either. We do know some things, and I merely stated what one of those things we happen to know is.

Quote:

Re-read my statement. You're saying exactly what I said.

Not really.

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Your life to this very moment is a single chain,

False.

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acted upon by infinite other 'single chains' - i.e. multiple chains.

There really are no "chains" to begin with. Each event has so many "causes" that to talk about a "chain of events" is to blunder into a fantasy world where you ignore the vast majority of what is happening. Even a "tree of events" branching backwards in countless branches would be a grossly erroneous view, as it would ignore the various influences between the branches. Really, what we're talking about is a giant web of events. You're trying to pick out one path along the graph of this web and call it a chain, and call that chain "your life", but that's pure fiction. There are countless many paths you could pick out, and calling any one of them "your life" would be no more valid than calling any of the others "your life".

You aren't a single chain acted upon by other chains, you are countless chains together, running in parallel, running across another, coming together, coming apart, branching, merging, forking, so much so that when you consider all the possible "chains" you could invent by drawing paths through the web, there's not even any clear and distinct line that you could draw and say, "on this side, these 'chains' are part of me and my life, and on this other wise are the 'chains' that are not a part of me or my life, just things that influenced me".

At this very moment, there are countless trillions of events occuring within you, all of which are simultaneously a part of you. For each of these events, there are countless "chains" you could invent by tracing backwards through all the many different causes of each of these events. Which one of these trillions of trillions of imaginary, invented "chains" are you going to call "the single chain of your life", when at any particular instant in time, more than a trillion trillion simultaneous events are occuring in your life?

My life at this moment is many orders of magnitude beyond a trillion trillion chains of events. It couldn't even be remotely described as a single chain of events. I could pick out one particular path through that web of events and call it a chain, but it wouldn't be the chain of my life, it wouldn't be more than an infintesimally small part of it, and ultimately it would just be a fiction anyway.

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Too bad Einstein didn't live long enough to prove his point.

Alas, no one lives forever, and it takes even longer than that to prove what is false. Einstein unfortunately spent the last few decades of his life working on theories that we eventually were able to experimentally prove to be completely and utterly wrong. Even the best sometimes make mistakes. He was a great man, but he wasn't omniscient. In the end, he was wrong, and these days we have the experimental data to prove it.

Augy · May 09, 2005, 04:31 AM // 04:31

how in the hell did quantum physics get mixed up in here?

anyone ever read Carlos Castaneda? Whether you believe his books to hold truth or not, one things for certain: our reality hinges precariously on an individual's point of perception. And since we were born with but 5 meager senses to interpret our universe, anybodies ideas, using math, science, or high tech wiz bang supercolliders are subjective at best.

now, where did I put that tab of acid...

The Red Knight · May 09, 2005, 05:06 AM // 05:06

Omgud Sky Is Teh Falling !@#!@#!@#! !

steve baisden · May 10, 2005, 06:15 AM // 06:15

Oh yeah, haven't you heard? The world ended last Thursday. It was in all the papers. Cities burned, oceans boiling. Weird. Florida is, like, toast now. So is Madagascar, I think. Bunch of people got killed. Yeah, it's over. Bummer.

SOT · May 10, 2005, 06:47 AM // 06:47

I was under the imrpession the world ended when Jar Jar Binks first appeared on screen

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve baisden

Oh yeah, haven't you heard? The world ended last Thursday. It was in all the papers. Cities burned, oceans boiling. Weird. Florida is, like, toast now. So is Madagascar, I think. Bunch of people got killed. Yeah, it's over. Bummer.

You forgot "Arizona Bay"

The IOU · May 10, 2005, 02:12 PM // 14:12

So what is the next date they set?

Super Awesome War Bunny · May 10, 2005, 03:16 PM // 15:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Augy

how in the hell did quantum physics get mixed up in here?

anyone ever read Carlos Castaneda? Whether you believe his books to hold truth or not, one things for certain: our reality hinges precariously on an individual's point of perception. And since we were born with but 5 meager senses to interpret our universe, anybodies ideas, using math, science, or high tech wiz bang supercolliders are subjective at best.

now, where did I put that tab of acid...

Most accurate statement of the discussion!

Super Awesome War Bunny · May 10, 2005, 03:19 PM // 15:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by The IOU

So what is the next date they set?

Tons of them!! Take your pick!

END OF THE WORLD!!!

Chaser · May 10, 2005, 03:26 PM // 15:26

i think we gotta wait intill june 6th, at 6:66 (which is 7:06) in 2006

The IOU · May 10, 2005, 03:44 PM // 15:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Super Awesome War Bunny

Tons of them!! Take your pick!

END OF THE WORLD!!!

lol

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According to The Church of !BLAIR!, the human race will probably be terminated at 3:28 AM (Soho, England time) 2047, SEP. 14!. The church teaches, with tongue firmly in cheek, that if the human race does not discard their plastic conformity, then the Gods will withdraw their protection. The Gods don't want us to worship them; they don't want sacrifices or even offerings. They just want us to rid itself of our excessive "Normalcy". At that point, Astro-Lemurs (extra-terrestrials similar in shape to lemurs, but with rainbow colored bodies) will attack the entire human race and beat them to death with gigantic burritos. You have been warned. ;-)

eventhorizen · May 11, 2005, 10:18 AM // 10:18

I read a good one in a book once, ill try and 'interpret it' cos i cant find the book, and ill most likely get it wrong

1 in 10 out of every human that has ever lived is alive now. Taking the time from when the first humans appeared to the present day, you would have a 1 in 10 chance of being alive today, compared to any other time in our history.

If mankind was going to live for billions of years and spread out throughout the galaxy, what would be the chances of a specific human being alive at this particular point in time? Very remote.
What does the fact that you are alive know tell us, statistically about our future? Thats statistically it would imply our future as a race is very short indeed.

Thats just statistics, doesnt take into account asteroids plague or anything else, doesnt take into account anything else at all so yes I am aware of the vast flaws. Point is that there was a lecture once by a statistician that told his class, in the 1980's I think, that statistics alone said mankind had a very short future.

Or something ;p

eventhorizen · May 11, 2005, 10:42 AM // 10:42

I have to agree with Dreamsmith, at the expense of Augy.

Although we have a limited number, 5, of senses, our knowledge gained from our senses and our technology enable to us to predict things, which our senses and technology have since confirmed.
If there were humongous things we do not know of working in our every day lives, we would be aware of the errors. And to be fair, we are aware of the errors.

Our limited senses mean we KNOW what we see is not the base truth of our reality. But by interpreting what our senses show us, repeatedly, we can analyse, theorise, and predict.

If we were wildly innacurrate in all things, then so many things in our lives would not exist. Computers and how we use them are beautiful examples, as is medical care.
Also, it has been shown, not by simply seeing, but by interpreting and theorising and predicting, that there is a base randomness to existance. Whether this is a product of something else, whether it is something unique to our Universe, and all the other crap that implies, we do not know for sure.

What we do know is to expect randomness at certain levels of 'questioning', i.e. experimentation. We also know that we can be sure massive objects obey our laws of gravity, simply because our laws of gravity came about by our questioning of the laws regarding these massive bodies.
This does not mean we know everything, rather it means we have a fairly accurate description of the laws that govern the things we have questioned deeply for a long time. The more we know the more we have to learn though. By formulating base rules governing the behaviour of space, of time, and of massive objects, Einstein opened the door to a new era of science, EVEN if his rules were not perfect.

What we know is that at the lower limits of what we can question right now, the thing that make things that make atoms, the subtle nuances of our existance that affect how these base things we are aware of behave etc. there is an inherant randomness. No one is saying that is the end. We merely say that is the point we are at.
And at the grander scale its becoming more and more accepted that the likelyhood is that our universe is not a closed off 'bubble' but rather an aspect of something much greater. Thats what our experiments and observations look to be telling us right now.

Dark matter for example. What that is is merely gravity that appears to have no observable origin. Galaxies get observed, and dont appear to follow the rules that fit our solar system so well. So what does that mean?
It means many things, and the scientist or thoughtful observer tries to consider all of these things. Until considered we cannot hope to discover.
And what scientists, some, are saying is that our Universe that we see is part of a larger entity that we cannot fully see with our eyes, or our feel with our hands, but we can see the effects of the gravity of whatever may be hiding.

And these are mere possibilities. No one ever says these are facts. These are what we have rationalised as being the likeliest possibility at this time based on our observations, but we never say this is the way, because THAT we do not know.