my theory

vandivx · Sep 23, 2007

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr /> In reply to: Why does the universe exist... the ultimate question for humans to figure out! -------- Yes, it is indeed the ultimate question. Every human should focus on it. Everything else is trivial.<hr /></blockquote> I'd rather focus on more fruitfull investigation into the nature of things within the universe than on such pipe dreams which can never be answered maybe if we knew nature inside out and were twidling out thumbs for want of doing anything anymore, such pondering might have more appeal but as it is there is plenty of other smaller unanswered questions that can surely be answered besides I think we should know all about universe from inside before we should entertain any hope of coming to understand the raison d'etre of it all your humble servant vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

majornature · Sep 24, 2007

Life is just an experiment. We are here simply to be a witness. We are here to "see" where it is all going. Just as vanDivx said it: "pipe dream" We can't even figure out this dark matter. We should focus more on simple things... like the universe. The universe is simple and you earthlings make it harder on yourselves....so fuggedaboudit... We'll never understand the universe...if we did, we wouldn't be in this forum asking these questions... <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> We are born. We live. We experiment. We rot. We die. and the whole process starts all over again! Imagine That! <img id="6e5c6b4c-0657-47dd-9476-1fbb47938264" style="width:176px;height:247px" src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/14/4/6e5c6b4c-0657-47dd-9476-1fbb47938264.Large.jpg" alt="blog post photo" width="276" height="440" /> </div>

adrenalynn · Sep 24, 2007

We can't even figure out this dark matter. "Can't" or "Haven't"? I haven't seen too many "can't"'s in my life. It's all just a matter of time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

MeteorWayne · Sep 24, 2007

ANd just how do you know that? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id. I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function </div>

ashish27 · Sep 24, 2007

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />Yes, it is indeed the ultimate question. Every human should focus on it. Everything else is trivial. Why? <hr /></blockquote> Adrenalynn, I can't explain that in words. You got to feel that.

ashish27 · Sep 24, 2007

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />We'll never understand the universe...if we did, we wouldn't be in this forum asking these questions... <hr /></blockquote> I disagree 100% with you. We are what we are so that we can "understand the universe". Please forgive my arrogance.

vandivx · Sep 24, 2007

"I haven't seen too many "can't"'s in my life. It's all just a matter of time." how right you are <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

adrenalynn · Sep 24, 2007

I can't explain that in words. You got to feel that. So that's a "believe" thing? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

wurf · Sep 25, 2007

"Believe things" are difficult to avoid. If you practice or enjoy science, you are holding a possibly groundless belief that science is, or can be, true. In an earlier post someone said "The Universe is a chain of events one leading into another." If that's true, and there's nothing more to the cosmos, then there's a movement of atoms which are right now causing thoughts in my brain, and the actions of those atoms are taking place in a certain way only because preceding actions happened in a certain way, and so on, and so on, back to the Big Bang. The thoughts I will be thinking one hour from now were determined accidentally eons ago, and I have no choice. Also, if human thought is just a history of a long chain of accidental matter and energy moving and acting, mere physics and chemistry, the thoughts cannot be true or false. Is hydrogen true or false? A volcano? They're neither true nor false, they just are. Then our thoughts are the same. Then there is no Reason as we know it. Then science, being based on reason, has no validity. Science itself can't prove science true; something else is required. You can't measure the trueness of an inch mark on a ruler by using that same ruler. A scientist has to assess ideas and hypotheses as to whether they are true or false, yet "truth" and "falsity" are not provided to us by the naturally occurring universe. The hard, rationalist person that claims to only believe what can be known or proven, is relying on a belief that a thing CAN be known or proven, which is itself a belief in something outside the natural "chain of events", or you could say, something super-natural. In my opinion , one can believe in an accidental, purposeless universe, or one can believe in science, but there's a logical difficulty in believing both simultaneously.

adrenalynn · Sep 25, 2007

You seem to have made a leap into logical fallacy. Where I think you fell off the tracks is when you appear to have jumped to the conclusion that any causal-effect chain of events has one and exactly one possible outcome. Of course, that's never true as there are a nearly infinite number of "if/then" statements at a nearly infinite number of points from the first instant. "Is hydrogen true or false" is a meaningless non-question. We need to pick a language and stick with it. If we run with English, the question would have to be something like "Is the statement of the existance of hydrogen true or false?". "Does a volcano, as defined, exist?" "Are all volcanos a pretty shade of chartreuse and spew molten cheese?" Science can prove science because science is more than a simple single statement of logic. It is a series of tests none [necessarily] interdependant upon the other. The inch is a horrid example, because it is a convention, not a truth. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

wurf · Sep 25, 2007

Before an event happens there may or may not be many possible outcomes, but after the event, there is only one - the one which happened. And that event is the one which caused the next one. If you want to really stretch I suppose you could say that in an indirect way some or all of the possible events which didn't happen also contributed to the form of the effect by virtue of their not happening, but then that just brings them under the umbrella of being merely a divisible part of one event which did. I agree that the hydrogen question is meaningless. So in the question, remove the word hydrogen and substitute thought, "Is thought true or false". What's the difference? Hydrogen and our brains are both composed of atoms. Hydrogen will "act" in certain puropseless, undirected ways, and so will our brains. Thoughts are merely physical/chemical/electrical actions of those purposeless, undirected atoms, from the same source, the Big Bang. If I played devil's advocate and asked someone to prove that science as a whole is true, it would be absurd to accept scientific tests as proof. The word "trueness" in regard to the inch was used in the sense of accuracy, not in any sense of cosmic significance. Once a majority of humans agree on what an inch or a centimeter is, then it exists and is expected to have one exact length, for the sake of being useful. Science could also be "accurate" that way, a convention which is useful for humans to make medicines, computers and rockets, without being true.

ashish27 · Sep 25, 2007

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr /> So that's a "believe" thing? <hr /></blockquote> no its a "feel" thing.

adrenalynn · Sep 25, 2007

More with Wurf when I get a few minutes. I'm packing for a week long remote trip. I'll try to get in here via satellite uplink when I'm able... My apologies for hanging threads. no its a "feel" thing. What's the difference? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

wurf · Sep 25, 2007

No problem, thanks for responding. No hurry anyway since I doubt the issue will be resolved to satisfaction, lol. As to ashish's comments, words such as "I believe", "I feel", "I suppose", "I think" are all, in his context, close enough in intended meaning to be interchangeable. Especially in that they all stand in contrast to the words "I know", or "It has been proven". If someone claims to believe a thing, you could ask them to provide grounds or evidence, but not necessarily an amount or quality of evidence which amounts to proof. But if someone claims to know a thing, it would be fair to go further and ask for evidence which is sufficient to establish proof.

mytheory · Sep 25, 2007

Before an event happens there may or may not be many possible outcomes, but after the event, there is only one - the one which happened. I agree very strongly with that statement, unless you bring in to the discussion multiple universes where outcomes vary from universe to universe for any given event, as Steven Hawkins believes. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> @LEX </div>

adrenalynn · Sep 26, 2007

Thanks Wurf. I should be in bed, but. . . <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> I think that's a very reasonable response, re: your take on Ashish's commentary. The funny thing, which I will admit, about "proof" is that it only goes so far. Like a 3yo, you can ask "why" until there just aren't any more answers. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

adrenalynn · Sep 26, 2007

I agree that there was only one eventual outcome to a single event, but that doesn't lock every following event into a single track. Every effect leads to a new decision leading to a new cause leading to a new event. Only a single effect is locked into place. But there are a near infinite number of splits in the tree for every decision. Although the event contributed to the next cause, nothing is frozen by the previous decision. By stating that thoughts are merely physical/chemical [...] purposeless actions of undirected atoms - well there-in lies the rub, doesn't it? That brings us to the philosophical question of predetermination versus free-will. Is the whole universe and everything within it on a track from which it can't be derailed, even in the microcosm? What is consciousness? What is predetermination? Are we more than the sum of our parts or not? Obviously (I think), we're not going to solve that one here... I don't think it's "absurd" to "accept scientific tests" in order to prove science. Scientific tests are not science in itself. Scientific tests are a practice established in pure logic. So we have two choices here that I can see. We can either attack the tests and show logically where they are insufficient. OR we can attack logic as a whole, and show where it's deficient. The big problem there is attacking logic without logic. (Although I see people do that frequently. It's rather amusing. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />) So I guess from here the question I have becomes: "Where do the established scientific tests fall down? What, specifically, is wrong with them? What can we do that is better"? You seem to be looking to redefine the definition of "true/truth". What definition shall we use? What do you find preferable? What exactly is "cosmically significant"? Pure science is very infrequently a simple convention. Too much is based on things that are NOT cosmically unsubstantial. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

wurf · Sep 27, 2007

I agree water was water before humans could observe it. And as soon as there existed four quarks or four anything, then 2 + 2 = 4, whether or not Earth or man ever came to be. I guess that's what "truths" are, facts which exist and are not subjective or illusory to humans. And it's science's job to find them and figure them out. What I meant about science not being used to prove science, with no appeal to anything supernatural or anything beyond observable phenomena, I could sum up with a hypothetical conversation: A scientist tells me "We've used reason and logic (thought processes in the brain) to discover much of the nature of the universe. What we've found is that everything is a purposeless, undirected flow of unconscious, irrational matter and energy." I might ask "Does 'everything' include scientists' brains?" "Yes." "So, you've used a purposeless, undirected flow of unconscious, irrational matter and energy to learn that everything is a purposeless, undirected flow of unconscious, irrational matter and energy." I'd be forced to conclude that science is nonsense. The problem solves itself if we allow that Reason, the thing which observes, measures, describes and judges all other things, is not wholly or merely a part of the flow or chain of things and events. While reason does manifest itself as a thought process in the brain, by mechanisms in common with all other natural events, it is not fully a part of the naturally occurring universe, or it at least has a different original source.

vandivx · Sep 29, 2007

"A scientist tells me "We've used reason and logic (thought processes in the brain) to discover much of the nature of the universe. What we've found is that everything is a purposeless, undirected flow of unconscious, irrational matter and energy." " ---- nice posts of yours and Adrenalynn here but let me comment what you seem to be missing here is that logic - reason and logic are really refering to the same thing because logic is the tool of the human thought process that we call reasoning when we are applying logic in that process - had been originally derived from observing nature, how it operates in very fundamental ways (Greeks formalized that) and from that it follows that if one uses correct logic one can't arrive at the conclusion that nature behaves irrationally, that would be grossest contradiction bar none while rules of logic are based on observation how nature operates, they are not merely some empirical truths about nature that we simply didn't observe yet to be otherwise, logical rules are fundamental in the sense that they cannot be untrue because that would autmatically imply contradiction and contradictions can't exist, rules of logic are in thus necessary rules which cannot be otherwise, they weren't invented but discovered in nature <blockquote>In reply to:<hr />The problem solves itself if we allow that Reason, the thing which observes, measures, describes and judges all other things, is not wholly or merely a part of the flow or chain of things and events. While reason does manifest itself as a thought process in the brain, by mechanisms in common with all other natural events, it is not fully a part of the naturally occurring universe, or it at least has a different original source.<hr /></blockquote> now it is true that we humans including our brains and thought processes are part of this nature and one might then say that nature is observing and studying itself ( <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

alokmohan · Sep 29, 2007

Last line you have talked of inner life.This unscientific talk.I mean to think this way is the way of science.

mytheory · Sep 30, 2007

I suspect that the ability to rearange concrete percepts into abstract concepts is due to some physiological difference from animals, if I take it as a given thing that we can do it then I can personally understand how we can become conscious of ourselves (which BTW animals never can and so they are totally shameless, they are purely outward oriented creatures without inner life - that is sole domain of us humans) and how it comes that we have the ability to originate a course of action (to have free will) I have to disagree with the later part of your statement that animals can never be conscious of themselves or have free will. Humans have no way of knowing what goes on inside animals brains, how they think, what they feel and how the preceived the world. Yes, Humans have evolved due to the fact that they have learned to communicate with each other in complex ways and have learned to use their hands to operate different tools. Animals can communicate with eachother in many ways that humans can not, some of which we are just starting to discover. Animals like humans can use tools to collect food, hunt, build living spaces you name it. They raise and care for their young and do everything in their power to pass on all they've learned to the next in line. I would think that they would have to be conscious of themselves to want to do all of these things. The part about free will was confusing to me, if an animal has the will to go and hunt for something so that it and it's young can survive they will surely do this. But because we can not understand what animals are saying when they communicate with themselves we shouldn't assume that they're outward oriented creatures. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> @LEX </div>

mytheory · Sep 30, 2007

....animals have no inner life? I think and hope you don't own any pets! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> @LEX </div>

vandivx · Sep 30, 2007

"I have to disagree with the later part of your statement that animals can never be conscious of themselves or have free will. Humans have no way of knowing what goes on inside animals branes, how they think, what they feel and how the preceived the world." --- well then, explain yourself at more length than just asserting it and please do it at least on the level I wrote my last post (not like if pet owner wrote it because we all know how cudly and emotional they can get but a scientist or amateur scientist) and then we can talk further, at least then I will be able to judge your understanding of these matters and know how (in what depth) and if I should reply with more than that I disagree with your statement you don't need to know what goes on inside their (animal) brains, in the same spirit you could say nobody knows what goes on inside anybody's brain incl his fellow men (which is a fact) and so he can't know anything and should just stop theorizing and go fire up his barbeque and open sixpack <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> animal behaviour is wonderfull thing and I can see how people can be fooled into seeing in it if not outright full human element then at least nascent parts of it, people who have pets are specially inclined to dump any objective assesment of their pet's behaviour but I am not aiming my post here to such pet owners vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

adrenalynn · Sep 30, 2007

I'm running out the door, so a quick post for sake of discussion. Some of the smarter dogs I've had, such as my current Jack Russell "Thor!" show signs of self-awareness. Any example: He will attack a dog that appears on the television. He will attack a dog on the street. But if you place him in front of a mirror, he will look at himself without reaction. If you shoot live video to the same television, he will watch himself with apparent curiosity, but not for long, and he won't attack the image. This is a classic test of self-awareness. We recognize ourselves in a mirror image. He's demonstrated that he does as well. The television example eliminates smell from the equation. He'll attack a strange dog's image without scent, but won't attack his own image. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> .bipartisan (bī-pär'tĭ-zən, -sən) [Adj.] Maintaining the ability to blame republications when your stimulus plan proves to be a devastating failure.IMPEACH OBAMA! </div>

mytheory · Oct 1, 2007

I did respond with more then I disagree if you haven't noticed. It appears that someone else had something to add which supports what I believe. Also I feel as if I have upset you somehow by disagreeing with what you wrote and feel whatever I add to what I have already written will not help my case. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> @LEX </div>

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