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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 7, 2006 8:41:47 GMT -5
1+1=2 was just an example to show basic concepts that are true, laws don't change.
If blah+blah=blee, and blee+blee=blob, then we know blah+blah+blah+blah=blob.
And as far as virtual particles and whatnot, just because we don't know where the particles are coming from doesn't mean there is not a completely understandable solution that we have just not arrived at, possibly because we haven't discovered smaller somethings that produce these, but we have to assume these exist. It goes against the fundamental things that governs everything, why would we assume that they just are magically created in space, and not formed from other things. That doesn't even make sense. All we can be sure of is math, if something you come up with conflicts it then what you came up with is wrong.
You can believe in a lawed and governed world or a random and chaotic one, i prefer the idea of being able to be sure of at least a few things like numbers....
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Post by Rodak on Oct 7, 2006 10:27:08 GMT -5
It goes against the fundamental things that governs everything, why would we assume that they just are magically created in space, and not formed from other things. That doesn't even make sense. All we can be sure of is math, if something you come up with conflicts it then what you came up with is wrong. You can believe in a lawed and governed world or a random and chaotic one, i prefer the idea of being able to be sure of at least a few things like numbers.... We cannot prove otherwise, and are thus COMPELLED to admit the possibility, no matter how remote. And one can have both order and chaos in different regions of the Universe! Near black holes things get rather trippy. Laws break down. We logically arrive at the inescapable conclusion that logic simply can not govern Everything! There is no way to accept Modern Cosmology without accepting the Random, inexplicable Crap that goes on at the Extremes of nature! |
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 7, 2006 19:11:48 GMT -5
Laws don't break, if it does...it's not a law. The case is that we don't fully understand how the law works and under what circumstances therefore it appears to have broken, when really we just need to adjust our law a little.
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Post by doyleman on Oct 7, 2006 19:38:23 GMT -5
in fact it's stupid not to accept definity. I can't believe you'ld stoop to something so retarded lol. Isn't that kind of indirectly saying that 'people who go by this belief' are 'stupid/retarded'? Cuz it sure seems like it. |
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 7, 2006 19:55:03 GMT -5
Indirectly yes...but not directly :-P
Just saying some of the arguments are more absurd than what I'm even trying to imply lol
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Post by Doan the Nado on Oct 9, 2006 2:08:12 GMT -5
You seriously sound drunk in these posts, Nash. You show little indication of fully thinking through Ves's arguments, and you are acting as though you are an unquestionable authority on Physics matters in general. Where'd you get your PhD? I mean, I know you did that school thing over the summer, but I was a Physics major for a year and a half, and an Astronomy minor, and I know that I cannot even hope to pretend to be an expert.
Seriously, you need to take several college Physics courses (and not intro- or even second-level stuff), and then come back and read these posts you're making. The universe is much more random than you would ever imagine, and even if it all does obey some kind of physical law, those laws could never be discovered within the confines of our own universe. Maybe 6-dimensional, super-intelligent beings can look upon our universe and see it all laid out like a story. Maybe we are all just part of a giant computer simulation (a la The Matrix or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), but from our perspective, there is really no way to tell. If in the fabric of our universe, choice appears to us as true choice, and there is no way to disprove it, then what's the difference if it's "true choice" or only observed choice? In the state in which we are aware of our existence, there is all indication of choice, so why should we assume that it is anything but?
Also, as far as the big bang is concerned, it is a logical extension of the existing knowledge that we have. All particles in every direction are moving away from us, which leads astronomers to conclude that the universe is expanding. Going in the reverse direction, it would be reasonable to believe that it all must have originated at a single point before an enormous expansion. Of course, other things are possible, too, such as oscillations in the fabric of space-time that cause periodic expansions and collapses, or something like that.
Uncertainties like this are the reason that I try to keep an open mind. I read all these posts to see if there is any new knowledge to be gained, new perspectives to consider. When someone comes out and introduces a very shaky theory of theirs which is largely based on intuition, then that person dogmatically pursues that theory and calls all who disagree silly or stupid, that sounds a lot to me like that subset of religious people who do the same thing.
Oh, and back on the topic, 1+1 is quite dependent on the units. Let 1 (or "blah", or "blee", or whatever) be .5c, or half the speed of light. Let's assume that a train is traveling at this speed, and then a man throws a ball at this same speed. The speed of the ball, then, should be 1+1=2=c, from simple intuition, but simple intuition is wrong. Numbers are an invention of man to describe the world around him, as ves was hinting at, and they only follow the laws that we assign to them. Electrons and the very basics of physical particles fail to even acknowledge numbers, and there is no reason for us to believe that they represent the foundation of our universe.
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 9, 2006 7:48:56 GMT -5
even if it all does obey some kind of physical law, those laws could never be discovered within the confines of our own universe. Maybe 6-dimensional, super-intelligent beings can look upon our universe and see it all laid out like a story. Maybe we are all just part of a giant computer simulation (a la The Matrix or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), but from our perspective, there is really no way to tell. That's exactly my point there Doan. All I'm saying is that the world is lawed (even beyond our comprehension), but because it is thus there is not true choice because the laws have to follow themselves. We almost definitely will never fully understand everything about the science of the world, but it without a doubt is lawed. Even if it does seem to create some extremely chaotic things, math does this too; I was just reading on derivatives the other day and found some graphs that looked soo chaotic they essentially looked to be a bunch of random points....looked random yes, but were they...no. Our past is as definite as our future, it's just our form of life was created to function this direction in time and thus can only use our past for analyzation and not our future. Basically all my report says is "The world has to follow the laws of physics which are beyond our comprehension, but is consistent even if we don't understand them. Because this is true we too are governed by the laws and thus the situation we are currently in not only has it's definite past that we know but also a definite future." Nothing too profound, hard to understand, or perverse. Just a simple (and most direct)conclusion based on a highly supported idea that the world has laws. |
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Post by doyleman on Oct 9, 2006 16:23:42 GMT -5
Seriously, you need to take several college Physics courses (and not intro- or even second-level stuff), and then come back and read these posts you're making. The universe is much more random than you would ever imagine, and even if it all does obey some kind of physical law, those laws could never be discovered within the confines of our own universe. Maybe 6-dimensional, super-intelligent beings can look upon our universe and see it all laid out like a story. Thank you! I tried finding the words for my argument, but couldn't seem to get them. Those are them, basically. I agree with Doan. Just the fact that anything is possible COULD render a law 'not' a law, couldn't it? |
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 9, 2006 18:07:02 GMT -5
Just the fact that anything is possible COULD render a law 'not' a law, couldn't it? No, it's just that are law wasn't completely correct and we need to adjust our law to follow the full information we have now. |
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Post by doyleman on Oct 9, 2006 19:37:00 GMT -5
Well, if say anything is indeed possible, then the law of what goes up must come down could be contradicted if something weren't to come back down. Cuz, anything is possible.
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Post by vespuleth on Oct 10, 2006 1:39:29 GMT -5
doyle, your a genius.
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 10, 2006 7:37:55 GMT -5
What goes up must comes down isn't the law though. It was before we completely understood gravity. Now we know it's the earth's pull on the object that brings it back down but if we get far enough away it won't be pulled back down to earth. Gravity is a force that is consistent throughout. Even light is effected by it, even if after a billion light years it only moves 1 electron over, it's still something. ~~~~~~Ed: Oh and what makes you say that anything is possible? If you're trying to play to my everything theory these still work together in basis. The lawed world is a logical product of the everything because the illogical products don't exist in a sense of time like this. |
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Post by Jugem on Oct 10, 2006 15:06:11 GMT -5
This is the first time I've seen this topic, and I've just briefly gone through most of the replies, so I apologize if I say something that's already been brought up.
Nash, it seems like true choice can't exist solely based on your definition alone. You say true choice "infers a choice not made based on all your influences", and has options "where each has 100% possibility of occurring". Would that not imply randomness? And randomness is not choice. But let's look past that for a minute.
I take issue with your definition of "true choice" not allowing for past influences/experiences. That is against the intuitive meaning for the term "choice". "Choice" means that we choose one of a selection of possible outcomes, based on whatever information we have that might help us in our selection. That includes past experiences. Sometimes we use those to help us make a choice. Other times, we ignore them and make a choice (that others may consider to be a bad choice) anyway.
Now, you may argue that there's no way that we would have made any other choice. So, if time was continually reset, and we went back to that moment in time at the moment the choice was made (with no knowledge of that moment or any moment thereafter), then you'd say that choice would be made every single time. Am I correct in assuming this? So when you say true choice doesn't exist, are you really saying we'd make the same choice over and over again in the situation just described?
Well, without time travel, there's no way to know if that situation is true (the same choice being made every time). It's easy to say that we would make the same choice, because we'd always have the exact same information to make that choice from. But in actuality, you can't claim that is the case. Simply because we don't have the means of knowing that.
I hope I understood/interpreted what you had written correctly.
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 10, 2006 19:53:36 GMT -5
You got her for the most part.
"Well, without time travel, there's no way to know if that situation is true (the same choice being made every time). It's easy to say that we would make the same choice, because we'd always have the exact same information to make that choice from. But in actuality, you can't claim that is the case. Simply because we don't have the means of knowing that."
To an extent your correct. We can't go to the past to see to be sure that are choices would always be the same in same exact exact situation. But because of the conistency of laws, we can come to this conclusion I believe. I'm a math guy, everything can be broken into fundamentals. Gravity is the same law now as 100 years ago, wether the human law of it changed or not, what it truly is hasn't. Absolute truth is the idea. So if the exact situation were to exist again the exact same outcome would have to occur. For every action there is an equal and opposite reactioN....one resultant case, not reactionS.
Thanks btw. And I like how you summarized true choice better than I did. True choice is saying that under the exact same conditions there are more than one possible outcomes that exist. But that would mean our past would be non-definite.
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Post by vespuleth on Oct 11, 2006 1:27:09 GMT -5
I really don't understand how you come to this conclusion.
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Post by Jugem on Oct 11, 2006 5:24:28 GMT -5
What do you mean by "non-definite" when you say "our past would be non-definite"?
Consistency of laws? And how do you compare gravity to the mental states of humans?
You keep on spouting out that every action has an equal and opposite reaction... What exactly do you mean by this? Can you give any examples? As it is, it seems the only purpose of this statement is to trick us into believing that true choice doesn't exist, without giving any explanation as to how.
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 11, 2006 7:55:47 GMT -5
A nondefinite past, because if you indeed come upon the idea that we could replay an exact scenario and get a different outcome, then there are also multiple ways upon which we could have our current state...an unclear cut past. We know that's impossible so logical so is our future to not be clear cut.
"And how do you compare gravity to the mental states of humans?"
You don't think the laws of physic apply to humans. Our cells can just magically defy chemistry and not do EXACTLY as they are suppose to do? Well ok then, you can go believe that then....
"You keep on spouting out that every action has an equal and opposite reaction... What exactly do you mean by this? "
What I mean is that for every event there is one defined reaction event. One. The opposite of 3 is just -3 (not -3,-4, and -9). Therefore for any precise happening there has to be a precise outcome. Since there has to be a precise outcome, the situation the entire world is currently in has to have a precise outcome. Everything following the laws and doing what they are suppose to, suddenly life comes about (regardless of statistics, if it's 1 in a google to happen, space still goes on forever so we just happen to be in that 1), life gets more complex, life that has characteristics to survive live on, those that don't die off, eventually giving us products of today with for the most part traits that allow us to live, we get complex enough to understand ourselves and others, we are told we don't have choice, we get mad even though it's true because of some past stimulus and whatnot to lead us to believe so, cause and effect, etc.... We are products of laws, complex, but still lawed regardless of what we do. Don't like to believe it, i don't care, you can believe that a giant chicken made the universe for all I care. But I'ld like to take the more obvious truth.
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Post by Doan the Nado on Oct 11, 2006 12:32:18 GMT -5
A nondefinite past, because if you indeed come upon the idea that we could replay an exact scenario and get a different outcome, then there are also multiple ways upon which we could have our current state...an unclear cut past. We know that's impossible so logical so is our future to not be clear cut. That is where your argument breaks down. We don't "know that's impossible", and in fact, I seriously doubt that it is. In one of my Computer Science courses, we are studying finite state machines. These are systems that have various states, and different input causes them to transition to different states. Here's an example from a machine that can accept input of either 'a' or 'b': q1 -a-> q2 .| .b .| .V q3 -a-> q4 -b-^ (up to q2) q1 represents the initial state, and q2 a possible "current state". One one hand, we could get to q2 by "a" alone, or we could get there by "bab". The fact that we are currently in q2 tells us nothing about how we got there. This serves to disprove two of your assertions: 1. Given current state, if you know all the laws, you can determine how you got there. 2. It is impossible to have multiple ways to reach the current state. The crux of your posts are those two assertions above, and frankly, they are incorrect. |
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 11, 2006 16:42:27 GMT -5
No Doan you don't understand, because in your case your are not all knowing. It's like ves's puddy we can't work the puddy itself backwards...we need to work EVERYTHING backwards. You must have complete knowledge of everything's precise state a.k.a the exact eletronic messages that cause the running of the script, their location and routing and everything.
Obviously knowing every variable is impossible however it's the fact that if one did know all the variables they could work backwards. Also the consistency of our past shows us this. If we lived in a free world/true choice world, our past would be as indefinite as how you want to see our future.
~~~(profound explanation ahead lol)~~~
For simplicity think of it this way. Our past we say is definite...our future you want to say isn't. But what is our future other than the past that hasn't yet came. And since the past has to be definite, so does our future.
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Post by Jugem on Oct 11, 2006 16:43:12 GMT -5
Assuming that replaying an exact scenario could result in different outcomes, you can't conclude that we have "an unclear cut past". Even though you can't determine the outcome from the past situations, there might still be only one possible past scenario for each outcome.
And even if our past is not clear-cut, why is that impossible?
And what "exactly" are they supposed to do? Has it been proven that there isn't something above and beyond pure simple chemistry/physics/etc. when it comes to mental states?
Can you support this claim? Are you saying true randomness doesn't exist? You make a bunch of claims, but I have to yet to see any solid support for any of them.
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Post by Jugem on Oct 11, 2006 16:48:11 GMT -5
~~~(profound explanation ahead lol)~~~ For simplicity think of it this way. Our past we say is definite...our future you want to say isn't. But what is our future other than the past that hasn't yet came. And since the past has to be definite, so does our future. Why does the future have to be definite if the past is? It seems that you like to think going in both directions of a causal relationship is the same. So if A causes B, then it seems like you think if B came about, then A must have also. But that's not the case. Maybe C also causes B. Then maybe C was the past instead of A. |
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 11, 2006 17:46:17 GMT -5
I understand that under normal cases with limited knowledge we can't work backwards.
For example we have the number 5. We don't know anything about it. We can't work backwards and see where it came from.
But under the full knowledge case it works more like an investigation where you have unlimited knowledge.
Let's say you could know the current condition of everything in a situation. Your saying you couldn't eventually figure what happened? There are 5 apples on the ground. You know exactly where their bruises are. You know exactly where each sproutspot on the tree is. We know where bends in the grass strands are. Everything. Are you saying that with knowing everything, every exact atom location, it's not possible to determine what happened? If you can move one frame backwards, you can repeat and find a billion frames backwards. Our thoughts are just chemical equations.
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Post by Jugem on Oct 11, 2006 17:57:40 GMT -5
Just about to go off to work, but noticed your post and thought I'd put forward a quick word or two...
So, did the bruises come from the apples hitting the ground, or from a bird swooping down and hitting the apple with part of his feet or beak (or something else)? Maybe the bird even hit the apple from the tree, knocking it down. At the same moment that the apple would have fallen naturally. The point is, you can't know what happened.
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Post by NASH7777 on Oct 11, 2006 18:09:04 GMT -5
Yeah but you also know the exact position and data of every bird in existence. Whether they have a full stomach or not or w-e tidbit of info you need. Also you know the exact shape of the bruise the exact intensity with which it fell and the exact time in which it fell based on decomposition and other factors. because you know everything, you always have enough info to solve the problem.
I'm accepting absolute truth, if so you have to side with me. If you want to believe there is no absolute truths then go ahead. Religious people have to agree with me here. Plus God knows everything right. So if God knows what we're gunna do before we do it...it's not really true choice. It's like what Ves said about our past. We know are past is definite only because we've seen it. But God has seen our future so that is definite as well.
And I do like your statement on "how can we be sure our path is definite?" We assume that because we have memories of things that's the way they were...but does that truly mean it. I could see someone saying our past is just as indefinite as our future, and if you go that right I'd agree with you.
If our past is definite so is our future.
But if our past isn't definite then our future isn't either.
plus I'll resay: At some time our future will be the past and the past is definite so our future is.
but if you say our past isn't definite then our future can't be either.
I agree completely with either conclusion. (especially because it goes directly with what I really believe in, the bigger picture of my everything theory)
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Post by doyleman on Oct 11, 2006 19:41:04 GMT -5
Oh and what makes you say that anything is possible? If you're trying to play to my everything theory these still work together in basis. The lawed world is a logical product of the everything because the illogical products don't exist in a sense of time like this. What makes it seem like anything is possible? What kind of question is that? The answer is simply because WE, as a race of humans, will never EVER see every possible outcome for every single thing. There may be algorithms to show behaviors (as shown in the movie 'A beautiful mind'), but are you saying nothing can sway any outcome? When you think about it, because of the limitless area of space, anything can happen! I read in ripleys believe it or not that somewhere it rained mice... or was it snakes, i dont know, but either way, it happened. Sure, some screw up at a plant could have caused it, but it was still pretty funny to hear bout it happening. Your thinking on the small scale of only laws, when not everything is lawed. Things that ARENT lawed can interfere with laws, and thus, anything is possible! |
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