General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: XxDaSTaRxx on June 23, 2015, 12:17:19 PM
Title: Is reality Real?
Post by: XxDaSTaRxx on June 23, 2015, 12:17:19 PM
I'm about to challenge your preconceived notions about reality, and the very universe around you. Now I know you think it's real, and I know you think it's 3 dimensional, But what does science have to say about that? How about we take everything you believe, and blow it the hell up.
Now let's take a look at the standard scientific model of the universe.
Everything, time space and matter was created at one moment in time known as "The Big Bang."
Now you cannot ask what happened before The Big Bang because time was created at that very moment, so there was no "before" The Big Bang. And you sure can't say "What in the Universe made the Universe" because the Universe was created at that exact moment. Newton's laws of motion say that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, meaning that something has to cause something to happen. Fire doesn't happen without spark, and smoke doesn't happen without fire. In other words, everything needs a catalyst for it to happen. So what made the Big Bang possible if there was no time or space for that catalyst to exist within?
This little conundrum is the reason why Einstein and the majority of his piers refuse to accept the Big Bang model, because it means that something that transcends, time, energy, space and matter, somehow created reality and the universe around you. Now think about that. Everything in your universe became a thing at a time when there was no things and there was no time. And although there are a small number of theoretical physicists demanding this is possible due to the laws of quantum mechanics, there's a whole bunch of others who say "nuh uh. We've got it wrong." And it doesn't matter who you side with because science is right now testing to see if we live within a hologram.
And what do I mean by a hologram? I mean that everything around you may not be 3 dimensional, it may be a projection from the outside of space on a two dimension field outside your reality. And with science today it may sound crazy, but there's been a lot of recent discoveries supporting that theory. So lets take a look at recent science. In 1982 a physicist known as Alain Aspect out of the University of Paris discovers that certain particles can communicate with each other regardless of the distance between each-other instantaneously, regardless of the space between them. This directly disputes Einstein's law that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, and suggests that space as we know it is an illusion. This leads David Bohm, one of the worlds most critically acclaimed scientific minds in quantum mechanics to say that REALITY DOESN'T EXIST AT ALL. In the 1990s, some phystists go on to say that once we can look at a very large level of space that we will be able to see a holographic haze or a hear a holographic hum, that will give evidence of a holographic reality. In January of 2009, the GEO600, the worlds most sensitive gravitational detector discovers such noise of this hum. This indeed supports the holographic principle. Whew. We're not even done. Not even lose to done.
Nick Bostrom. A professor from Oxford University, and award winning philosopher, argues that there is a high probability that we exist within a computer simulation. He presents this argument in his 2003 paper, "The Simulation Argument." Within this argument, he allows an equal probability to 3 possibilities. 1) All species within the universe, that achieve technological maturity, end up destroying themselves before they could make simulations of the universe. 2) All species technologically mature enough to create a simulation of the universe, choose not to. And of course number 3, we are living within a simulation of the universe. What he's trying to argue is, if there is at least one planet in the entire universe with life technologically mature enough to make an exact simulation of the universe to which it's artificially intelligent "players" cannot understand a difference between a real universe and their simulated one, we could be within it.
Now you're saying, Kippy, how does that even make sense? Well lets consider the fact that computer engineers say we could accomplish this feat in the next 30 years, some say 500. But either way, that is a small drop of time within a large "bucket" of time. Now imagine all of the species out there that are 1000, 1,000,000 or even 1,000,000,000 years more advanced than us technologically. Now ask yourself how many individual simulations are out there with artificial intelligent "players" that can think, feel, and make decisions on their own. If you are looking at the size of the cosmos, and if there is in fact life that is more technologically advanced than we are, which is nearly 100% guaranteed, then we could be looking at hundreds of thousands, if not millions of simulations of the universe, and that is highly likely. In fact, Nick Bostrom argues the only way to counter-act the mathematical probability of this actually happening is saying that anybody who is technologically advanced to simulate the universe like that decides not to or dies before they can. But if even one race on one planet in the entire cosmos can make one, the chances are you could be in one right now. Just do the math yourself, a million simulations with intelligent AI that can think for themselves just like humans vs. your odds of being in the real universe. So in other words, if there are millions of these simulations then you have nearly a 0 chance of being in the real universe.
TL;DR? Take your Ritalin and try again.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: PR3D4TOR on June 23, 2015, 12:39:27 PM
Follow the white rabbit.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Gman on June 23, 2015, 12:49:42 PM
If you've ever studied or even just read about quantum mechanics, this is pretty interesting material regarding the same subject matter. Go to 3:36 in the video if you don't want to see the other innovations in the video first. Also, the link to the Uni of Aus work and more information on the experiments regarding future affecting past quantum mechanics theory. As Einstein himself said in his writings about this subject, it's "pretty spooky". Scientists now claim they've proven this, see below. If true, it goes a long way in explaining human instincts and flashes of deja-vu many have described over human history.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: TequilaChaser on June 23, 2015, 01:07:41 PM
see you in the next earth age, hopefully......
if you don't get it, read your Bible!
TC
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Zoney on June 23, 2015, 01:39:28 PM
I've researched this theory XxDaSTaRxx, and I'm sorry, but it has some huge holes in the logic.
The programmers are supposedly so good they have created this entire Universe that is not real but they are not good enough to stop us from figuring it out. What would be the point of not correcting the programming flaw? Why, if this is true would the programmers want to hide the reality that it is a holographic computer simulation, but allow us to discover the flaws?
It just does not work both ways for me.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: FLS on June 23, 2015, 01:47:18 PM
Somebody doesn't understand the collision model.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: SFRT - Frenchy on June 23, 2015, 02:00:04 PM
I don't if it's real since it's the one I'm stuck in. :)
Title: 42 is the answer
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on June 23, 2015, 02:43:24 PM
You ignorants! Douglas Adams already explained everything in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: TequilaChaser on June 23, 2015, 03:42:22 PM
Um, it's an increasingly ill-named trilogy of 5 books.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: TequilaChaser on June 23, 2015, 04:18:50 PM
Yes it is, my Daughter tells me all about them.... actually both of my Daughters probably read anywhere from 15 to 30 books a month....where as I only read American Hunter and National Rifleman mostly.... with a few Hot Rod and other magazines...
Books I might read are from people I know personally or knew before they past'd away...
Damned KGann, Damned Sniff both who have gone to Heaven, Damned Rodan still kicking , and others I have meet in these flight sims...... all of them have books published, Rodan has quiet a few published....
TC
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Meatwad on June 23, 2015, 06:31:19 PM
The great book says everything on this planet is controlled by little mice, and that everything you need is your towel and the great book
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: SPKmes on June 23, 2015, 07:28:45 PM
we are a highly contagiuos bacteria in a petrie dish...we are being studied to find a cure for the disease...the bright light we see (commonly known as the sun) is in fact the light of the microscope.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: katanaso on June 23, 2015, 09:30:10 PM
Everything, time space and matter was created at one moment in time known as "The Big Bang."
Now you cannot ask what happened before The Big Bang because time was created at that very moment, so there was no "before" The Big Bang. And you sure can't say
Have to disagree, there was Time before the Big Bang, just no way to measure it.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: FLOOB on June 23, 2015, 10:52:55 PM
Quote
Is reality Real?
Definition of REALITY
1: the quality or state of being real
Yes. Next question.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: PR3D4TOR on June 23, 2015, 11:55:25 PM
They did make it into a movie. My imagination, while reading, was better than the movie. I'm sure that I'm not alone.
The Infocom game was fun too. :)
I know they made a movie but a movie can represent perhaps 2% of the books. And 90% of that wrong.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: kappa on June 24, 2015, 12:35:28 AM
Could be on to something cause apparently the moon is just a hologram too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3axPn65MGM
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: bozon on June 24, 2015, 12:57:13 AM
There are are a lot of thing wrong in the OP - facts, history and physics. Too many to type.
Once philosophy is brought into the discussion you immediately know that this is going to be pseudo-physics BS. Philosophy was cast out of science about 200 (?) years ago for a reason. Universities now keep their professors of philosophy in a building sufficiently removed from the science and engineering departments so the scientist will not have to use the same cafeteria with the philosophers.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Swoop on June 24, 2015, 05:47:13 AM
42
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Lusche on June 24, 2015, 06:09:36 AM
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: eagl on June 24, 2015, 11:39:09 AM
The world we see is just the shell of a turtle. So what's the turtle standing on? Another turtle. You see, its turtles all the way down.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: XxDaSTaRxx on June 24, 2015, 02:32:04 PM
This thread is hilarious :rofl
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: XxDaSTaRxx on June 24, 2015, 02:35:07 PM
There are are a lot of thing wrong in the OP - facts, history and physics. Too many to type.
Once philosophy is brought into the discussion you immediately know that this is going to be pseudo-physics BS. Philosophy was cast out of science about 200 (?) years ago for a reason. Universities now keep their professors of philosophy in a building sufficiently removed from the science and engineering departments so the scientist will not have to use the same cafeteria with the philosophers.
Well I never really studied this stuff. Everything except the first introduction and the "Now you're saying, Kippy, how does that even make sense?" Was pulled from an article. I just wanted to see input from you guys and see if you all had ideas.
Well, That hasn't done me too much good as this threat has derailed a bit into hilarity, but I suppose the hilarious results are better than the ones I wanted.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Arlo on June 24, 2015, 02:48:36 PM
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Swoop on June 25, 2015, 03:26:39 AM
See, this whole argument about us being simulated is bunk. The shortened version of it is that if there are x number of billions of planets that support life and x number of billions of civilisation that could/can/did reach technological maturity then so many x number of those civs will have an interest in simulating historical scenarios (like us for example) which means there are going to be billions and billions and billions of simulated universes around, far outstripping the number of real universes. Therefore, the chances that we're in a simulated one is much higher than being in a real one.
But here's the thing.....firstly, I personally have half a dozen different universes (albeit at a much lower res than this one) simulated on my PC right now. I'm definitely not in any of them though.
Secondly, sure, I know simulations are getting pretty geeky these days (farming....goats, etc) but surely, no-one in their right mind is going to want to simulate me taking a dump in the morning. Or simulate me simulating something that's way more fun than the simulation....so to speak. I mean, as sims go, this one is even more geeky than World of Warcraft.
And thirdly, just using ratios as a method of predicting the state of things is a ridiculous thing. There are billions of Chinese.....only 70 million British......so by this logic my mum should have had a Chinese son, right? The most common first name in the world is Mohammed, the most common surname is Li......and I'll bet you right now you won't find one single Mohammed Li in the world. Basing scientific theory on ratios of probability is almost as stupid a theory as: In the beginning there was nothing....which exploded.
So no, I don't buy it. It's all hogwash.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: guncrasher on June 25, 2015, 03:48:26 AM
See, this whole argument about us being simulated is bunk. The shortened version of it is that if there are x number of billions of planets that support life and x number of billions of civilisation that could/can/did reach technological maturity then so many x number of those civs will have an interest in simulating historical scenarios (like us for example) which means there are going to be billions and billions and billions of simulated universes around, far outstripping the number of real universes. Therefore, the chances that we're in a simulated one is much higher than being in a real one.
But here's the thing.....firstly, I personally have half a dozen different universes (albeit at a much lower res than this one) simulated on my PC right now. I'm definitely not in any of them though.
Secondly, sure, I know simulations are getting pretty geeky these days (farming....goats, etc) but surely, no-one in their right mind is going to want to simulate me taking a dump in the morning. Or simulate me simulating something that's way more fun than the simulation....so to speak. I mean, as sims go, this one is even more geeky than World of Warcraft.
And thirdly, just using ratios as a method of predicting the state of things is a ridiculous thing. There are billions of Chinese.....only 70 million British......so by this logic my mum should have had a Chinese son, right? The most common first name in the world is Mohammed, the most common surname is Li......and I'll bet you right now you won't find one single Mohammed Li in the world. Basing scientific theory on ratios of probability is almost as stupid a theory as: In the beginning there was nothing....which exploded.
See, this whole argument about us being simulated is bunk. The shortened version of it is that if there are x number of billions of planets that support life and x number of billions of civilisation that could/can/did reach technological maturity then so many x number of those civs will have an interest in simulating historical scenarios (like us for example) which means there are going to be billions and billions and billions of simulated universes around, far outstripping the number of real universes. Therefore, the chances that we're in a simulated one is much higher than being in a real one.
But here's the thing.....firstly, I personally have half a dozen different universes (albeit at a much lower res than this one) simulated on my PC right now. I'm definitely not in any of them though.
Secondly, sure, I know simulations are getting pretty geeky these days (farming....goats, etc) but surely, no-one in their right mind is going to want to simulate me taking a dump in the morning. Or simulate me simulating something that's way more fun than the simulation....so to speak. I mean, as sims go, this one is even more geeky than World of Warcraft.
And thirdly, just using ratios as a method of predicting the state of things is a ridiculous thing. There are billions of Chinese.....only 70 million British......so by this logic my mum should have had a Chinese son, right? The most common first name in the world is Mohammed, the most common surname is Li......and I'll bet you right now you won't find one single Mohammed Li in the world. Basing scientific theory on ratios of probability is almost as stupid a theory as: In the beginning there was nothing....which exploded.
So no, I don't buy it. It's all hogwash.
I did find a mohamad ali. so by definition your explanation just got 99% debunked. if you include the fact that most people have a tendency to misspell then we can come with the conclusion based on my unscientific vodka and tonic logic that ali was actually a misspelling due to I dont know maybe the same reason why we have a guy named oral roberts. think about it what was their mom thinking about when they named him? same goes for ali, think his mama was more like yalling "alli, alli". so when he got older he remember his mom screaming that name behind closed doors and therefore he thought he was calling his name.
let me go get another drink and I'll tell you about the life of brian.
semp
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Swoop on June 25, 2015, 04:27:53 AM
I refuse to accept anyone who's chosen their own name (like Cassius Clay) as evidence that a Mohammed Li (or even a misspelled Mohammed Li) exists. Therefore we are not living in a computer simulation.
And dare you to build a time machine, go back to 1975 and tell Mohammed Ali that he can't spell his own name.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: pembquist on June 25, 2015, 09:57:37 AM
The time machine feature won't be available till the next update.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: FBKampfer on June 25, 2015, 11:58:45 AM
My personal favorite implication of quantum physics is that time might not be continous, but rather exist at discrete quanta at the Planck-time scale.
Oh, also the Planck temperature.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: DmonSlyr on June 25, 2015, 03:32:24 PM
One of the funniest things was my ex conspiritor roommate showing us a video about the world being "One big computer Simulation". The guy in the video said " One big computer Simulation" like at least 30 times with his British accent. Omg it was sooo funny. I couldn't even take the video seriously.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: FBKampfer on June 25, 2015, 07:22:28 PM
One of the funniest things was my ex conspiritor roommate showing us a video about the world being "One big computer Simulation". The guy in the video said " One big computer Simulation" like at least 30 times with his British accent. Omg it was sooo funny. I couldn't even take the video seriously.
You see the flat-earth conspiracy nuts?
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: BaldEagl on June 25, 2015, 08:04:34 PM
People are so loony man. Some people literally think everything in this world is out to get them and everything created by man is an atrocity with some hidden agenda behind it. It's like, lets take the first space shuttle landing on the moon for example. You have NASA written reports, a real rocket lift off, samples from the moon, reports from the astronauts, so on and so for. Yet, these loons decry the whole thing as a conspiracy simply because the flag was waving. These are the types of nut jobs who don't do a single bit of research about science, math, gravity, and wind, so they spread roadkill around the world to make people believe in what they do, and the worst part is that people will believe them.
Talk about idiocracy.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: SysError on June 26, 2015, 02:57:17 PM
So in other words, if there are millions of these simulations then you have nearly a 0 chance of being in the real universe.
The idea of not really existing was probably first fully put forward by Bishop Berkeley in 1710 in “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge”.
Berkeley’s main idea is that reality is just perception. Reality only exists in our minds and objects only exist to the degree that they are vivid in our minds.
“To be is to be perceived"
He is going way beyond Plato’s idea that something exists because we hold an essence of it in our minds.
The point I am trying to make here is that you may not need to buy in to (or perhaps understand) a Quantum Theory of holographic existence to argue that existence is some sort of simulation.
To be fair, I do not really understand Quantum Theory; I am a sort of like a lost tourist hopelessly flipping through a poorly edited phrase book for the wrong country --without my reading glasses. It is not that I have forgotten more than I once knew, it is that I muddle up more than I sometimes understand. I am reading a book right now that has a large section devoted to Quantum Theory but I do not hold out much hope that I’ll understand it.
Newton's laws of motion say that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
Wait. Since you are talking about the creation of the universe, why bring Newton into it? It is a bit like using a pastry chef as your main guy in a NASCAR pit crew. Wrong skill set for issue at hand perhaps?
This little conundrum is the reason why Einstein and the majority of his piers refuse to accept the Big Bang model, because it means that something that transcends, time, energy, space and matter, somehow created reality and the universe around you.
Yes there are a great many areas were Einstein didn't go. Einstein did not come up with a large number of theories, he only worked on a small number of ideas that have come to be the basis of one of our current frameworks of understanding the universe – the theory of General Relativity (the other framework idea is Quantum Theory. And yes, I’m leaving out String theory/M-theory for the moment).
Einstein himself never really proved any of his theories through predictions. In fact it wasn’t until 1919 when Arthur Eddington, four years after Einstein’s 1915 publication, used a total solar eclipse to prove Einstein’s idea that light bends. (To be fair, that it bends more than it was thought possible.)
In a sense we have moved beyond Einstein. In 1915, the accepted assumption was that the universe was static. It was Hubble who 20 or 30 years later (not sure when) realized that the universe was expanding, and it was right after that that the current idea of the Big Bang was developed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest and cosmologist. At the end you can thank Hawking. He "proved" singularity.
In 1982 a physicist known as Alain Aspect out of the University of Paris discovers that certain particles can communicate with each other regardless of the distance between each-other instantaneously, regardless of the space between them. This directly disputes Einstein's law that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, and suggests that space as we know it is an illusion.
It is true, we believe that nothing can go faster than ~187,000 miles per second – the speed of light. But I am sure that Alain Aspect knows that because of Einstein’s spacetime continuum you can argue that you might be able to bend the spacetime fabric around itself, much in the same way that you can fold the top part of a sheet of paper to its bottom half. So why would you say that you are using this to dispute Einstein? If he really has figured out how to “move” faster than light, he is the smartest person that you or I have heard of in the past 100 years.
I know that this is going to sound strange, but in a sense the following might be more believable: It sounds to me as if he should be arguing that he has developed/discovered some sort of time machine. We already know that time travel is possible. It has been proven. But it is a boring type of time travel – time dilation. There are several other passible theories about time travel, maybe he has stumbled into one of them.
Either that or he is really on the cusp of a new type of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Until someone reconciles General Relativity and Quantum Theory I guess these sort of issues will arise.
I will try to spend some time reading up on Alain Aspect but I am not sure that I’ll become a fan.
For me, the best way to understand Einstein is through Bertrand Russell's ABC of Relativity. Easy to read without overlooking anything important (expect for the math).
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Routledge-Classics-Bertrand-Russell/dp/0415473829 "Authoritative and accessible, it provides a remarkable introductory guide to Einstein’s theory of Relativity for a general readership".
Or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sio4yOdSbQI Bertrand Russell - ABC of Relativity: Part 1
(cont….)
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: SysError on June 26, 2015, 02:57:49 PM
Now let's take a look at the standard scientific model of the universe.
I'm losing it. The standard model has been proven complete with the discovery of the so called God Particle, the Higgs boson. (BTW: I read that the reason it has been called the God particle is that a couple of physicists who were trying to get a paper published used a working title of "That G*d D*m Particle", the publisher refused to use it and they all compromised on the "God Particle"). Physicists have come to hate the term the God particle. Media loves it, it sells print.
The point really is this: Now that we believe that we know for sure everything that makes up the Standard Model of particle physics, we have a real problem with how much we know about the universe.
In the 1970s a female American astronomer Vera Rubin (still with us) unexpectedly proved that if we take everything we know about Newtonian Physics and General Relativity, we can “see” or explain only about 4% of the universe. Something else--and we do not know what--makes up about 96% of “other matter”, or dark matter (and – to later to also include dark energy). People had had the idea of dark matter before the 1970s, but there was never any evidence until Rubin, who working with galaxies and how they moved, realized that unless you “add” 96% of this other thing you couldn’t explain the universe, gravity, time and really, at the end of the day, my 1972 Dodge Dart.
Until the Large Hadron Collider proved that the Standard Model was complete, one strong theory was that we had missed something really big in the Standard Model. We now know that that is not true.
We are now looking for a new physics, beyond the Standard Model.
It is an exciting time to be alive. 500 years from now, (when AH ver 30.0 is released), if we are still around as a civilization, people are going to look back in time and say – “And that’s when they started their search for ….????” (I know, I know, they will be saying it in Chinese but my hanzi sucks!)
There are several issues in going beyond the Standard Model and you can really see them when you look to see how the Higgs was discovered. The Higgs boson was discovered at an energy level of 8 teraelectronvolts (TeV) (actually a low level of energy, it is just that it is in one particle). The LHC can go up to 20 Tev (I believe) but take note of some real big issues. First they kind of had a few good guesses as to the mass of the Higgs and they had a good idea of how long they had to see the Higgs. An estimate is that a Higgs boson, once created in the LHC, has a “life” of a Zeptosecond. Or 10 ^-21 of one second or; one ten-billionth of a trillionth of a second or; 0.000000000000000000001 of a second. In fact, they realized that they couldn’t see it at those speeds so they looked for (and found) the expected debris field from a Higgs collision. All very reasonable, so they sort of knew what to look for and how long they had to find it. Next problem was how to capture and process the data.
A collision in the LHC generates, in about a second or a second and a half, about six petabytes or’ 10 ^15 or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or six thousand terabytes of data. So the first thing you have to do is figure out what sliver of data you are going to capture. And guess what, if you have a few good ideas about its mass and what to look for in a debris field, your task goes from really impossible to just very, very hard.
With dark matter no one really has any firm ideas of what to look for and at what energy levels!
I have read that using 20 Tev to poke around in Dark Matter is like using a kid’s water squirt gun when what you really need is a couple of fire hydrants.
(BTW: if you want to read about the Higgs and the LHC you can do no better than: The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World, by Sean Carroll http://www.amazon.com/The-Particle-End-Universe-Higgs/dp/0142180300)
Of the people you cite, I think that I am more interested in Nick Bostrom than any of the others. I got some time, but perhaps it is something that I will add to my fall reading list.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on June 29, 2015, 10:51:14 AM
I fail to understand the concept of 'you only exist if you're being observed'. That would mean that anyone stranded on a remote desert island would not exist anymore. Yet they sit there waiting when someone discovers them. Robinson Crusoe would have not been written lol.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Meatwad on June 29, 2015, 09:03:20 PM
So if I hide in a closet, then I no longer exist. Sweet! Now I can get out of doing unwanted jobs my wife gives me
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Arlo on June 29, 2015, 10:37:13 PM
I fail to understand the concept of 'you only exist if you're being observed'. That would mean that anyone stranded on a remote desert island would not exist anymore. Yet they sit there waiting when someone discovers them. Robinson Crusoe would have not been written lol.
Robinson Crusoe wasn't written by Robinson Crusoe.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: SPKmes on June 29, 2015, 10:45:53 PM
But if he doesn't exist, is he still there to be seen? Right now I'm unobserved, but I still see my hands as I type. Can I observe myself? Are any of us truly self aware enough to consciously observe ourselves?
What if all this is a hallucination, and none of you are real? What if I'm actually god, but wanged my head getting out of the shower, and now I'm dreaming in a coma?!??! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggrjddfhgkudswrhh!
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on June 30, 2015, 08:40:59 PM
I fail to understand the concept of 'you only exist if you're being observed'. That would mean that anyone stranded on a remote desert island would not exist anymore. Yet they sit there waiting when someone discovers them. Robinson Crusoe would have not been written lol.
This is not going to sound convincing to a 21st century ear, but imagine if you will, that you lived in the pre-Kantian world of 1710.
What Berkeley would say, I believe, is that you exist as a finite spirit/person and that through your experiences of your sensations, you see God’s nature. And it is as a finite spirit that our perceptions of objects make them “real”. The Laws of Science/Nature is really God’s way of exposing/revealing ideas (which, for Berkeley, are the same as real objects/matter) through our sensations and thus experiences. When no finite spirit (an individual) is observing say a table, the table exists because an infinite spirit/God gives it existence.
Today many casual observers will slam on their mental breaks when they see a justification rooted in the existence of an infinite spirit. (We are very modern we say….) But in Berkeley’s time you had no choice but to explain how your idea(s) either supported or enhanced the prevailing concepts of God.
I’ll accept that the following is a bit of a square peg in a round hole; but substitute Supersymmetry for an infinite spirit. Supersymmetry, which is a principle and NOT a theory/law, provides us with a way of explaining a number of issues within the Standard Model and provides one possible way of establishing a unified theory between Quantum Theory and Relativity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CeLRrBAI60
I think that all this is pretty interesting stuff, but the point I want to make here is that without the principle of Supersymmetry we would have one less very useful tool to understand the universe.
Here is a definition of the word Principle: “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.” For now, today Supersymmetry is in a sense performing the same role as an infinite spirit did for Berkeley.
BTW: I thought that the Ted talk presenter got too defensive when the moderator drew a connection to Berkeley, probably because of the dependency to an “infinite spirit” that he did not wish to make. After all, his thoughts are really driven by the logic of mathematical models and not any principle of a spirit!
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on June 30, 2015, 11:23:16 PM
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
This is not going to sound convincing to a 21st century ear, but imagine if you will, that you lived in the pre-Kantian world of 1710.
What Berkeley would say, I believe, is that you exist as a finite spirit/person and that through your experiences of your sensations, you see God’s nature. And it is as a finite spirit that our perceptions of objects make them “real”. The Laws of Science/Nature is really God’s way of exposing/revealing ideas (which, for Berkeley, are the same as real objects/matter) through our sensations and thus experiences. When no finite spirit (an individual) is observing say a table, the table exists because an infinite spirit/God gives it existence.
Today many casual observers will slam on their mental breaks when they see a justification rooted in the existence of an infinite spirit. (We are very modern we say….) But in Berkeley’s time you had no choice but to explain how your idea(s) either supported or enhanced the prevailing concepts of God.
I’ll accept that the following is a bit of a square peg in a round hole; but substitute Supersymmetry for an infinite spirit. Supersymmetry, which is a principle and NOT a theory/law, provides us with a way of explaining a number of issues within the Standard Model and provides one possible way of establishing a unified theory between Quantum Theory and Relativity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CeLRrBAI60
I think that all this is pretty interesting stuff, but the point I want to make here is that without the principle of Supersymmetry we would have one less very useful tool to understand the universe.
Here is a definition of the word Principle: “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.” For now, today Supersymmetry is in a sense performing the same role as an infinite spirit did for Berkeley.
BTW: I thought that the Ted talk presenter got too defensive when the moderator drew a connection to Berkeley, probably because of the dependency to an “infinite spirit” that he did not wish to make. After all, his thoughts are really driven by the logic of mathematical models and not any principle of a spirit!
This would be a logical continuum to age old pattern. Man knows little, explains everything with God. Man understands more, explains more things with science.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: guncrasher on July 01, 2015, 02:13:57 AM
Because fiction requires a basis in reality. Like, lets say, all of Douglas Adams' books. :D
You forget that there have been real life Crusoes who have written their first hand experiences.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: eagl on July 01, 2015, 12:49:45 PM
Why is it when a unexplained event or unusual phenomena is explained, the message it brings is suddenly discounted or ignored? We don't ignore the message of impending danger when we hear a train whistle just because we know how the sound is made, so why are "supernatural" warnings ignored just because we think we can explain the cause via science, or can now observe how the warning was created?
As an example, many of the health warnings in the old testament book of Deuteronomy are still entirely valid (cook your food, don't poop in your house, etc), yet people scoff at them simply because the folks that wrote those rules couldn't explain WHY they were important without using a supernatural spirit as the basis for the rule. We know the scientific reasons behind many of those rules (and many social reasons behind some of the social rules like don't beat your wife), so a great many people discount the entire book as nonsense simply because we can look behind the curtain and see how its done now.
You don't see many atheists ignoring train horns at crossings just because they know some guy is pushing a button which sends highly compressed air into a very loud horn, yet they're all eager to throw out every rule, no matter how good of a rule it is, if the original justification for it was even remotely spiritual.
Knowing reality makes us so much stupider sometimes. A dose of myth and legend may be healthy now and then.
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: Arlo on July 01, 2015, 09:40:12 PM
You forget that there have been real life Crusoes who have written their first hand experiences.
Am I forgetting that you've gone figurative? And you are also using second-hand information to back your reality. I'm not sure you're as sure as you want to be. ;)
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: guncrasher on July 02, 2015, 12:51:00 AM
You forget that there have been real life Crusoes who have written their first hand experiences.
dude, you ever think that windows 10 has somehow manipulated your unconscious mind? after all there's a reason why MS wants automatic updates just like V.I.K.I did.
semp
Title: Re: Is reality Real?
Post by: eagl on July 02, 2015, 08:49:45 AM
The next step of the shared experience, shared waking dream, is underway with win10. It automatically shares wifi access credentials, bypassing password entry for wifi access.
It's the next step of course, getting everyone connected on the same net, surfing the same matrix. Its already almost alive so this could be the tipping point.