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[GregWS]

OK, so I'm creating this on a lark, because a fair number of us here seem to actually know something about Metaphysics and the philosophers that pushed that field forward.

So, who do you like/agree with?  And what's your crazy idea of the universe and how it works?

OK, here's a semi-obscure one to start this off:

I'm really interested in Henri Bergson's idea of Duration.  Assuming I understood him right, he argued that time/existence doesn't exist in causes/effects or in increments of time (eg. seconds) as we commonly view it.  Instead, everything is one big Duration.  An example he provides is that when a person moves their arm, there are an infinite number of positions between the start and end point, not just a few (like in our sprites).  He argued that the movement couldn't properly be understood as an incremental action when it really was a duration.  He expanded this and argued that other things occurred as durations too.

He also had a very interesting idea on Intuition and Intuiting an object; trying to put oneself inside it and view the world from it's point of view.  I'm a little hazier on this side of his philosophy, and I really should review it as I agreed quite strongly with some of it when we were doing a brief study of his work in my philosophy class last year.

Anyway, yeah, discuss!

[Rory]

Blech, discussing metaphysics makes my life seem utterly pointless

No offense intended.

Anyway, I think that Schroedinger was wrong. And mean to cats. That's my contribution.

[neon]

wittgenstein up in this bitch

also i think that metaphysics is futile, at least right now, because i have the overwhelming thought that as a civilization we can think and think and theorize and theorize and we can become infinitely close to understanding everything, but we will never have a grand unified theory of all things.  in other words, we will get to .9999999999, but we won't reach one, because in doing so, we'll realize that it was all a positive feedback loop or something else god dammit i don't know right now i'm tired

so i am hereby getting the hell out of this conversation

[GregWS]

in other words, we will get to .9999999999, but we won't reach one

You know, I agree with this, and yet somehow I'm still interested in thinking about it.  Strange.

[neon]

yep

[diwil]

A few years back, zamp and I had a few too many glasses (erm, bottles) of rum, and we theorized infinity and space in a way, which made the concept of infinity make perfect sense to us, or at least, to me it did.

A few years later, I read through a science journal, and a scientist had come up with the same exact theory, naming it the Quantum Crunch theory. My own thoughts (drunken rambles) were based on the Russian mathematician Perelman findings on the Poincare Conjecture, stating that the shape of the universe is a four dimensional sphere, or a hypersphere as they call it in the field.

My theory was basically concluded upon pondering the phenomenon of observing the expansion of the universe, which seems to be speeding up; with the laws of physics, if said matter is still expanding from the Big Bang, shouldn't it be slowing down, rather than accelerating? So, I started to think about how could matter accelerate in a three dimensional space, and remembered the Russian scientist's theory of the universe being a hypersphere.

In my head, I simplified the universe to a two-dimensional space and thus it was simple to create the infinity from it, by wrapping said two-dimensional space into a regular sphere. Here, I placed the big bang to the bottom of the sphere's inside and plotted the trajectory of matter flowing from it; the big bang, which is supposed to hold all the matter in the universe, would surely have an immense mass, even after the initial explosion/expansion.

With this mass, there would be gravity, and the matter flowing along the sides of the sphere (in two-dimension, yet infinite surface) would slow down as they would hit the top of the sphere and trickle back down, but due to the gravity of the Big Center affecting the matter, it would accelerate, until everything would collapse again at the center in a great big cycle, only to be blown up again, known as the lifetime of the universe and the Quantum Crunch.

With this, I concluded that we are already past the half-life of the known universe, and also, that time is a strange loop, perhaps it even repeats, endlessly, which would in a way explain the concept of infinity; it is like a great circle, without a beginning or an end, only a length, which seems infinite due to our limited ability in perception and the fickle span of a human life.

Highly theoretical and yet, at least for me, it makes perfect sense. Any comments?

[jeb]

Highly theoretical and yet, at least for me, it makes perfect sense. Any comments?

When can we play it?

[diwil]

I'd estimate in around 3~5 billion years.

[agj]

I remember reading an article in Discover magazine several years ago about the latest theories from some physics convention or some such thing. Some guy had this allegedly controversial talk about, if I remember correctly, space being subjective, that it doesn't exist as we perceive it, or doesn't at all. And ended his talk with what the writer qualified as 'mysterious' or something, saying that maybe time was like this as well. I remember going 'duh', because I had already considered the likely possibility that time and space were objectively very different (or nonexistant), yet we perceive them the way we do because we're essentially boxes within a box; we can only observe from within our personal box, and what we observe is only what the box will let us see. We lack perspective, and for all we know we could be rats in a maze.

Also, who hasn't considered the possibility that the whole world is imaginary and actually circles around oneself?

[diwil]

To quote the late Bill Hicks;

Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration — that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.

[Hideous]

we will get to .9999999999, but we won't reach one

Ah, but 0.99999... (etc) IS 1.

[jstckr]

When you google for meatphysics, you get lots of porn and a book called Meatphysics.

[increpare]

I've been reading Matter and Memory by Bergson on and off for the past year.  I haven't seen anything of what you've mentioned in that book though so far.  The most striking thing I've read by him so far was his description of the act of concentration.  The weakest of his ideas I think is the one that people have a soul, and that thus they are incapable of forgetting (though some of the examples he gives in justification are interesting).  For some reason I seem to be able to read most of his stuff without paying attention to this belief of his (and indeed view it in quite the opposite way).

None of this is exactly metaphysics though.

  Instead, everything is one big Duration.  An example he provides is that when a person moves their arm, there are an infinite number of positions between the start and end point, not just a few (like in our sprites).  He argued that the movement couldn't properly be understood as an incremental action when it really was a duration.

That's essentially just half of Zeno though isn't it?  It's not clear what you mean by 'duration' here.  When I think of duration, I think of a set of end-points in time.  It doesn't connote ideas of space or experience explicitly, so I think I'm missing something.

With this mass, there would be gravity, and the matter flowing along the sides of the sphere (in two-dimension, yet infinite surface) would slow down as they would hit the top of the sphere

I don't understand of what use the sphere is at all in this picture...

[Valter]

I think everybody gets too worked up about "time". I've decided myself that "time" doesn't truly exist. There's only now, at this moment, and other "times" are already gone, or not yet here, and will never be available to us. "Time" is mostly just the mind's method of explaining the unknown, since most people can't account for why things that have happened can't be accessed again. They try to tack a material presence onto an incorporeal theory.

Time is consisted of memory, not any actual fiber. Our timeline is the result of everything we remember about it. I always get pissed off when people talk about "Oh, what if the world was created 2 seconds ago, and our memories were just implanted into me? What then?" The answer is: nothing. It doesn't matter if the world was created now or a billion years ago, because our memories would still be there, which means that our timeline still exists. As long as you possess memories of an event, you can always be sure that that event happened.

[diwil]

I don't understand of what use the sphere is at all in this picture...

The universe is a three-dimensional space, or, at least that is how we perceive it. How do you turn a three-dimensional space infinite? The same way you'd turn a two-dimensional limited space into an infinite plane; you warp it into a three-dimensional sphere. The universe is the same, only it's wrapped into a four dimensional sphere, or a hypersphere. That's the analogy I was chasing after.

[increpare]

I don't understand of what use the sphere is at all in this picture...

The universe is a three-dimensional space, or, at least that is how we perceive it. How do you turn a three-dimensional space infinite? The same way you'd turn a two-dimensional limited space into an infinite plane; you warp it into a three-dimensional sphere.

By turn infinite you mean turn finite? (in that three-dimensional space, as we perceive it, doesn't seem* to have any bounds/is infinite.  At least that's how I understand it).

(*for the most part, though I did once expend a certain degree of effort into viewing things differently, and I think I succeeded for a couple of moments).

[muku]

As long as you possess memories of an event, you can always be sure that that event happened.

You know, there are certain mental illnesses where people have memories of things that never really happened. They tend to get into certain troubles once they attempt to argue this point with other people who do not share these memories.

[increpare]

As long as you possess memories of an event, you can always be sure that that event happened.

You know, there are certain mental illnesses where people have memories of things that never really happened. They tend to get into certain troubles once they attempt to argue this point with other people who do not share these memories.

Or, perhaps almost equivalently and far more commonly, when one forgets things.  For instance, when somebody with Alzheimer's forgets that somebody has died.

And, people's memories are notoriously unreliable on a wide variety of matters, and their recollections of a particular event are subject to not inconsiderable change over time (there are many scientific surveys documenting this).

[brog]

My own thoughts (drunken rambles) were based on the Russian mathematician Perelman findings on the Poincare Conjecture, stating that the shape of the universe is a four dimensional sphere, or a hypersphere as they call it in the field.

What.
Too many news articles and not enough scientific journals for you, laddie.

[diwil]

It doesn't matter if the world was created now or a billion years ago, because our memories would still be there, which means that our timeline still exists. As long as you possess memories of an event, you can always be sure that that event happened.

To argue this point, here's a bit of a philosophical dilemma to your view; if I die, and thus, my memories evaporate along with my consciousness, assuming there is no life after death, and by time's hand, all traces of me ever existing disappear, does that mean I never existed in the first place?

Obviously, for the people in the future this is true. They do not know I ever rambled on these forums, or any of us did, so to them, we do not exist. That's a bit of a nihilistic way to see the world, don't you think? And digs way too deep into the subjective-viewpoint of portraying the entire universe and history.

What.
Too many news articles and not enough scientific journals for you, laddie.

Dude. Rum.