Life, The Universe, And Everything

[Rob Oplawar]

This is a bold undertaking. This is an ambitious thread. To speak of such things on the internet- how is it possible?

Lol. In all probability, this will get a couple of responses and then get buried, but it's still worth a shot.

I wanna start an abstract hypothetical universe discussion.

It being that the only thing I can logically prove to myself is my own existence, this sort of discussion is entirely hypothetical and "what-if"ical. But try not to get too off topic with patently ridiculous things like "omg down is up" or "what if the universe was sneezed out by a massive being and we only have a few millenia left before it gets wiped off its sleeve?" Let's try to come to decisions with at least a little bit of logic, as far as the concept of "pure speculation" will allow.



So lemme get us started off.



I like to think of the universe as a set of rules and a set of data. A massive set of data, lol. But I mean, in it's purest sense, that's what it is, or what it can be reduced to from our perspective, anyway. Mass? Datum. Inertia? Datum. Charge? Datum. The universe, then, data.

But that's not very interesting.

What's interesting is the various "Matrix" arguments that come out of this; who knows, it's possible that this set of rules was designed and this set of data created. I can't think of any purely logical way to figure out if this is the case, so instead I use a slightly flawed argument and just stick with it as I have nothing else to go by:
If the universe was created, and if its creator was anything that we could possibly understand in the least bit, then it's probably fallible. I can't think of anything we can understand that is perfectly infallible, can you? And with a fallible being of any sort, creating something as complex as the universe, well, it's just impossible to say exactly how fallible it may or may not have been, so I can't say it's probable, but with nothing else to go by I'll just say it's possible that somewhere in the universe is one or more mistakes.

So yeah, with nothing else to go by, I don't expect to be able to prove that the universe was not created, nor prove that it was, although if I can find something that appears to be amiss then that would at least be some strong evidence.

So yeah, continuing my tradition of searching in Halo, I'm searching for glitches in the universe. Lol.

Well, that seems a pretty good place to stop for this post, but believe me I've got a ton. But it's no fun talkin to the wall. No fun making ridiculous longposts without anyone to, you know, discuss it with.

So discuss.


edit: Also, since it's impossible to leave the concept of "God(s)" out of this sort of discussion, I'll just warn you to tread lightly. I myself am an atheist, but I am open to discussion about it unless it gets too preachy or for lack of a better term, "religious" in nature.

[TeeKup]

42!!!

[Emmzee]

Ever wonder if it's just you in the universe?

Think of it like this: You have your perception of the world. You have never seen anybody else's perception of the world. What if you're the only one, and everybody is like an NPC? You'll never know, because it's only you that you have experienced the world as.

[Rob Oplawar]

Sure have. You know what conclusion I came to? If it's just me, well that hardly changes anything. My personal universe is just me. So why don't I act like I'm the only person that matters? Because real or not, people will react to what I do. And real or not, I want people to like me, because that makes my life happier. So even if none of you exist, it's cool, I'll still treat you as my friends.

But don't worry. I'm not that full of myself. Even with no evidence, I'm still pretty sure you exist.

Pretty sure... but not positive! Dun dun dunnnnn!

e: Also, I'd +rep teek, but now that that shitty movie is out, you never can tell anymore. =(

[Flyboy]

Well here's the thing, all this is assuming everything had to start, there had to be a beginning and conclusively there must be an end. In my eyes there is no beginning nor is there an end, nor is there some way of recording and tracking points in between that begging and end (the time part of our space time). People want things to make sense, and the only way to comprehend things such as this is to start with one. But from my eyes there is no beginning and there is no end, thusly nothing is fallible, nothing is a mistake as it had no original intention. We're here because things happened one way or another and because of that there is no error. We exist, and we shouldn't ponder why. It's a waist of time.

[Mass]

I always wondered whether we all percieved things differently, particularly myself. do wheaties taste like tunafish, is red seen as blue? You can't describe a sense.

[Flyboy]

To each his own, and that applies strongly.

[Rob Oplawar]

Just because we can't possibly understand it doesn't make the speculation any less fun.

Well ok, the whole futility of it thing is kinda off-putting, but still, I think it's fun to just take what we do know and make up stories about what we don't.

[Corndogman]

I used to think that a lot when i was little. like "Am i the only one with this inner conscious thing? do other people have thoughts and can they make decisions like me? Are they programed to do certain things?" Obviously we know this is not true, but one can only wonder...

edit: that was in response to Emzee's post.

[Flyboy]

Actually we can't know it to be true. We can only think logically and doubt it. But as far as you or any of us know, everyone could just be here for us, all we know is what WE know, thusly everyone around us is insignificant.

[OmegaDragon]

I still think this is somekind of alien MMO and some fat alien kid is telling me to type this right now :tinfoil:

There are many strange things that go around when you notice little things that go on.

Haven't you looked at something, then turned around, and look at it again, and it says something different? Then when you try to remember what it said, your mind goes blank and then you get the picture of what it says right now?

Also, 42.

[Sever]

Falliblity exists only in human perspective: "Its working the way it should - you just didn't do it the correct way." Nothing is flawed with the physics of the universe. If an 'anomaly' occurs, it is just because we haven't/are unable to observe its cause. Simple as that.

Also, I read the book before i saw the movie. 43 is a much cooler number by the way.


Agnostic, Insomniac
Dyslexic
I'm Wide Awake And I'm Wondering If There Is A Dog

[Rob Oplawar]

note that Flyboy speaks in "we"s and "us"s. I know what decision he's come to about it... =)



edit: Ooh, now here's a discouraging thought: If we are part of whatever complex system this universe is, and not just external participants, then if something controls the universe it also controls us. If it was created I would tend to say that it is also controlled, so my glitch search may be entirely futile- I may have already discovered a glitch. And my thinking about that glitch raised alarm bells. And the master server admin rolled me back to a previous state and fixed the glitch. =O

[Flyboy]

Not necessarily, I'm just entertaining the idea ;)

Edit: Your basically saying we live in the matrix

[thehoodedsmack]

In response to the whole "What if I'm the only real person" idea: I think, therefore I am. And you'll just have to take my word for it. I too have pondered that idea. Most recently, it occured to me that I may never understand the universe, as I may not be raised with the correct ways of thinking. God-believers will argue that everything was made by God, and if you should ask them what God was doing before that, they'll usually reply "He was making Hell for people like you". And if the universe was indeed produced suddenly by a big ol' bang, what was there before that? I did some research, and so far the most convincing ideas I've seen involve ideas about the space-time continuum(sp?). That time and space are linked, and that before the big bang, time was not even in existence. Strange stuff. That's my two cents.

[Phopojijo]

42!!!You won the race it seems...

[CN3089]

There's no use, it's turtles all the way down. http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c251/CN3089/Emoticons/emot-pseudo.gif

[DaneO'Roo]

oh SNAP

If i was to specular though, the universe is actually just a perception, so everyones wrong. You lose.

[n00b1n8R]

speculate?

at any rate, I've suspected things were not as they seem for quite a while now. It's gotten to the point where I'll be waiting for someone to reply on xfire, get bored then close it and I'll expect that in the next 5 seconds I'll get a reply. most of the time I do >.>

and there are far too many coincidences like that to make sense.

[Phobias]

We're just an Alien ant farm.

[n00b1n8R]

We're just an Alien ant farm.
I prefer to think of it as an MMO.

[DaneO'Roo]

Anybody else say something from a particular simpsons episode, and then that episode comes on that night, and it happens like nearly every day? Too many coincidences in life sometimes.

[Rob Oplawar]

*has been staring at Dano's sig for several minutes*

Wait a minute, Dano, the image in your sig really does shrink and grow! All this time I thought it was just an obnoxious optical illusion created by the changing depth of bump.

You did that on purpose, didn't you?

[TheGhost]

Ever wonder if it's just you in the universe?

Think of it like this: You have your perception of the world. You have never seen anybody else's perception of the world. What if you're the only one, and everybody is like an NPC? You'll never know, because it's only you that you have experienced the world as.

That's an interesting point, and to some extent it is true. Most of us feel like we're at the center of our own little universe, and we act accordingly. It's like the world is a play, and everyone feels like he is the main character.

[Sever]

I feel like I'm an extra...

[Tweek]

*has been staring at Dano's sig for several minutes*

Wait a minute, Dano, the image in your sig really does shrink and grow! All this time I thought it was just an obnoxious optical illusion created by the changing depth of bump.

You did that on purpose, didn't you?


it doesn't
trust me.

it does shrink in a way, because the bumped pieces are taking away pixels from the unbumped features, this making them smaller, an appearing to shrink and grow. it's more comparable with an invertex box where you're staring straight at the back wall, wich moves forward and backwards, it's not changing dimentions, its just taking away pixels from its surroundings.
allthough im pretty sure it'sa terrible way to compare it. i am sure it's not shrinking and growing ;)

[Sever]

So it shrinks, but the interior detail doesn't shrink. I'd still count that as shrinking lol...

[Tweek]

no, it just doesnt shrink, it just looks like that. but it doesnt.

!
i think the universe is like pacman.
and all the planets are like the little balls.. waiting to get eaten.. or turned into a piece of produce.

[Botolf]

Ever wonder if it's just you in the universe?

Think of it like this: You have your perception of the world. You have never seen anybody else's perception of the world. What if you're the only one, and everybody is like an NPC? You'll never know, because it's only you that you have experienced the world as.
I've thought of this exact subject so many times before, and I always am left with the questions I started with :(

[Rob Oplawar]

no, it just doesnt shrink, it just looks like that. but it doesnt.
No, look! put your cursor over a reference point on the image, and watch the image move back and forth past your cursor! It's only by a couple of pixels, but it's moving! :tinfoil:

[teh lag]

Thinking about the universe, perception, and whether or not it's all just my brain making stuff up is something I do a lot, but it also makes me really scared. Thinking about how insignificant (or possibly extremely significant, if it really is all in our heads) is a bit disturbing to me. What if someone doesn't exist? I only remember them in the past because they must have existed to exist now, and they will continue to exist because I already think that they do exist. What if red to me is something that's beyond what I can even think of in terms of color to someone else? What would another sense be like? What if we could sense something that we can't even perceive right now? What would that thing be? What if right now, everything stopped existing? As we speak, I'm scared a hole will rip open in space and consume my computer area. :tinfoil:

[Rob Oplawar]

Try this one on for size: what if nothing up until *right now* never actually happened?

I mean, you have memory of everything that's "happened" up till now, but it's nothing more than simple memory, and we don't even know what that is, so how do we know it happened at all? Maybe the universe was created just a few moments ago, with everything in just the right state so that when it continues on, it seems like there was no transition at all and has really been going on all this time.

So what if it's right now that the universe started. Or now. Or... now! If it was all initialized right, it could just carry on and you'd never know. You can only know that *right now* is really happening, but as soon as it passes, well, you only have the memory of thinking that just then really happened, but the memory could have been inserted when the universe was created *just now*.

So that's exactly why I don't believe in time travel in any form- my feeling is that *right now* is all that ever really exists, although *right now* is constantly moving forward, and even though that past may have been a *right now*, it isn't now, and never was, never will be; in a sense, doesn't exist and never did in the first place. Similar story with the future. So forget timelines and moving back and forth through time, because there is no time other than *right now*. So it's silly to say we have 4 dimensions if you include time, because time isn't a dimension; it's just a point: right now.

... now.

...NOW.

=O

edit:
What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
What hapened to then?
We passed then.
When?
Just now. We're at now now.
Go back to then.
When?
Now!
Now?
Now!
I can't.
Why?
We missed it.
When?
Just now.
When will then be now?
Soon.

[Emmzee]

This thread gives me headaches.

[Chewy Gumball]

Firstly, I am going to just comment on your "fallible" universe part:

If you were a being who was capable of creating something like a universe, it would follow logically that you would not create every single piece of the universe by hand. It would be easier and simpler to make a "mold" for each different piece, and then just stamp them out till you had enough. This would mean that the only mistake you could make would be in the mold, in which case, we can't tell if anything is a mistake because EVERYONE of the pieces would have the same mistake. Basically, we can't tell if there are mistakes because we don't know what a non mistake is, nor can we find out.

Secondly, time travel:

I think every moment in time that could happen ever exists at the same time, we just experience them in a certain order and if we want to "go back" in time, we just have to figure out how to change the moment we are experiencing to an arbitrary one. Deja vu is just when you temporarily experience a moment ahead of where you are in the line of moments you are going to experience, probably while a sleep or day dreaming cause who remembers when they first experienced the deja vu moment?

Thirdly, alone in the universe:

I don't care if I am the only actual person being in the universe. It doesn't change things at all. It doesn't matter. But say that it did matter. Something with the intelligence of another person would be classified as a highly advanced AI, probably bordering on sentience. Even though they aren't a person, they are still highly intelligent. Kinda like Data from startrek (omg I just said startrek :o), they know he is an android, but that doesn't change how they think of him as a human.

[thehoodedsmack]

You're not the only actual person. The fact that so many people have had the same thoughts verifies that.

[Emmzee]

You're not the only actual person. The fact that so many people have had the same thoughts verifies that.
Or has it?

[Mass]

your perception wishes to make you feel un-alone, so you percieve your mental fragments to share your ponderings. No logic would say that having the same thought proves anyone's existance.

[n00b1n8R]

Time is a point on the 4th dimension. just like you can have a point on the first, second or third. therefore, if you can travel in one direction, you can travel in the other (and at different speeds).

[Botolf]

Here's something I don't understand, the thought of eternity scares the crap out of me, the actual concept itself. If I begin to ponder eternity, I think of myself living forever, and this inexplicable fear comes over me, enough sometimes to make me shiver. It's why I don't consciously think deeply about the subject, it just scares me :(

[nooBBooze]

i recently discovered nihilism.
so if someone tries to tell me what life is really about and starts dumping all sorts of philosophical crap onto me, "so what?" is all i reply to him/her. of course he will be forced to explain and evaluating himslef and his point he was trying to make but this will only get as far as a few "so whats" after that, theres really nothing left to be arguing about. it may sound unproductive and childish at first, but trust me, i came to this point after quite some reasoning.

so what?

:/

[Roostervier]

You're not the only actual person. The fact that so many people have had the same thoughts verifies that.What if the other people were programmed to say that? It's okay to believe that everyone else has thoughts and stuff, but that feeling(of being alone and everyone else is just... there) is pretty much infallible.

[thehoodedsmack]

What if the other people were programmed to say that? It's okay to believe that everyone else has thoughts and stuff, but that feeling(of being alone and everyone else is just... there) is pretty much infallible.

Programmed? You people aren't in an alien MMO, or anything similar.

[teh lag]

All this questioning of existance is most certainly raping my mind. This thread is gonna end with me barricading myself in a physics lab or something in hopes of proving you all are real.



Programmed? You people aren't in an alien MMO, or anything similar.

That's what they want you to think.

[Archon23]

Programmed? You people aren't in an alien MMO, or anything similar.

Theres as much of a chance of that as there is God blowing the entire universe out of his ass.

I mean what if this is all some Alien MMO that has the player influence everything in its world, and were all their avatars, or just a virtual reality device where these guys can live in an alternate universe?

Also I read through the thread. My brain hurts. A lot.

[thehoodedsmack]

or just a virtual reality device where these guys can live in an alternate universe?

That's a little more believable, but what's beyond that? Eventually, you'd die, and exit said virtual reality.

[Emmzee]

Why am I me? Why am I not experiencing someone else's life, instead of the one I am experiencing?

[thehoodedsmack]

Because.... This Is Your Life!

[Sever]

Because you just fail that much.

[Emmzee]

Because.... This Is Your Life!
IT'S NOW OR NEVER! I AIN'T GONNA LIVE FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

[thehoodedsmack]

I was actually making a reference to "This Is Your Life", the biography show, but your interpretation works too.

[JunkfoodMan]

I was actually making a reference to "This Is Your Life", the biography show, but your interpretation works too.

*Gets red book*...

BUT WHAT IF YOU SEE RED AS BLUE!?

[thehoodedsmack]

I don't.

[jngrow]

Ever wonder if it's just you in the universe?

Think of it like this: You have your perception of the world. You have never seen anybody else's perception of the world. What if you're the only one, and everybody is like an NPC? You'll never know, because it's only you that you have experienced the world as.

Haha, that's pretty much exactly what I was going to post. I guess I have nothing to say. :/

[n00b1n8R]

Theres as much of a chance of that as there is God blowing the entire universe out of his ass.
Is that a family guy reference I see there?

also, that whole "what if the universe only started now. OR NOW. OR NOW!" thing allways creeps me out. :tinfoil:

[Botolf]

If I ever found out I was the only person alive in the universe, and that this moment was the first, I'd lose my mind.

[il Duce Primo]

This thread reminds me of the movie Donnie Darko. What do you guys think happens wen you die. MAybe you live for a few more days and see what happens if you were to live but really you were dead. So when you die you have a few days left tolive. just to imagine what it would be like fi you were alive. Now can some explain that to me.

[Emmzee]

This thread reminds me of the movie Donnie Darko. What do you guys think happens wen you die. MAybe you live for a few more days and see what happens if you were to live but really you were dead. So when you die you have a few days left tolive. just to imagine what it would be like fi you were alive. Now can some explain that to me.
Nobody here has ever died (except Lobo). It's gonna be kinda hard to get that experience without dying. But if they've died and experienced something, they're dead now and can't tell you.

[Con]

IMO your consciousness just ceases to exist and there's nothing after, since you don't exist.

[Emmzee]

IMO your consciousness just ceases to exist and there's nothing after, since you don't exist.
Do you have any proof?

No, and nobody has any concrete proof as to what happens after we die. So what does happen?

[Con]

Do you have any proof?

No, and nobody has any concrete proof as to what happens after we die. So what does happen?
That's why I said it was my opinion instead of stating it like a fact :eng101:

[Emmzee]

That's why I said it was my opinion instead of stating it like a fact :eng101:
I don't read abbreviations, because whoever typed them is too important to type them out, and that's too important for me.

[Con]

I don't read abbreviations, because whoever typed them is too lazy to type them out
ftfy

[Emmzee]

ftfy
And I don't respect lazy people.

[Random]

Fixed that for you

Fixed that for you

[n00b1n8R]

ftfy

ftfy.

Back ontopic.

I agree with conscars tbh. I believe consciousness exists in the brain, and that the brain is a machine. when you turn off your computer, does it dream? however it can muck up on shutdown, which can lead to strange things (chemicals being released, painkillers, all that stuff).

[Rob Oplawar]

I wanna step back a couple of pages to what chewy said about time.
Ok, so suppose time is a dimension, with an infinite number of points "before" and "after" this point. Well, we can move around the normal three dimensions through Newton's laws, basically coming down to us pushing off against other matter, pushing it in one direction and ourselves in the opposite direction. What if similar laws apply to motion through time? What if all we have to do to travel through time is push off from a massive object, like the earth, from the present, having oriented ourselves to face either the past or the future- which would propel the earth in the opposite direction through time, but by an infinitesimal amount due to its relative mass.

Ooh, now I've got a better one- so what if the reason our universe is constantly moving forward through time is because this has already happened? Well, it's hard to talk about "events" occurring without the notion of time, because if the universe started stationary in the dimension of time, then either the first moment ever was the universe being pushed through time or else there is another dimension analogous to time that would allow that event to occur in the absence of time.

But anyway, however it may have happened, that's a kind of cool way for the universe to start- in the beginning it is a single point of all the space and time and matter of the universe condensed into a point, and then something somewhere pushed off against the universe with such force as to propel it in the opposite direction through space and time. Big bang. And hell, maybe the thing that did this is this notion of a "creator"- I mean, what good is his creation, his mass of data and rules for interaction, if it is all stationary. It had to be given a push.

Wow I really went off on a tangent there. What I meant to go on about is what if objects in space are not all moving through the dimension of time at the same rate? Well actually come to think of it it's been demonstrated they aren't- objects moving faster in the normal three dimensions are moving slower through time, and the relationship can be through of as a right triangle- the hypotenuse is the speed of light, and one side is the speed through the universe, and the other is the speed through time. What if this relationship merely comes from the orientation of the time dimension with respect to the normal three dimensions, that is, in order to orient yourself to propel yourself so as to speed up in the normal 3 dimensions, you've inadvertently oriented yourself to slow down your movement through time as well.

So now there's my main point- it may be that Newton's laws apply to motion through space and time, and that when we push off objects, we not only move through space but through time as well. Actually, that much has been proven- that motion through space affects motion through time, so it's just a matter of discerning the nature of this relationship, and like I said, I think it's the geometrical relationship between space and time that determines this relationship. Furthermore, this geometry may in fact determine the speed of light and the fact that it is an absolute limit.

Ok, now let's just mention how this could be taken one step further without actually going too deep into it just yet, because this is turning into a really longpost:
What do we use as a reference point, and how do we define the basis for spacetime? Those of you who know what I'm talking about with vector bases will get what I'm saying. If space and time really are so intertwined, is it possible to define a different basis for this four dimensional space, in which our arbitrary time vector points in a different direction? That obviously wouldn't change the way the universe works, but it would provide us with new insights to that.
Also where do we define the origin, and how are we moving relative to it? We could arbitrarily define that the origin is right here, moving right at 5 million kilometers per second, or that it's moving left at 5 million km/s.

Anyway, jeez longpost.

[Rob Oplawar]

Doubleposting cause that post was already long enough. Chewy also said something about the fallible creator thing, and he brings up a good point: how do we know what is a glitch and what isn't? All we have to go by is the universe we have. I mean, we have no external reference. So how do we tell what's supposed to be there and what isn't?
I personally think that quantum mechanics has got to be the major glitch with the universe. For the most part the simple rules that define the universe work really well, but then suddenly when the creations do something really unexpected and look at the smallest units they can possibly look at, well idk, perhaps there are simplifications and approximations and levels of detail that are presented to us to define the universe, but when we use those approximations to look at something too small, they break down and act all weird. Glitches.

That, or, we just don't have a friggin clue what's going on there yet. TBH, the second one is more likely, but I like the first one better.

And with the deja vu thing, it's just the brain getting confused when it tries to store a memory and goes "wait a minute, was this already here? this must be a duplicate then."
Kinda disappointing, innit? I get it all the time.

And @Noob: yeah it does tend to much up on shutdown because it's not designed to reboot, is it? =P

[Sever]

Who ever said that the universe 'started'? Time is a concept created and perceived by humans, and thus we are trying to define our environment, which we did not create. In my opinion, the universe didn't 'start', it just was, is, and will be. Also, I'm not denying the theory of 'the big bang', I'm just saying that before it, matter and energy still existed (even if they weren't in the same forms that we observe today).

[Chewy Gumball]

We just named it, we didn't create it. Just like we didn't create length. Both time and length do not have a definition. Which is another thing, how can we even think about time traveling if we can't define exactly what time is. Maybe time isn't something you can travel through, or on.