I had a dream...

AlexCode

Imagine the very bottom of the ocean. Even inside a earth-quake fracture... real deep, n times deeper than what we ever went. Imagine that somehow, possibly with the earth changes, millions of years ago, a cave was formed. A dry and very big cave like an underwater city. Time passed and some evolutions were made, and new forms of intelligent life appeared, new materials where discovered... They build some sort of water vehicle to go to another rock, far away thinking that may be more of them there, but no. They can see other rocks but they're too far to reach them with their technology. They don't know that going straight up the water ends and starts a new environment. They don't even know which way is up. Can you relate this to us now? ;P The cave being our planet, the near rock the moon, and the absolute absence of knowledge that our environment has an end and that others forms of life and different environments may exist delimiting ours... It makes us think a bit...

Liam OHagan

I like to think of the apparent similarities between universes and solar systems, with planets orbiting a central sun, and the supposed structure of atoms, with (broadly speaking) electrons orbiting a nucleus. Perhaps the universe is recursive :)

I have no blog...

AlexCode

Liam O`Hagan wrote:

Perhaps the universe is recursive

That one is new for me... :-D By recursive you mean also getting from bigger to smaller or just looping with no correlation? :doh:

Patrick Etc

Liam O`Hagan wrote:

Perhaps the universe is recursive

The more appropriate concept is that the universe is a fractal - that no matter how far you zoom in (or out), there's repeating and highly detailed structure. The appearance of seemingly related features is merely a limit of our capacity to describe them, however; electrons don't really orbit nuclei in the same sense that a planet orbits a star (actually, electrons don't orbit at all). There are very different forces at work in each case.

Patrick Etc

AlexCode wrote:

The cave being our planet, the near rock the moon, and the absolute absence of knowledge that our environment has an end and that others forms of life and different environments may exist delimiting ours...

There's not an absence of that knowledge, simply that that knowledge isn't practical for all but the philosophers. There's a certain arrogance to the way we go about our lives, even the most enlightened of us, an arrogance necessary to define a sense of identity in a world where identity is, objectively, a meaningless construct. Note that I do not use the word arrogance in the derogatory sense, here. We need it though, to give ourselves a place in the world. The human brain's whole basis of conceptualizing the universe is predicated upon the assumption that there's meaning in the meaningless - which incidentally, is why we create explanations of why things happen that may not necessarily make sense (e.g., God). We need a WHY, even if there isn't one. It is very difficult for us to imagine, even consider, worldviews that are extremely divergent from our own. Yet in doing so, it becomes very instructive, because it shows us just exactly how much we assume in how we look at the world.

Anton Afanasyev

I think he means that once you get to the end of universe, you get warped to the beginning. That kinda recursive. Although, how is the universe constantly expanding then?

:badger:

Anton Afanasyev

Hey, I've actually been thinking of something VERY similar recently. And I've also been having another thought: think of us and the universe as a huge online world, where each one of us is controlled by some player online. When we die, thats them logging off. When we die in accidents, well, that them being stupid. Oh, and the constantly expanding universe thing...well, think of it as new servers being added to the game constantly.

:badger:

peterchen

Patrick Sears wrote:

however; electrons don't really orbit nuclei in the same sense that a planet orbits a star (actually, electrons don't orbit at all)

Again, we might ask (not just rhetorically): Is this our perception, or an reality independent of us. I guess if planets would revolve "really fast" and we would replace our optical sensors with better gravitational ones, we'd see something similar to charge densities (that seem to have replace the orbitals model). And now I wonder if there's something equivalent to spin.

We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
My first real C# project | Linkify!|FoldWithUs! | sighist

Iain Clarke Warrior Programmer

The whole electrons spinning like little planets is a "lie to children". I remember a whole chapter in a Discworld Physics book about this. Every now and then teachers need to go through a whole "Yoi know how you learned X last year? Well, that's not really true. Here's a slightly more complex near-truth for you..." Its why you go to university all smart and clever and stuffed full of knowledge, and leave screaming "I know nothing!" That, or evil creatures are sucking out your brains. Either explanation works. I recently read a blog entry An Idea That Could Save The World: Disavowal Day![^] which seems like a good idea. Warning, bad language ahoy... Iain.

AlexCode

Patrick Sears wrote:

It is very difficult for us to imagine, even consider, worldviews that are extremely divergent from our own.

You can see that on the science fiction movies.... aliens are always (or most) mans with a mask. It can change from 1 eye to 10 but still has eyes, and arms, etc.

Patrick Sears wrote:

There's not an absence of that knowledge, simply that that knowledge isn't practical for all but the philosophers.

Existing other forms of life in other planets as I believe it does it's almost impossible that they have anything to do with us and being on the same evolutive stage as we do... I was considering knowledge as knowing, not anything empirical. We don't know anything beyond what we can reach right now, we don't know anything about most what we can reach with our "eyes", we don't know if it ends, etc. Philosophers can write about it but the lines were never based on something concrete. They don't know either.

ednrgc

I think I saw this movie..... Oh yeah, Donald Sutherland as the "hip" Prof. Jennings in Animal House.

AlexCode

And expanding in what? To expand something you must have space to fit it!

AlexCode

That is an explanation for GOD. HE's like a super-hero gamer that can handle a multi-player game alone! I don't believe in GOD but I meant no offense to who does... just joking.

Andy Brummer

Not if its the space that is expanding. :) Or maybe all the rulers are getting smaller.

This blanket smells like ham

Andy Brummer

peterchen wrote:

or an reality independent of us.

it really is independent of us.

peterchen wrote:

I guess if planets would revolve "really fast" and we would replace our optical sensors with better gravitational ones, we'd see something similar to charge densities (that seem to have replace the orbitals model).

That would produce a different probabilistic model, but not quantum mechanics.

This blanket smells like ham

Blake Miller

AlexCode wrote:

You can see that on the science fiction movies.... aliens are always (or most) mans with a mask. It can change from 1 eye to 10 but still has eyes, and arms, etc.

And then you have "The Blob" and "The Thing" and "The Andromeda Strain" and more recently "Invasion". Don't forget about the Tribbles!

Blake Miller

Anton Afanasyev wrote:

And I've also been having another thought: think of us and the universe as a huge online world, where each one of us is controlled by some player online. When we die, thats them logging off. When we die in accidents, well, that them being stupid.

"The Reality Matrix" - by John Dalmas http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Matrix-John-Dalmas/dp/0671655833/ref=sr_1_1/103-9109508-6303007?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188310863&sr=8-1[^] Been there ... done that.

Dan Neely

AlexCode wrote:

Patrick Sears wrote: It is very difficult for us to imagine, even consider, worldviews that are extremely divergent from our own. You can see that on the science fiction movies.... aliens are always (or most) mans with a mask. It can change from 1 eye to 10 but still has eyes, and arms, etc.

Which is why written SF is so much better. Instead of bumpy foreheads or muppets you can get aliens that are totally alien. Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep has two well developed sets of totally alien aliens as wells as numerous others that are more background species than anything else. The aliens in his A Deepness in the Sky were also completely alien, but I'm in the minority who didn't really care for the book. It's something of a prequel to AFUTD, but I'd recommend reading it second because it answers one of the biggest open questions of the other book.

-- You have to explain to them [VB coders] what you mean by "typed". their first response is likely to be something like, "Of course my code is typed. Do you think i magically project it onto the screen with the power of my mind?" --- John Simmons / outlaw programmer

peterchen

Andy Brummer wrote:

it really is independent of us.

I just wanted to avoid that discussion right now ;)

Andy Brummer wrote:

That would produce a different probabilistic model, but not quantum mechanics.

Of course. My thought was just that our "sensoric configuration" might very well determine the (simplified) model. While both may describe the same aspect of reality with similar accuracy, they are in focus and structure different. In my experience, it takes an excellent scientist to see the same idea behind the two.

We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
My first real C# project | Linkify!|FoldWithUs! | sighist

Andy Brummer

peterchen wrote:

While both may describe the same aspect of reality with similar accuracy, they are in focus and structure different.

They essentially use completely different language to describe, and not just something simple like Deutsch-English-Japanese, but Human-Martian.

peterchen wrote:

it takes an excellent scientist to see the same idea behind the two.

It would take a genius of the highest caliber. Scientists have been trying for almost a hundred years now and nobody has even come close.

This blanket smells like ham