I had a dream...

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

Richard Jones

Similar to A Bug's Life, where their whole world took place within 50ft of a tree in a meadow. Scale means everything to perception. I doubt those ants could comprehend the distance to Tokyo or the Sun, or speeds we know.

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."

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

peterchen

Iain Clarke wrote:

Every now and then teachers need...

A few years ago, I think helping my niece with school physics I noticed that this actually had happened :D They were using a charge density distribution instead of the planeary model - it didn't make it easier for me, but I genuinely liked it because it could explain about the same with much less weirdnesses mixed in, and closer to the quantum mechanics model.

Iain Clarke wrote:

Here's a slightly more complex near-truth for you

Exactly. Rarely a new discovery - as revolutionary as it is - throws out everything we learned before.

Iain Clarke wrote:

An Idea That Could Save The World: Disavowal Day!

I don't think it would work as intended - but it would be fun if it did.

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

AlexCode

I agree with you in some parts but disagree when you compare our intelligence with the ant. Not that I'm offended, an not that some people I know are more dumb than an ant but the difference is that we don't have anyone or anything to tell us about what's beyond what we know. I don't thing that we couldn't understand it... P.S.: Writing the above put me to thing about the scale thing... What if compared to the relation between us and ants is another form of life that have the same difference to us, being more intelligent in the same or grater scale... Maybe I don't disagree with you that much :->

AlexCode

Now we get in loop... Again to expand we got to have more space right? To have more space means that something will have less space. For example, if I need more space at home I'll have to build another room. This room will occupy some of my garden, so my garden got smaller to my house get bigger. If my house is the Universe and thinking that it's constantly expanding, what's my garden? Does it ever end? Yeah? how? You bump your head into some sort of wall? What's beyond that wall? Does it really ends :-D:-D:-D I like these thing and I'm just mad I'll die exactly what I know now about this...:mad:

Andy Brummer

AlexCode wrote:

Now we get in loop... Again to expand we got to have more space right? To have more space means that something will have less space.

No, you just get more space because the space itself just got bigger. With the house you are just rearranging things around the space not changing the space itself.

This blanket smells like ham