Deep thinking Created 13 years ago2011-07-08 07:39:29 UTC by zeeba-G

Anyone into deep thinking? If so strike up a deep conversation or idea and state your own opinions and thoughts.

I can think of subjects all day. Though I have a busy schedule I began this thread anyways because it is good exercise for the mind.

I will try to come at ideas with an unbiased outlook.

Here's an idea.

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Is it true that we actually physically exist? Or could we be "an idea, or in for ex. a video game". It makes sense that infinity exists because you can count up forever but is the space we live in big enough to hold infinity? Is this possible?

If you can count to infinity than you can count negative infinity. If you relate these numbers to the size of molecules in a matter than does the size continue on getting smaller forever or is there a final smallest particle? It seems that it must go on forever but if physical matter really exists, wouldn't this be impossible? So does matter really exist or not?

I don't expect us to know the answers here but logical reasoning could lead you to discover something.

It seems that if particle's size continue to decrease infinitely "split into smaller particles" than it would make sense that we are simply a speck or particle of something bigger and many things smaller forever in both directions.

On the other hand, if matter does really physically exist than "idealy" the particles could be broken up infinitely being 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc. forever, yet "actually physically" it could no further be broken up at a certain point with the particles even existing "too small to exist".

This brings to mind that when you get something on your hands it never "100%" comes off. This is a philosophical view on it but with the physical view I stated where the particles could no longer be further broken up "if this were true" than your hands could become "100%" clean of the substance touched.

The problem with particles and the micro world in general is that you can not apply the logic as you know it for it does not exist on such levels. Logic breaks down the further down into the matter you go and when speaking of individual particles then there is none of it left.

The electron is concidered to be a point particle. This means that it doesn't have a volume and thus is infinitly small in a way. The protons and neutrons however are made up by smaller things as you might know called quarks, but what's beyond that is hard to tell because smashing quarks open to see what's inside is quite a hard task.

Concidering that energy is quantizised I find it hard to believe that you will end up with smaller and smaller particles because eventually you will reach a lowest possible energy level and everything bellow that will be too unstable to exist for any real physical time period.

Also when speaking of infinities. It's easy to get infinities in simple maths. But when you get an infinity as the answer to a physical equation than something has gone terribly wrong. There can't be any infinities in the real physical world, imagen the consequences. Not even space can be infinite for it has an expansion velocity which suggests that there was a beginning.

Interesting subject. I often find myself just sitting around staring into mid-air thinking about things like this.

well, I'm in the countryside making a hay stack. this is some ezxellent time for deep thinking.
I often try to think about what's beyond space-time... becase our Universe, as big as it is, is not infinite.

That one gets to me every time Striker. And it's so annoying since we can't possibly find out. To our simple human minds, what else could there be outside if not space and time? Something undefined.

Whether or not we physically exist isn't nearly as interesting as the mindboggling nature of sentience. We can think. We can think about thinking. And that's incredible. IMHO

To our simple human minds, what else could there be outside if not space and time?

The human mind is not a simple thing. I know you want to be all "humans are stupid because look at war and hate and murder and blah blah blah," but for an object the size of two soda cans to be capable of metacognition - at all - is nothing short of miraculous.

To understand the exact nature of the entirety of everything is no easy task, especially because we're outright incapable of just observing everything directly. Consider dark matter, for example.

Be careful about what you're thinking in threads like this. Don't ever expect answers to your questions, because your questions are probably unanswerable (much less by people like us who haven't really studied anything). They're better suited for mind-expanding exercises. Also, that's like 4 edits since my original post.

Final edit: By the way, Zeeba, matter is a very dense form of energy. Not sure if you already knew that, but I'm just throwing it out there. Madcow is also right, our understanding of physics breaks down at the quantum level, so to reach a conclusion by continuously halving things is inherently flawed.

how come we can think about thinking, but it's near impossible to think about thinking about thinking? and when you think about processors that can emulate processora that can emulate processors that .... which is, at the end, a product of our mind.

The human mind is not a simple thing. I know you want to be all "humans are stupid because look at war and hate and murder and blah blah blah," but for an object the size of two soda cans to be capable of metacognition - at all - is nothing short of miraculous

That's not how I ment it. I ment it as we can not imagine things beyond a certain limit. We can never imagine the microscopic world accuratly, we can never imagine anything above the third dimension, and we can never imagine what's outside of our universe. Perhaps I sentenced it wrong.

Obviously we are quite complex biologically. The complexity of the human body is facinating and mindblowing, but at least most of it can be explained, and what we can't explain about it today we will be able to explain in the future.

And don't make assumptions about what I want. That's just silly.

Perhaps I sentenced it wrong.

You accidentally the whole verb.

There was no need for that comment, I noticed my error and explained myself.
Are you going to nag on my flawed English or are we going to have a discussion?

Striker: I find it hard to even think about thinking. How do you do it?
Something that has bothered me is that when I think about a taste then I for a few seconds can actually somehow taste it, but then when I notice that I can taste it the sensation just disapears. Sometimes a similar thing happens when I try to imagine an image. At first I get a clear picture, and then it slowly decays and after a minute or so I can't imagine it at all. If I wait a while however I can repeat the process.

The photon is as "small" as it gets. It has no mass, yet it has properties that make it seem to have mass. It bounces off things, yet it can penetrate things at the same time.

As for our existence, yeah, anything is possible. But I don't really care.

People strive to find the meaning of life for centuries, yet I find it incredibly simple. The meaning of life is happiness. All of us are constantly working toward that goal--either instant gratification or delayed reward. Ultimately, we are all trying to be happy.

Mapping makes me incredibly happy. Sometimes I think it ought to be regulated like a potentially addictive substance because it's so exhilarating.

What about color? What if everybody's eyes are different? What if what I see is red, you see if blue? My black can be your white? Some people love the darkness, while some people love the brightness.

Nope, everybody perceives the same colours, with minor difference. And colors don't actually exist, it's just reflected light from a specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

What about color? What if everybody's eyes are different? What if what I see is red, you see if blue? My black can be your white? Some people love the darkness, while some people love the brightness.

Nope

As for the universe being infinite, who cares, we are fucking out world up, instead of flying into space to come back to an empty planet, we need step our shit up.

Anyways, you know it was the computer "Deep Thought" that managed to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It took a few million years to calculate it, and it had discovered "42".

Since nobody knew the question to life the universe and everything, it was difficult for the computer. So they asked how they might find the question to life the universe and everything, and it said to build a much bigger and stronger computer, known as "The Earth".

The scientists then created a fake race called the "humans" that looked much like apes. They were part of the computer programming. 7 million years were needed to find the question of life the universe and everything, but at the last 5 minutes of the needed programming, the Vogons blew it up to make an intergalactic bypass.

And colors don't actually exist, it's just reflected light from a specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

And this, is why space is black.

Its not neccessarily black, its darkness, which is the absence of light.

What he Said:

Anyways, you know it was the computer "Deep Thought" that managed to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It took a few million years to calculate it, and it had discovered "42".

Since nobody knew the question to life the universe and everything, it was difficult for the computer. So they asked how they might find the question to life the universe and everything, and it said to build a much bigger and stronger computer, known as "The Earth".

The scientists then created a fake race called the "humans" that looked much like apes. They were part of the computer programming. 7 million years were needed to find the question of life the universe and everything, but at the last 5 minutes of the needed programming, the Vogons blew it up to make an intergalactic bypass.

What he ment:

HERP DERP IMA TRASH UP THIS THREAD WITH NEEDLESS CRAP I LEARNED IN SCI-FI MOVIES :3

As for colors, I like the really nice colors and stuff White Dwarfs and super novas give off. They look amazing, I hope one day man can make it into space with full on FTL travel, and we can see them first hand, but that would take years, centuries to do, to come up with the FTL drives, AND then we would have to protect ourselves from the radiation. I would be worth, imo.

You guys have sparked some interesting stuff. Some philosophers believe everything is one element in different forms. Some believe this is water. Perhaps the truth is that everything is electricity or even broader "energy". Thus would this really be physical? I'm tellin ya, were a video game lol!

Well the color thing is interesting in that you cannot possibly imagine a color that does not exist by mixing colors you have seen. Isn't this interesting? Say for example "a greater being" created us and created the colors. And he only gave us what colors we have. If there are more colors out there, we cannot possibly perceive them. This is like a computer only being able to work with what its been given. Or the ball not being able to bounce higher than from where it was dropped.

Satchmo I like your suggestion. In the bible it says "God is love" and that is all. So even from a religeous stance the deep truth would say that life is about happiness or "love". And from a non religious stance you can say the same thing because people are out to make them self and others perhaps happy and benefit themselves. This is human nature. I find mapping as awesome as you do. I can't get enough of it.

As for mapping, its interesting to think about the void you are given. It is this dark cold place with no atmosphere. Where you don't allow light it will remain dark. Where you don't add matter "pshh "brush"" matter does not exist.

Another interesting outlook is to see the void as an actual physical "3d" black void box that exists in your monitor. Pretend its a black bock floating in your room with the top and bottom wrapped with the edges of your monitor. Placing stuff inside this box is fun and you can than walk around in it and explore this 3d place.

Through the Wormhole is Morgan Freeman is a good show. At least its backed with true science stuffs.

Deep thinking can be scientific. Its like imagining something unscientific and than trying to find the solution with science and logic.

My whole life I have gone with faith in religion but now I even question it. Perhaps I need proof because I believe it is human nature to seek proof before believing something to be true. Other wise it just seems foolish.

I'm also less judgemental over everyone. Non religeous people get offended when religeous people judge them for certain things because the non religeous person doesn't judge others on the certain subject themselves. So to be judged on something that someone doesn't perceive as bad on others becomes offensive imo.

It also says "religeously" you will be judged the way you judge others. So if I am religeous and say you are going to hell for stealing than I would go to hell for being sexually imoral right? So I think its better to not judge at all unless you believe you walk in no sin and yet still not judge.

Sorry for getting religeous guys but it does pertain to deep thinking. I admire everyone's outlook no matter what religion.

My atheist friend/coworker once told me " im not religious because I don't think anyone deserves to go to hell". This really changed my entire outlook and made me think.

I noticed this.

In Minecraft, 90% of the time, you start on a beach. The default character looks like a sun-beaten guy with dirt possibly damaged clothes. The game type is survival. Have you been shipwrecked on a distant land fighting for survival? Did Notch set it up like this or is it coincidental?

I would like to make a Minecraft diary of such a story one day.

Haven't played it. Perhaps another thread? Unless you consider that "deep thinking" about the game...

Its deep thinking to me. I fantasize about owning a country.

Well the color thing is interesting in that you cannot possibly imagine a color that does not exist by mixing colors you have seen.

Maybe I'm missing your point, but there are "colors" that exist that we don't see. Ultraviolet and infrared are just that, practically speaking.
But really "color" is just the result of the brain interpreting a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Fun fact to those who don't know: gammas rays, radio waves, and light are all literally the same thing.
But I'm probably missing your point.

Its deep thinking to me. I fantasize about owning a country.

The easiest way to get a country would probably be to buy or invade Sealand (if you see that as a real country) or to become pope.

You know what boggles my mind about electromagnetism?

I'm sure you heard about the Perpetuum Mobile mechanism. This has nothing to do with electromagnetic waves, but the concept somewhat applies.
Say you generate an electromagnetic wave. Probably a radiowave, or an x-ray, or probably even a gamma-ray(which are the strongest). This wave is going to travel... well, infinitely. At least until it encounters something that can totally absorb it, else it will reflect and continue its travel.

I haven't learned very much my physics lesson about electromagnetic waves this year, but I remember they maintain this "motion" because they're basically composed of 2 types of energies: magnetic and electric. I don't remember this part, but in its motion, the magnetic field generates an electric field until it's depleted, then the electric field generates a magnetic field and so on. I might be wrong about this, but it's what I remember.

How can this happen? How come it doesn't loose its energy?

At the beginning of the 20th century, when astronomy started being more popular and researched, Hubble discovered (I think he is the one, I might be wrong again) that objects in the sky(stars, galaxies, nebulas) which are travelling away from us emit a redshifted light( the light tends to be reddish). The objects that travel towards us ar blueshifted.
At first, scientists couldn't explain this, but in 1929 Fritz Zwicky offered a possible explanation: the light, after having travelled such a great distance, has become 'tired', essentially loosing some of its energy.

He was proven wrong.

It's all about the Doppler effect, those objects travel at such high speed that the wavelength is lengthened. Or shortened, if they travel towards us. You can very easily observe the Doppler effect with sound sources. Know the ambulance sound? Pay attention next time one passes near you guys, and you'll know what I'm talking about.Actually this discovery has participated at the validation of the Big Bang theory. In about the 50', scientists predicted that the Universe, having cooled down to a low enough temperature, must had emitted at about 300.000 years a type of radiation that's nowadays called "cosmic background radiation". Now, that light exists even today, but it is so old that because of it's traveling and expansion of the spacetime web, it has become microwave radiation.
COBE, a satellite launched in the 90', proved this to be right.

Now imagine this: that energy has been emitted billions of years ago( probably 15, more or less) and it still exists. And that "energy" is actually something that is continuously generated out of... nothing(maybe).
It will only get "fainter", but never disappear.

I need somebody to explain this to me, it still boggles my mind.

[EDIT] Oh btw, Zeeba, religious people participated numerous times in science. Big Bang, for example, was a theory invented by a catholic priest.
I myself am an Orthodox(not a strong believer, but I prefer to know there's a 'Designer'), but I feel like this theory reconciles really well with God.

Sealand doesnt have any room or ground. Maybe a relatively large Polynesian island.

I've dug into some of the craziest stuff a while ago about pre-christian angels.

From what I remember.

Hell was basically a place to be punished like we all know, but it was not an eternal punishment like the modern twist on the idea. Simply your soul was tortured by angels of punishment until it is turned into water. Then you ere cast back upon the earth in the rain to find life again.

Angels were crazy-ass monsters. Michael was said to have 1000 wings, each with a mouth that drool out Cherubs. His face was simply a shape of flesh and skin that had no eyes, mouth, nose, etc.

Demons are only corrupted humans, and Sataniel is not evil at all. Only humans can be evil.

Creepy shit brah, creepy shit. But, if you want to own a small country, find a small, un-discovered/un-inhabited island. Make a fortress. Call yourself president. Win.

Here's a take on what gravity is. It has to do with the big bang theory. That a giant star exploded and in the space that the star existed the "void" because of pressure begins to draw in matter until it has created a ball so big that it still draws in matter but not as strongly.

Now this new weaker force is gravity. And over time the gravity will dissopate and seese to exist until the earth looses hold of itself and disentigrates into space or explodes like a bomb that it could be.

It is afterall a huge ball of matter with mountains of pressure and filled with molten lava. This could all be true yet a very "slow" process.

Shizam

Rim, if you want your own country go minecraft some sand from a shallow chunk of ocean and build up an island. Lol I saw a vid on minecraft.

Maybe I'm missing your point, but there are "colors" that exist that we don't see. Ultraviolet and infrared are just that, practically speaking

Well techniqually speaking Infrared and Ultraviolet aren't color, they are waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. There is no such thing as "color" we can't see due to the fact "color" is defined the reflected visible light that our mind registers, Infrared and ultra violet are the extremes of that spectrum.

Light is the phenomenon created when a photon is created, and this occurs when an electron snaps back into its valence charge. Infrared and ultraviolet are these but aren't seen. which makes them difficult to classify.

Technically speaking, visible light is only called visible light/color because we have the biological equipment to interpret that narrow sliver of the spectrum. My point was that if we could interpret a wider range of the spectrum, it would still be other colors -- which pretty much goes without saying but is fun to consider nonetheless.

Thats the kind of deep thinking I like to hear soup! Another kind of deep thinking is deep imagining like I did with the hammer window on my monitor being a physical 3d void existing inside my room.

My mind has been too preoccupied with work and my summer online class "precal" but before I was able to have lucid dreams. This is just even another kind of "way" of thinking and with a little effort you can be controling what happens in your dreams. Its pretty fun. But I guess stress gets in the way of it. And I took a break from trying because I am currently more interested in other things.

Light is the phenomenon created when a photon is created, and this occurs when an electron snaps back into its valence charge. Infrared and ultraviolet are these but aren't seen.

Ultraviolet is seen by many bug species.

Creepy shit brah,

Those in a nutshell. it got a lot creepier than that. Also the book wasn't mine and was very very very old.

Ultraviolet is seen by many bug species.

Ultraviolet is also seen by many photo film species.

I have to spray for polaroids a lot.

I wouldn't mess with the theory of gravity Zeeba. It's pretty solid

Now imagine this: that energy has been emitted billions of years ago( probably 15, more or less) and it still exists. And that "energy" is actually something that is continuously generated out of... nothing(maybe).
It will only get "fainter", but never disappear.

I need somebody to explain this to me, it still boggles my mind.

Striker:
That energy was generated from the big bang. It was quite an energetic expansion. Those who represented the big bang theory infact predicted that there would be a universal electromagnetic radiation as a consequence out of the bang. That's why they got all excited when they actually accidentally found it So the energy didn't come out of nothing. Unless you count big bang as coming out of nothing which wouldn't be that far fetched actually.

A foton, or a lightwave, can interact with other things that doesn't fully absorb it. This will cause a transaction of momentum (even light has momentum even though it has no mass) which will change the energy of the lightwave. The lightwaves energy is dependant only of it's frequency and so that will be the only factor that changes as the speed remains the same (of course the wavelength also changes due to the fact that the frequency changes)
So if you let a foton bounce around in space for a few billion years it will most likely hit quite a few things within that timeperiod and therefore loose energy.

Eventually the foton will hit something that absorbs all of its' energy.

Ha lots of neat ideas and fun conjecture in this thread. I think we all have a lot in common as in the way we think as mappers. =)

@ Madcow, It was an idea that it might not forever exist. Just a "deep" thought. It was just an idea.

Another kind of deep thinking is deep imagining like I did with the hammer window on my monitor being a physical 3d void existing inside my room.

I know! like your computer screen is a shoebox diorama, but you could also squeeze inside your monitor, and enter another worldspace? =P

*building dioramas was my single-favourite thing to do in elementary school; it's mapping, except with cardboard.

i wonder if, when we have more information about quantum particles, things like the tardis could exist in terms of being bigger on the inside than the outside. Talk of the hammer window being a physical 3D space made me think of the tardis.
Is it so farfetched? We've observed quantum particles occupying the same space at once...

Madcow, that' not what I meant. You have to read my entire post to understand.

I did D: Twice.
Fuck english

It's when you start talking science you realise that even though you took like 10 courses you still can't talk about what you love.

Interesting Thread, My 2 cents worth on:

We've observed quantum particles occupying the same space at once...

Personal perceptions of what is reality given/accepted but the general principle is that we cannot measure both position and time simultanously on the quantum scale. (it's "either or" but not both.) The quantum argument is the opposite of General Relativity and what starts to happen at the very "large end of scale", where given enough scale there is no space or time only space-time. At the quatum level space needs to be redefined as "something else" (call it x), then at x we can have simultanous particals, and/or particals that pop into and out of existance and entanglement etc.

Epkyrotic Bang theory states that our universe spawned from two other universes colliding and sparking our universe. If this is true, our universe would be infantile and a gordonfreemanillion times smaller compared to other much older universes.

Welcome, wolf-3d! Enjoy your stay here at TWHL.

Haha captain I loved diarama's too! They were magical!

The models I make for architecture school are pretty wicked cool. I'll have to post pics of some eventually.

Given that god is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite... would you like a toasted teacake?

Quotes aside. I don't think that happiness is the meaning of life. At least, not in literal terms. In literal terms, we exist to continue the existance of our species. So what's the purpose of ALL of our existances? For individuals, it seems that we exist TO exist. Us having a "purpose" implies that someone/something had a need and we would have been created to fill it, which would work with some religions. But apart from that theory, is it just that we were randomly brought about by the progression of the universe?

On the other hand, if god or any other deity/race/whatever DID create the human race, why? Are we like HL maps, created out of enjoyment of creation, or to be shown off to our creator's friends? Or maybe they were just lonely, in which case we're the equivalent of an ant farm or a pet?