Discussion: Reality - Printable Version

Discussion: Reality - Printable Version

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Discussion: Reality - Weltall - 13th April 2010

I thought it might be nice to engage in a little philosophy in the Den of the Philoceraptor.

So, today's topic is reality. How do you define it? Do you believe that objectivity can exist within the concept? And, since we perceive it to exist, where did it come from?

Discussion: Reality - Dark Jaguar - 13th April 2010

Reality is the stuff that exists whether we think it's there or not. We can be as objective as is possible considering our minds are imperfect and biased (specifically biased towards "middle sized things at middle speeds", moving around on the serengetti fighting for food). The best we can do is to constantly come up with tests to disprove our ideas, tests that try to remove as much bias as possible, and those ideas that survive the most rigorous testing we can subscribe to as true, tentatively.

As to where "reality" came from, to quote a sci-fi story, there is not enough data to provide a meaningful answer.

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 14th April 2010

Well I guess i'll just share some random stuff i've been playing with.

- We live in a multi-verse capable of infinite possibilities, ie: infinitely larger and infinitely smaller outer and inner space.

- My theory of reality can be compared to a bat cave, not the kind with the workstation and the amazing car, but an actual cave of bats. The construct of the cave is natural, the animal evolved to take advantage of it and specifically evolved to do so (hanging upside down, echo location, etc). But there is an entire alternate world below where the dropped food, dying or dead bats and excrement has fallen to the cave floor. Here is a vastly more complicated world even containing its own atmosphere and exclusive life forms just a few inches off the ground. I apply this on a universal scale. The cave is our perceived universe, the bats are the space dust (including all known and unknown things) and planets, such as Earth is the cave floor where complicated life forms and ecosystems evolve out of the natural flow of the cosmos. I raise a suspicious eyebrow constantly on whether or not this is designed specifically.

- For several decades now, there is a dirty rumor that the UFO's man has seen aren't machines but rather living things themselves. Like some kind of grand single cell that uses the upper atmosphere, low orbit and orbit of Earth as its dwelling. This isn't completely outside the realm of speculation, a life-form that exists in space is not only theorized but sometimes accidentally photographed by NASA. If this pans out to have any truth to it whatsoever we could apply the bat cave again with the giant cells being the bats and Earth being the excremental biosphere. Alternatively, they could have begun their evolution as proteins in the upper atmosphere from Earth and have no true extra terrestrial orgins (unless you want to get in to 'seeding' and how life possibly arrived to earth). Regardless, the speculation is fun and it just gives you a view in to how multi-layered this reality is, whether its fabricated by the imagination for our entertainment or speculated by our top minds.

- Imagination is a huge key, we are arguably the only living thing capable of it, at least to the level we have seen. This aspect of our inheritance I believe comes from our ability to survive long periods of isolation, a trait gained after several ice ages could could have possibly taken the un-imaginative in to the hells of insanity and the list of horrors that come with isolation and what it does to an animal. Survival of the fittest meaning that the mentally acute could use music, story telling, crafting and other artistic outlets to keep focused. But the byproduct of this gained perspective would mean that we would spend this imagination on figuring out how the universe works. To step in to the possibly religious ideals for a moment, we could be the children of the universe being raised simply to give a consciousness to the unconscious sentience of the cosmos.

- This reality has layers upon layers, there is the physical and the unphysical, manifestations of sound for example which obeys its own laws of not only what we're capable of perceiving but way beyond in to frequencies we cant even grasp, frequencies constantly theorized as important to chemical makeup or atomic structure. We know that sound is vibration and we know that everything has a specific vibration, everything from brainwaves to stars to rocks, crystals and organisms. This, another example of our multi-verse, gives us insight in to the inner-workings of our inner-space. Everyone knows that vibrations can feel good or bad, whether it's a sexual device or a musical instrument - we comprehend that certain vibrations have calming or intensifying effects and everything in between. Civilizations that exist today that are thousands of years old believe that by using certain types of matter (elements such as metals, crystals etc) have properties to them that can heal. Other cultures have things such as sound bowls, like the Tibetan Monks who believe that using a gradient of smaller to larger "bells" with methods of how to produce their vibrations, and used on the sick or dying, can have positive results. Using vibrations to strengthen cells is scientifically proven, but not widely accepted. It is theorized that creating vibrations of a certain type could even transcend space and time, breaking the walls of perceived physics. If one could emulate all frequencies, you could speak directly with the universe. That communication could also be applied to everything be it translating dolphin clicks and whistles, to recreating or otherwise altering matter and anti-matter.

- On the subject of molecules and atoms, I believe they have sentience , but I dont know if I would call it a life form. I dont know what an atom is and we cant debate that yet. What I debate is whether or not that sentience is simply perceived because of their organization or if they are actually actively working together. Its constantly explained as magnets, that just by throwing these positive and negative space stuffs in to the air, they will connect to form everything and anything and do this automatically because of their design. But theoretically, wouldn't they form something to generate a secure existence, like all other life? Possibly reverting to base forms such as gasses. If this is true, would it mean that everything is in some state of life? collecting, separating, transforming like a naturally occurring cold fusion in constantly transitioning existence?

- The timpanic membrane of all hearing things translates sound and vibration in to thought. Often times we can find people with the ability to take in that sound and see or "feel" a color. There is even a specific disorder of the brain where this is so prevalent it interferes with daily life. To speak in colors, you would have to imagine that specific color, if done correctly you could produce that sound frequency in your brain which would be transmitted as a wave, to that end, you could, in theory, communicate telepathically on a very simple scale. When you start to build on to the naturally occurring aspects of reality, it creates potentialities that bend our understanding. To that end, is sound only a byproduct, or a means to an end? Is its true purpose a vehicle to carry thought? When animals communicate, are they hearing the sound, or are they feeling the message inside it? Does a wolf mother's cry tell her children a mile away specific information, such as go hide or where are you that the pups react to it on a subconscious level, not because of what they hear, but because of what they feel? The answer is increasingly complicated to me and becomes more elusive the more I try to break it down.

Discussion: Reality - Weltall - 14th April 2010

I read a book by a British scientist named Vlatko Verdal discussing reality as it may be defined by quantum physics. It was pretty fascinating.

The gist, as I understood it, is that classical physics would demand determinism because Newton's idea of physics allows no room for truly random occurrences in the universe. Thus, every single event since the very beginning of time is directly and indirectly determined by all other events that have ever taken place since the beginning of time. Therefore, there is absolutely no place for the concept of free will, because anything we think is going to be pre-determined by an existing set of information. If this is the case, then there is a truly objective reality because every single idea and concept in the universe can eventually be boiled down to binary information, given enough time and energy to pursue each to its most basic elements. Everything is either true or false, and everything above it is based upon that true/false statement.

However, quantum mechanics allow for something to be true and false at the same time. An example offered is how a photon can be fired into a series of mirrors which are designed so that the photon will treat the surface as either reflective or transparent in theory, yet in practice, it is possible for the same photon to reflect and pass through simultaneously, and it is completely impossible to predict ahead of time if it will do one, the other, or both. Thus, there is true randomness in the universe, and if there is true randomness, then reality is still predetermined on the macro level, but down on the most basic levels, it is being influenced subtly by random events which have the ability to snowball as they influence factors up from microscopic to macroscopic.

Dr. Vedral goes on to postulate that the only concept which remains entirely constant between classical and quantum physics is information, and that information is a wholly physical concept which is the most fundamental force in the entire universe. Accounting for both classes of physics, it is conceivable that absolutely everything in existence can be quantified as data, and that the universe itself may be an enormous, all-encompassing quantum computer generating a program we call 'reality', which because of random possibilities, can never be totally objective.

Discussion: Reality - Dark Jaguar - 14th April 2010

lazy, I think what you're showing is the well established tendancy for humans to detect agency where none exists. You're looking for motives, desires and plans in atoms after all. The thing is, atoms behave EXACTLY the same as each other, and their interactions with each other can be predicted exactly in all situations, hence chemistry. If such predictable outcomes of their interactions are possible, the more reasonable explanation seems to be that they don't have any sort of conciousness or will of their own.

If you're going to say they do, you'll need to come up with some method of actually testing this. What would we expect atoms to do if they were concious that the model that they are NOT concious and simply obeying chemical laws does NOT predict?

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 14th April 2010

Right now no one even knows if atoms exist (at least in our definition), its just widely accepted explanation of a theorized unit of measurement though they can be "seen" we have no idea what they actually are. It's strange that you mentioned that Ryan because atoms themselves can only explained by way of quantum mechanics since individual atoms can, in theory, alter and divide sorta like cells. This is life behavior, like a virus that is "alive", it wants to exist, it wants to spread, it wants to feed and grow.

There's a very big difference in investigating the origins and principals behind things and simply adding a view in to it to alter its meaning. I've done all my research and this has always interested me. I've given speeches at forums, taught at schools, etc *toots on horn* so I know what i'm talking about. I gave a counter argument to "rods" which were these amazing little beams of light that "could travel at thousands of miles per hour" and were "invisible to the human eye" and people thought they could have been another example of the so-called cosmos animals, living things that can exist on earth or outside of it. My counter argument was that it could be a simple camera malfunction, like the diamond-shaped UFO's that turned out to be the inner iris of certain video cameras creating a diamond shaped oddity through the viewfinder and mistaken for a UFO. Turns out some kids figured it out and it was just bugs moving too fast for the shutter of the camera. I was slightly disappointed, but there a dozen or more examples of these cosmos animals that even NASA and the air force have documented regularly, even when they dont want to.

Discussion: Reality - Weltall - 14th April 2010

Quote: Right now no one even knows if atoms exist (at least in our definition), its just widely accepted explanation of a theorized unit of measurement though they can be "seen" we have no idea what they actually are.

I think you're confusing atoms with sub-atomic particles such as quarks and electrons, which are the smallest components of physical matter which our capabilities can detect.

In the world of the microscopic, atoms are actually extremely large compared to base particles (by extreme, think of an electron as the size of a person. The atom would be planet-sized), and our understanding of their behavior and structure is extremely advanced. We've even created artificial structures that are barely larger than a handful of atoms already. We observe atoms undergoing changes frequently, but I've never heard it said that this behavior emulates conscious behavior.

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 14th April 2010

No sir, it's essentially all theory at this point, basically we dont have a concrete method to view them as of yet but I heard there's something either being experimented with now or new to the field that offers some pretty interesting things. The best method they have is a type of vacuum that forces electricity through materials to make "atoms visible" but even then, we have to have faith in what we're perceiving is an actual atom. They say this new method can even allow us to see subs.

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/less-one-angstrom.html

But i know very little on it. The problem with atoms being photographed or observed is that you dont know what you're looking at because atoms emit no light are too small for light to bounce off them. So you need to have the machines tell you, then it gets overly complicated because what you're seeing is a representation of a reconstruction's representation. If science wants round balls, by God they will tell us its round balls until they are blue in the face. Just like Mars is actually red and the world is flat, or that organic compounds create lattices of construction, etc. It's interference not reference, but that debate is as old as the late 70's.

Creating structures the size of a few angsrtom is almost routine yeah but then again - what's an angstrom but a made up term used to describe something that only exists on paper with only theories supporting it. We can see things at a very small scale until it has to be manipulated, but by then what we're looking at is anyone's guess. Atoms can be electrified (causing their familiar lattice form) and it is energy held together by energy, it's mass is only equal to its ability to generate transformation (again all theory)

Most of it i dont subscribe to mostly because they haven't attempted a new idea in the field since like 1981 so i'm bitter about it. But like I said, we can "see" them but we've no idea of what they actually are and what we're seeing is only skin deep.

Discussion: Reality - Unreadphilosophy - 14th April 2010

There are some books that I have been meaning to read on the nature of reality. The only that I have been most interested in is called the My Big TOE series. Here's a link to the book:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Big-TOE-Complete-Trilogy/dp/0972509461/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271303603&sr=8-1

Here's another book that I want to read:
http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Solved-Jim-Elvidge/dp/1424336260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271305712&sr=1-1

An expensive little shit.

The book covers everything--God, reality, the nature of humanity. It looks incredible. The problem is that I have too much reading to do regarding things like the Constitution.

Let me give you my take based on what I've heard so far. Senses, as we all know, are nothing more than the mechanics that give us the ability to perceive our world. The question that I have come across is this: how do we know that what we are perceiving is actually what it is? Take colors, for example. I always hear a lot of people say that things have colors because that's the way they are. The truth, however, is that things have color because that's the way we perceive them. Colors are nothing more than a part of perception. The word "color" is defined when light reflects off an object and is interpreted by our eyes. Don't believe me? Go into your room, close the door, and turn off the lights. You don't see any colors. You may be able to tell people what colors the objects are by touching them, but you don't know if those colors really exist.

The correlation between color and reality can be applied to cultures as well. When I took Anthropology 101, one thing that I learned is that cultures have different ways of perceiving colors. What be blue to us is green to others.

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 15th April 2010

[Image: spectrum.gif]

Doesn't it piss you off? :D Human beings can only see such a tiny little portion. Eagles can see in to the UV and IR which to them, I mean, who knows what they can see, I bet everything lights up like a Christmas tree. They can probably see radio waves and clouds of natural and unnatural radiation for all we know.

[Image: Infrared_dog.jpg]

With IR

With UV

Those are minerals from wikipedia under UV light which is considered "near UV". So you can imagine how strange everything would look. A lot of animals and flora evolved to take advantage of it since they can see in that range, sometimes they can only see in that range.

[Image: uv_poppy.jpg]

Seeing in the infrared also means you can "see" heat, so heat emitting from an animal for example would literally glow.

I cant even imagine what the world would look like if we could see every part of the spectrum of light radiation. We'd probably go insane. Even sound would disturb the image, you'd witness the movement of air as it swirls in different temperatures and levels of microbe, rays of all refracted and reflected light would bombard you and the radiation given off things naturally would glow like highlighted objects, your own body would be phosphorous in its description. Every wave of and band of radio and projected frequency, you would even see the radiation of living and nonliving things regardless of of your eyes being open or closed as x-rays would penetrate everything unless it's too dense, like Superman. We'd need muscles in our eyes that dont exist to control the level of input because i'm pretty sure you'd never be able to actually see a single object or focus. It pisses me off that we can never see what an object truly looks like. I also always wondered what colors look like in space outside of the atmosphere without NASA retouching it.

As far as cultures that thought green was blue, do you mean the writings of the Aztecs that suggested that they all had an inherited birth defect resulting in color blindness? or the prolonged exposure to the sun in your African and South American cultures, that can cause several types of blindness.

Discussion: Reality - Weltall - 15th April 2010

I read a book detailing why our visual range is what it is. Essentially, the rods and cones in our eyes are of a size that only that narrow band of wavelengths can register upon them. For us to be able to see far into the IR or UV spectrums would requires eyes that are either much larger, or rods and cones which would be so small that most visible light would be invisible to us. Even animals who can see into those spectrums do so only very slightly, and usually their entire visual range is shifted to compensate (a creature who sees UV would not register the color red, for example.

The sun emits more visible light than any other kind, so we got what is really most useful to us.

Fun fact: we can technically 'see' UV radiation with our skin, it's just that our brain does not represent the sensation in a visual manner. It would theoretically be possible to transmit all senses as visuals given a better understanding of how the sensory input is processed by the brain, though our eyes are a much higher fidelity input device than any other we possess. A visual representation of heat on the skin would just appear as a blur.

Discussion: Reality - Unreadphilosophy - 15th April 2010

http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Consciousness-Everything-Scientific-Verification/dp/0970316100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271363474&sr=8-1

I had completely forgot about this book. Here's what I gather: if you can read and understand this book, you will understand everything. I'm guessing your brain will literally expand everytime you finish a chapter.

If we want to have a real discussion on reality, I think we should read this first.

Discussion: Reality - Weltall - 15th April 2010

That is the most ridiculous title for a book. Ever. If you added "Captain Underpants" as a prefix, it would make more sense.

Plus, it's really expensive. ;_;

[Image: pillar.jpg]

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 15th April 2010

Weltall Wrote:I read a book detailing why our visual range is what it is. Essentially, the rods and cones in our eyes are of a size that only that narrow band of wavelengths can register upon them. For us to be able to see far into the IR or UV spectrums would requires eyes that are either much larger, or rods and cones which would be so small that most visible light would be invisible to us. Even animals who can see into those spectrums do so only very slightly, and usually their entire visual range is shifted to compensate (a creature who sees UV would not register the color red, for example.

The sun emits more visible light than any other kind, so we got what is really most useful to us.

Fun fact: we can technically 'see' UV radiation with our skin, it's just that our brain does not represent the sensation in a visual manner. It would theoretically be possible to transmit all senses as visuals given a better understanding of how the sensory input is processed by the brain, though our eyes are a much higher fidelity input device than any other we possess. A visual representation of heat on the skin would just appear as a blur.

That's really cool. But heat creating a blur has more to do with bad juju where the heat creates a mirror in simple terms and we see wavering liquid. When heat is pushed out of an engine we see it as we would gas fumes but thats because the hot air is mixing with the cool air and the light is refracting from it. I believe all living things with eyes would see the same effect.

But all light is just radiation, even artificial light. All light is visible is including every tick on the spectrum, we just evolved not to use it. And that pisses me off. Eagles have UV and IR vision and have completed simple tasks such as picking out a red item from other colored items. Snakes have IR sensors but its not in their eyes so I have no fucking clue how they see. Where's our IR sensors? Where's our bigger eye-cones?? I wanna see UV shit!

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 15th April 2010

wtf on that book "Proof of logic God is" what the fuck am I reading? It's written by Yoda?

Discussion: Reality - Unreadphilosophy - 15th April 2010

^The title is quite complex. From what I've read, the author is an expert in the realm physics. Then again, I don't think he'd write that book if he wasn't.

Not only is the book expensive (as Ryan pointed out), it's quite long--over 700 pages. Still, I think it's worth it.

Discussion: Reality - etoven - 15th April 2010

Weltall Wrote:I thought it might be nice to engage in a little philosophy in the Den of the Philoceraptor.

So, today's topic is reality. How do you define it? Do you believe that objectivity can exist within the concept? And, since we perceive it to exist, where did it come from?

I tend to believe that reality is a construct of our mental perceptions of the world around us, therefore reality is different for everyone.

For, example one day humans could evolve to the point that I could wink lazyfatbum out of existance, by simply believing that in my reality, he does not exist.

Think about this... If I believed with all my heart that I could fly, and no one could disprove it to my satisfaction, who is to say it's not so?

How do we know that a tree makes a sound in a vacant woods?

We can only think the tree makes a sound because we believe it is so..

Discussion: Reality - alien space marine - 15th April 2010

reality tv sucks

except for cops

Discussion: Reality - lazyfatbum - 16th April 2010

Etoven you can already do that, it's called having a mental disorder or being a psychopath.

ASM speaks the truth.

Discussion: Reality - Weltall - 16th April 2010

>From what I've read, the author is an expert in the realm physics.

From what I've read, 700 pages written in that kind of English would turn my brain into crisco.