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David_lees (David_lees)
Username: David_lees

Registered: 12-2011
Posted From: 92.22.9.54
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 02:17 pm:   

I thought this was pretty amazing: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2157548/Is-secret-previous-univer se-hidden-microwaves-Scientist-spots-ghost-Big-Bang.html

The jist seems to be they've found the "ghost" of a previous universe which suggests there have been multiple Big Bangs, with multiple universes expanding then contracting over billions of years the way ours is now.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.42.53.119
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 02:23 pm:   

Current literature and writing is really zooming in on this topic, isn't it?
I think writing is akin to coincidence; we write what we sense and coincidence is us sensing things, too; the coincidences don't 'happen', we zoom in on them because they are clues to things we don't yet realise are coming but know are, deep down.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 02:37 pm:   

I'd go one further and state that the universe is ageless.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.214.176
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 02:44 pm:   

But how could this be when we know it's 6,000 years old...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 02:44 pm:   

At last scientists are finally catching up with what philosophers have known "must be" for millennia. Well done, chaps!

Not only was there an earlier "universe" but we're surrounded by the ruddy things.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 03:06 pm:   

Assuming that things "must be" a certain way is dangerous. Our instincts have evolved to hunt and procreate, not understand the Universe in one gulp. Reality is much odder than that.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 03:46 pm:   

Setting aside Occam's Razor as too blunt for this case, do you remember Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, Proto?

It applies here.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 06:10 pm:   

"Elementary, my dear Watson. I saw your reflection in the teapot."
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.72.157
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 06:25 pm:   

The game's afoot.

(What a crap game.)
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.91.204
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 06:52 pm:   

I think I've been spending too much time on Facebook. I just wanted to 'Like' Mick's comment.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 07:13 pm:   

Watson, the needle.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.40.254.128
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 12:10 am:   

Weird thing about the start of the universe/multiverse. You realise that it demands the application of philosophy to physics, resulting in the understanding that every single possible explanation for the start of the universe is correct.

It's illogical but logical, Captain.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.38.121
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 12:55 am:   

If quantum theory is correct and the multiverse genuinely exists and every time a decision is made a new universe is created wherein any of the possible outcomes happens, then in an infinite number of these universes God must exist in one form or another. Also admittedly an infinite number of universes where he doesn't. We have no way of knowing which type of universe we're in... Belief as a default option seems like a good idea.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 94.197.127.40
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 01:41 am:   

Quantum computers are a good indication the multiverse theory is correct, Weber. If the multiverse theory was incorrect, they wouldn't work.

What's interesting is where one universe begins and another ends. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that all and everything are part of one and the same, all coiled and wrapped around each other while being 'seen' as flat and straightforward.

Also, I've got an itchy ear tonight.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.40.253.58
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 02:57 am:   

Still got an itchy ear and it's nearly two in the morning. Raining as well. Hm. This bodes dangerous for message board posting. Too easy to write something dumb and regret it in the morning. Who was the philosopher who said the aim off all men should be to say sober what they would only otherwise say when drunk?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 04:45 am:   

Multiple universes is merely sub-categorizing now what was before fully definable—that is, if we always knew there were multiple universes, they would have come up with a word long ago that INCLUDES all the multiple universes together, and we'd be calling that the whatever the term is then instead of "universe"; like say, blix—"I'm the smartest man in the entire blix, which is to say, the vast collection of universes all put together." So the whole argument boils yet again down to language, semantics, silliness.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.40.253.178
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 08:45 am:   

Uh... You may need to read Steven Pinker on linguistic determinism, Craig.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 08:56 am:   

Why? Anything I read by him, can only be hopelessly bracketed by what I understand already. Best to build whole blixes of conceptual thought, and then allow this Pinker to inhabit them....
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 10:08 am:   

Possibilities co-exist, not actualities. I find that many people who discuss quantum physics are still hopelessly trapped in Newtonian thinking.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.42.53.119
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 11:05 am:   

We each have a universe of our own, like nobody else.

I have to say, being adopted, I feel very very aware of being wrenched from a universe I should have been in but never made it to. It's taken me my whole life to settle into this one. In fact, I don't think I even have (and my birth mother, who I've spoken to, ISN'T my mother).
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.40.254.173
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 11:23 am:   

Possibilities become actualities. When there's nothing, the weight of value of one possibility is equal to another and all possibilities demand their own actuality. Hence the multiverse. Hence existence in all its possible forms. It just so happens we're playing this possibility.

Put it simpler. 'Before' the multi/universe is represented by a blank sheet of paper. Upon the paper can be written any story. At this point all stories are equally valid and carry as much weight and validity as any other. Thus, all stories, be definition, then become the actuality, because the blank paper never really existed. The stories are the universes of the multiverse.

Uh. That's the simple metaphor.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.42.53.119
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 11:34 am:   

Amazing.
I've been reading about disappearances, things like people walking round a car to wipe a window and completely vanishing, their partner at the other side never seeing them again, a vicar vanishing while repairing his car on a busy road, stuff like that. One man even vansihed in front of his family's eyes. Is this linked? Is the fabric between these universes fragile?
And are you mentioning stories in a way to make me stop talking and get on with my writing?
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 12:01 pm:   

Possibilities become actualities.

Out of the many possibilities one and only one actuality emerges, the one we perceive as our everyday reality. There are no other actualities, only possibilities.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.42.53.119
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 12:18 pm:   

Hubert - I think it sounded nicer where it was...!
:-)
I've talked to a few physicists that believe in parallel universes, what Mark said. But then one of them said half the time they just make stuff up.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 02:12 pm:   

There are no other actualities, only possibilities.

From our viewpoint only and given our limited sensory perceptions, Hubert.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 03:35 pm:   

Possibilities become actualities. When there's nothing, the weight of value of one possibility is equal to another and all possibilities demand their own actuality.

Okay, so I hold a playing card up, face-away from my friend—to me, seeing it, it is in "actuality" the Ace of Spades; but to him, not seeing it, it is "all possibilities" at once, any card from the deck.

I turn it around, show him the Ace of Spades, and instantly possibilities have erased and actuality has actualized. No more possibilities for him that the card could be any other.

Then I immediately whack him in the side of the head with a hammer. He falls back unconscious, and I immediately revive him. His memory has naturally been jarred, so he can't remember what card it was I held up for him. I hold it up again, face-away, and you're telling me we're back to "actuality" having vanished, and "all possibilities" reigning again in its place?

In that case, memory itself, which is to say the human mind, controls actuality and multiverses?

Forget Newtonian: we've never escaped the Cartesian universe at all...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.42.53.119
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 03:45 pm:   

Have you seen Source Code? I have, but couldn't understand what happened. I *think* it deals with this.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 03:52 pm:   

In another universe, yes, Tony, I've seen SOURCE CODE.
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 212.219.63.204
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 03:52 pm:   

There is only on universe. It may consists of number of other components (or universes if you like) and was structured differently before the "Big Bang" whatever that actually was, but it's all part of the same thing.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 05:27 pm:   

From our viewpoint only and given our limited sensory perceptions, Hubert.

Proof for that does not exist. Why prefer anything we can't perceive to what we can and do perceive, unless it's an abstract notion? It makes no sense.

@Mbfg: there was nothing 'before' the Big Bang. With the Bang time itself came into existence, so 'before' is technically an impossibility. Very difficult to grasp, since we ourselves are dependent on the thermodynamic arrow of time (as Stephen Hawking calls it) to such a great extent.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 05:39 pm:   

Circular, Hubert: "Before time existed, there was no time." And before donuts existed, there were no donuts... though there was the Platonic ideal of a donut, waiting to reach inception. Though it required large vats of lard to be "actuated" first.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 05:58 pm:   

I don't think this is an example of circular reasoning, Craig. It's stating that the notion 'before' does not apply, since 'before' supposes there was 'some sort of time' before time itself. Imho what 'went on' 'before' the Big Bang has nothing to do with the universe as we know it today.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.42.53.119
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 06:00 pm:   

Sigh. The big mystery; how can there be nothing, and how can there be something? How can there be things and not be things?
It could drive you insane.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 06:12 pm:   

You're using the term "before," Hubert. This is 100% time-dependant, this term. You can't say "before time existed"; it's the same fallacy as the unstoppable-force/immoveable-object puzzle, which isn't a puzzle because both establish universes in which the other cannot logically exist. "Before time" is much the same thing as an alcohol-free martini....
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 06:24 pm:   

That's exactly what I'm saying: that the preposition 'before' does not apply here.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 06:29 pm:   

Unfortunately, Hubert, my argument will collapse if I concede you're right and retract my statements. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist your pants are on fire.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 06:57 pm:   

That's all right, Craig. Recommended reading matter: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Hawking calls his book a read for the layman, QED . . . The Zukav book is full of notions which boggle the mind, especially in the chapter "The end of science".
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David_lees (David_lees)
Username: David_lees

Registered: 12-2011
Posted From: 92.22.23.18
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 09:09 pm:   

Of course there's also the case of Lerina García, who claims she woke up one morning in a different universe...ours.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1575/265/Terrified_Woman_From_Another_Universe_Wa kes_Up_Here.html
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 09:19 pm:   

Yeah . . . We all, like, live in our own universe, dig?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.155.144.90
Posted on Monday, June 18, 2012 - 05:47 pm:   

A joke? http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1575/265/Terrified_Woman_From_Another_Universe_Wa kes_Up_Here.html
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.155.144.90
Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 10:53 am:   

Good article;
http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/html/vortex_kinesis.html
(And Ramsey - can we have this pub-looking wallpaper on here?)
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David_lees (David_lees)
Username: David_lees

Registered: 12-2011
Posted From: 92.22.34.16
Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 01:40 pm:   

It's an uneducated guess, but I wonder if the universe-hopping woman could have had some kind of mild stroke in her sleep that messed up her memories?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.155.144.90
Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 01:51 pm:   

No - I agree. But I like the idea of deep mysteries being conjured up by the mundane, our inability to tell the difference.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.137.235
Posted on Friday, May 20, 2016 - 03:12 pm:   

I miss this stuff.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 94.10.34.9
Posted on Saturday, May 21, 2016 - 12:14 pm:   

How can one give an age to the infinite? One can't. The very concept is meaningless.

We can measure and give an arbitrary "age" to what we can see and detect but all that we can see is one blinkered aspect of unknowably infinite existence. Beyond that is everything else. And I do mean Everything.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Sunday, May 22, 2016 - 02:07 am:   

Agree, Stevie. Meaningless.

In Augustine's Confessions, he explains how time is - this part we all know - just an invention, and that we live in the present. But an example he provides: you hear two notes, one short, and one long. Then you are asked which was short, which long. We know... but how do we know? We aren't "hearing" it in real time in our memories. My own theory, is that what we think of as a "sensation" - taste, sight, smell, etc. - actually includes things like time, familiarity, etc. The only reason we know a film like Pulp Fiction was lengthy, is because our mind put a little gold star on it that means "lengthy." The taste of a lemon remembered, and remembering a long film, are like a gold star and a purple star sticker on a piece of paper - in all essences exactly the same, just differing for purposes of recognizability....

Am I even remotely on subject?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 94.10.34.9
Posted on Sunday, May 22, 2016 - 12:48 pm:   

Yes, Craig, the knowable part of existence that we are aware of is entirely defined, for us, by our own limited sensory perceptions and how each individual mind interprets and stores them, whether by personal choice or circumstantial association. In life we are all the centre of our own apparently finite universe. Beyond life lies infinite possibility. Infinite possibility equates to Everything. Including everything that is, was and will be... us.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 94.10.34.9
Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 03:49 am:   

When scientists go on about finding smaller and smaller particles (or fragments of reality) until they expect to find the eventual smallest fundamental building block of the universe I part company with them. Infinity dictates that anything that exists must be made up of something. To me it is inescapably logical that matter exists as part of an endless spectrum that we are only able to perceive a limited section of within our own realm of sensory perception. Matter exists that is either too "small" or too "big" or too "other" or however one wants to describe it that we are unable to perceive. It's there, in whichever direction one cares to look, but it is forever beyond us. The periodic table, to give just one example, is as illusory (though useful as a tool within our limited realm of reality) as is time.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 94.10.34.9
Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 04:05 am:   

But just beyond our perceptions there must exist realms that we can almost detect because of the quantifiable effect they have on our realm. States of existence that we will never be able to measure but that we can infer the reality of because of the ripples they spread, if you like. And there are realms that our own "universe" impacts upon in the same way. This spectrum of infinite existence goes on and on endlessly all around us. To me this is a reasoned deduction based on pure logic that is completely irrefutable. It leads us beyond the necessary and useful constrictions of science, in all its materialistic glory, into the higher realm of philosophy as opposed to mysticism or theology, imhalro.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2016 - 07:12 am:   

I'm wondering, Stevie, though, if terms like "infinite," "eternal," etc., aren't problematic to begin with? Perhaps it's like the old "dilemma" about the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. The conundrum only exists there in language: unstoppable force = no immovable objects, immovable object = no unstoppable forces; ergo, the example is purely illogical and in fact nonsensical.

If you said, given a cup filled with liquid, can it be more filled with liquid? An illogicality, obviously. So if you say, "Given infinite X," is that a complete statement that cannot be further propounded? Is it more like a fact, like, number 5? "Given number 5, can number 6?" That makes no sense. "Given an infinite universe, can there be also alternate universes? Parallel universes?" Are these statements equally illogical?

Perhaps an analogy to what you're saying is video games: If you're "in" a video game, is that experience finite, or infinite? Are there "boundaries"? How does one even define a boundary in a video game? The entire concept of a boundary has to be invented first: the concept of boundary, time, distance, etc., simply don't apply to video games. But there's a kind of life and meaning and reality to it regardless. Perhaps life... is something like that?...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 94.10.34.9
Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2016 - 12:07 am:   

But a video game (or any game, for that matter) needs to be played, Craig. And that requires consciousness outside of the rules of the game - not only in the player but also in the creator of the game who set the rules in the first place.

There are only two logically possible universal states that could possibly exist within all of imagination - and if Spock were here now he would wholeheartedly (if he had a heart) agree with me. Either there is something or there is nothing. As we are here discussing these possible states one of them is automatically and instantly negated i.e. made an impossibility. So something exists. Agreed?

That apparently simple fact if examined proves irrefutably that that something is also everything. For nothing can exist where there is something. So that something cannot exist in a vacuum and must necessarily be infinite i.e. existing in a neverending state outside of which nothing "other" can possibly exist. That, sir, is infinity. And we are all a part of it. The infinite cannot possibly have a beginning or an end or a limit to the possible states of existence within it. Ergo, ipso facto, etc, you, I, we and everything else in existence is also necessarily infinite.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Tuesday, June 07, 2016 - 01:58 am:   

These points are naturally difficult to fully quanitfy, Stevie, but I think I get the gist of your argument. It's soundly logical, and I think kind of what I was saying in another way - or what I was saying was repeating you in another way, perhaps. Thinking there must be "something" "beyond" the "limits" of existence is more than likely just simple illogic: Platonism breaks down with idealized pb&j sandwiches, let alone flying pigs and square circles. Just because you can imagine it....

Eternity is nothing more than consciousness without a termination, I presume. And even if one imagines the most god-lessly mechanical of universes, still - there's that pesky IS, as you say. Ergo, IS must "return." Ergo, even atheist-mechanists are forced to acknowledge, I think, at least the Nietzschean eternal recurrence construct, or some variation. And as Nietzsche said, that thought either breeds horror, or exhiliration - depending on how you spend your IS right now.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 90.204.207.193
Posted on Tuesday, June 07, 2016 - 06:56 am:   

I don't think of eternal recurrence as a construct, Craig, but as a mathematical certainty. Existence proves the concept of infinity to be an unquestionable truth. Infinity proves the existence and eternal recurrence of everything imaginably possible. And within all those possibilities - where there is conscious observation and the need to define, categorise, analyse and explain - there exist infinite imagined impossibilities. Though I find it rather difficult to visualise a square circle lol.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 90.204.207.193
Posted on Tuesday, June 07, 2016 - 07:08 am:   

For me the thought breeds exhilaration, Craig, and an overwhelming feeling of comfort and security.

Every book you wished to read or write will inevitably be read and written. Every film will be watched. Every pleasurable experience enjoyed. Every question answered. Nothing can harm us. We are infinite.

Consciousness endures... whether existing in the illusory but entertaining state of individuality or as part of the collective whole, the One. It has no choice.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 90.204.207.193
Posted on Tuesday, June 07, 2016 - 07:17 am:   

Ultimately, as part of the One, we chose and will eternally continue to choose to live this finite thing called "life" and to obey its rules... for a time.

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