Thread on Matter (Label Free)

Former Dining Room Set said:
Well, it's probably nothing you don't already know... I didn't have much in mind. I mean, not really anything insightful when it comes to the topic of 'nothing'. I was thinking more in terms of 'no-thing'. 'Thing' is just a word. A thing is a think, right?
Click to expand...
I am not sure. We use language to define things, ok. But does a "thing" come into existence only with language? Is an apple not what it is even if we didn't speak, or think?
 
anonymous said:
You can put the idea that we are nothing on the shelf with the trillion other ideas in the world. It is an idea. It will not bite.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. But think on this - If the Archons wanted to keep us from our Godhood, what better way than to trick us into prostrating in the heaven of the Demiurge for eternity, OR convincing us to seek out our own souls' oblivion?

(half-joking)
 
Pure speculation here. Seems safe to say that it is the apparent solidity of matter that makes this reality feel real. But if we create a thought pile we may begin to have some doubts.

1. From a layman's scientific view, no matter how solid objects appear, they are mostly "empty space" and an astonishingly minute amount of atomic material, whatever that is. (We apparently don't have clue.) It almost doesn't feel like a stretch to say that an object is mostly a mix of empty space and probability.

2. Objects in the dream state can enjoy this same unquestionable realness.

3. Well thought out idealist metaphysics that posit "consciousness" as fundamental are as sound and reasonable as any other metaphysics.

4. Anecdotal clusters surrounding such phenomena as UFOs, 3rd man events, non-corporeal communications, deep coincidences, time slips, etc. suggest an underlying plasticity to this reality that is more akin to the dream state.
 
Max_B said:
Thinking about the popular notion of 'time', I think it's worthwhile thinking about how you reliably (and practically) pass information forward in time, so that you can usefully use this information again, perhaps a month into future at the same location?

It's interesting to list some examples....
Click to expand...

went down like a lead balloon...
 
Standing waves of energy? Energy? Fields? That's tricky. Energy seems always related to matter, does pure energy exist?
Defined by what? Laws. What the hell are they? Matter obeys laws and does not create them. Where do they come from they are not made of matter?

Nothing but a pattern of quantized bits? Information? Information to who? A simulation?

At the atomic level our models require a very precise balance for the atom to be held in a stable configuration. The atomic laws are simply exquisite. Look at the periodic table that organization of groups and periods separate into the qualities and properties in the accumulating amount of protons in the nucleus. The configuration of electron shells seek out a balanced and stable sets, sharing electrons in covalent bonds to form molecules or exchanging them to make ionic bonds to make all the variety of matter we see. Pretty cool.

Marveling at matter does not make you a materialist.

Layers, layers of organization each building on the next, all from the void.
 
LoneShaman said:
Defined by what? Laws. What the hell are they? Matter obeys laws and does not create them. Where do they come from they are not made of matter?
Click to expand...

Glad I'm not the only one who finds the "laws" of nature to be rather bizarre. They're just extrapolations from observed regularities. There has to be some property inside things, an internal essence, that maintains these regularities and provides the "oomph" to causality. (Unless you accept the "laws" have coercive power, at which point you hit the meta-law regression problem!)

Seems just as, if not more mysterious, than consciousness, especially when the QM level of "matter" offers possible randomness/retrocausality/timelessness/entanglement. So at what point is the essence that causes things to obey natural laws injected into whatever matter is?
 
Sciborg_S_Patel said:
Glad I'm not the only one who finds the "laws" of nature to be rather bizarre. They're just extrapolations from observed regularities. There has to be some property inside things, an internal essence, that maintains these regularities and provides the "oomph" to causality. (Unless you accept the "laws" have coercive power, at which you hit the meta-law regression problem!)

Seems just as, if not more mysterious, than consciousness, especially when the QM level of "matter" offers possible randomness/retrocausality/timelessness/entanglement. So at what point is the essence that causes things to obey natural laws injected into whatever matter is?
Click to expand...

Yes, you can't really ask what matter is without addressing the laws it follows to become what we call matter. It boggles my mind how materialist can rationalize it frankly. Because I have never heard a rational one. Yet they have just included them as part of physicalism. :eek:
 
anonymous said:
Do a little waxing poetic and maybe it will gain some altitude. I was not able to really catch onto what had clearly interested you.
Click to expand...

I was hoping that people might contribute different ways they move information into the future in the same location... and hopefully show that every single example is encoded in spatial patterns.
 
Max_B said:
I was hoping that people might contribute different ways they move information into the future in the same location... and hopefully show that every single example is encoded in spatial patterns.
Click to expand...

Even remembering something? Or do you mean moving information via representations in matter?
 
Max_B said:
I was hoping that people might contribute different ways they move information into the future in the same location... and hopefully show that every single example is encoded in spatial patterns.
Click to expand...

Nice. Information is a separate entity to the medium encoding it. You could plant it in trees even, scratch it in rocks, create a new set of patterns and the cypher some place else. If it is destroyed is the information lost? Perhaps still recorded in the spatial pattrens of the brain of the sender? Maybe a copy somewhere else on a hard drive? When I burn a cd does the mass of the cd change?

Your balloon wasn't lost on me.
 
LoneShaman said:
Yes, you can't really ask what matter is without addressing the laws it follows to become what we call matter. It boggles my mind how materialist can rationalize it frankly. Because I have never heard a rational one. Yet they have just included them as part of physicalism. :eek:
Click to expand...

The one explanation I've seen offered is that the essence of the physical laws of nature is that all actions follow a path of minimum energy -> In all of the infinite ways in which a particle can move from point A to point B, the actual path will be the one that requires the minimum amount of energy.

But it seems to me this only pushed the problem back?
 
LoneShaman said:
When I burn a cd does the mass of the cd change?
Click to expand...

I may have misunderstood but a "full CD" (BTW... CD? There's one for the teenagers ;)) has no more "data" than an empty one. The media is just rearranged differently.

The best analogy I heard was it's like building a sandcastle: You're not adding to the beach, just rearranging it.

LoneShaman said:
When your done with them the universe would like them back.
Click to expand...

... It was always a short term loan.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top