All I know is Nothing.

[melanie]

Our theories are irrational make-believe assertions.


"Reality is the tip of an iceberg of irrationality which we clamber onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal." ~ Terence McKenna

Max Planck said:
"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature.
And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."

"The only real wisdom is knowing you know nothing" ~Socrates

The realisation of the "unreality of reality" has not reached the minds of the masses and has generally been parried around by the sciences.

Welcome to the world of institutionalised second hand knowledge a world where you are taught to live a lie.



"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Those that speak do not know, those that know do not speak." ~Lao Tzu

[labelwench]

"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Those that speak do not know, those that know do not speak." ~Lao Tzu

Originally posted by Melanie

I shall now have to ponder at length about 'The Silent Majority' and wonder if they know something that we don't, or if they are equally confused and just clever enough to remain in 'stealth mode'.

[SteveA]

Our theories are irrational make-believe assertions.

"Reality is the tip of an iceberg of irrationality which we clamber onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal." ~ Terence McKenna

There was a post Lloyd had showing a similar concept and I was actually going to make a comment similar to this that we can even find the equivalent of layers of irrationality. Our beliefs can change over time and what could be considered untrue or true today may be considered differently in the future. When we look at the logic applied to these beliefs, it creates a space that can appear irrational, yet truly be rational and perfectly logical as well - it's just that when we use a secondary and imprecise translation, it appears conflicted/impossible/irrational.

Of course my comments here as well as the quote above could be considered self defeating argument though ... but it would be interesting to see if there are even structures underlying changing beliefs or things that appear paradoxical or irrational. It could be there's even a way to wade into that chaos a bit ... though it would appear that fundamentally there's no way to truly ever untangle it, but it could be fun trying (Lots of interesting possibilities in that direction as well!)

Another thought I'd had regarding yours and Austins ideas about everything being nothing or summing to zero. Imagine if there was a way to temporary alter some things, yet have the operations perfectly invertible - in other words, some events could occur that end up canceling in influence similar to virtual particles in physics. It's interesting to consider the potentially that a whole lot of nothing could be done ... in fact, there are likely all sorts of nested trees of operations capable of doing absolutely nothing, unless a smaller view of the picture is taken. Such as a some isolated infinite set of possibilities. It's amazing that perceptions give us such a distorted view of nothing ... the illusion of many things is rather impressively realistic, in my humble opinion

How many ways can we take a set of objects and do nothing with them? Hmmm ... well we've got finite rotations, those are finite and always remain closed, then we've got permutations which could be counted through as a finite set as well, and we've got ... etc. as long as something retains a record of each of these transformations, then there's a way to undo everything and go back to what you were previously doing

Here's another interesting thought - if we had a way to enumerate all of these as a single deterministic computation, you could effectively have an unlimited quantity of "subconscious" possibilities available as there would be no need for any conscious involvement in a predetermined computation, so in terms of conscious time, there might be ways of basically computing anything instantly!

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Balance of Nothing Intro

[austintorn@aol.com]

Our theories are irrational make-believe assertions. — Mel

I thought your proposition was better then that, Mel (ha-ha).

[SteveA]

Thank you for the video, Austin.

It touched upon a couple other ideas I'd had regarding a couple other concepts. If we went "past" irrationality to a fundamental unknown, it could be similar to a singular quantity that describes everything common in a specific universe. Every observation could effectively be an equivalent description of that same volume and so we could see this as similar to a universe composed of canceling motions or influences all centered around its equivalent "Big Bang". Having that quantity unknown could have some uses as well (unless everything was viewed simultaneously, there's a use for having a place to pack lots of unknowns - otherwise there are no dynamics and no time).

Then the fundamental operation for the true "original" Big Bang becomes +1 to break all the symmetry and that could be seen as the fundamental "force" - though it appears there would be little manner of proving such a theory true except upon some extrapolation - if the general characteristics of the universe appear to match a subset, then we could potentially logically extrapolate back to an origin. Still the "unknown" component for a universe would appear to be arbitrarily large and likely only estimateable in terms of statistical properties as there would be no way to know how much information is contained within an unbounded quantity (it would be smaller than fundamental units of time though, as those would additionally need to describe a specific pathway over time within a universe).

Also, as usual, all the qualities of experiences and some of the irrational components would similarly appear to describe any rational explanation. We basically have to preassume their existence simply to have any information at all - why does consciousness figuratively use a specific alphabet versus some other possibility, it may not ultimately matter and I guess that's the most significant thing. If it was different, I'd assume that would be like starting over in life - (and my guess is we're not at a bad spot, of course opinions could vary )

Anyway, there's a potential beginning of a ToE that has some possibilities and some elements of concreteness that might be at least empirically veriable (certainty can only be arrived at by a decision though and from the track record, that remains correct until something better comes along ).

Have fun, Austin.
Steve

[austintorn@aol.com]

The James Webb telescope, six times better than Hubble, launches in 2014.

We live, and have lived in, interesting times.

[austintorn@aol.com]

How and when I learned about consciousness and the brain—
In the 2nd half of the video.



(Go to the 'World Intelligence Agents' thread
if you want to see the first few parts as well
Of 'The Road Too Far')

[melanie]

I shall now have to ponder at length about 'The Silent Majority' and wonder if they know something that we don't, or if they are equally confused and just clever enough to remain in 'stealth mode'.

I love our sense of humor Lorrina



what you know is the source of your ignorance ~chin chan

[melanie]

The Balance of Nothing Intro

I like this video Austin. Thanks.

It expounds the ineffable in much the same way as I see it too.
Although it can neither be proven or disproven for one very good reason.

A strange and spooky paradox.