tar

B John Jones, But do you figure the various heavens are populated by gods that transcend reality, or is the universe populated by other real entities like us and grains of sand and helium atoms and suns and such entities that are available for study to everybody in the waking world...or are your heavens populated by imaginary beings that can exist fully in your mind and have no bearing on any model of the place I may be able to construct in my mind? Regards, TAR

Mike, I think you are right in suggesting that the universe has to be able to build a car...because we have cars and there is nothing else but universe material and simple standard laws and materials from which the universe could have created a car. That is, nature had to do it, because it got done, and there is nobody here but us chickens. I don't think however you can say the universe values this thing more than that. That has more to do with things valuable to humans, and an ant or a super nova, or a grain of sand or a helium atom, might have, well obviously would have a different "thing" it was trying to accomplish. So the universe getting better, is sort of a value judgement made by Mike. A black hole might get better as is gobbles up matter and light, but that is not automatically good for the objects that had an identity before they were torn apart by the gravity of the black hole. Regards, TAR

I know the difference between the waking world and the dream world.

disarray, possible, but I am thinking there is another possibility, that this particular universe has evolved far enough to spawn us, and other reaches of this universe may indeed have planets with heavy elements, able to produce interesting, fitting characters not anybody we are liable to be pen pals with however, given the huge nature of the place Regards TAR

disarray, the queen of heart thing was meant to point out that the universe works with what it has, and takes the next step based upon where it is standing. Not so random and chance filled, if it is just the next step in a thusly sensible progression. The previous universe thing I speculate about is not unlike a new universe forming on the other side of a black hole. And it was others that speculated that other universes could have math and different constants, not me. I am OK with counting any universe that is spawned from a black hole in this universe, a child of this universe and not a separate thing. Regards, TAR

disarray, You can roll the dice a trillion times and you will always get a number between 2 and 12 inclusive You will never get a queen of hearts. For that, you need to be drawing from a deck of cards. Regards, TAR B John Jones, I am not interested in you talking about something I could not see for myself. If we are to talk about something, it should be something we both already have access to. Regards, TAR disarray, I don't think you can say that physical laws are the same everywhere, when you are talking about other universes. They could have different physical laws than this one. And this one had a period of inflation, followed by a period of expansion and there was a time where the place was not transparent to photons and such. So even the physical laws of this place change over time, and change depending on whether you are in a void or a blackhole and so on. Regards, TAR

disarray, Well, there does seem to be some organizing principles in the universe. What with gravity and suns gathering together hydrogen and dust and turning them into furnaces that spew ordered energy and the theorized black holes that do more gathering than dissipating, and the great attractor that local walls of galaxies seem to be circling, and the like. Even the theories of galaxies widening the gap between themselves over time, allow for certain close ones to be "gravitationally bound". But most important to me, is the thought that every atom seems to want to get rid of its energy and relax its electrons to the lowest possible energy level...except the rest of the atoms in the universe are attempting the same feat, and there seems to always be a photon coming in, from somewhere or another. So closed systems and open systems might work a little differently. Equilibrium might be the end result, but only if the system is left "alone". I am thinking that any system encountered within the universe is not closed off from the rest of universe and the rest of the universe shines on each other part of it, a photon at a time. Regards, TAR so maybe the universe is not scheduled to run down, as it can not ever fall to complete rest, because the rest of the place keeps each portion, alive and any thing that is supposed to happen in a trillion trillion trillion years is completely meaningless to us not only does it not matter to us, but there is no way to check if the prediction is true some unaccounted for principle is likely to present itself in that time, and the prediction can not possibly account for an entity that has not yet emerged plus the entirety of the universe that we now sense with our radio telescopes is old news, and the current universe is doing stuff we have no access to (except locally) For instance, if all the atoms in the universe would time out and cease to operate when their nuclei reach the age of 13.8 billion years, and no atom in the universe would send out a photon, ever again, this location in space would continue to "see" stars shining for just about always. First, after about 8 minutes there would be no more photons from the Sun. Then after a few years the closest stars would blink out, then after 100,000 years there would be no light from milkyway stars, but the surrounding galaxies would still shine, even though they stopped shining the same moment our Sun did. Even trillions of years later there would be some sparse photons coming in to this spot at super long wavelengths. There is no place for this spot to go, It will never not be subject to an incoming photon.

disarray, My long standing own take, and I might be alone, is that our universe is alone, but was something else prior the big bang. That is we were something else other than this universe that had emerged from perhaps the end of the universe that preceeded that one. This gives a slightly different lean, than your take, in that it is not that it can all happen again, but that this is a progressive step in a long series of universes, each one requiring the residue from the earlier one to provide the raw material from which the next is built. In my take, this is happening for the first time, as the previous universe did not start with what it finished with. Regards, TAR

disarray, Agreed. But in addition, and to me a very important consideration when attempting to talk about the universe, is how you are talking about it, and from what perspective. That is, are you imagining that there is a way to consider the whole thing at once, that is a different way than that that we have when we look out into it. That is, the way the universe seems to work, is that close things report their activity almost immediately to the surroundings, whereas far away stuff takes a long time to make itself known. This is a particularly important point to me, because it speaks to the role of point of view, in noticing the universe in the first place. If for instance one melts back into the near nothingness, into the no division "true" nature of the universe, then one loses the ability to say anything in particular about the thing, in Kant's terms. Here I find it confusing to determine what one is talking about, when someone asks or tells what the universe is doing now. Confusing, because that is something that can not be determined by any one observer, and would need to be determined by a survey of all observers, which or who cannot communicate instantly with each other, but would take in some cases, a time longer than forever, given the expansion of the universe and the speed of light. Here is where I find concern about another universe particularly unnecessary since the far reaches of this one, are already outside our experience. Regards, TAR

disarray, Another way to think of evolution though, is survival of that which fits. As in a lung would not develop if there was not oxygen to take out of the air, and metabolism that used oxygen would not develop at the bottom of the sea...where sulfur based life formed at the vents...the energy taken from the heat of the vent, rather than from the Sun as developed with life forms near the surface. The particular temperature and pressure of the environments on the Earth, the particular chemical makeup of the land and sea and air, determined what would fit. I don't think it works the other way round, that the universe is tuned for life...more that we fit the place, because it is the place where we emerged. The other universes you are talking about may or may not have anything to do with us. They might not be relatable to here in terms of distance or time. They would not have to have a similar past, present and future, nor a similar shape and size, or similar motions, energies, goings and comings, causes and effects. And there is absolutely no requirement that other humans would have to emerge, even on a planet with similar temperature pressure and elemental makeup to the Earth. Any small event could change the course of any development of a species. Even on our own planet if some battle between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens had gone differently, the subsequent genetic mix of the planet would have changed. This being the case, it makes me think that it is unlikely that another planet would have to follow our history exactly, when our planet did not HAVE TO do what it did, until it did the first things that laid the environment and conditions for the next things to happen. The groundwork of carbon based life needs to be laid, by organisms fixing carbon in the first place. A whole chain is required, and any little historical happening could have made it a different place. Another universe would have its own emergent entities and the intermingling of those entities would not HAVE TO follow any pattern. Especially it would not have to follow any pattern possible in our universe. Only things possible in this universe, could happen here, and it would have no bearing on what could or would or should have happened in another universe. That is the other universe's business. Regards, TAR disarray, As to consciousness living on after the life that has the consciousness, the body/brain/heart group, is dead, I think it not reasonable to assume that such a thing is possible. That is, what would things look like, without an eye, or smell like, without a nose, or taste like without a tongue, or feel like without skin, or how would you know if the situation was good or uncomfortable, if you had no dopamine or adrenaline or a brain for the stuff to be released into? Again, the question is similar. What good is an imaginary observer, from which you can not get any actual data. What would be the purpose of imagining another universe, when you can never experience it? Our universe is quite large enough and long lived enough to provide plenty of places and events that have little to do with us. Things we are insulated from by scale, by distance by time, already. Another universe, that exists only in the imagination, is not useful. The import of such a thing is very small. But back to your question of me suggesting as a fact, that there is no ghost in the machine, that has a life without the machine. It seems evident to me that the spirit of a thing can easily exist in another human's consciousness, or even be apparent in what was left behind, like a heart with initials carved into a tree. One can "feel" the presence of another human, and converse with unseen others. We do it all the time. You can imagine your Aunt Bertha, and what she sounds like and what she looks like and what she would say and what she would think about a happening and such, and it would not matter if Aunt Bertha was alive in Cleveland, or if she died last week...she would still exist in your memory, either way, and you still can converse with her in your imagination, as an unseen other. So, the spirit of Aunt Bertha exists, with or without a living body/brain/heart group...but once Aunt Bertha dies, she can no longer hold you in her mind. That said, I had a thought and feeling about 10 years ago, that somehow, this particular TAR body/brain/heart group has something about it, that existed before and will exist after TAR's death. I don't know what I meant by that, or what I mean by that, but it seems that I already belong to reality, in some manner that is not bound by TAR. Like the general idea you expressed earlier of "returning to the force'. I assume that such is a possible route my identity might take, some sort of melting back into the universe, with no specific borders or separate identity required...but continuing to exist, AS TAR, after TAR is dead, seems like a hope, without a mechanism. Regards, TAR

disarray, "i think that nature is conservative in that nothing of value that is created, is ever lost," There is a certain personification you make here, assuming the universe could tell the difference between what is valuable and what is not. And it would be difficult for the universe to break one of its own laws, except if you gave the universe the role of lawmaker in the first place. And I was not so concerned with letting the 3 year old know it was going to be alright, I was more thinking about myself, and my 90 year old dad. Immortality is not something that is evidently the case. This being the case, the good part of life, for a mortal is that which occurs after conception and before brain death. Since the soul does not seem to exist without the body/brain/heart group functioning and intact, worry about life after death, or should I say consciousness when you are no longer capable of being conscious of anything in particular, is rather misleading. Thus, personally, I think death will be rather like it was for me, before I was born, and similarly the stars and planets will proceed along much in the manner they were accustom to, before I knew the place." So the "important" thing about the universe, is that we see it now, and the Sun warms us now, during the day, and we lose that organized energy to space, during the night. Whether it is better to be hot or cold, or just right, is a human value judgement. The universe is not making the decision to warm us and freeze us, we have instead "decided" on our own to fit the place. And the place itself is neither cold and uncaring, nor warm and loving, but in the result of our consciousness, we have, in concert with our parents, and their ancestors, made it, or fit into it, in such a way as that we are alive, as individuals, and as a species. The only life after death there is going to be, in my case, is everybody else that remains alive after I die. The "afterglow" is only the memories in other people's minds, and the results of my works, and the effects my life will have had on the environment, and the continued existence of my pattern in the personage of my children, and the similar patterns of other humans that watched over me while I lived and that I watched over while alive. I am not optimistic about the possibility of my soul continuing on its own forever. However I am optimistic about my universe continuing on, after I die, and in that, it is going to be OK. Regards, TAR But "another" universe is no concern of mine.

disarray, I am not sure that we don't already have unconditional love from the universe. And let me try to clarify and unwind that statement, so that it is not taken to mean that god already loves us. In my recent remarks, the metaphors and empirical evidence sometimes appear to change places, but I am more trying to suggest that we already hold the key, than that we need to be provided one. There is, all you say about fathers and reuniting with the universe and such, after one's identity ends with death of the body/mind/heart that makes up a conscious person. But to me, the separation of a person from the universe, in the claiming of a form, of a pattern, of a life, is a victory, not a defeat. Not a thing to be corrected, but a thing to be enjoyed. And such an identity can easily be viewed as the glass half empty. because we are small and fragile and temporary, but can likewise be viewed as the glass half full, because we are alive and conscious and capable not only of seeing and hearing and smelling and feeling and touching the world, but capable of moving around in it and modifying it to our advantage. So the unconditional love we have, from the universe is the same love the buttercup in the field receives from the Sun, the same "going around" the asteroid has, the same belonging. So yes we look to the world like we look to our father, to give us the pattern, along with the mother, to grow in the womb and become a separate life, that still is protected and nurtured by the parents and the family and the society and the generations of lives that came before and taught us how to grow food and build seaports and institutions and alliances that help us survive and pass on our pattern to our children....but return to the universe is both a sure thing, and a loss. And we already have access to the place...it has already spawned us...it has already proven its love, and capability. We already fit the place. The fall of man is a metaphor. We did not lose our way by knowing the difference between good and evil. We simply just would not be man if we were not thusly separated from each other and from the universe, by our individual points of focus. You think perhaps it would change our religion should we find other lifeforms that would prove to us that we were not the universe's only child. I am thinking the opposite. We would just have a bigger family. Regards, TAR When my daughter went off to VT to become a PhD she feared the loneliness and separation from family and friends. I told her, as we hugged good bye in a motel parking lot in Richmond, that, no, our neighborhood just got bigger.

Thread, Well nevermind then about the white male stuff...on to white women. Now, I am prone to guesswork based on perceived changes, and one of the things I noticed, being an appreciator of the female form, is that lately, the last 10 years or so, it has become more the norm than the occasional, that you see a woman with too much extra over her form. so I don't know the cause of this, but I have some candidates, or guesses. I think something must have changed in our general diet, and in our general hormonal balances, as well as life style and societal norms. It didn't used to be OK to be fat, but now it is more acceptable, almost as a extension of the tolerance and acceptance extended to handicapped and mentally challenged and sexual identity choices and the like. And extra weight or hormonal excesses could be related to health issues that might increase the death rate. And there might be emotional baggage related to being overweight that would cause relationship problems, or stresses that would result in abuse of alcohol and drugs which might put them at higher risk of suicide and overdose and the like. Regards, TAR Plus, and this might be the most important factor, women have more responsibility than they used to. Previous norms had women cleaning the house and cooking the food, doing the laundry and raising the children while the male brought home the bacon, took care of the outside of the home while the female took care of the inside. Now a woman still cleans and cooks and plans and takes care of the family, AND withstands the stresses of traffic and commuting and climbing the corporate ladder.

disarray, I like your knowledge of the different philosophers that I read in college while a philosophy student. I think perhaps over the years I somehow have joined various ideas of those philosophers, with my own muses and the thoughts of others I have talked to about life and religion and philosophy and formulated my own worldview from the composite. It is nice the way you link some of my thoughts with various thinkers...because it is reading their thoughts that probably gave me the ideas in the first place, and its nice to be reminded of the sources of the pieces of my worldview. I don't however think of the universe as having a consciousness "of its own" , but I am 100percent sure that there is consciousness within the universe, and any such consciousness found within the universe is consciousness that belongs to the universe, because the universe is the containing entity. Regards, TAR

disarray, A lot there. I think I can associate with many aspects of what you said. This however goes more toward us operating from a standard play book, than being isolated forever from each other. I look at it like this. Each of us operates from a particular point of focus. This focus is by definition a different point than the focus bounded by the next consciousness, but were we not thusly separated from the universe, we would not be able to notice it. And being that there is no place, other than the universe, to come from and be made out of, then a different point of focus, is simply that, a different view, of the same universe There is nobody here that can say their universe is not this one, the one I call my universe, the one you call yours. So it is our universe and even if create alone, from a singularity, it is no longer a singularity, and there are multiple points of focus within it. So perhaps the answer to the thread question is that even if created alone, the fact that there is more than one place to stand within it, makes it not a lonely place. If you will, being not a singularity allows the universe to keep itself company. Regards, TAR

disarray, Still, though one consciousness might have a different feeling about a thing or a different symbol to stand for a thing, the thing itself is still real and you knowing the thing and me knowing the thing, causes the thing to be the connection between us. Different places in the world have different languages, people can make sounds that are just jibberish to billions of others....but no matter what you call it, the meaning behind the words is the same. Snow is snow, the moon is the moon. Regards, TAR

disarray, But the important thing is what we are conscious of. How we manage it, is partially due to the fact that there really are sensations to be conscious of. Certain vibrations, certain chemicals that react with our sensors in such a way as that we feel the sensations. I am familiar with how the senses can be fooled and how the mind can fill in the blanks and such, recognize patterns and see faces in grill cheese sandwiches and the like, but that our consciousness is illusion, I just don't buy. Perhaps I give more credit to the world, to provide me with something to be conscious of, than you do. Or perhaps you are stuck thinking that the true world, the thing as it is, is the real thing, and everything we know is just a shadow on the wall of Plato's cave. Even so, something is casting the shadow and you can not have a shadow, or an analogue, without the original object whose form is represented by the shadow, and a light source. Regards, TAR that your consciousness exists, without anything to be conscious of, is probably false

disarray, Maybe not controversial, but I seem to get a lot of grief when I talk about two nows, and the need to take the thickness of a galaxy into account, when thinking of it as one thing, that satisfies one simple gas law. What we see the closest star in a distant galaxy doing happened a million years ago, or however distant the galaxy is, and a star on the far side of the same galaxy that we see, is doing what it did 1.1 million years ago. Suggesting that with that information, we can know, extrapolate what the entire galaxy is doing today is somewhat unfactbased. But on the other issue, that of one consciousness being isolated from another...I don't think it so. We see the same world, and through that, share experience. Same world is modeled in our brains. Different parts of it, to be sure, but there are many things, like the moon, and the Atlantic ocean, and Times Square that exist as an analog representation in both your brain and mine. In this at least you are not isolated from me. Regards, TAR put it this way,,,if a person's consciousness is a sum total of her experiences and you share a couple of those experiences with her, are you not connected by those experiences?

Disarray, There is evidence of mirror neurons and such that would indicate that we do feel what others feel. Who does not move their own hand back when someone else's is about to get burned. My point about scientists does not apply locally where we can test and observe the cause and effect mix of things, and agree upon how things fit together. My issues arise when talking about things where there is no way to determine if the speculation is true or not, and the ignoring of the general fact that something very far away is not accessible. I have gotten into many arguments on this board, mostly lost them, but still feel it correct to say that we have in common those things we have in common. You can go down to the local florist and see a red rose, same as I can. We would agree about many things concerning the rose, how it smells, how the thorns hurt, how the gardener did a good job feeding and watering it, and keeping the bugs from eating it up. Not so many things we can say about what is going on in a cave on a planet on a star on the other side of the galaxy. We can not check to see if what the one says about it is true. Regards, TAR But more important, whatever is going on in that cave will not, absolutely can not affect our lives, this century, here on Earth. The fastest impulse in the universe will not get from there to here until 100,000 years from now. It is happening really far away. If a creature in that cave, 100,000 years ago had built a cosmic ray machine and fired it off in the direction of our Sun...it would not hit us, because the Sun would have traveled around the center of the galaxy a distance, while the ray was in transit, and the image the creature was firing at, was not a fresh image, and was informing the creature of where our Sun was, 100,000 years before the day of the firing.. My point being, that even if the creature did the correct figuring and led the target so that we could receive his pulse tomorrow, we would not be able to tell him, the day he sent the pulse, that we got it.

Disarray, Well yes, you are right in your various points. I prefer science over belief in garden gnomes and angels, and believe fully that the supernatural is that which is not natural, but instead resides fully in the imagination. But here I think it crucial to note that similarly, a model of the world, or universe interpolated and built in a human mind is also imaginary. Feeling we contain the whole thing is misleading. Just imagining the outside perspective, does not make it so. Such is a thing I constantly remind myself of, as in trying to imagine how many supernovae are currently burning in our galaxy. We can not verify our guess or calculation, nor can we agree on what vantage point to take, to make the count. Regards, TAR

disarray, Sorry to make you feel I am trying to take either you or science down. But I don't agree that what is really going on, is somehow a valuable consideration, if a human has no access to it. Regards, TAR

disarray, I know that Santa Claus is not an empirically true being with an actual shop at the North Pole...yet I read the Night Before Christmas every year to my family, the night before Christmas, and we put out cookies and milk and some sugar for the Reindeer every year until the kids convinced each other that my wife and Santa and the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy were the same person. We still occasionally read the story, for ole time sake, and spend Christmas morning exchanging gifts, and we all know that its Santa who fills the stockings with trinkets and candy after we go to bed Christmas eve. If you lump me and my family in with people who still believe in Santa, in order for you to feel more scientifically correct about the universe, that is OK, but I actually do know, the same as you know, that you can't fit more than 6.23 billion angels on the head of a pin. But...I am stuck on the thought we had earlier, that people tend to get something out of being more factually correct about the world, than the other 8 billion folks on the planet. Some are, and there is always some fact I know that you don't and vice a versa. As my tag line says, nobody knows more than everybody put together, because its an additive thing, and the collective that is speculated with the thought, is imaginary in nature. That is, we are the only ones we know empirically are keeping count of what is known. That is my warning to scientists that have more faith in the power and complete coverage of universal laws, then they have in the judgement of the guy sitting next to them. Regards, TAR And more importantly, to the thread topic and the thought of what is "outside" space and time, is the fact you mention, that there is simply no way to figure such a thing out. We, as Kant suggests, have but two a priori judgements, that are not built upon any other notion. Space and time. We all already know what they are, and each has no notion upon which they are built. They are already understood. However, it would be hard to even think about or talk about, or say anything about what is "outside" of space and time, without reference to space and time, because those notions are the notions upon which we reference all others, and communicate the ideas to each other. Any object, in general, has its location in spacetime. As does every event. There is no commonly understood way to get outside everything describable.

Enric, I think what is most rational is to consider the universe as created alone. Although the word created confounds the question, and implies a creator, which would immediately give the universe company, thereby negating the aloneness of the place. So yes or not, does not quite cover the possible answers...however the uni in front of universe implies to me a totality in the singular nature of the word. Regards, TAR Below is from Wiki article on Category(Kant). The table of judgments[edit] Kant believed that the ability of the human understanding to think about and know an object is the same as the making of a spoken or written judgment about an object. According to him, "Our ability to judge is equivalent to our ability to think."[8] A judgment is the thought that a thing is known to have a certain quality or attribute. For example, the sentence "The rose is red" is a judgment. Kant created a table of the forms of such judgments as they relate to all objects in general.[9] Quantity Universal Particular Singular Quality Affirmative Negative Infinite Relation Categorical Hypothetical Disjunctive Modality Problematical Assertoric Apodictic This table of judgments was used by Kant as a model for the table of categories. Taken together, these twelvefold tables constitute the formal structure for Kant's architectonic conception of his philosophical system.[10] The table of categories[edit] Quantity Unity Plurality Totality Quality Reality Negation Limitation Relation Inherence and Subsistence (substance and accident) Causality and Dependence (cause and effect) Community (reciprocity) Modality Possibility Existence Necessity

disarray, You are right. Just because we cannot communicate with someone on the other side of the Milky Way or in another universe does not prevent us from jamming with other musicians. On the reflection, I think it important to note that that is how we witness the world. I was looking at a still lake, the color of the sky, and saw every building and tree and pole and cloud twice, once above the water line, and once below. Someone standing next to me would see the whole scene the same way. Every point on the lake's surface, is thus reflecting the whole scene, like the whole image being in each shard of a shattered holographic plate. I think of the brain as being similar to the surface of a lake, all folded up. We project an analog copy of the world upon our brains, and remember the scene, and compare the next instant's image with the stored image, to note any changes, Our other senses, other than sight, also build an analog copy of the vibrations encountered, or the chemicals touched, or the contours and surfaces we encounter. In this, the outside world is contained on the inside. The important thing about science is we concentrate on those things we sense and remember, that anybody else, with the same senses and brain, can agree on. Regards, TAR In this, we are not alone. We have each other. And we came about as naturally as did the rest of the universe.

So though, a cruel and uncaring universe, is negated in that at least you care about the place, and its inhabitants. So any other being in the universe is not alone, because there is you, for them to be here with. At least those within a couple light years of here, where pen pals could exchange messages within their lifetimes. Matter of fact, the idea of a penpal establishes also the reality of a collective consciousness, where a family or a civilization, could, over a period of many lifetimes, communicate with someone, or with another such long lived collective, at distances greater than half a lifetime away. You could for instance, today, receive a return message from someone, somewhere who received an early 20th century radio broadcast, and responded to it. I have a pet idea, surrounding the fact that I held a match up to the universe when I was thirteen. Some being 50 lys from here, should be seeing that light next year. In another 50 years, my daughter might learn of a response.