michel123456

To me it is not philosophical only. The approach says that when time passes by, you continue to "exist" somewhere in the past. And the same for the future: it says that you are already "existing" in the future. This approach says that you are not a 3D human being living its life, it says you are a 4D "extended human being from its birth to its death". It says that from this 4D Reality, the thing you are perceiving is only 3D objects + the "illusion of time " coming from the 4th dimension. My pet theory says it is wrong. One of my argument could be that if the 4th dimension exists (aka Time), then why would it be perceived as an "illusion"? Time is that thing that allows motion to take place, time is the same real as distance. For example, do you know Flatland? Flatland is described as a 2D Flat world. But since events are able to happen in Flatland, time exists in Flatland. Which means that Flatland is a 3D world (2D of Space + 1D of Time). The 3D of Flatland can be represented by a cube sliced in a succession of flat surfaces. Each surface representing a moment of NOW. Ok you can do that, and build a 3D cube of solid wood with all points of all events happening in Flatland. So what? Is that time? Have we explained anything? The question remains: what is the process that makes one slice slide to the other? Is it an illusion? Is that it? Why is one slice able to observe the past slices and not the future ones? What is the process that gives the direction to the sliding? And the direction of the oservable? And also: are the slices of NOW exactly flat? (hint: no they are not) And also: can a specific point on a slice observe all the events of all past slices? (hint: no) And why? And also, do all the slices continue to "exist"? Why are we so sure of that?

Pentalpha is more about mysticism and I am just pedantic.

Maybe you are correct but it needs a graph. The height of the signs plays a role in the moment arm. Also, say the wind is south and assuming the legs are north/south, then the west & east bags act exactly as if they were in the centre. The only difference is taken by the position of the south and north bags. So I don't know.

Where did you get this info from? When was that?

When you get that kind of coinciding results you must check with other numbers.

Music

I think you are thinking too much. The "like it is hard to move a door from a spot near the hinge" part is wrongly interpreted. The wind does not push near the hinge, the wind always push upon the sign. The reverse is happening: the sandbag pushes against the wind and you should put it as far away from the centre as in correct your first thought. The other way is to make holes in your sign.

To me the first idea that comes to mind is the pentalpha (or pentagram)

Now that I have learn it from Swansont, I vote for Betteridge's law.

No, I don't think so. It would be a Universe that looks pretty much the same as ours. And it is not necessary to have failed. Nor is it necessary to be exactly the mirror image. THAT would violate our laws of physics. I think. You should PM a moderator to correct the title.

Chimera?

My intuition says they are not mutually exclusive.

That's all details to me but it looks to me that a cup falling has kinetic energy (from human hand or simply falling by gravity) and the kinetic energy is spread to all the pieces. Your description looks like an explosion, not like a desctruction caused by the impact. So what? Is that entropy? I bet you have also eluded human intervention in this example. It is not an analogy from which one can take a conclusion.

I don't know what you really mean with the world "artifact", but I agree with the bold part of your statement. I think it is a basic understanding of the concept of Spacetime in Relativity. There I don't follow your thoughts. The "We are therefore biased to view cause and effect as unidirectional" is a huge step from your first statement. And IIRC Eternalism is not really compatible with Relativity. ----------------- Also you agree that we are restricted to observe only a part of spacetime and alltogether you are jumping into explainaing that "everything exists at once". What "everything"? The "part of everything" that we are observing, or truly "everything"?

OK neither will reform "spontaneously". But if you do a quick energy analysis, none will fall "spontaneously" either. And you don't want to introduce human intervention in the scenario, because with human intervention you will see the cup reform and be put on the table again, against gravity. That was and still is my argument: if you want to explain and understand physics, don't take examples from the living world. And to me (let me be wrong on this), the living world extends also to the things created by life, like eggs, fruits, seeds, spermatozoids, nests, cups of tea, lamborghinis, skyscrapers, rockets, etc. Well, of course a rocket follows the laws of physics, but is a rocket explodes on the ground, do not expect to ever observe the reverse process, heat producing a rocket, for the same reason that heat cannot produce a cup, an egg or a plant "just like that" On the other side, heat can melt ice, heat can make water evaporate, and reducing heat can make water turn into ice again. One must explain why this cycle cannot be achieved ad infinitum in a closed system. And forget the cup analogy once for all.

Sorry studiot I didn't put much importance in your post because acorn cups are also a by-product of life. So let me resume your conditions: You are presenting an "isolated system" where a cup can break (IOW energy can flow in the form of impact and heat) but energy cannot come in (because it is isolated). Then you make the statement that, well, energy is flowing out but not coming in, and put a name on it, entropy. In reality the whole setup has put the conditions for this exact conclusion. Of course heat alone will not make a cup. When we change the cup with some other material that can indeed be rebuild without human help, then you say we were talking about a "isolated system" and you cannot input heat. You cannot input human intelligence, you cannot anything. Under these conditions, of course you cannot anything. Is that it?

Yes, the example of the cup is not of a cyclic process. Because somewhere in the process the human mind used energy in a way mother nature usually doesn't. It had no external energy input? Maybe because you are ignoring the energy required to build the cup. You are declaring this is not of our business, we can make the experiment without taking that into consideration. A cup of tea, so what. So what? I was simply asking for an example of the same kind with an object mother nature can build. Like the one you have given, with the broken iceberg. And I am asking you, what is the "one state" corresponding to the cup of tea?. Is it the iceberg, the ice cristal, the drop of water, the snow flake, or the iceberg again? And if the "one state" = the iceberg by definition, then is there somewhere negative entropy when the iceberg is formed again? (a question I cannot ask with the cup of tea) Yes, with glue, and human intervention. Again, human mind is required to build the cup. Not only energy. Not "pure physics". -------------- (edit) And if you accept glue, then you must also accept the cup jumping back onto the table, with human help of course.

Which is interpreted by me that space and time are actually "made up of the same stuff", called spacetime. IOW when you look at an object, the distance that you observe, that you call "space", is not only space. It is spacetime. There is time in it.

The process I mention is cyclic. At what time can one say that it has less state than another? Swansont wrote in the original thread What when the snow freezes and makes the iceberg again?

I have to admit some time ago I also had this conception that the BBT is about an event that happened a long time ago and very far away from here. However, the BBT states that the BB happened everywhere. That means the BB happened here, also. A long time ago.

Because it took more or less 4 billion years for nature to "built it by itself". Nature had to build life first. It depends what you call "spontaneously". How do you think the iceberg formed in the first place? For example, the pieces melted, then travelled in the arctic ocean, mixed with the Gulf Stream , evaporated, formed a cloud that snowed somewhere close to north pole and formed an iceberg. It takes time, but much less than the time nature takes to make an egg from scratch.

Since the 4th dimension is time, a 4D sphere is a sphere moving. ----------------- And not even. A 3D sphere simply existing is a 4D object. No motion required.

I really don't know what to say... You have an object that physics cannot create "just like that". In no way. Forward in time, with all the energy you want, it cannot. So when the object breaks, why being astonished that physics cannot re-build it ? As an analogy: Ask a mountain to build a car. Can it? No. Then take a car, crash it, and ask the mountain to re-build it. Can it? again, No. The mountain is physics in the above analogy. So IOW when a cup of tea breaks, you shoudn't be surprised that nature cannot re-build the cup. What one has to do is take something that nature can build by itself (salt in water, an iceberg,etc) and ask exactly the same question. The cup of tea should be discarded as an analogy. The egg too. I hope that was clear. No if you ask again why that matters, it means our minds are very far away from each other.

The special things about humans is that they build things that nature does not build by itself. Like machines, rockets, cups. It is also related to the so-called Schrodinger's paradox. -------------------------------- The cup follow the same laws of motion as a rock being dropped. What I say (for the 3rd time) is that you cannot say "woaw I never see the pieces of the cup jump back and make a cup" because even normally, nature by itself cannot make a cup of tea (except with the help of humans). It is much like trying to understand physics with dad pushing constantly a child on a swing. You cannot expect to get safe results. What you do when studying physics is to eliminate the human factor and build a pendulum. AND if you use a rock instead of a cup, again you cannot sat "woaw I never see the pieces of the rock jump back and make a rock again". Because if you wait long enough, the pieces may come together. Not jumping back of course, because gravity is what it is, as I said earlier.