Fred56

Yep, it is "bleedingly obvious" that everything is, or must be connected. This is a direct consequence of Einstein's theories and the observed expansion. This could mean that everything (in a classical sense) is predetermined, that every event determines a chain of causality, so there was a first event, and the causal chain (of every event) goes back to this. I think it's ok to say everything is connected, because of this. Of course, Heisenbergs theory tells us something else, that events are "fuzzy", that a causal chain cannot be determined. The indeterminacy at the quantum level seems to blow a big hole in the idea of a chain of causality. But everything remains connected somehow. That's where I was sort of hoping to go with this, but I got "deleted".

Fer chrissakes, how many scientists are able to say there is absolute certainty about anything? Name more than one thing that we are 100% certain of (apart from "knowing we're alive")...

Hang on, I just finished running his post through a bi-directional cut/paste filter (after renormalising some of the infinities) and some interesting terms have emerged: Can you see it?

Some things fit my definition only to the extent they have a store of energy. But none of them goes around looking for more of it. Cars don't drive themselves around looking for gas-stations. Looks like it's already time to narrow things down a little though. So life, needs to do something more, to have other functions, than just storing energy in a dynamic way. Hmm... I guess an obvious need would be some sort of information-processing. An organism would need a way to assess, at least periodically, both its own state and that of its environment. Some way of storing previous "assessments" for comparison might be helpful. Of course, all this would require some energy, but it would certainly give an energy-storing thing that needs to find more energy some advantage. The level of processing would depend on the type of organism, (a bacteria vs a cat, say).

Does anyone have any ideas about superposition (entanglement) and why distance or separation is an imaginary/non-real quantity to it?

Every thing, every object and particle, every photon of energy and wave of matter is where it is now, at the end of the next comma, only because of every single event, every oscillation, every change of phase and every orbit of every electron or star about a galaxy, since the very first event. This is according to the most successful description of our universe that has been built so far. Looking up at some distant star, it is hard to conceive of any connection to it, but there is some remote. There is a connection. The light that has crossed the universe to effect the recoil of electrons in your eyes is this very thing. Perhaps this light sped unerringly to the electron in one of your eye's pigment cells, as if it knew it would be there...

Saying "it can't decrease" means "it can only increase", it isn't "going" anywhere. Since no one's pulled me up on this, I'll ride it a bit further. The "vector" of time (times arrow) is obviously not a real quantity, but belongs in the imaginary realm. Is it still logically consistent to say the vector is measurable? How should it be modelled? Or do we only have a single point to consider (at a time, har har)?

Humans like to think they are single, complete, and in and of themselves (a contained physical presence). This view we have has already been discussed by plenty of people with bigger brains, but we have a multilayer brain, for starters. Our brain is the product of a lot of evolution and previous evolutionary "structure" is present in our "version". We've got like version 7.1, or something (not sure how many). If you think about different structures, the cerebellum, the pons, the hippocampus,.... We are a composite organism. Then there's the external world, without which existence is kind of meaningless. We're in the world, and we observe it, but that's about as far as you can get without starting to approach metaphysics.

So you feel the concept of information having mass/energy doesn't pose a problem for the determinist/empiricist view?

I wonder how long they were in like, an apatosaur.

You're looking for a translation of Einstein's original papers or what?

"...a definition of information entropy for points in metric spaces ...measures the amount of information needed to specify a point of a metric space. For the definition of entropy we need an additional structure on the metric space .., a computable structure. If information sources are considered as a metric space ...entropy has the same value as Shannon['s] ...for almost all points of the space. If general metric spaces are considered there is a relation between entropy and dimension." -S Galatalo (in case anyone's still confused...)

Stop making any effort to change their minds. If they're interested, explain something but don't have a brain-burp.

“...we can speak equivalently of Information which is defined as the negative of entropy, and representing system order. ...[since] entropy measures the rate of diffusion to a state of disorder..., ...the entropy metric is defined by the order or disorder of topological structure[.]” -J. E. Johnson (in case you need to know...)

I was trying to define the non-existence of it (time). It isn't that easy, but I don't think I say: "It doesn't exist" and then: "but it does exist". I say it exists only as a concept. That's an "idea" btw. (that last sentence is recursively "defined by itself" -work that one out?)

Is it a neuron, by chance?

SF is the domain and range of the function of imagination.

Next stop Hotel Infinity A certain entity (whom shall remain nameless) decides to check in to the Golbert-Hidel for the night. As he goes to sign the register he notices it appears to be already full, and every name looks very much like his own. "No need to sign, sir" the desk clerk says, and the new guest is given a key, but as he goes up to his room, he forgets which one it is. He stops to ask a porter if he can find the room for him. “Certainly, sir, can I have your name?”, the porter asks, at which point the guest realises he has completely forgotten it. The porter smiles, asks the guest for his key, and turns and unlocks the nearest room. “It's not a problem sir”, he says, “The rooms all have the same lock and they're all empty anyway”. Version 1.1 A certain entity (whom shall remain nameless) decides to check in to the Golbert-Hidel for the night. The new arrival goes to the desk, to find two registers, one already apparently filled up with names, the other open at the first blank page. He turns the last page of the already filled book and sees that there are more pages also filled in, with signatures that all look very similar, but somehow vague. When he tries to look closely, the writing sort of wriggles and squirms out of his focus. Turning another page, he can see the same thing. He notices that every signature looks very much like his own. Puzzled, he asks the desk clerk where he is supposed to sign. "No need, sir", the desk clerk says, “We know you are here already”. “That's room number infinity for you, sir”, and the new guest is given a key with an odd-looking 8 on it, drawn sort of sideways. “Plus one, of course, sir”, the clerk says, and the guest, with a wry look, hands over a tip. “Have a pleasant stay, sir”, the desk clerk says. As he goes up to his room, he realises he has completely forgotten which one it was the clerk told him. He stops to ask a porter if he can find the room for him. “Certainly, sir, if I might have your name?”, the porter asks, at which point the guest realises he has absolutely no idea.The porter smiles, asks the guest for his key, and turns and unlocks the nearest room. “It's not a problem sir”, he says, “The rooms all use the same key and they're all empty anyway”.

“the total number of people who understand relativistic time ...is still much smaller than the number ...who believe in horoscopes.” -Yuval Ne'eman 1) Maybe someone would like to try and show that there is a dimensional edge, a "boundary", to the universe? 2) Or try to prove that there is no expansion (so no "edge of expansion")? 3) The entropy of the universe cannot decrease.

Heres the beginning of the essay (the rest is above): A hundred years ago, a young scientist was thinking about our current view of the universe, and decided there was something wrong with it. He spent several years reviewing the thinking and insights into the nature of reality introduced by the theories of James Clerk Maxwell. He developed or adapted his own mathematical symbology, and constructed a theory which would predict the expansion of the universe. For all of human history, man has believed in the existence of both an external and measurable world, and external and measurable time and distance within it. This is coupled, or co-cepted, with the belief that this measurement is “free”, it comes at no cost to either the observer, or the thing observed. There is no perturbation of any system and, conceptually, all information is available. These ideas -of complete information and an external measurable “system” that can be viewed as separate, or isolated, without cost- were thought by many, especially at the close of the 19th century, to be the keys to unlock the secrets of the universe (unfinished)...

More than ninety years after Einstein's earth-shaking discoveries, many still live in the same world these earlier "prophets of the real" (19th century scientists) believed so fervently in. But it is blindingly obvious that information does not come for free. We now understand that all of the “messages” we get from the external world arrive fundamentally because of tiny, quantised bits of energy. We know there is no way to deliver or receive any message without the “transfer” of at least one of these. We also know that time cannot exist, as such. Time is a facet of the way we measure change in the world. Our measurement is not costless but perturbs the very object (also the subject) of itself, of measure. This is actually blindingly obvious to anyone, but we cling to our concepts of a real, external, existential time, “time-stuff” (tachyons, anyone?), which has no existence other than as a concept of measurable change.

To communicate in binary, would we be able to use words? How many bits would they need? How would we map binary to our 10 digits? Or would we only use our arms and have some kind of semaphore language, and no evolved speech? Hic improbabilis est (et delectare).

I strongly advise any would-be dentist to "get over" any feelings (as I'm sure you must have at least begun to do) about poking their fingers in someone's gob. I recently had a dental problem and went to about 5 different places before I found one who seemed relaxed about this. I couldn't understand how someone could have a job like that and avoid doing this (examining the "inside"). The family dentist I saw as a kid would always run his fingers around my teeth when having a look at me. No dentist nowadays seems to have the "courage" anymore. Just a comment.

The "answer" is that irreversible processes result in transfer out of the system (losses). This is an equilibrium-busting process.

Yes, I realise photons are "massless". You do realise you have said that information, which is "massless" photons, doesn't have mass? Sorry, it does (have a mass equivalent). This one is tough for most people, like accepting that time doesn't exist.