Why is there something rather than nothing?

Yes, and agreed. Science is a tool used by us to reduce subjective bias in observation, not eliminate it. As long as we do not possess omniscience we cannot claim to objectively understand or comprehend the universe. We assume that axiomatic postulates hold and apply then proceed to examine any claims from within the framework of these assumptions.

While that serves the purposes of reducing the inherent observer bias in a system, it does not eliminate it completely to be termed as an inertial or an objective frame of reference.
sid_16.

 

you're always welcome.

 

I welcome him/her in advance if comes back from the past or future and visit MDL ,see this thread and would like to reply.

 

Time is a dimension. How can it have a start point? or even more..an end point? And dimension is a reference for existing things.

Why do you believe a dimension has a beginning? Does the unit called mile has a absolute beginning? Do we have a spot in the universe, which is marked as the "beginning of distance?

 

Dark matter isn't "discovered". Dark matter is, by definition, matter we can't detect. Once we detect it, it isn't dark matter anymore. What you have to understand is that there is a limit to what we can see with an optical telescope. Past a certain point, the only way we can detect an object in space is if it is either emitting radiation or has a gravitational field large enough to affect something we can detect. The simple truth of the matter is that there could be a hunk of lead the size of the moon a light year away from us and there's no way we'd be able to detect it.

Causation is a scientific tool, not a scientific law. What this means is that we assume that if an event occurs it must have been caused by a previous event/s. We can safely make that assumption because usually it is true... But the fact remains that we may never know or understand what caused a specific event. In fact, according to Chaos Theory, it is impossible for us to do so.

The Single Event Model (the best known as "Big Bang Theory") is not the only model of the universe... Or even the model that best conforms to observation. Multiple Event Models and even Dynamic Eternal Models actually conform better to some observational data than Single Event Models.

My conclusion is, we cannot prove one hypothesis by disproving another hypothesis.

The simple reason is that hypotheses are not either/or propositions. For an example to show what I mean with the following two hypotheses:

H-1. 'X' is a spammer , s/he must be banned.
H-2. 'Y' is a spammer,s/he must be banned.
Should I treat these hypotheses as "competing either/Or hypotheses"? In other words, if I show that 'X' is not a spammer, does that mean 'Y' must be a spammer? Of course it doesn't...

Even though they are competing hypotheses, they are not "either/or" hypotheses.

The fact of the matter is that both or neither of them could be spammer that should/must be banned.
sir,please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
thanks,
sid_16.

 

Okay some what I tend to agree with you. If time is a mental illusion, then every thing exists only in our mind. There is sufficient ground to believe that the brain has a biological clock which enables the brain to read sensory inputs at fixed intervals and not on a continuous basis. I think that is the basis for the phenomenon called time. In that case time need not exist out side of the brain.

Then universe need not have a beginning and end like we are forced to believe due to the concept of time in our mind. It is difficult for us to imagine a phenomenon with no beginning or end because of our concept of time. Now, this is not an attempt to disprove all existing scientific theories.

I am only trying to view things from a different angle and presenting it so that we can think together. We came up with the theory of expanding universe because of the fact that galaxies are continuously moving apart and according to human understanding this can happen only in an expanding scenario like the blowing of a balloon. This again could be due to our concept of time as all our measurements are time dependent.

Let me ask a simple question here. Today at this particular moment on the 14th of May 2012 at say 6.37pm my time the universe including our immediate surroundings is in a certain state. Is it the same state that existed at the same time on 14th of May 2011 at say 6.37pm ? If the answer is yes I would like to know why. If the answer is no; when did the change of state occur? Does the old state still exist?

 

Sir, sorry for the late reply.Without the preamble I'm coming directly to the topic. Our old perception was a flat earth with the sun and stars going round it. It is not a wrong perception. The earth is approximately flat at visible distance and with reference to earth everything else is moving in circles. At the first layer of perception, it is true. Our mind is not lying here.

If you go up on a rocket, at some distance the earth will appear round and rotating about an axis. This perception is right again from that distance.
As you go further up the perception changes again to a solar system and Milky Way and so on and so forth. At each level, our perception is true.

Does it mean all the other perceptions were wrong? At each level there are different realities; all right ones. So logically one has to conclude that our perception is dependent upon our space-time position in the universe.There could be an infinite number of layers of perceptive realities and the universe is a sum total of all those layers. The so far unknown areas are good ground for mystics to fill up with fancy stories.

After all, there is still the issue that the entire universe may be in your head and there are no other people. But setting that aside, even language is not always agreed upon. I doubt there is even one word in the English language that every single person would agree to the meaning of. Nor would even every single person agree that it is English.

Perhaps someone from an African tribe might mistake it for German, for example. What I am saying is that subjective reality is sovereign over objective reality. Even when someone claims that 'A' thing is objective, it is through their subjective reality that they find it to be objective. So it really is just an opinion. I think what most people claim to be objective/absolute reality, is really just a majority consensus on an issue.

But how does a majority vote make it objective at all? I for one am not too quick to jump on "the majority is usually right" . Common belief has more then often been later proven incorrect. For instance, it was once commonly believed that the world was flat and there were sea monsters at the edge of the world. I think it is safe to say that is not the case now. Also it was once believed that the sun rotated around the earth. That has also been proven false.

I personally think the most commonly believed things are usually the incorrect ones. People go through life believing whatever makes the most sense to them until something better comes along. Facts come and go. History is rewritten. Different schools of thought manipulate reality at various times. How do we really know that science is any more accurate than religion? Truth is that we don't. This may seem like a contradiction in terms, but reality appears to be for all intents and purposes made up. We make it up as we go along.

A child's maturity is an evidence of that. As we grow older we change, and so does our perception of what is real and what is not. Little children believe in say- Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny but when they reach a certain age they stop believing that. Hardly anyone grows up continuing to believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny.


So what changes? Do Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny change? No our perceptions of them do change. In this case, our perceptions of their very existence changes. But that is actually false. The Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny do still exist, they are just not real.

The human mind is a universe in and of itself. It is this magnificent universe that forms what we conveniently call objective reality. If everybody on the entire planet perceived that the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause were real, then wouldn't they be?

What if we all thought we knew Santa Clause personally and he was a great guy. I know that sounds like an impossible scenario, but people believe more outlandish things than that. We could actually be reptilian apes. Some people say we are. More then one would think.

I have a distant relative who is a (detective movie buff) schizophrenic and he actually thinks the CID/CBI put a microchip in his brain that they communicate to him via radio frequencies. I have told him that he is just mentally ill, but he insists that I am just not aware of the conspiracy. I told him to go for an X-Ray of his head, and if there weren't any microchip there then he would have to believe me. Though he did not take me up on that, I bet if he had, he would have come up with an excuse why it did not show up on an X-ray such as the X-ray technicians were in on it.

But this being the case, how do we know that we are not all crazy (for the above case) and he is the only sane one? We don't, and there is no way to prove it one way or another.

And lastly, solipsism is trivial to refute. I know for a fact that my own mind neither can create a Pablo Picasso painting , nor a Shakespeare play. Yet my mind perceives those to exist in an apparently real world. Therefore something else created them. How do I know for a fact that my mind can't create such works? Because I can't even write a simple paragraph of the Shakespeare's play or a curve of the Picasso's painting, that's why, If my own mind had created Pablo Picasso painting and As You Like It, then I'd be able to create equally complex works anytime I wanted to do so.

 

Yen sir thank you very much for the compliments. At last one of my thought/post brought your attention, and I appreciate you for comparing me with your young mind. Rest I'll reply later.
Few question relating to 'the self'. Am I simply a set of chemical and biological reactions? Are my thoughts and actions just a result of these reactions? Or is there something more to me? What is it exactly that makes me ? May be, every seven years or so my body completes a cycle where it has renewed every cell it is made up of, in effect it is no longer the same body. However, I am still me, why do I still have this idea of me ? Is it then my consciousness and my memory that makes me? I remember my name, I remember what I did yesterday, last year etc. Do these memories go a long way to explaining my sense of 'I' ?


thanks,
sid_16.

 

Socrate MMXII, we all think we are sane people without any hysteria or schizophrenia or something like that... But this is the same way a schizophrenia will also think... For a schizophrenic person living in the cells of a mental care hospital, he'll still be a normal person like you or me in his imaginary world .

So how can we be sure we are not a schizophrenic , (I agree with your idea about schizophrenia), now chained in a mental asylum, but still lives normally as you or me or whoever we are in our imaginary world ?

Once someone realizes that we are not aware of objects directly, but via a veil of perception, one can immediately question the belief that there are external actual objects corresponding to our perceptions. And solipsism says that our perceptions, and our minds, exist in themselves, without any corresponding external objects. It is based on the idea that since you cannot verify that there are actually corresponding objects out there (the verification would imply sense use, and that is what you are trying to verify), it is equivalent to say that you only live in a sense-data world, meaning just your mind. Solus - ipse. Only - yourself.

As I've posted the link for vacuum fluctuations , is a bit more complicated, but what it says in essence is that for very brief instances in time, matter appears and disappears into 'non existence' (not exactly, but it is a good enough analogy for now). In fact a leading hypothesis of how the universe came about utilities this principle to provide plausible hypothesis about creation ex nihilo, i.e spontaneously and naturally. It is fascinating really, but not everyone's into it. There is pretty sound theory supporting these claims, but the actual physical evidence is just coming around now. We are three dimensional projections of a four dimensional reality, much in the same way a holograph, is a three dimensional projection of what is in effect two dimensional information. See the holographic universe here. While this is still in its infancy, it does have more going for it than axiomatic claims of reality existing independently.

"YOU can create Picasso's paintings and Shakespeare's poems easily IF you let THE SELF to express ITSELF." Here I think your 'self' express to 'itself' very well (from all of your posts I came to realize) and a query from the quote above, can you create a loader like Daz to activate win8 or modify bios like others here? just kidding. (My answer would be very simple you can't make a loader that can activate win8, neither can I compose a Shakespeare's play or Picasso painting, 'cos minds are same in terms of features, but differ in terms of abilities)
sid_16.