gestalt

Striker · Post by **Striker** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 7:32 am

My chance of achieving this is so small that we're getting near the 'Heart of Gold' drive, but for an elementary particle that's entirely possible. Some of the little buggers do it all the time...

Bustercharlie · Post by **Bustercharlie** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 8:27 am

gestalt

[ This Message was edited by: bustercharlie on 2002-03-23 12:31 ]

Striker · Post by **Striker** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 8:29 am

*swarms Buster's picnic*

You were saying?

Foddercat · Post by **Foddercat** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 8:36 am

On 2002-03-19 06:07, El SillY wrote:

Oh, Silver Spawn (a Jack reader who hasn't worked up the courage to enter the forum yet) says Hi.

Hey? HEY! Silver Spawn! I saw Silver Spawn on ICQ! She tried to freak me out with some bizzar message! I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything... Now I feel bad. I should have at least said "Hi"

WolfFur · Post by **WolfFur** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 8:42 am

On 2002-03-19 06:43, Foddercat wrote:
Okay, I'd like to see how you can and can't exist at the same time. Go ahead. Surprise me. Defeat the one truth that nobody has been able to defeat for the past few hundred years.

The CIA's knowledge of Osama's whereabouts.

Krikkit · Post by **Krikkit** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 9:04 am

Okay, el Silly, you're basically right, but you're not discounting Choas Theory. CT basically implies exactly waht you said about the impossiblity of your experiment, the fact that everything influences everything, but we cannot in any way keep track of it all, so we approximate, and get patterns/results where we believe there should be none.

Time bandit · Post by **Time bandit** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 9:17 am

Ooh! Schrodinger's cat paradox, I know this! This pretty much reveals how ridiculous quantum theory could be by stating a scenario in which a cat placed in a box with poision has a 50% chance of being alive or dead at the end of one hour. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is described by a wave function encomapssing two possible states: the state in which the cat is alive and another where the cat is dead. An observation is necessary to collapse the wave function and put the kitty in one state or another. Until that observation is made, and the wave function is collapsed, the cat is neither alive nor dead- it is in a superposition of sates. Of course, this paradox was created to reveal a critical weakness in quantum theory. As Einstein pointed out- does the moon exist simply because a mouse looks at it?

Surtur · Post by **Surtur** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 10:41 am

El SillY- If you want to accept quantum mechanics at face value (and there's no reason why you have to) then there are a few problems with your theory. One is Quantum Indeterminacy Principle, which claims that while the probable outcomes of any particle interaction can be calculated (the eigenstates and eigenvectors) it is impossible to predict with certainty what the outcome will be. This is not because of some insufficiency in our predictive power, but because the probabilistic nature of subatomic particles in quantum theory.

Interestingly enough, this has some strange consequences for free will. For example, if we are living in a deterministic universe, (which could be described as an immensely complex equation, as in your example) then surely free will is impossible, as your actions are determined by the state of the universe before you were born and the laws governing particle interactions. If we are living in an indeterministic universe, however, then free will still seems impossible. If the physical laws of the universe do not determine our actions, neither can they be determined by us.
If you hold a binary view of the universe as either deterministic or indeterministic, it seems you must abandon free will.

[ This Message was edited by: Surtur on 2002-03-19 12:07 ]

El SillY · Post by **El SillY** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 12:58 pm

On 2002-03-19 08:36, Foddercat wrote:
On 2002-03-19 06:07, El SillY wrote:

Oh, Silver Spawn (a Jack reader who hasn't worked up the courage to enter the forum yet) says Hi.

Hey? HEY! Silver Spawn! I saw Silver Spawn on ICQ! She tried to freak me out with some bizzar message! I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything... Now I feel bad. I should have at least said "Hi"

When was this? Cause she isn't called SilverSpawn on ICQ, so either it was her and she changed her name recently or it was someone else...

I was going to say something about the CT too but it ended up all silly...

Foddercat · Post by **Foddercat** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 6:56 pm

please for the love of Tony Danza- RUN.

Don't ask.

Don't argue.

Just RUN.

This is the one, and only message sent to me by SilverSpawn. Is it someone else that just happens to have the same name?

Oh, also, someone by the name Silverbolt contacted me, also via ICQ, claiming to be SilverSpawn's brother! Again, does any of this ring true? Or have I lost my mind?

_________________

"It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, as long as you do it with style!"
Foddercat

[ This Message was edited by: Foddercat on 2002-03-19 18:58 ]

Cypress · Post by **Cypress** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 7:23 pm

...? O_o; Once I went on Battle.net and my comp crashed, I was wrangling with some hackers at the time and it took me a bit for my comp to come alive again... Well, as soon as my comp worked I went back On B.net the first thing that came up was:

"Be careful now ZF_CypressGuard!" <---(My user name.)

This was freaky so I went off-line (Not before taking a screen shot first though!), downloaded a good firewall and went hacker hunting.

After searching a few channels (Buddy bounced around alot,) I managed to corner him... the damn thing was a bot! Gah! all that for a damn bot! How it got my name though is beyond me... I was waging a mind game war on a hacker at the time (It must have been a script kiddy... no way I coulda gotten away with it), so I thought it was one of his more prominent buds... was dead wrong.

Anyway, I freaked the dude out eventualy (He convinced himself I was FBI somehow.) and he backed off, I later found out that the dude was in a nasty hacker clan so I pretty much got away with it unscathed. *Shudder...* I'm glad it was just a script kiddy and not a full fledged hacker, my firewall was going wonky* for a bit which was not reasuring.

*Note: I like to come up with odd/new words... that is all.

Cypress · Post by **Cypress** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 7:26 pm

MMMmmmm... here is one good thing about being Canadian... Kraft Diner is da bomb!

[YUM!]

Kree · Post by **Kree** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 9:45 pm

Kree grins at Foddercat and churrups, "From a logical standpoint, I agree with you, however, as Surtur stated, that kind of reasoning leaves no room for free will. A perfectly binary universe has no place for freewill. If everything either is or isn't, then all decisions boil down to stimulus/response - nothing more than what the simplest microbe gets by on. The only way for freewill to exist is if until a decision is made by a sentient entity, that decision remains in total flux, neither True nor False and only when the decision is made and acted on does reality solidify around that point so that it seems to be an absolute. Oh, and last I heard, Striker is right - subatomic particles have been observed (through instruments of course) to simply disappear and reappear elsewhere. I believe particle physicists call the effect 'tunneling' since the particles can pass through 'solid' matter that way. Of course, matter isn't really solid - its mostly empty space with various fields stretching across the emptiness, and in fact, matter and energy might be pretty much the same thing according to some theories. You see, logic is a wonderful tool with which to model reality, but never forget that no model, no matter how perfect, is identical to the original and thus never perfectly mirrors it."

Swiftfoxhound · Post by **Swiftfoxhound** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 10:17 pm

Well let just get back on track with what the damn topic was about. Ya sure im a stupid ass fanboy... aww shitabanatasay.

Krikkit · Post by **Krikkit** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 10:34 pm

Nah, I like debating the fundamental premises of the universe better.

Foddercat · Post by **Foddercat** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 10:38 pm

Tsk. Who says logic and free will can

Surtur · Post by **Surtur** » Tue Mar 19, 2002 11:55 pm

Foddercat- Yes, absolutely. Binaries are the most fundamental unit of logic. They are the basis of categorical logic (some X are Z, all Z are C, etc.) and are fundamental in propositional and predicate logic, as every logical operator implies a binary in some sense. As such any logical statement can be reduced to a binary (with some loss in meaning) or broken down into binaries (with some loss in cleanliness

).

However, logic is a mental creation, a tool with which to analyze what we think or know. The concept of binaries, when mapped onto the physical world, is simply a way to describe certain patterns and properties that we observe.

btw, the Schroedinger's cat paradox actually is testable, at least in terms of electrons, in what i think is commonly called the double-slit experiment. Essentially, when an electron is in a superposition of states (like when the cat is both dead and alive) it can actually interact with it's 'virtual' selves, and these interactions are measurable. There are several other ways that quantum theory seems to defy binary logic, such as the Heisenburg uncertainty principle.
The important thing to realize is that, while logic and binaries certainly seem to fail in the case of quantum weirdness, events on a quantum scale seem to have no detectable influence on events on the macro scale that we are familiar with. The Schroedinger's cat experiment is an attempt to show how impossible such an influence would be.

As for +/- existence, i don't think i'm qualified to take that on. As an interesting aside, however, Zen Buddhists see the transcendence of that duality as a step towards enlightenment. The old Madhyameka philosopher Nagarjuna said, "To say 'it is' is to grasp for permanence. /To say 'it is not' is to adopt the view of nihilism. /Therefore a wise person /Does not say 'exists' or 'does not exist.'"
Then again, i sort of see Zen Buddhism as the process of very clinically driving oneself insane.

Blarg!
Blarg cast Red!

[ This Message was edited by: Surtur on 2002-03-19 23:58 ]

Foddercat · Post by **Foddercat** » Wed Mar 20, 2002 12:24 am

Hmmm? Rene Descartes was the one who first stated the whole "I think, therefor I am" statement. So far it is the only, and I mean ONLY thing that all philosophers agree on. And as for particals that defy binaries? I don't think you can. I mean, any time a binary is to complex to define a certain phenomenon, all you have to do is split it into two simpler binaries that deal with the anomaly. And since logic and binary are ultiamtely concepts, they can be applied to anything in the for of theories. I still believe that everything does exist in binary form if you break it down, but I make no claims to be able to break that down myself. I know I'm cheating here, but I have to paraphrase Socrates on this one: "The only thing I know, is that I can never know for sure. The things I see are puzzles beyond my mortal capacity, and only if I attaint godhood will I truly know all things." So in other words, we may know one day, but not now. All we can do is watch the electron jump about and form opinions, but we lack the means to prove it.

On a side note. I've been thinking of El Silly's theory of stasis. Technically, he could be right. There is nnothing that I've seen to suggest that he even could be wrong, let alone is wrong.

Oy...

Anyhow, what I'm interested in is the Zen view on life. Zen produces a lot of thinkers doesn't it? I wouldn't mind doing a research paper comparing the theories of logic to the theories of Zen!

Surtur · Post by **Surtur** » Wed Mar 20, 2002 1:16 am

"The only thing I know, is that I can never know for sure. The things I see are puzzles beyond my mortal capacity, and only if I attaint godhood will I truly know all things." So in other words, we may know one day, but not now. All we can do is watch the electron jump about and form opinions, but we lack the means to prove it.

True dat. In fact, we can't even watch the electron directly.

What's Really going on is anyone's guess.

Anyhow, what I'm interested in is the Zen view on life. Zen produces a lot of thinkers doesn't it? I wouldn't mind doing a research paper comparing the theories of logic to the theories of Zen!

Yeah, Zen is The Shit

I don't claim to begin to understand it (in fact, studying zen is bad, you're supposed to 'realize' zen, rather than understand it, or so i hear

) but i never get tired of it!

That would be an awesome paper, especially considering that a lot of academics dismiss zen as 'mystical' and therefore incompatible with western philosophy, when in fact there seem to be some startling paralels.

I like 'seem'.
Seem seem seem.

[ This Message was edited by: Surtur on 2002-03-20 01:17 ]

Lobo · Post by **Lobo** » Wed Mar 20, 2002 1:26 am

On 2002-03-19 19:26, Cypress wrote:
MMMmmmm... here is one good thing about being Canadian... Kraft Diner is da bomb!

[YUM!]

*ahem*
'If i had a million dollars/
We wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner.../
But we would!'

heh, bare naked ladies.