Deep Thoughts

[quasarrgames]

I'm sure at some point you've had some kind of strange, intriguing, and really-philosphical-if-you-dig-deep-enough thought about something.

So here's a place to put them.

Here are some examples i found:

What if every country has ninjas, but Japan's ninjas are just really bad at their job?

How do they take tower cranes off of skyscrapers when they're done with them? Since the building is built around the crane, is it trapped forever? Is the twisted husk of a tower crane sitting in every tall building, and we've just never noticed?

What happens to werewolves during solar eclipses?

 

Have fun!

[Tex_NL]

13 minutes ago, quasarrgames said:

...
What happens to werewolves during solar eclipses?
...

Nothing. Werewolves 'turn' only at a full moon. Solar eclipses can only ever happen at a new moon.

[astrokerb]

What happens if you go back in time with the purpose of averting some horrible tragedy and avert the tragedy? When you go back to the present, the tragedy never happened, so you never went back in time to prevent it, so it still happened, so you went back in time to prevent it, so you never did, so it still happened, etc. 

Edited May 6, 2016 by astrokerb

[cubinator]

Have you ever been walking, or moving in some way and then you're not sure if you're moving through the world or if the world is moving under you? 

What about when you're in a car? When you close the doors, are the windows just projections, the car isn't actually moving, just feels like it is like that one Star Wars ride at Disneyland? YOU CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE! 

What if it's all just a really convincing simulation?

What if I'm not real?

What is "real?"

Why can I ask these questions?

Time to think about kittens again...

[Atlas2342]

Why are we governed by laws of physics....

[astrokerb]

What caused the Big Bang? What is the meaning of this universe? Is there a meaning to the whole multiverse?

Are we in a complex simulation? What if it's a government funded project? If it was defunded, what would happen? If it where a simulation, would I be able to wonder this?

Is it possible to imagine having no perspective at all? Is it possible to have absolutely no perspective? 

 

 

 

Edited February 11, 2016 by astrokerb

[cubinator]

2 hours ago, astrokerb said:

What caused the Big Bang? What is the meaning of this universe? Is there a meaning to the whole multiverse?

Are we in a complex simulation? What if it's a government funded project? If it was defunded, what would happen? If it where a simulation, would I be able to wonder this?

Is it possible to imagine having no perspective at all? Is it possible to have absolutely no perspective? 

 

 

 

I exist, therefore nothing does not exist. "No perspective" as you describe it is simply not being alive. Imagine the time before you were conceived. Imagine the time billions of years before our sun even existed. That is "no perspective" because you could not perceive things in that time.

Because the universe exists, there is no such thing as "nothing." Maybe the universe exists because there was simply no way not to. Maybe it's because something just happened. That something just happens to be our universe. We may be completely incapable as a species to understand this due to the physical limitations of the human brain, just as a mayfly has no way of learning about things like continental drift because they have not enough time for their tiny brains to learn it. It's possible that only a brain with infinite cognitive power is capable of understanding why anything ever came to be. But we mere mortals are capable of lots of other cool stuff like sliced bread and KSP!

[quasarrgames]

6 minutes ago, cubinator said:

It's possible that only a brain with infinite cognitive power is capable of understanding why anything ever came to be. But we mere mortals are capable of lots of other cool stuff like sliced bread and KSP!

Speaking of sliced bread... what do you think came before that saying? Were people before that saying "it's the best thing since the wheel?" before that, was it "the best thing before bread?" before THAT, was it "agriculture?" BEFORE THAT, was it "pointy sticks?".

[cubinator]

18 hours ago, quasarrgames said:

Speaking of sliced bread... what do you think came before that saying? Were people before that saying "it's the best thing since the wheel?" before that, was it "the best thing before bread?" before THAT, was it "agriculture?" BEFORE THAT, was it "pointy sticks?".

My best guess would be that the saying originated sometime in the early 1900s.

*after a couple of quick Google searches*

"By the 1930s, pre-sliced bread was fully commercialized, and standardization was reinforced by other inventions that required uniform slices, such as toasters. The common phrase, "the best thing since sliced bread," as a way of hyping a new product or invention may have come into use based on an advertising slogan for Wonder Bread, the first commercial manufacturer of pre-wrapped, pre-sliced bread." (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/02/how-the-phrase-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread-originated/252674/)

CALLED ITI!!! 

"It was first sold in 1921 in the United States, and it later became one of the first to be soldpre-sliced, being marketed like this nationwide in 1930. This led to the popular phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread", upholding a paragon of culinary innovation." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Bread)

Before that company advertised it's sliced bread, I don't think there was any other version of the catchphrase floating around. This was it's first appearance.

Edited February 11, 2016 by cubinator

[Atlas2342]

What if there is no such thing as gravity and the big bang and such? What if our minds just created these things so we can comprehend the universe? What if the only measurement of the universe is time?

[Xorth Tanovar]

If I pour a glass of plain water on a towel, it gets darker where the water is.

Why? The water itself is essentially colorless.

[Matuchkin]

When you think about human extinction, it really makes you feel how unimportant Earth, the Sun and maybe even our universe is. We think we're the leaders, the dominators, and yet everything is going to end within the next few centuries.

[cubinator]

17 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

When you think about human extinction, it really makes you feel how unimportant Earth, the Sun and maybe even our universe is. We think we're the leaders, the dominators, and yet everything is going to end within the next few centuries.

I doubt humans will go extinct in such a short time. What event could cause it to happen in these next centuries? Climate change will not render the planet completely barren, it would only cause many species to need to adapt to different climates, including humans which I believe we are capable of. A global nuclear war would put us back in the Stone Age before we can completely kill ourselves with it. An asteroid apocalypse is unlikely, and the sun won't run out of hydrogen for a looooong time. I think humans will be around for, at worst, something on the order of millions of years. At best, we'll spread across the whole galaxy and live on long after our tiny, humble origin is stardust.

[Matuchkin]

Just now, cubinator said:

I doubt humans will go extinct in such a short time. What event could cause it to happen in these next centuries? Climate change will not render the planet completely barren, it would only cause many species to need to adapt to different climates, including humans which I believe we are capable of. A global nuclear war would put us back in the Stone Age before we can completely kill ourselves with it. An asteroid apocalypse is unlikely, and the sun won't run out of hydrogen for a looooong time. I think humans will be around for, at worst, something on the order of millions of years. At best, we'll spread across the whole galaxy and live on long after our tiny, humble origin is stardust.

1. According to Stephen Hawking (and statistics): within 600 years, everyone on earth will have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and the earth will be heating up substantially due to the energy consumption. You may think that's an estimate based on the current reproduction rate, but then you have to acknowledge that global human reproduction rate is increasing.

2. We'll all pretty much screw over if another solar storm like the one in 1859 hits us.

[cubinator]

1 minute ago, Matuchkin said:

1. According to Stephen Hawking (and statistics): within 600 years, everyone on earth will have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and the earth will be heating up substantially due to the energy consumption. You may think that's an estimate based on the current reproduction rate, but then you have to acknowledge that global human reproduction rate is increasing.

Before this happens, a lot of people will die off. A small percentage will survive, and will probably decide "Let's never do that again." My point is, it would be extremely rare that every single one of us dies due to human-caused events. There might be small, isolated populations that come out of the woods in a thousand years completely oblivious to the civilizations that once existed there.

[quasarrgames]

Ah, yes! I was wondering how long it would take for this thread to turn to the nihlist side! I'm surprised it only took 12 posts. That's quite swift progress.

Yes, one of the biggest flaws of society, as my parents used to say, is that "it takes 20 people to build a barn and one fool to burn it down". But isn't that the case with life as well? In one swift moment a person can jump off a cliff or get eaten by a lion or successfully type in the nuclear launch codes, and years of work, countless hours of invested energy and effort are thrown away. It's quite a miracle that life as a whole has lasted so long. Everything in the universe wants to dissolve into chaos and entropy, but not life. Life is defiant, every cell driven by this insatiable urge to keep existing, this... fear of death, of entropy. It puzzles and fascinates me.

[ThaZeus]

Why do we think? Why is there life? You can easily see that it is almost mathematically impossible for life to form. So how did it? Why are we bipedal? We did mammals develop intelligence instead of bigger and bigger teeth and weapons like every other animal in history? How do we know that we are sentient?

[cubinator]

On 2/13/2016 at 11:24 PM, ThaZeus said:

How do we know that we are sentient?

We don't.

On 2/13/2016 at 11:24 PM, ThaZeus said:

Why are we bipedal? We did mammals develop intelligence instead of bigger and bigger teeth and weapons like every other animal in history?

What made us able to achieve civilization is that we are not only really smart, but we have hands that can make things. Without our hands, we would not have been able to create fire, tools for farming, monumental structures, books, etc. I think it was a combination of our rising intelligence and our ability to put it to good use by making things like spears, shelters, and other sophisticated tools that allowed us to get to what we have today. As for our intelligence, it was just as good as big teeth because we could outsmart the animals that might eat us, or make weapons to protect ourselves.

[Matuchkin]

22 minutes ago, cubinator said:

We don't

Personally, I believe that all our emotions, all our feelings, and everything we do consists of long, complicated chains of reflexes and instincts.

Basically, if you take a super-computer and constantly input information into it for a few million years, you'll get a human brain.

[problemecium]

Here's one that I finally feel safe posting now that I know I'm not actually the first one to think of it:

Imagine you are a Who living on a grain of dust, except instead of being looked after by Horton you and your tiny dust-planet are orbiting millimeters outside the event horizon of Sagittarius A*, the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy. Barring distortions due to rapid rotation, the horizon is a virtually perfect sphere, so on a small scale like yours it appears perfectly flat, covering about half the sky.
Your civilization's astronomers debate at length over the nature of the universe: since the sky is on one side completely black, and on the other filled with points of light, it is easy to conclude that you live near the edge of the universe. So which side is the universe and which is the void? Given that one side seems to be full of stuff, which some scientists surmise includes other tiny dust-grain planets, clearly that side is the universe, and the black void on the other side is nothing.
But then they discover the technology to measure tiny variations in gravity and movement over long distances - perhaps a gravitational wave telescope They peer out into the sky and notice increasing redshift over greater distances, indicating that the universe is expanding. They also notice that the black void behind them is ever so slowly shrinking away (due to Hawking radiation), and as it does so it recedes faster and faster. The prevailing hypothesis is that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
Measuring differences in gravitational forces and other physical laws on opposite sides of the dust grain world suggests to the scientists that the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe, so they surmise that if the grain were farther from the edge, the same basic observations would still apply - the universe is expanding, it expands at an accelerating rate, etc.

The analogy isn't perfect; for example, at the moment Sagittarius A* is actually growing by absorbing energy from the cosmic microwave background. But it's spookily similar to what we've concluded, save for the simple happenstance of our position at the apparent center of the universe.
We know that the Whos are wrong - they don't live at the edge of the universe but at the edge of a black hole. But if all their science checks out, then who are we to say that it isn't us who are wrong?
The universe does have an event horizon, at the edge of the visible universe, beyond which is nothing but a black void receding from us at an ever-increasing rate.
And even spookier, the Schwarzschild radius of the known universe has been calculated to be approximately 13.7 billion light-years - which by some measurements is the actual radius of the known universe.

TL;DR: Do we actually live inside a giant black hole? And if black holes exist within it, then could further black holes exist within them, surrounded by tiny universes? And does that mean our entire universe is itself situated within an even bigger universe? How many "levels" are there?

...I only found out several months after first thinking this up that someone else already did and that it got featured on "Through the Wormhole" ^^;

Edited February 14, 2016 by parameciumkid
This post editor is gettign on my nerves. Turns out it's impossible to post a YouTube link without it turning into a huge embedded video.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

You forgot the "Ultimate question"

The answer to life is 42, but what is the equation?!

[Xorth Tanovar]

23 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

You forgot the "Ultimate question"

The answer to life is 42, but what is the equation?!

"What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?" 

A friend and I figured this out....it's mathematics are counted in Base 13.

Thus leading to the subsequent statement by Arthur Dent, "I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."

Edited February 15, 2016 by Xorth Tanovar

[astrokerb]

How do causal loops start?

What causes not-life to become life?

Are time, space and thought the same thing?

What causes Big Bangs?

[Krobinson]

10 hours ago, astrokerb said:

How do causal loops start?

What causes not-life to become life?

Are time, space and thought the same thing?

What causes Big Bangs?

The universe is a self- organizations system and follows the laws of nature.

Live is a dissipative imbalance. If matter lies inside an energie flow it could form simple structures, followed by comlpex and finaly living things.

But only under a massive count of coincidences (bottleneck theorie's)

Time and Space building the spacetime which einstein maybe intepreted correctly (einsteins theories are damn good checked)

Thought is not physical (maybe). "How to be John Malkovich knows only John Malkovich"

But its interesting that certain "neardeath"-stories from humans said they saw a bright light.

-> travelling with speed of light would distort your view into something like a bright light dot in front of you and darkness around. (just sayin)

The big bang(s) is caused by itself. Because everything fluctuate, like the quantum theorie tells us, the universe was born by itself.

Something was homogeneously and cause this fluctuations something happened.

For sure this are theories but thats the todays knowledge.

[EliasDanger]

What is consciousness? Is it just matter and energy arranged in such away that it creates the illusion of an observer all because it turned out that that was evolutionarily desirable? Or is consciousness something that arises from the existence of something unsubstantial and unmeasurable, like a soul or spirit? Are near-death experiences real or explainable by science?

How are the forces in this universe so perfectly tuned for the existence of atoms, of galaxies, of solar systems, of planets, and of life? Change one force just a tiny bit, or cool the universe slightly slower or faster after the big bang, and none of this could be here. Is this because there is an infinite number of universes out there and we just happened to be in one that was just right? Or is it the work of a creator entity, a "God" if you will? Why does an infinite and always existing multiverse sound more logical than an infinite and eternal Creator? If the multiverse was infinite, that would mean that not only is there another me out there somewhere, there are in fact, an infinite number of mes out there. This seems less intuitive then the universe simply being created by a higher being. Perhaps it is like a simulation, a divine one. Maybe when we die, we find that heaven is the real world.

Edited May 6, 2016 by EliasDanger